The Last Thing on Their Minds

Remember when the Middle East's only innocent bystander 'miraculously' acquired East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Egypt's Sinai and Syria's Golan Heights in just 6 days back in June 1967?

Remember how, in the words of Alan Dershowitz, "the only question was whether the Arab armies would be able to strike the first military blow"? (The Case for Israel, p 92)

Remember UK novelist Howard Jacobson telling us on Q&A in May 2011, "You often hear people talking about the occupation.... I don't know anyone who wants the occupation. I don't know any Israeli who wants the occupation. But people speak about it as if it just kind of happened. One day there was an occupation. Out of a clear, blue sky Jews dropped... Israeli people dropped down and said, 'We'll have that piece of land'. It's not what happened."? (See my 24/5/11 post Gunfight at the Q&A Corral.)

So much for the flimflam. Here's the reality: 

"The [Israeli] military archives have released generals' testimonies that put the reader on the ground during Israel's capture of Jerusalem's Old City in the 1967 Six-Day War... Further testimony released Sunday was by Maj. Gen. Uzi Narkiss, who headed Central Command during the war. He told how the IDF had plans for conquering the West Bank in three days. He remembered that before the war he had told reserve officers in the 4th Brigade: 'I don't know if something will happen, but if it does, within 72 hours we'll drive out all the Arabs from the West Bank.' On June 5, Narkiss received orders to prepare for war... Narkiss phoned [Israeli West] Jerusalem Mayor teddy Kolleck. 'It's war, everything's in order... You'll be mayor of a united Jerusalem. We're enjoying great success; the armored forces are already inside.' Narkiss' testimony details his efforts to get the army into Jerusalem's Old City... As Narkiss put it, 'Since I'm a Jerusalemite and know this thing and know the concept of lamenting a missed opportunity for generations, I said that now was the time to take Jerusalem.' He was referring to the failure to keep the Old City in 1948." (Israeli generals in 1967 war: concerned over Jerusalem looting, hoping to drive Arabs out of West Bank, Gil Cohen, Haaretz, 5/6/16)

Ideas? What Ideas?

OFFS:

"[Howard] Jacobson is a novelist of ideas. Shylock is My Name ponders why Jews aren't at home in nature, why the People of the Word prefer order to disorder, why Jews have a kosher frame of mind even without a kosher kitchen, why the stereotype of the masturbating Jew persists, why reading the Guardian newspaper makes an enraged Manchester man a Zionist..." (From Louise Adler's review - The villain's response to Shakespeare - of Howard Jacobson's Shylock is My Name, Sydney Morning Herald, 20/2/16)

How can anybody take this Howard Z Jacobson bloke seriously? This is the Guardian of C.P. Z Scott who introduced Chaim Z Weizmann to David Z Lloyd George, co-daddy with M'Lord Z Balfour of the bloody Balfour Z Declaration, and is today run by Jonathan Z Freedland, who has given the keys of the shop to the likes of Hadley Z Freeman, Nick Z Cohen and Rafael Z Behr etc. Seriously, Howard, what's not to like about the Guardian?

Now You See It...

Now you don't.

One can only imagine the ructions over at SBS Television at the brave decision to screen Peter Kosminsky's insightful and historically accurate recreation of modern Palestinian history, The Promise, the final episode of which is to be screened this Sunday. Alas, absent a whistleblower, we cannot, of course, be privy to the gory details.

We are lucky, however, to have been afforded a tiny glimpse into what happens behind the scenes when a mainstream media outlet such as SBS throws caution to the winds and gives the Palestine problem the attention it deserves.

The glimpse I refer to is the fact that, while SBS's website hosted a forum for viewers' comments following the first two episodes of the 4-part series, this was abruptly terminated a mere 4 days after episode 2 and has not resurfaced since.

Why?

Well, the short and winding road which led to the termination of same seems to have begun with a comment from a certain 'surferbob' which appeared on the thread following episode one. From memory, I found it a model of rational and informed discourse on the subject at hand. And yet, without explanation, it was soon removed by the SBS moderator. Its disappearance prompted another commenter, 'Emile', to ask why. As it happens, it was at this point that I began printing off some of the comments, which enables me to quote verbatim the conversation that ensued:

SBSMegan: Hi Emile, surferbob's comment was removed because it contained racist expressions that were deemed inappropriate for this forum.

Emile: These were not apparent to me, I'm afraid. I really think the alleged 'racist expressions' you took exception to should be discussed in the interests of fairness and openness. Could you kindly list them for us, Megan?

Emile's response went answered, but the forum, with contributions from sundry commenters, including Emile, continued on - until, on Thursday 8, 'surferbob' resurfaced and addressed SBSMegan thus:

"Well, Megan, if you diagree with my comment that Israel has taken a seismic shift towards the right - sliding into fascism - read respected Israeli commentators such as Uri Avnery for their opinion. Better still, go there and see the living proof. I have witnessed protesters blinded, disfigured and killed at peaceful, non-violent protests against the ongoing theft of Palestinian lands. I myself, at 70 years of age, have been tear-gassed and shot. Welcome to the real Israel - or would you rather just censor comments you find unpalatable and label them racist?"

As I said earlier, a model of rational and informed comment. The above comment remained on the thread and was joined 3 hours later by this from 'Emile':

"With respect, Megan, I really do think you've had long enough on this. What precisely was your problem with surferbob's previous comment? What are your/SBS's criteria for alleging that his earlier comment contained 'racist expressions'? In the absence of any clear statement on this, commenters can only conclude that your decision to delete his comment was based on nothing more than your own, not necessarily informed (How would we know?), individual opinion."

Not only was there no response to this comment from 'SBSMegan', but the entire forum was closed, without notice or explanation, the very same day, and has not reappeared since. What - and this is, of course, an entirely rhetorical question - is SBS afraid of?

But there's more: In addition to the moderator's unilateral, and, on the face of it, contemptuous pulling of the plug on SBS's rightly questioning audience, a disclaimer of sorts - "This is a drama inspired by the accounts of British soldiers who served in Palestine" - appeared as an appendage to the precis of episode 3.

It would seem that SBS is reacting here to complaints from Israel lobbyists contesting the drama's historical veracity, the absurd and insulting (to both Kosminsky and to the historical record) insinuation being that The Promise is really little more than a dramatisation of the anti-Semitic attitudes of British troops serving in Palestine at the time.*

The following salutary letter in this week's Australian Jewish News by Arje Singer of Castle Cove only serves to highlight the crackling hysteria coming from Israel lobbyists on the one hand - "Forget Holocaust denial. Holocaust denial is old hat. The new strategy... is to depict the Holocaust in all its horror in order that Jews can be charged ('You of all people') with failing to live up to it."** - and the evident cowardice of certain quarters at SBS on the other:

"As an Israeli citizen, I couldn't find any anti-Israeli parts in The Promise. Every person has the right to bring his views to the general public. Not every picture or book must be Zionist. The TV series has historic background. It is completely ridiculous to write: 'Viewers unfamiliar with the facts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may come to view Israel more negatively'."

[* Maybe I'm reading a bit too much into this. In an interview with Kosminsky in The Guardian of 23/1/11, Britain's humiliation in Palestine, Rachel Cooke writes: "Between 1945 and 1948, some 100,000 soldiers served in the British-controlled Mandate of Palestine. Kosminsky's team spoke to around 80; he found the men's stories to be both gripping and moving, so he carried on, wading next through letters, diaries, memoirs and history books. Slowly, a theme began to emerge. 'The thing that came out most strongly', he says, 'was that the men all arrived in Palestine feeling incredibly pro-Jewish. A few of them had helped to liberate the [concentration] camps, so they had seen what had happened [to the Jews] with their own eyes... Over time, though, the soldiers' attitudes changed. Some of this was just the usual British support for the underdog; there's no question that by 1948 [when Israel declared itself an independent state] the Arabs were perceived as that. But also, if you're being attacked on a daily basis [by the Jewish resistance], if you're under constant threat of kidnap, if you're confined to barracks behind a lot of razor wire, your feelings are bound to change'."; **Howard Jacobson, Ludicrous, brainwashed prejudice, The Independent/AJN, 2/12/11]

Brainwashed

"To me, Pesach is the greatest Jewish festival because the story is so good. We sit around the Seder table and relate, over and over, our escape from Egypt... As a boy I felt fraught during the Passover service because it seemed that even as we celebrated a narrow escape from one disaster, we were preparing for the next. A Jew has either to be ignorant of his history or mad to suppose that what has happened before won't happen again." - British novelist Howard Jacobson condemning UK miniseries The Promise in Ludicrous, brainwashed prejudice, The Australian Jewish News/The Independent, 2/12/11

Yes, great story, Howard. No doubt about it. However, there's just one little problem:

"There is no evidence for Israel in Egypt. There is no evidence for the Exodus. There is no evidence for the Conquest even." - Israeli archaeologist Amihai Mazar, winner of the 2009 Israel Prize for Israeli archaeology, on Radio National's Late Night Live, 12/9/11.

Go figure, Howard.

Looks Promising!

I'm making no predictions about the worth or otherwise of this series until I've seen it with my own eyes. However, this item in today's Australian Jewish News does make it look... well, promising:

"A new TV series set to begin airing on SBS1 this Sunday prompted outrage from the Jewish community when it was broadcast in the UK earlier this year. The Promise tells the story of Erin, a young London woman, heading to Israel for the summer, who discovers the diary of her sick grandfather, which relates his part in the post-World War II British peacekeeping [!!!] force in pre-state Palestine. According to the Israeli Embassy in the UK, it received more complaints about The Promise than any other program, with a spokesman saying it 'created a new category of hostility towards Israel'. President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Vivian Wineman, wrote a letter to the UK broadcaster Channel 4 slating it as 'a propagandist caricature'. He added: 'The Promise consistently demonised Jews, by using distasteful stereotypes and even comparing the actions of the Nazis during the Holocaust to those of Jews in mandate Palestine'. The board also expressed 'grave concerns at historic [sic] inaccuracies', while Man Booker prize-winning author Howard Jacobson slammed it as a 'ludicrous piece of brainwashed prejudice'." (Mandate drama isn't very promising)

Why do I have this feeling that, even as I write, someone at SBS could already be copping flak over The Promise?

Gunfight at the Q&A Corral

How refreshing to watch last night's Q&A with writers (in town for the Sydney Writers Festival) instead of politicians for a change.

As it happened, with 3 of the 5 panellists identifying as Jews - UK novelist Howard Jacobson*, winner of the Man Booker Prize for The Finkler Question, UK academic Gail Dines (Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality), and Australian ethicist Leslie Cannold - Palestine/Israel got quite an airing. An audience question on Obama's latest fudge on the conflict provided a wonderful opportunity to sort the sheep from the goats, know what I mean?

[* See my 30/9/10 post Jewish Settlers - Now... & Then]

Here was the question that got the ball rolling: "President Obama recently outlined a new approach to the peace process in the Middle East, one that's explicitly based on the 1967 borders. Do you think this approach will work, and what would Howard Jacobson's Sam Finkler make of it?"

The limits of the question were obvious, given that there was nothing particularly new about Obama's approach. As Obama himself admitted in his follow-up speech to AIPAC on 22 May: "There was nothing particularly original in my proposal: this basic framework for negotiations has long been the basis for discussions among the parties, including previous US Administrations." Nor did the question acknowledge that Obama had hobbled his reference to Israel's 1967 borders with talk of "mutually agreed swaps."

At any rate, it had Howard Jacobson on his hobby horse of "Jews [who are] ashamed of being Jewish because of Israel." Jacobson doesn't like such Jews apparently. "First and foremost," he averred, "I'm an Englishman... [but] I never went around calling myself an ashamed Englishman because of Mrs Thatcher or Tony Blair."

Jacobson gives us no sense that the English Jews he is referring to derogatively as 'ashamed Jews' (presumably his euphemism for the Zionist putdown, self-hating Jews) may be merely reacting, to one degree or another, to the monstrous conceit of a foreign power that calls itself not just a Jewish state, but the Jewish state, claims that it, and not their birthplace, is their true homeland, and has long been engaged in the grinding genocide of another people... in their name.

The problem here is the man's dishonesty. If only he'd owned up to being the unashamed Zionist that he is, instead of hiding behind the word Jew. This would then have clarified the fact that his so-called ashamed Jews may in fact be principled anti-Zionists, that is, Jews who resent and reject the brutal colonising project that recruits them to the cause whether they wish to be so recruited or not. Still, Gail Dines, to whom I'll return later, would have none of it, and cheekily interjected with "I'm an ashamed Jew."

Jacobson, catering to his audience no doubt, was more honest about his Zionism in an interview in The Australian Jewish News of 20 May. There he was asked, "You're one of very few British Jewish celebrities who will stand up in public [but not on Q&A it seems] and proudly admit to being Jewish and Zionist. Why do you think you're in such a small minority?" Jacobsen responded snidely with: "It's about [them] wanting to be loved. It's about a longing for acceptance. It's about fashionable thinking, and the need English Jews have, particularly in theatre or show business, to show they are intellectually and politically in the swim. Anti-Zionism is as necessary as a union card."

So completely has Jacobson swallowed the Zionist myth that real Jews are Zionists, that he simply cannot bring himself to acknowledge that those he scornfully refers to as ashamed Jews are consciously going over to the anti-Zionist camp because they find it impossible to reconcile their belief in universal standards of decency and humanity with support for a vile ethno-national state that indulges in daily killing sprees against Palestine's indigenous population. Still, what we at least get in the AJN interview is the term anti-Zionist rather than the weaselly term ashamed Jews of Q&A.

On Q&A, in fact, before a largely non-Jewish audience, Jacobson appeared to me to be playing down his Zionist allegience, saying vacuously that he "hopes that Obama's speech will lead to peace," and obfuscating the issue with this pretentious gobbledygook: "You will get no peace in the Middle East as long as Israelis do not understand the equivalent centre of self of a Palestinian... and you will never get peace unless the Arab countries understand the equivalent centre of self of an Israeli."

Which brings me back to Dines' interjection and this pointed exchange:

DINES: And I'm an ashamed Jew
JACOBSON: You should be ashamed of being an ashamed Jew.
DINES: No, I'm not.

Unfortunately, it was at this point that compare Tony Jones paraded his own utterly superficial understanding of the Obama-Bibi-Lobby menage a trois by asking Jacobson irrelevantly, "Do you think it's what Obama is trying to do while taking on both the Israeli government and the Israeli lobby in the United States?"

IOW, is Obama himself, utterly clueless on, and entirely indifferent to, "the centre of self of a Palestinian," in the business of getting Bibi (who once said that the only way to deal with Palestinians is to "beat them up, not once but repeatedly, beat them up so it hurts so badly, until it's unbearable"*) to understand the "centre of self of a Palestinian"? To which Jacobson lamely waffled, "Netanyahu should have taken a deep breath and said... we'll have to discuss precisely what one means by those borders and of course there were problems with those borders, which is why we kept having wars. But... it's a speech in the right direction."

[*See Fibi Netanyahu, Liel Leibovitz, tabletmag.com, 15/7/10]

Then it was on to Leslie Cannold, who, after saying that she found "Howard's book... just fascinating" on the subject of Jews' "self-absorption," rambled on in the following outrageously self-absorbed fashion: "I am Jewish by background and so often it is seen like I ought to have an opinion and ought to have some say in what, in particular, is going on in the Middle East and in some ways I guess I do because the way that the law is set up in Israel is that I have the right of return because I have a Jewish mother. I'm Jewish and therefore if I ever wanted to go and live there I could and I also feel somewhat attached because I have, you know, a knowledge of history and family and know that when we didn't have a state I definitely accept that that was part of what made us vulnerable..."

Cannold here reveals herself as someone who has simply not thought about the issue under discussion, a condition not helped, no doubt, if all she's ever read on the question of Palestine is Jacobson's novel. The question arises: Do Jewish by background people such as Cannold, with a Jewish mother and a sense of Jewish vulnerability at various points in the trajectory of European history, but comfortably and successfully ensconced in countries such as Australia, Canada, the US or the UK, ever ponder the question Why is Israel holding the door open for me but keeping it slammed shut on Palestinian refugees uncomfortably and unsuccessfully ensconced in refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan for the past 63 years?

Sure she goes on to say that she'd like to see "Israelis have as much insight into the need that Palestinians have for land as well, because they are not safe or secure either without a state as we have that kind of understanding about ourselves," but really, how pathetic is that? If only Cannold would take time to read say Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine she might then desist in dishing out liberal Zionist inanities such as the above. One lives in hope. Maybe if someone out there could perhaps post her a copy?

Parenthetically, seeing she's raised the issue of Israel's Law of Return, I'd like to dedicate this pithy little gem thankfully archived on the Jews Sans Frontieres website (1/12/05) from the unfortunately extinct Fat old Jewish New Yorker blog:

"People want to know what I, a Jewish guy, think about Israel. I want to make something clear. I live in New York. I do not have a right and do not want a right to 'return' to Israel. I never was there. I want to skip all the arguments about whether or not today's Jews descend from the people of the Old Testament. I don't care if I do or I don't. It doesn't matter nor should it. The territory that is known to many as Palestine had been peopled by Arabic-speaking folks for centuries. Mainly they were Muslims, many were Christians, and a few of them Jewish too. Most of those people were kicked out of their lands and homes in 1948 by people like David Ben Gurion and Ariel Sharon and more were expelled in 1967. They are the ones who have a right to return, not me."

Anyway, back to the fray. I'm afraid, it was left to the fiesty, unashamedly ashamed Jew Gail Dines to lively up the discussion. After Jones had asked her what she meant by identifying herself as an ashamed Jew, she responded with some very plain speaking indeed:

"Well, I lived in Israel for quite a while. My son is actually an Israeli. I'm an Israeli citizen as well, so I have a vested interest and I was part of the Israeli peace movement as well as the feminist movement, and I think that Jews in Israel have an inability to empathise with the Palestinians because we believe that because of what Hitler did to us, that kind of cleansed us of any future wrong-doings. And I can tell you when I lived there during the Sharon years and the Begin years - and it's gotten much worse now - the Left has been virtually annihilated by the government. Everytime I go back there and meet with my friends, they are under siege by the government. And so I think as Jews, who live in the diaspora, that we need to speak up and we need to say it is absolutely unacceptable that Israel is building all these settlements. It is unacceptable what they did in Gaza. It is unacceptable what they did in Lebanon and we need to say that there needs to be some morality here and that the Palestinians have a right not to be refugees, and that we, as Jews, given what we have suffered, should empathise with them."

But this was too much for the unashamedly Zionist (at least in the AJN) Howard Jacobson, who reverted to the last refuge of the Zionist scoundrel when on the ropes - the conflict is sooo terribly, terribly complicated, and it's been going on, like, since time immemorial:

"I think it's an extremely complex business and what upsets me, as a Jew thinking about it all, as a Jewish novelist thinking about it all, is simply really that people really don't know enough about it. You often hear people talking about the occupation. No one wants the - I don't know anyone who wants the occupation. I don't know any Israeli who wants the occupation. But people speak about it as if it just kind of happened. One day there was an occupation. Out of a clear, blue sky Jews dropped - Israelis - Israeli people dropped down and said, 'We'll have that piece of land'. It's not what happened. The people in that part of the world have been fighting for over 100 years. They have been killing one another for more than 100 years. It's a long and complex story. So when we use a word like 'the occupation' we should know what it is that we are talking about but I agree with you entirely that the settlements are vile and I know no humane person that supports the settlements."

Sorry Guv, someone who does know something about the Six Day War of 1967 - in fact he's written what's probably the definitive history of it based on the Israeli archives - begs to differ. Israeli historian Tom Segev knows of heaps of Israelis who wanted the war and its spoils real bad. Some snippets:

"The generals were in their forties, family men, but they clung to the Israeli culture of youth; they were like adolescent boys in rut. They believed in force and they wanted war. War was their destiny. Almost 20 years had passed since the army had won glory in the War of Independence, and 10 years since the victory in the Sinai. They had a limited range of vision and they believed that war was what Israel needed at that moment, not necessarily because they felt the country's existence was in danger, as they wailed in an almost 'Diaspora' tone, but because they believed it was an opportunity to break the Egyptian army." (1967: Israel, the War & the Year that Transformed the Middle East, 2007, p 296)

"[Prime Minister] Eshkol gathered the members of his party's political committee. 'We have been given a good dowry', he told them, 'but it comes with a bride we don't like' - the Palestinians... At that point he was ready to keep Gaza... 'perhaps because of Samson and Delilah'. But Gaza too... 'was a rose with many thorns'. A committee of experts was already looking for areas where refugees could be settled'." (p 369)

"The main pressure to seize the Golan came from General David Elazar of the Northern Command... In the 2 years preceding the war he had broached the matter not only with his superiors in the military, but also with Eshkol... with whom he even discussed the possibility of occupying Damascus." (p 388)

"The effort invested in talks with [Jordan's King] Hussein was intended to largely convince the US that it was genuinely trying to achieve peace. The fear in Jerusalem was that the Americans might force Israel to withdraw [from the West Bank]." (p 568)

But I digress. What was Jacobson banging on about? Oh yes, vile settlements unsupported by any humane individual he's aware of. God bless Dines for pricking that little balloon, which really set Jacobson off, arms flailing:

DINES: The Israeli government supports them.
JACOBSON: Yes, but the Israeli government is run by people I am prepared to accept are...
DINES: Then we should be organising as Jews with a morality against the fact that the Israeli government are supporting the settlements.
JACOBSON: No [NO?!!!], but we know perfectly well that these settlements will be part of the bargaining thing. The Israeli government has to deal with the problem that the people with whom it must negotiate - some of the people with whom it must negotiate - say you've got no right to exist... So they're frightened. Well, blow me [down], the Israelis are frightened. It's not often understood how frightened the Israelis are. They are there surrounded on all sides by people who would like them to not be there. They may...
DINES: See, I think this is the wrong mentality to have as a Jew.
JACOBSON: The poor Israelis...
DINES: I think this is incorrect.
JACOBSON: The Israelis made the terrible mistake of winning the Six Day War. If only they'd lost the Six Day War everything would have been...
DINES: We're not just victims.
JACOBSON: No, we're not just victims.
DINES: We're aggressors in the Middle East as well.
JACOBSON: And we're not just aggressors. We're sometimes victims and sometimes aggressors. It's complicated. It's been going on a long time. [Now where have we heard this before?]
TONY JONES (saving Jacobson's bacon whilst lending credence to his when-on-the-ropes argument): OK. It is, indeed, very complicated. We are not going to resolve it here. We are going to move on to other issues...

I don't know about you, but I'm good for a rematch.

Jewish Settlers - Now... & Then

British novelist Howard Jacobson may be a master of "intense, cerebral comedies, which gnaw away at his Anglo-Jewish identity, the convolutions of the male mind and the battle of the sexes," (Interview: Howard Jacobson, Lindesay Irvine, The Guardian/SMH, 25/9/10) but he obviously doesn't have a clue about the Zionist project, which has been gnawing away at the body of Palestine for almost a century now:

"Grief was not the only real-life shock to find its way into [his new novel The Finkler Question]. As Jacobson began working on it, Israel's incursion [!] into Gaza was fueling a rising tide of anti-Zionist feeling in Britain, by which Jacobson was intrigued. 'At what point does anti-Zionism become anti-Semitism? That's the big question that was being asked. I can quite see why one might object to a lot of Israeli policy and much that Israel does. But the hating of Zionism itself is a very strange thing'. He says the country's fiercely secular roots have been obscured. 'I hate the sight of religious Jews wanting to build their settlements. I think they're a curse on the land. But that doesn't make one anti-Zionist. It actually makes one pro-Zionist'." (ibid)

So, for Jacobson, the religious fanatics who have spearheaded the Jewish colonisation of the occupied West Bank since 1967 are a plague and a curse, but the secular Zionists who ethnically cleansed and colonised Palestine from 1948 to 1967 were sterling fellows.

Perhaps he'd find a heart to heart with Likud MK and Speaker of the Knesset, Reuven Rivlin, enlightening. In railing against those Israeli actors and artists (people not unlike Jacobson) who are currently boycotting a theater in the Jewish colony of Ariel, Rivlin said, "I say to those who want to boycott, beware! Those who expelled Arabs from Ain Karem, from Jaffa, and from Katamon [in 1948] lost the moral right to boycott Ariel." He added that those Jews who settled in Ariel and the rest of the West Bank did so on "the orders of Zionism." (Knesset speaker Rivkin's admission: Israel 'expelled Arabs' across Palestine in 1948, maxblumenthal.com, 3/9/10)

Jacobson, it seems, can't bring himself to acknowledge what is obvious to a plain-speaking (at least in the Hebrew press*), red-blooded Zionist such as Rivlin: that the kibbutz colonists of pre-67 occupied Palestine and the settlers who have gone viral in the occupied West Bank since 1967 are part of the same inexorable and pitiless colonial process of wiping Palestine, from the river to the sea, off the map. [*Rivlin's scoldings were reported first in the Hebrew language Ma'ariv newspaper, 1/9/10]

As for Israel's fiercely secular roots being obscured, as Jacobson has it, the latest Israeli polling indicates that only 42% of Israelis now regard themselves as secular. (See Poll: Fewer than half of Israelis see themselves as secular, Moti Bassok, Haaretz, 13/9/10)