Gideon Levy: Israel is Voting Apartheid

An apartheid state voting for apartheid? Who'd have thought?

"There will be one certain result from Tuesday's election: around 100 members of the next Knesset will be supporters of apartheid. This has no precedent in any democracy. A hundred out of 120 legislators, an absolute of absolute majorities, one that supports maintaining the current situation, which is apartheid. With such a majority, it will be possible in the next Knesset to officially declare Israel an apartheid state. With such support for apartheid and considering the durability of the occupation, no propaganda will be able to refute the simple truth: nearly all Israelis want the apartheid to continue. In the height of chutzpah, they call this democracy, even though more than 4 million people who live alongside them and under their control have no right to vote in the election.

"Of course, no one is talking about this, but in no other regime around the world is there one community next to another where the residents of one, referred to as a West Bank settlement, have the right to vote, while the residents of the other, a Palestinian village, don't. This is apartheid in all its splendor, whose existence nearly all the country's Jewish citizens want to continue.

"A hundred Knesset members will be elected from slates referred to as either right-wing, left-wing or centre, but what they have in common surpasses any difference: none intend to end the occupation. The right wing proudly says so, while the centre-left resorts to futile illusions to obscure the picture, listing proposals for for a 'regional conference' or 'secure separation.' The difference between the two groupings is negligible. In unison, the right and left are singing 'say yes to apartheid.'

"As a result, this election is so unimportant, so far from crucial. So let's cut the hysteria and the pathos over the outcome. Neither civil war nor even a rift is in the offing. The people are more united than ever, casting their vote for apartheid. Whatever Tuesday's result may be, the country of the occupier will remain the country of the occupier. Nothing defines it better than all the other marginal issues... So there's no reason to hold our breath over Tuesday's results. The election is lost in advance. For the country's Jews, it will shape the tone, the level of democracy, the rule of law, the corruption in which they live, but it won't do a thing to change Israel's basic essence as a colonialist country.

"The far right wants the annexation of the West Bank, a step that would make permanent in law a situation that has long been permanent in practice. Such a step would present a tempting advantage. It would finally rip off Israel's mask of democracy and might finally generate opposition both in the country and abroad. But no person of conscience can vote for the fascist right wing, which includes people who advocate the expulsion of Palestinians or the construction of a Third Temple on the Temple Mount, the destruction of the mosques there, or who even dream about extermination. (From Israel is voting apartheid, Haaretz, 7/4/19)

Foxtrot? Tommyrot! 2

When I responded to Paul Byrnes' Herald review of the Israeli film Foxtrot (see my 21/6/18 post Foxtrot? Tommyrot!), I was under the impression that the grief-stricken Israeli parents of Act 1 were those of an Israeli soldier killed in Act 2. This, it seems, is not the case, as yet another review of the same film in the same paper (why?) indicates (A bloody legacy, Stephanie Bunbury, 23/6/18).

The parents who wake to a knock on their door one morning, only to be told by military officials that their soldier son, Jonathan, has been killed, apparently represent every Israeli parent: "In Israel, actor Lior Ashkenazi says, everyone knows exactly what has happened; in a country with compulsory national service, that morning knock is like a code. This woman's child must be dead. 'In Israel, everybody knows somebody in this position... It surrounds you: the grief'."

To which I can only add - Bunbury doesn't, of course - if the occupying Israelis are enveloped in grief, it is simply beyond imagining what the occupied Palestinians, whose death toll is infinitely higher, are going through. But when was the last time you saw a commercial release featuring Palestinians in a sympathetic light (not to mention getting TWO reviews in the same media outlet)? In fact, what this 'morning knock' business is really all about is hyping a supposed threat to the occupier by the occupied, and casting the occupiers as victims.

Bunbury then says of Michael, the father, that he "fought his own war in Lebanon. Of course he did: there is always a war on. Everyone carries the same burden." It seems she's blissfully unaware that all of Israel's wars have SFA to do with self-defence, and everything to do with acquiring more territory. Such land-grabs, of course, are always hyped as existential threats, and the "burden" in murder and destruction is borne exclusively by Israel's Arab victims.

Moving on to the second act (which, you'll recall from Byrnes' review, is set at a checkpoint in the desert), we're told that it's set at a "checkpoint near the Lebanese border." Here the confusion grows. The soldiers manning the checkpoint are described as lifting "the barrier for a lone camel passing through." There is, of course, no desert anywhere near the Lebanese border, and certainly no camels either. So what gives?

What Byrnes' in his review calls "an accident" is clarified in Bunbury's: "One of their number panics and shoots an entire car of young Palestinians. The solution presents itself: bury the car, including the bodies, in the ever-present mud." Which only leads to further confusion. Who are these mysterious Palestinian youths (over whom, it seems, no tears are shed)? If the checkpoint is "near the Lebanese border," then it's got to be in the Galilee, and the "young Palestinians" would therefore be Israeli citizens. If, on the other hand, they're Palestinians from the occupied West Bank, then all I can say is they're a bloody long way from home.

More confusion arises from the Israeli response to the gunning down of the Palestinians. As anyone familiar with the modus operandi followed by Israeli troops when they murder Palestinians will know, the invariable practice is simply to blame the victims, stick doggedly to the concocted story, and be hailed as heroes by the vast majority of Israelis. Burying the evidence with the help of a bulldozer that just happens to be nearby? I don't think so.

But Maoz, the film's director has an explanation. Bunbury quotes him as saying, "You don't have to be a genius to understand that there is not such a specific roadblock, not such a specific reality."

And you don't have to be a genius to understand that Maoz, quoted elsewhere in the review referring to Israel "a pathetic and anxious society with the distorted perception that comes out of a terrible past trauma," is playing the Holocaust card, a move designed to get Israel off the hook for its crimes against the Palestinians.

I'll let the Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy have the final say on this phony film:

"The film unit of the Israel Defense Forces spokesman's office would not have dared produce such a pro-Israeli and pro-army film like Foxtrot; they would have known that nobody would believe them. Neither could the unit have produced such an aesthetic film - poetic, symbolic and metaphorical. Nor is there a ship of fools that would accept such a demented level of ignorant assaults on the film by the culture minister without having seen it, she might not have realized what a PR treasure it is.

"Her colleague, a general in the war against the boycott, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, who is also information minister, should have instructed his ministry to immediately distribute the film worldwide as part of his battle. There's nothing like Foxtrot for beautifying the image of the state. Look how beautiful we are, we Israelis. What great cinema we have, what beautiful homes we live in and how beautiful are our Holocaust survivors; even our much maligned checkpoints are so beautiful.

"Sanuel Maoz made a beautiful film - and a deceptive, misleading film. The last thing it deserves is to be decried as harming the state. Its foxtrot is dirty dancing. Maoz says that the film is a metaphor for universal questions about fatalism, choice, fate and the individual's ability to shape his future. Those are worthy and fascinating subjects. Maoz could have dealt with them by means of a story line about a wrong diagnosis of cancer, a critical date that a couple never went on, or someone who was fatally late for a flight. Instead, he chose to focus the debate in the context of the Israeli occupation. And so he shouldn't play dumb and claim that this is an artistic and imaginary film, without context or obligation to reality and truth. The moment he chose the occupation as the arena for his film, he turned it into a political and current events film. Not only is that not the way to dance the foxtrot, as Maoz discovered too late, this is not the way the occupation looks - in fact, there's no resemblance at all.

"Beautifying the occupation is no less grave than tarnishing its image. Calling Israeli soldiers is a terrible thing, but presenting them at checkpoints the way Naomi Shemer described the soldiers in her iconic 1968 song At the Nahal Outpost, where she saw 'lots of beautiful things,' as well as 'small poetry books on shelves' - that was no less grave. A lie is a lie, no matter what direction it takes. There aren't lots of beautiful things at a checkpoint. Not even one. Maoz decided to embellish it. He has the artistic right to describe reality as he sees it, but he can't ignore the implications of his hallucinations. When an IDF checkpoint looks like a beautiful surrealistic scene in an old-time Italian movie - maybe they'll believe it in Venice. Here it's not possible. There are no beautiful checkpoints like that, with a camel passing silently by and an ice-cream truck with a blond girl painted on it.

"Neither can he shirk responsibility for the message or for the fact that the Palestinians are momentary extras, and even in that context, their depiction is so different from the reality. In Foxtrot, they ride in a collector's Chevy, with Israeli license plates, wearing their finery, on the way to a wedding or back from a party, erupting in wild joyful song.

"There aren't a lot of apartments designed like the one where Yonatan's parents live and there are no soldiers who sit at checkpoints drawing comics in their many hours of free time and checking the incline of the packing container, which is a metaphor for the extent of being stuck in the mud.

"The soldiers at the checkpoints simply don't look like that. They don't throw sorrowful looks and they're mainly busy with brutality, not comics. Most of them didn't grow up in House Beautiful apartments belonging to handsome architects who married their students; the ones that did go to the elite 8200 intelligence unit. They can be shown anyway one wants, but when an Israeli director with political awareness does that, he's making propaganda, not cinema.

"It's not the 'scene' that everyone is talking about that makes this film infuriating. Not the killing by IDF soldiers and not the concealing of evidence that followed. Foxtrot is trying to conceal something else entirely: It's trying to conceal the ugliness." (A beautiful film about the occupation, 1/10/17)

Gideon Levy: 'Israel is Set to Commit Horrors'

The next Nakba:

"The truth is that Israel is well prepared to massacre hundreds and thousands, and to expel tens of thousands. Nothing will stop it. This is the end of conscience, the show of morality is over. The last few days' events have proved it decisively. The tracks have been laid, the infrastructure for the horror has been cast. Dozens of years of brainwashing, demonization and dehumanization have borne fruit. The alliance between the politicians and the media to suppress reality and deny it has succeeded. Israel is set to commit horrors. Nobody will stand in its way anymore. Not from within or without." (From 60 dead in Gaza & the end of Israeli conscience, Haaretz, 17/5/18)

Gideon Levy: 'Habash Was Right'

One of Gideon Levy's best essays: This biography makes it clear: The founder f the Palestinian Popular Front was right (Haaretz, 15/4/18):

"George Habash was Israel's absolute enemy for decades, the embodiment of evil, the devil incarnate. Even the title 'Dr.' before his name - he was a pediatrician - was considered blasphemous. Habash was plane hijackings, Habash was terror and terror alone. In a country that doesn't recognize the existence of Palestinian political parties (have you ever heard of a Palestinian political party? - there are only terror groups) knowledge about the man who headed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was close to zero. What's there to know about him? A terrorist. Subhuman. Should be killed. Enemy. The fact that he was an ideologue and a revolutionary, that his life was shaped by the expulsion from Lod, changed nothing. He remains the plane hijacker from Damascus, the man from the Rejectionist front who was no different from all the rest of the 'terrorists' from Yasser Arafat to Wadi Haddad to Nayef Hawatmeh.

"Now along comes Eli Galia's Hebrew-language book 'George Habash: A Political Biography.' It outlines the reality, far from the noise of propaganda, ignorance and brainwashing, for the Israeli reader who agrees to read a biography of the enemy. Presumably only a few will read it, but this work by Galia, a Middle East affairs expert, is very deserving of praise. It's a political biography, as noted in its subtitle, so it almost entirely lacks the personal, spiritual and psychological dimension; there's not even any gossip. So reading it requires a lot of stamina and specialized tastes. Still, it's fascinating.

"Galia has written a nonjudgmental and certainly non-propagandistic biography. Taking into consideration the Israeli mind today, this isn't to be taken for granted. Galia presents a wealth of information, with nearly a thousand footnotes, about the political path of Habash, a man who was considered dogmatic even though he underwent a number of ideological reversals in his life. If that's dogmatism, what's pragmatism? The dogmatic Habash went through more ideological changes than any Israeli who sticks to the Zionist narrative and doesn't budge an inch - and who of course isn't considered dogmatic.

"In the book, Habash is revealed as a person of many contradictions: a member of the Christian minority who was active in the midst of a large Muslim majority, a bourgeois who became a Marxist, a tough and inflexible leader who was once seen weeping in his room as he wrote an article about Israel's crimes against his people. He had to wander and flee for his life from place to place, sometimes more for fear of Arab regimes than of Israel. He was imprisoned in Syria and fled Jordan, he devoted his life to a revolution that never happened. It's impossible not to admire a person who devoted his life to his ideas, just as you have to admire the scholar who has devoted so much research for so few readers who will take an interest in the dead Habash, in an Israel that has lost any interest in the occupation and the Palestinian struggle.

"The book gives rise to the bleak conclusion that Habash was right. For most of his life he was a bitter enemy of compromises, and Arafat, the man of compromise, won the fascinating historical struggle between the two. They had a love-hate relationship, alternately admiring and scorning each other, and never completely breaking off their connection until Arafat won his Pyrrhic victory. What good have all of Arafat's compromises done for the Palestinian people? What came out of the recognition of Israel, of the settling for a Palestinian state on 22% of the territory, of the negotiations with Zionism and the United States? Nothing but the entrenchment of the Israeli occupation and the strengthening and massive development of the settlement project.

"In retrospect, it makes sense to think that if that's how things were, maybe it would have been better to follow the uncompromising path taken by Habash, who for most of his life didn't agree to any negotiations with Israel, who believed that with Israel it was only possible to negotiate by force, who thought Israel would only change its position if it paid a price, who dreamed of a single, democratic and secular state of equal rights and refused to discuss anything but that. Unfortunately, Habash was right. It's hard to know what would have happened had the Palestinians followed his path, but it's impossible not to admit that the alternative has been a resounding failure.

"Habash, who was born in 1926, wrote about his childhood: 'Our enemies are not the Jews but rather the British... The Jews' relations with the Palestinians were natural and sometimes even good' (p 16). He went to study medicine at the American University in Beirut; his worried mother and father wrote him that he should stay there; a war was on. But Habash returned to volunteer at a clinic in Lod; he returned and he saw. The sight of the Israeli soldiers who invaded the clinic in 1948 ignited in him the flame of violent resistance: 'I was gripped by an urge to shoot them with a pistol and kill them, and in the situation of having no weapons I used mute words. I watched them from the sidelines and said to myself: This is our land, you dogs, this is our land and not your land. We will stay here to kill you. You will not win this battle.' (p 22) On July 14 he was expelled from his home with the rest of his family. He never returned to the city he loved. He never forgot the scenes of Lod in 1948, nor did he forget the idea of violent resistance. Can the Israeli leader understand how he felt?

"Now based in Beirut, he took part in terror operations against Jewish and Western targets in Beirut, Amman and Damascus: 'I personally lobbed grenades and I participated in assassination attempts. I had endless enthusiasm when I was doing that. At the time, I considered my life worthless relative to what was happening in Palestine.' 'The Palestinian Che Guevara' - both of them were doctors - made up his mind to wreak vengeance for the Nakba upon the West and the leaders of the Arab regimes that had abandoned his people, even before taking vengeance on the Jews. He even planned to assassinate King Abdullah of Jordan. He founded a new student organization in Beirut called the Commune, completed his specialization in pediatrics and wrote: 'I took the diploma and said: Congratulations, Mother, your son is a doctor, so now let me do what I really want to do. And indeed, that's what happened.' (p 41)

"Habash was once asked whether he was the Che Guevara of the middle East and replied that he would prefer to be the Mao Zedong of the Arab masses. He was the first to raise the banner of return and and in the meantime he opened clinics for Palestinian refugees in Amman. For him, the road back to Lod passed through Amman, Beirut and Damascus. The idea of Pan-Arabism stayed with him for many years, until he despaired of that as well. He also had to leave medicine: 'I am a pediatrician, I have enjoyed this greatly. I believed that I had the best job in the world but I had to make the decision I have taken and I don't regret it... A person cannot split his emotions in that way: to heal on the one hand and kill on the other. This is the time when he must say to himself: one or the other.'

"This book isn't arrogant and it isn't Orientalist; it is respectful of the Palestinian national ideology and those who articulated and lived it, even if the author doesn't necessarily agree with that ideology or identify with it. This is something quite rare in the Israeli landscape when it comes to Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular. Nor does the author venerate what's not worthy of veneration, and he doesn't have any erroneous romantic or other illusions. Galia presents a bitter, tough, uncompromising, very much failed and sometimes exceedingly cruel struggle for freedom, self-respect and liberation. And this is what is said in the founding document of the PFLP, which Habash established in December 1967 after having despaired of Palestinian unity: 'The only weapon left to the masses in order to restore history and progress and truly defeat enemies and potential enemies in the long run is revolutionary violence... The only language that the enemy understands is the language of revolutionary violence.' (p 125)

"But this path too met with failure. 'The essential aim of hijacking airplanes,' wrote Habash, 'was to bring the Palestinian question out of anonymity and expose it to Western public opinion, because at that time it was unknown in Europe and in the United States. We wanted to undertake actions that would make an impression on the senses of the entire world... There was international ignorance regarding our suffering, in part due to the Zionist movement's monopoly on the mass media in the West.' (p 151) The PFLP plane hijackings in the early 1970s indeed achieved international recognition of the existence of the Palestinian problem, but so far this recognition hasn't led anywhere. The only practical outcome has been the security screenings at airports everywhere around the world - and thank you, George Habash. I read Galia's book on a number of flights, even though this isn't an airplane book, and I kept thinking that were it not for Habash my wanderings at airports would have been a lot shorter. In my heart I forgave him for that, for what other path was open to him and his defeated, humiliated and bleeding people?

"Not much is left of his ideas. What has come of the scientific idealism and the politicization of the masses, the class struggle and the anti-imperialism, the Maoism and of course the transformation of the struggle against Israel into an armed struggle, which according to the plans was supposed to develop from guerrilla warfare into a national war of liberation? Fifty years after the founding of the PFLP and 10 years after the death of its founder, what remains? Habash's successor, Abu Ali Mustafa, was assassinated by Israel in 2001; his successor's successor, Ahmad Saadat, has been in an Israeli prison since 2006 and very little remains of the PFLP.

"During all my decades covering the Israeli occupation, the most impressive figures I met belonged to the PFLP, but now not much remains except fragments of dreams. The PFLP is a negligible minority in intra-Palestinian politics, a movement that once thought to demand equal power with Fatah and its leader, Arafat. And the occupation? It's strong and thriving and its end looks further off than ever. If that isn't failure, what is?

"Yet Habash always knew how to draw lessons from failure after failure. How resonant today is his conclusion following the Naksa, the defeat in 1967 that broke his spirit, to the effect that 'the enemy of the Palestinians is colonialism, capitalism and the global monopolies... This is the enemy that gave rise to the Zionist movement, made a covenant with it, nurtured it, protected it and accompanied it until it brought about the establishment of the aggressive and fascistic State of Israel.' (p 179) From the Palestinian perspective, not much has changed. It used to be that this was read in Israel as hostile and shallow propaganda. Today it could be read otherwise.

"After the failure of 1967, Habash redefined the goal: the establishment of a democratic state in Palestine in which Arabs and Jews would live as citizens with equal rights. Today this idea, too, sounds a bit less strange and threatening than it did when Habash articulated it.

"On the 40th anniversary of Israel's founding, Habash wrote that Israel was galloping toward the Greater Land of Israel and that the differences between the right and the left in the country were becoming meaningless. How right he was about that, too. At the same time, he acknowledged Israel's success and the failure of the Palestinian national movement. And he was right about that, too.

"And one last correct prophecy, though a bitter one, that he made in 1981: 'The combination of loss of lives and economic damage has considerable influence on Israeli society, and when that happens there will be a political, social and ideological schism on the Israeli street and in the Zionist establishment between the moderate side that demands withdrawal from the occupied territories and the extremist side that continues to cling to Talmudic ideas and dreams. Given the hostility between these two sides, the Zionist entity will experience a real internal split.' (p 329)

"This has yet to happen.

"Imad Saba, a dear friend who was active in the PFLP and is in exile in Europe, urged me for years to try to meet with Habash and interview him for Haaretz. As far as is known, Habash never met with Israelis, except during the days of the Nakba. Many years ago in Amman I interviewed Hawatmeh, Habash's partner at the start and the leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which split off from the PFLP in 1969. At the time of the interview, Habash was also living in Amman and was old and sick. I kept postponing my approach - until he died. When reading the book, I felt very sorry that I had not met this man."

The Martyrdom of Ibrahim Abu Thurayeh 2

The Israel military first took his legs, then his life by Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 17/12/17

"The Israeli army sharpshooter couldn't target the lower part of his victim's body - Ibrahim Abu Thuraya didn't have one. The 29-year-old, who worked washing cars and who lived in Gaza City's Shati refugee camp, lost both legs from the hips down in an Israeli airstrike during Operation Cast Lead in 2008. He used a wheel chair to get around. On Friday the army finished the job: a sharpshooter aimed at his head and shot him dead.

"The images are horrific. Abu Thuraya in his wheelchair, pushed by friends, calling for protests against the US declaration recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital; Abu Thuraya on the ground, crawling toward the fence behind which the Gaza Strip is imprisoned; Abu Thuraya waving a Palestinian flag; Abu Thuraya holding up both arms in the victory sign; Abu Thuraya carried by his friends, bleeding to death: Abu Thuraya's corpse laid out on a stretcher: The End.

"The army sharpshooter couldn't aim at the lower part of his victim's body on Friday so he shot him in the head and killed him. It can be assumed that the soldier realized that he was shooting at a person in a wheelchair, unless he was shooting indiscriminately into the crowd of protesters.

"Abu Thuraya posed no danger to anyone: how much of a danger could a double amputee in a wheelchair, imprisoned behind a fence, constitute? How much evil and insensitivity does it take in order to shoot a handicapped person in a wheelchair? Abu Thuraya was not the first, nor will he be the last, Palestinian with disabilities to be killed by soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces - the most moral soldiers in the world, or not.

"The killing of the young disabled man passed almost without notice in Israel. He was one of three demonstrators killed Friday, just another humdrum day. One can easily imagine what would happen if Palestinians had killed an Israeli who used a wheelchair. What a furor would have erupted, with endless ink spilled on their cruelty and barbarism. How many arrests would have resulted, how much blood would have flowed in retaliation. But when soldiers behave barbarically, Israel is silent and shows no interest. No shock, no shame, no pity. An apology or expression of regret or remorse is the stuff of fantasy. The idea of holding those responsible for this criminal killing accountable is also delusional. Abu Thuraya was a dead man once he dared take part in his people's protest and his killing is of no interest to anyone, since he was a Palestinian.

"The Gaza Strip has been closed to Israeli journalists for 11 years, so one can only imagine the life of the car-washer from Shati before his death - how he recovered from his injuries in the absence of decent rehabilitation services in the besieged Strip, with no chance of obtaining prosthetic legs; how he rumbled along in an old wheelchair, not an electric one, in the sandy alleys of his camp; how he continued washing cars despite his disability, since there are no other choices in Shati, including for people with disabilities; and how he continued struggling with his friends, despite his disability.

"No Israeli could imagine life in that cage, the biggest in the world, the one called the Gaza Strip. It is part of a never-ending mass experiment on human beings.

"One should see the desperate young people who approached the fence in Friday's demonstration, armed with stones that couldn't reach anywhere, throwing them through the cracks in the bars behind which they are trapped. These young people have no hope in their lives even when they have two legs to walk on. Abu Thuraya had even less hope. There is something pathetic yet dignified in the photo of him raising the Palestinian flag, given his dual confinement - in his wheelchair and in his besieged country. The story of Abu Thuraya is  an accurate reflection of the circumstances of his people. Shortly after he was photographed, his tormented life came to an end. When people cry out every week: 'Netanyahu to Maasiyahu [prison]' someone should finally also start talking about The Hague."

Move Over Geraldine, Fauziah's Here!

Unbelievable! I've just listened to Israel's 'most hated' columnist on Radio National's Sunday Extra (26/11). Visiting Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy was being interviewed by RN presenter Fauziah Ibrahim. (Despite the Arabic name, it seems she's actually from Singapore, and has been working in broadcast journalism for 15 years, including for Al-Jazeera.)

I can't remember, however, when I last heard questions/statements quite as excruciatingly slanted in Israel's favour as Ms Ibrahim's. So much so that I found myself paying more heed to her questions than to Levy's answers!

See what I mean:

*When you say 'automatic [Israeli] soldiers' are you implying they're brainwashed, they don't actually know what they're doing, and they don't have an understanding of the larger context of their role?

[Oh no, Fauziah, they're all Einsteins! No, better, budding high-tech entrepreneurs!]

*This military has been in existence for a long time... are you seeing a difference between this generation and the one you served [in the army] with?

*Have you ever apologised to the parents of the soldiers who died defending this country?

[OFFS!!!???]

*Israel is surrounded by hostile Arab nations. That's an undisputable [sic] fact. Don't you think it's unfair to target the young men and women who were serving their country, risking their lives to protect and defend the country?

[OFFS!!!??? second time around.]

*I want to talk about the elite or the decision-makers. Is there a slow change in mindset? Recently, Israel's president rejected an appeal to pardon Elor Azaria. He was jailed for 18 months for killing a wounded Palestinian attacker. Do you see this refusal to pardon him as a shift in mindset?

*Can you blame [the Israelis] though, when they are surrounded by hostile neighbours and everywhere you go in the media you continually hear about Islamic extremism, and that threat seems to be larger than ever against Israel?

[Hostile neighbours again! This woman sounds like the proverbial broken record.]

*You have been quoted as saying that 'My biggest enemy is the [Israeli] centre and the Zionist left.' How do you counter the arguments of a group of people whose memories still hold the hurt of Nazi persecution and in Israel they have found finally their sanctuary?

[So the Zionist project in Palestine, even though it kicked off in the late 19th century, is all about the Holocaust? There were no Jewish settlers in Palestine before the Holocaust? Every Israeli is a Holocaust survivor, or the descendant of one?]

*How do you counter the views of a group of people who believe it is their God-given right that they live on the land their faith has promised them?

*When you first visited the Palestinian territories in 1967... Take us back to that time. What was your sense then?

*How did you feel about the war at age 14? It was a non-choice war!

[Oh, was it? Israel attacked the Egyptian air force on the ground in a pre-emptive strike on 5 June, 1967, and according to Israel's General Peled, Chief of Logistical Command at the time: "All those stories about the huge danger we were facing... an argument expounded once the war was over, have never been considered in our calculations. While we proceeded towards the full mobilisation of our forces, no person in his right mind could believe that all this force was necessary to our 'defence' against the Egyptian threat. This force was to crush once and for all the Egyptians at the military level. To pretend that the Egyptian forces concentrated on our borders were capable of threatening Israel's existence does not only insult the intelligence of any person capable of analysing this kind of situation, but is primarily an insult to the Israeli army." (Le Monde, 3/6/72)

*When did you start to question your birth country's actions against the Palestinians?

*How do you deal with the the animosity from your own fellow Israelis? Do you find it frustrating that your voice is a minority in Israel?

*Do you think you may have any common ground with PM Netanyahu?

[!!!???]

*I want to go back to another leader, Shimon Peres... His politics started very hawkish then he became a dove. Explain how that shift came about.

*Another leader who started off hawkish and then became, not a dove, a little more centre, Ariel Sharon... He orchestrated Israel's withdrawal from Gaza and he had plans to withdraw from the West Bank. If a solution comes with a soldier, how much does politics sway them away from that solution?

[Ah, Sharon the peacemaker. Not at all sorry about the cold water here: "[C]ontrary to the prevailing assumptions, Sharon did not evacuate the Gaza settlements of his own free will. He cooked up his disengagement plan as a means to gain time, at the peak of international pressure that followed Israel's sabotaging of the Road Map. Yet still, at every moment since then, up until the very moment of disengagement, he was looking for ways to renege on this commitment, as he had done so many times previously. But this time he was forced to follow through with the Gaza pullout by the Bush administration. Though it was kept fully behind the scenes, US pressure on Sharon was massive, and included military sanctions on Israel." (The Road Map to Nowhere: Israel/Palestine since 2003, Tanya Reinhart, 2006, p 4)]

*You are a champion of Palestinian rights. Are you also a champion of Palestinian politics?

*Do you feel guilty being an Israeli?

*How effective is BDS?

*It's not fair to target the Israeli citizen or companies through this boycott.

[But it's fine to target - literally - occupied Palestinians?]

*You support a one-state solution, but isn't that unrealistic? It means a whole rethink, a whole shift from Zionism, the Israeli identity. Where do you start?

[OMG, expecting Israeli Jews to think - Gideon, how could you?!]

AIJAC Strikes Back

"The longer I was in Israel, the more I realised that key figures in the Australian Jewish community sat on the far right of the Israeli political spectrum. In Israel I was able to have meaningful discussions with key army or intelligence figures about the Palestinian issue. But with many of Australia's Jewish leaders this was just not possible. It was almost as if they felt that, given they were not living in Israel, they needed to take a harder line than many people who were living there." (Balcony Over Jerusalem: A Middle East Memoir, John Lyons, 2017, pp 260-61)

"In response to our legitimate articulation of an alternative viewpoint on the Middle East, Lyons has devoted a chapter of his memoir to falsely portraying AIJAC as an extreme, hardline mouthpiece for the Israeli Right. Is this the same AIJAC that sponsors programs for prominent Israeli Labor leaders to visit Australia, as part of our efforts to expose people from both countries to counterparts from across the political and social spectrum? Is this the same AIJAC that issued a media release in February this year openly criticising Israeli legislation that would retrospectively legalise settlement outposts on land owned by Palestinians? In a healthy democracy, holding the media to account is arguably as important as holding politicians to account. Lyons ended his comment piece by quoting hard-left Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar's demonising of AIJAC and saying the Australian government did 'not (give) a shit' about his children. Nothing could be further from the truth. Lyons also describes as a hero another Israeli journalist even more extreme, Haaretz's Gideon Levy, an advocate of economic, artistic and academic boycotts against Israel. That's like forming your view of Australia from Green Left Weekly. It's sad that Lyon's response to the normal functioning of interest groups in a pluralist democracy is so vitriolic but it does demonstrate the value of AIJAC and others in advancing additional evidence and alternative views to his." (In Israel, as anywhere, objectivity, balance, multiple voices are critical to credible journalism, Mark Leibler, The Australian, 7/8/17)

Je M'excuse...!

by Gideon Levy

Dear Orna & Moshe Gan-Zvi,

"I was saddened to read in Tuesday's Hebrew edition of Haaretz that you've decided to cancel your subscription. I don't know you, but I will miss you as readers. As someone who is partly responsible for your decision, as your article indicated, allow me to apologize. To apologize for writing the truth all these years. I should have taken into account that this truth wasn't palatable to you, and acted accordingly.

"It was not pleasant for you to read the theory put forward by me and my fellow Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass about the occupation. You, who are active in Rotary Israel, who come from the business world, who are so proud of your children and the fact that they live in the West Bank. Your son was educated at the Eli premilitary academy, and your granddaughters proudly carry the last name Sheetrit. You, who are so pleased with yourselves and your values, with your children and your morals, don't think you should be forced to read unpleasant truths. You simply don't deserve it.

"Indeed, how could I have spent all these years publishing articles that even you, generously, admitted were touching, without ever, to my shame, checking how these Palestinian families ended up in their serious predicaments? Really, how did this happen? Of course it was their own fault, but I keep blaming the Israel Defense Forces - how could I? And how could Amira Hass be so one-sided and lacking in perspective that would explain how a people could prefer the elimination of another people over a democratic society? Really, how could you, Amira?

"I assume, Moshe, that if they were to lock you in a cage for years, you would continue your Rotary membership and refuse to back a struggle against your incarceration. I assume, Orna, that if foreign soldiers were to burst into your home in the middle of the night and arrest your Moshe before your eyes, kick him, force him to his knees, blindfold him, handcuff him, and beat him in front of your children who study in Eli - and then snatch him from your home for months without trial - you would be looking for some 'creative leadership' for your people.

"I assume that you, who come from the business world, would lovingly accept those who confiscate your property and ban you from your own land. I'm sure it would never occur to you to struggle against those who have tortured you with such evil for so many years.

"What can we do? The Palestinians are different from you, dear Orna and Moshe. They were not born in such lofty heights as you. They are human animals, bloodthirsty, born to kill. Not all of them are as ethical as you and your children from the Eli academy. Yes, there are people who fight for their freedom. There are people who are forced to do so violently. In fact, there are almost no nations who haven't acted this way, including the chosen people you're proud to belong to. Not only do you belong; you are the pillar of fire that leads the camp, you're the best, the moral elite - you, the religious Zionists.

"I apologize for the one-sidedness. How could I not maintain a a balance between the murderer and the murdered; the thief and his victim; the occupier and the occupied? Forgive me for daring to turn off your joy and pride in the land flowing with milk and Mobileye, and cherry tomatoes, too. There are so many wonderful things in this country, and Haaretz - with its 'moral deterioration,' as you call it - is ruining the party. How did I not see that you don't like to read the truth, and didn't take this into account when I'd return from the occupied territories every week to write about what I'd seen with my own eyes?

"But now it's too late. The call to boycott chocolate spread was too much even for you, so you've decided to boycott Haaretz. From now on, the only paper on your coffee table will be the weekly, right-wing Makor Rishon. They won't write about how IDF soldiers sprayed five Palestinian car passengers with bullets three weeks ago, and I'm sure your Shabbats will be a lot more pleasant from now on." (A heartfelt apology to Haaretz readers, Haaretz, 21/4/17)

Our Debt to Israel

Italy had its Oriana Fallaci, Britain's got its Melanie Phillips, and, not to be outdone, Australia's got... Jennifer Oriel:

"Thank God for Israel. If it weren't for the Jews, the UN would have to battle despots, communists and Islamists." (Say goodbye to a UN that attacks the free world, The Australian, 9/1/17)

How lucky are we, who live in the "free world," to have "the Jews" battling "despots, communists and Islamists" on our behalf?

How fortunate that these Israeli brave hearts should do what they do, solely for our benefit, solely to protect us from the gathering Forces of Darkness... out there... in the night.

How fortunate, too, that we have Jennifer Oriel to remind us of their sacrifice. Because, without it, how could we possibly sleep at night?

So what exactly is it that they do?

Gideon Levy tells us:

"What do you call a regime that every night drags people from their beds? How would you label mass detentions without a warrant? How would you define brutal home searches in the dead of night, some of which have no purpose except as training exercises? What should we call such acts, which the army, the border Police and the Shin Bet security service carry out nightly? What should we call the state in whose name they act - a democracy, the only one in the Middle East? Do you recall dark regimes, think of Latin American juntas, are shocked by Turkey? Welcome to Israel's occupation of the West bank, night after night, just a short drive from your home.

"Each morning, in its Twitter account, the IDF describes its misdeeds of the previous night with a touch of pride: 'During the night our forces arrested wanted men who are suspected of popular terror activities and violent disturbances. They were handed over to the security forces for interrogation.' Wanted men, popular terror, disturbances - the language is polished yet stilted, with childish Hebrew acronyms that seem to conceal a secret. The wording is formulaic, without naming or otherwise disclosing the humanity of the detainees. The army is like a nighttime hunter who each morning displays his nightly catch. Last week there was a night with 23 arrests, 14 the previous week, 10 and 11 in the weeks before that. There is no night without such abductions. Who are they? What did they do? Who cares? They are all part of the 'popular terror' movement, all of them now in the hands of the security services.

"Sometimes, there's a special treat: 'Last night our forces sealed off an apartment and a warehouse in Nablus, which had served for the preparation of terror explosive devices.' Explosive devices? An apartment, a warehouse? By what authority? Nablus is in Area A, supposedly controlled by the Palestinians, but who cares about such trifles? Occasionally there is money involved. 'During the operations of the Etzion Territorial Brigade, our sources seized thousands of shekels that were used to finance terror. These were transferred to the security services.' Sometimes it borders on the grotesque: 'The forces of the Ephraim Territorial Brigade also arrested a person suspected of violent and disorderly conduct in which he climbed onto an army vehicle two months ago. He was sent for interrogation by security forces.' He climbed on a vehicle? Should we laugh, or cry?

"To anyone familiar with the nature of these operations, there is nothing funny about them. They are stomach-turning. Hundreds of thousands of people live in constant terror: children who wet their beds, parents who are afraid to even close an eye. The soldiers blow up the doors of the homes and invade. Before you can even understand what is happening there are dozens of armed men, their faces sometimes covered, in your home, in your bedroom, in your children's bedrooms, in the bathroom. This is how the nightmare begins, the search and the arrests, with neither an explanation nor a court order.

"Sometimes the occupants are pulled out of their home and into the street, without being allowed to get dressed. Occasionally a father is beaten in front of his children. Frequently belongings are broken. All accompanied by bullying and humiliation. Tear gas is often sprayed at the neighbors, outside. These are traumatic experiences for any human being. There is no Palestinian who has not experienced it. There is no Israeli who can imagine it. I once spent a night in the Jenin refugee camp. When soldiers approached the home I was staying in, I almost died of fright. In the end they did not come in, but I will never forget those moments of terror. That's only the beginning of the nightmare. Then the 'wanted person' is taken, handcuffed and blindfolded, for an interrogation whose end is difficult to predict. It will go on for weeks and it will involve humiliation and torture, sometimes without any foundation. Nearly one million Palestinians have been arrested in this manner in the course of the occupation. Nearly one million.

"The Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported last week, based on a United Nations report, that between October 4 and October 17 there were 178 such nighttime raids, around 14 each night. This, in a time of relative calm, apart from the lone-wolf attacks that no raid can prevent. A girl who seeks to die won't be arrested at night. The nighttime terror may actually drive others to another desperate attack.

"Every night, while you were sleeping. And afterward there are more Israelis who dare to claim - out of ignorance or chutzpah - that the occupation is over, or at least that discussing it bores them." (Good morning from the Israeli army's Twitter account, Haaretz, 6/11/16)

So next time you go to bed for a good night's sleep, spare a thought for those on the front line, in far-away Israel, who are making it all possible. Thank God for Israel! And bless you, Jennifer.

Who Are You Staring At?

Just as well Benjamin Netanyahu wasn't an IDF conscript, and Odeh Bisharat, a Palestinian, in the wrong place at the wrong time:

"Two days ago, Benjamin Netanyahu hosted members of the Haaretz editorial staff for a closed conversation that lasted four hours, during which he spoke without interruption. 'Spoke' is a rather restrained understatement; Netanyahu lectured, preached, demanded and overwhelmed; he showed videos, slide presentations, maps, tables, and minutes. He scribbled a self-portrait, with an elongated nose and beads of sweat; he pounded on the table, raised his voice, lowered it, leaned forward and back in the meeting room, wrote on the board and erased. At one stage he approached my colleague Odeh Bisharat so angrily that I feared for his safety." (An overwhelming one-man theater performance by Benjamin Netanyahu, Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 17/8/16)

The Unvarnished Truth

Say it loud, say it clear:

"There is no decent politician in the world today who supports Israel."

- Gideon Levy, Bring Israel a Corbyn, Tsipras or Sanders, Haaretz, 24/9/15

Prison Nation 2

This is a normal country?

Israel sentenced a 13-year-old Palestinian girl to prison: This week, just as a 12-year-old's term was reduced, a 13-year-old girl was sentenced and told to pay an unimaginable fine - and if not, her mother will be sent to jail for up to seven months. By Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 14/4/16

"They're not even sure of the exact date of her arrest. They only remember that it was on a Wednesday nearly a month ago. (It was March 23.) They also had a hard time finding a photograph of S. Her mother rummaged around for a long time until she found a faded and wrinkled studio picture of the family, taken a few years ago. S. is in the front, sitting on a rocking horse, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. There's another shot of S. as a baby. That's all. Where's her room? It's here, the room we're sitting in: a living room with moldy walls that contains nothing apart from a few mattresses on the floor and two light-brown plastic chairs. At night, it's her room.

"But now S. is not home. She is in Sharon Prison. A 13-year-old girl, in the seventh grade, she is an inmate in an Israeli jail. Last Thursday, S. was sentenced to four-and-a-half months in prison and a fine of 7,000 shekels ($1,860). If the fine is not paid - and for this family it's an absolutely unimaginable amount - S.'s mother, Amna Takatka, will be sent to jail for up to 7 months; one month for every 1,000 unpaid shekels, for what her daughter did. That was the sentence handed down by military judge Lt. Col. Ami Navon.

"Six weeks ago, we visited the family of another girl, D., a 12-year-old from Halhul, who in February was also sentenced to four-and-half months in prison. She too is in the seventh grade. Thus, during the same week in which the public campaign to bring about D.'s early release succeeded - she will be let out on April 24, about two months early - another girl of about the same age, S., was thrown into prison.

"In the home of the al-Wawi family in Halhul, D's well-kept room awaits her, the stuffed rabbit, kitty-cat and teddy-bear perched on her bed. For her part, S. will come back to her dingy home in Beit Fajjar, a few kilometres from Halhul, both of them suburbs of Hebron. In Beit Fajjar, known for its stonemasonry, everything is covered in dust - the streets, the cars, the clothes people wear and the air they breathe. S.'s home is located very close to the industrial area where the stonemasons are concentrated, at the town's entrance, where her father works as a stonecutter. Amna, 45, mother of six children, sits on a mattress in the living room. All she knows about her daughter at the moment is that she's incarcerated in Sharon Prison.

"On the day of her arrest, S. went to school as usual. She then came home, ate lunch and helped her mother with housework and special preparations with the family of her aunt. S. then served tea to the guests, at her mother's request. She placed the glasses of tea on the table and disappeared. She was distraught, her mother recalls now; She'd been in a highly emotional state for the whole week, since two residents of her town, Ali al-Kar and Ali Takatka, were killed in the course of a stabbing attack that they perpetrated near the West Bank settlement of Ariel, on March 17. S. watched the reports of their killing on television. The former was the brother of a classmate, the latter a member of her own extended family. Their killing shocked S. deeply. Her classmates related that S. said she hates Israel for killing the two and wanted to avenge their deaths. Her grandfather saw her leave the house and run toward the road that leads out of town, but wasn't able to stop her. It was early evening. He said afterward that her face was flushed and that she seemed to be holding back tears. He did not see a knife in her hand.

"An improvised Israel Defense Forces checkpoint had been set up on the main street. The army often swoops into Beit Fajjar, by day and by night, because of the town's proximity to the Etzion Bloc Junction, a major settler site and a focal point of the present wave of resistance. The soldiers sometimes prevent young people from leaving the town; night arrests are common. According to eyewitnesses, S. was a few dozen meters from the soldiers. It would later be alleged that she was holding a knife ('a particularly long one'). She apparently also threw stones. A few locals tried to calm her down and put her into a car, to take her away. But the soldiers ran after her and arrested her before the vehicle could pull away.

"Her father says he got a phone call that evening from the local Civil Administration District Communication Office, informing him that his daughter had been detained. Her mother saw her a few days later at a hearing in a courtroom on the Ofer base, near Ramallah. It looked to her as though S.'s face was sickly and yellowish. S., who was handcuffed, burst into tears when she saw her mother crying. Her mother has not seen her since. A prison visit will not be allowed for another three months, S's mother was told.

"As happened in the case of D., with S. too, the prosecution and the defense agreed on a plea bargain. 'Juvenile Court in Judea, before his honor Judge Lt. Gen. Ami Navon,' the court transcript states. 'The accused: the court read me what is attributed to me in the indictment. I understood it and I admit it. The judgment: I convict the accused [the male rather than the female form is used] of what is attributed to him in the indictment, namely an attempt to cause death deliberately, an offense under Article 205, 209 of the Security Directives Order: Being in possession of a knife, as per Article 248. Throwing objects at a person or property. Article 248. The verdict: The accused was convicted, according to her confession, within the framework of a plea bargain, of deciding, on March 23, 2016, after watching a program and content on television channels, to stab and cause the death of Jewish civilians [according to the indictment, she tried to attack soldiers, not civilians]. Accordingly, the accused took a knife with a particularly long blade, 19 centimeters [7.5 inches], and went to execute her plan, to cause the death of a Jewish civilian as such. In addition, the accused threw stones at soldiers, so that they would approach her, with the intention of later being able to implement her plan to stab one of them. There is no doubt that these are among the gravest offenses there are, whose aim is to take human life as such, only because of its belonging to the Jewish people, in this case.' Here the court's interpretation echoes that of the Israeli propaganda machine. The Palestinians are trying to kill Jews because they are Jews, not because they are occupiers. Judge Navon concluded, 'After considering the arguments of the sides, I found that the plea bargain is reasonable and deserves to be honored,' and handed down his sentence.

"That same day Israeli soldiers arrested another child, a boy, a few streets from S.'s home; making it another family with a child in jail. It's a more affluent home. Zainab Takatka shows us her son's handsome room, all in light blue, the walls and the bed, and can't stop crying. Her 14-year-old son, M., was arrested at school last Thursday. His friends brought her his schoolbag and told her that soldiers had arrived and arrested M. and another boy., who has since been released. M.'s trial has not yet been held. His mother says now some local children told her that they were playing soccer when the soldiers made the arrest. It's very possible that stone throwing took place. Maybe that's exactly why soldiers raid the premises while children are in school or are leaving the grounds. Zainab is convinced that her son was arrested because he's the biggest boy in the class. His 4-year-old sister, Fatma, and his 3-year-old brother, Osama, keep asking about him. And again, Zainab breaks down.

"Asked to comment on the arrests of M. and the other boy, the IDF Spokesman told Haaretz that on April 7, 'army forces identified youths, including the subject of the inquiry, burning tires on the outskirts of Beit Fajjar, for the purpose of provocation. The forces arrived at the site, and caught the two youths with the lighters still in their hands. The youths were turned over to the security forces'."

Einstein Israel Under Threat

In Einstein Israel, where every man, woman and child is a born genius, and where everyone would receive a Nobel Prize were it not for the fact that the rest of the world is so hopelessly anti-Semitic, a terrible affliction seems to have overtaken the collective brain, wiping out that most basic of mental operations, the ability to connect cause and effect.

Dr Gideon Levy, Israel's most respected psychiatrist (and Haaretz columnist), reveals the sheer scale of the problem:

"[There has been] 100 years of dispossession and 50 years of oppression... years in which Israel thought it could do anything and pay no price.

"It thought the defense minister could boast he knew the identity of the Dawabsheh murderers and not arrest them.

"It thought that nearly every week a boy or teenager could be killed and the Palestinians would stay quiet.

"It thought military and political leaders could back the crimes and no one would be prosecuted.

"It thought houses could be demolished and shepherds expelled, and the Palestinians would accept it all humbly.

"It thought settler thugs could damage, burn and act as if Palestinian property was theirs, and the Palestinians would bow their heads.

"It thought that Israeli soldiers could burst into Palestinian homes every night and terrorize, humiliate and arrest people.

"That hundreds could be arrested without trial.

"That the Shin Bet security service could resume torturing suspects with methods handed down by Satan.

"It thought that hunger strikers and freed prisoners could be rearrested often for no reason.

"That Israel could destroy Gaza once every two to three years and Gaza would surrender and the West Bank remain calm.

"That Israeli public opinion would applaud all this, with cheers at best and demands for more Palestinian blood at worst, with a thirst that's hard to understand. And the Palestinians would forgive..." (Even Gandhi would understand the Palestinians' violence, Haaretz, 8/10/15)

Beware the Zionist Thought Police

"A prominent Jewish academic banned from delivering an address at a major conference because he boycotts against Israel has warned of a growing trend of censorship within the Jewish community. Peter Slezak, a philosopher at the University of NSW, had promised not to raise the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign [BDS] at the Limmud-Oz Festival of Jewish Ideas to be held in Sydney in June... He offered the organisers the chance to vet his proposed talk, on the German-American Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt... The Limmud organisers rejected the proposal, saying even though Professor Slezak might not mention BDS, the problem is he believes in it." (Jewish community 'censors' its own on BDS', Ean Higgins, The Australian, 5/5/15)

Peter Slezak is to be commended for speaking out against the activities of the Zionist thought police. Here's another recent example of their handiwork:

"Australia's B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission [ADC] has welcomed the decision by the UN to conduct a review of any anti-Semitic and anti-Israel books..."

Note the conflation here!

"... offered at its official store in Geneva. Some of the texts to be reviewed include How I Stopped Being a Jew, Israel's War Against the Palestinians, and The Punishment of Gaza." (UN takes stock of its books, jwire.com.au, 4/5/15)

How I Stopped Being a Jew is by Israeli historian Shlomo Sand. I assume that the second item on the list is Noam Chomsky & Ilan Pappe's Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians. The Punishment of Gaza is by Israel's top journalist, Gideon Levy.

Oh well, the Zionist thought police may be after him, but Peter Slezak can at least take comfort from the fact that he's in the very best of company.

Palestinian Resistance 101

The Palestinians Right & Duty to Resist by Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 26/10/14

"Imagine you're the Palestinians. Perhaps residents of East Jerusalem. Forty-seven difficult years are behind you; a big, depressing darkness lies ahead. The Israeli tyrant that dooms your fate declares arrogantly that everything will stay like this forever. Your city will remain under occupation 'forever and ever.' The defense minister, second in importance in the government that subjugates you, says a Palestinian state will never be established.

"Imagine you're Palestinian and your children are in danger. Two days ago, the occupation forces killed another child because 'he lit a firebomb.' The words 'Death to Arabs' were sprayed near your home. Everywhere you turn, a soldier or Border Police officer may shout at you. Every night, your home may be invaded brutally. You will never be treated like human beings. They'll destroy, humiliate, intimidate, perhaps even arrest you, possibly without trial.

"There are close to 500 administrative detainees, a record number in recent years. If one of your dear ones is arrested, you will have difficulty visiting him. If you succeed, you'll get half an hour's conversation through a glass window. If your dear one is an administrative detainee, you will never know when he'll be released. But these are trivia you grew accustomed to long ago.

"Maybe you've also grown accustomed to the land theft. At any moment a settler can invade your land, burn your orchard or torch your fields. He will not be brought to trial for this; the soldiers who are supposed to protect you will stand idly by. At any moment, a demolition order or random eviction order may appear. There's nothing you can do.

"Imagine you're the Palestinians. You can't leave Gaza and its not easy to leave the West Bank either. The beach, less than an hour's drive from your West Bank home, is beyond the mountains of darkness. An Israeli can go to Tierra del Fuego, between Argentina and Chile, much more easily than you can go to the beach at Ajami. There are no dreams, no wishes. Your children have a slim chance of accomplishing anything in life, even if they go to university. All they can look forward to is a life of humiliation and unemployment.

"There's no chance that this situation is about to change anytime soon. Israel is strong, the United States is in its pocket, your leadership is weak (the Palestinian Authority) and isolated (Hamas), and the world is losing interest in your fate. What do you do?

"There are two possibilities. The first is to accept, give in, give up. The second is to resist. Whom have we respected more in history? Those who passed their days under the occupation and collaborated with it, or those who struggled for their freedom?

"Imagine you're a Palestinian. You have every right to resist. In fact, it's your civil duty. No argument there. The occupied people's right to resist occupation is secured in natural justice, in the morals of history and in international law.

"The only restrictions are on the means of resistance. The Palestinians have tried almost all of them, for better and worse - negotiations and terror; with a carrot and with a stick; with a stone and with bombs; in demonstrations and in suicide. All in vain. Are they to despair and give up? This has almost never happened in history, so they'll continue. Sometimes they'll use legitimate means, sometimes vile ones. It's their right to resist.

"Now they're resisting in Jerusalem. They don't want Israeli rule, or people who set live children on fire. They don't want armed settlers who invade their apartments in the middle of the night, under the Israeli law's protection, and evict them. They don't want a municipality that grants its services according to national affiliation, or judges that sentence their children according to their origin. They also go nuts when the house of a Jewish terrorist is not demolished, while the house of a Palestinian will be torn down.

"They don't want Israel to continue tyrannizing them, so they resist. They hurl stones and firebombs. That's what resistance looks like. Sometimes they act with heinous murderousness, but even that is not as bad as their occupier's built-in violence. It's their right; it's their duty."

Carlton & Le Lievre Get Gaza

Finally, after much mealy-mouthed msm dancing around the issue here in Australia, a powerful condemnation of Israel's butchery in Gaza - Israel's rank & rotten fruit is being called fascism - has appeared,  in Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald.

While not necessarily agreeing with everything he says, Herald columnist Mike Carlton deserves special mention as one of the rare few in the corporate media who gets it and is not afraid to say so. The same goes for Herald cartoonist, Glen Le Lievre*, whose unforgettable image, on the same page, perfectly complements Carlton's text:

"The images from Gaza are searing, a gallery of death and horror A dishevelled Palestinian man cries out in agony, his blood-soaked little brother dead in his arms. On a filthy hospital bed a boy of perhaps five or six screams for his father, his head and body lacerated by shrapnel. A teenage girl lies on a torn stretcher, her limbs awry, her face and torso blackened like a burnt steak. Mourners weep over a family of 18 men, women and children laid side by side in bloodied shrouds. Four boys of a fishing family named Bakr, all less than 12 years old, are killed on a beach by rockets from Israeli aircraft.

"As I write, after just over a week of this invasion, the death toll of Palestinians is climbing towards 1000. Most are civilians, many are children. Assaulting Gaza by land, air and sea, Israel has destroyed homes and reduced entire city blocks to rubble. It has attacked schools, mosques and hospitals. Tens of thousands of people have fled, although there is nowhere safe for them to go in this wretched strip of land just 40 kilometres long and about 10 kilometres wide. There are desperate shortages of food and water, of medical and surgical supplies.

"In an open letter to US President Barack Obama, Dr Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian surgeon working at Gaza's al-Shifa hospital, writes of 'the incomprehensible chaos of bodies, sizes, limbs, walking, not walking, breathing, not breathing, bleeding, not bleeding humans. Humans!

"'Ashy grey faces - Oh no! Not one more load of tens of maimed and bleeding. We still have lakes of blood on the floor of the emergency room, piles of dripping, blood-soaked bandages to clear out... the cleaners, everywhere, swiftly shovelling the blood and discarded tissues, hair, clothes, cannulas - the leftovers from death - all taken away... to be prepared again, to be repeated all over.'

"The onslaught is indiscriminate and unrelenting, with but one possible conclusion: Israel is not fighting the terrorists of Hamas. In defiance of the laws of war and the norms of civilised behaviour, it is waging its own war of terror on the entire Gaza population of about 1.7 million people. Call it genocide, call it ethnic cleansing: the aim is to kill Arabs.

"As none other that Malcolm Fraser tweeted this week: 'If any other country went to war killing as many civilians, women and children, it would be named a war crime.' But it is not, although the UN is asking the question of both sides.

"Yes, Hamas is also trying to kill Israeli civilians, with a barrage of rockets and guerilla border attacks. It, too, is guilty of terror and grave war crimes. But Israeli citizens and their homes and towns have been effectively shielded by the nation's Iron Dome defence system, and so far only three of its civilians have died in this latest conflict. The Israeli response has been out of all proportion, a monstrous distortion of the much-vaunted right of self defence.

"It is a breathtaking irony that these atrocities can be committed by a people with a proud liberal tradition of scholarship and culture, who hold the Warsaw Ghetto and the six million dead of the Holocaust at the centre of their race memory. But this is a new and brutal Israel dominated by the hardline, right-wing Likud Party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition. As one observer puts it: 'All the seeds of the incitement of the past few years, all the nationalistic, racist legislation and the incendiary propaganda, the scare campaigns and the subversion of democracy by the right-wing camp - all these have borne fruit, and that fruit is rank and rotten. The nationalist right has now sunk to a new level, with almost the whole country following in its wake. The word 'fascism', which I try to use as little as possible, finally has its deserved place in the Israeli political discourse.'

"Fascism in Israel? At this point the Australian Likudniks, as Bob Carr, calls them, will be lunging for their keyboards. There will be the customary torrent of abusive emails calling me a Nazi, an anti-Semite, a Holocaust denier, an ignoramus. As usual they will demand my resignation, my sacking. As it's been before, some of this will be pornographic or threatening violence.**

"In fact, that paragraph within the quotation marks was written by an Israeli. Gideon Levy is a columnist and editorial board member of the daily newspaper Haaretz. Born in Tel Aviv to parents who fled the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, he despairs of what his country has become and the catastrophe its armed forces are visiting upon Gaza. After a recent column calling on Israeli pilots to stop bombing and rocketing civilians, his life was threatened and he now has a bodyguard day and night. It has come to that. In the worst insult of all, Levy is branded 'a self-hating Jew'.

"Israeli propaganda is subtle and skillfully put. 'If Israel were to lay down its arms tomorrow, she would be destroyed; but if Hamas were to lay down their arms, there would be peace,' goes the line, parroted endlessly.

"But in all these long and agonising decades, Israel has never offered the Palestinians a just and equitable peace. They would have only a splintered, vassal state, their polity and economy and even their borders and freedom of travel and trade managed and determined by Israel. The occupation of Palestinian lands would remain with the relentless expansion of illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank of the Jordan and the Dead Sea.

"As the Palestine Liberation Organisation official Hanan Ashrawi put it this week in a television interview with the Australian journalist Hamish McDonald: 'No nation can accept being imprisoned, being besieged by land, by air, by sea and deprived of the most basic requirements of a decent life: freedom of movement, clean water. For seven years they have been under a brutal and lethal Israeli siege... You shell them and you bomb them; you destroy homes, you destroy whole neighbourhoods. You obliterate, annihilate, whole families, and then you come and say that this is self-defence?

"That is why the killing and the dying goes on. Ad nauseam, ad infinitum. And the rest of the world, not caring, looks away."

[*See my 25/11/12 post Gaza for the Complete Idiot; **See my 12/6/10 post A Ferocious Beast.] 

James Carleton's Israel Meets the Real Thing

The fact that a typical ABC interview on the subject of the Middle East conflict invariably reveals as much about the interviewer's entrenched Zionist prejudices and ignorance as it does about the matter under discussion never ceases to amaze me.

A particularly glaring example was Wednesday's interview with Israeli academic, activist and author Marcelo Svirsky by Radio National's current Breakfast presenter James Carleton (Racism becomes the new norm in Israel: Political scientist, 23/7).

For Carleton, Israel's is always the default position. Typically, he begins the interview, with the premise that Hamas, a mere symptom of Israeli occupation, is the problem:

JC: Unfortunately, the firing of rockets into Israel and the strong response of the Israeli military into Gaza is nothing new. Hamas has been at war with Israel since it was first elected 8 years ago. Yet, in spite of that history of violence that stretches way back before Hamas, our next guest says something new is happening in Israel. Dr Marcelo Svirsky is a political scientist. He's an Israeli Jew who now lives in Australia, and teaches at the University of Wollongong in NSW. He's just returned from Jerusalem and he says that the hatred and racism he's witnessed towards Arabs has become the norm in Israeli society, something he's never seen before.

[But it gets worse. Next comes Carleton's 'understanding' of the Middle East conflict from 1948 to the present.]

JC: Before I get you to substantiate that claim, and because it is a big claim, why would it be so given in the past Arab armies have nearly destroyed Israel in 1948, and there've been wars of survival up to 1973, there've been intifadas, the current situation, relatively speaking in terms of Israel's security, is rather mild, why should there be hatred now but not then?

[It has to asked: Is it a qualification for work at the ABC that the employee have experience in peddling Zionist propaganda? Svirsky, of course, is not impressed]:

MS: Well, to begin with, I don't think the narrative of 1948 is right as you expose it. Israel was not under threat of destruction in 1948, but [again] this is something we perhaps need to discuss in another program. I think that the present situation [in Israel] is special and different in the sense that we're witnessing a further crystallization of violence and racism in Israeli society not yet seen. I'm not talking about the regular, more familiar structure of racism and settlerism we [already] know about, but something new, and I'm talking about 3 particular forms of behaviour or social patterns. The first is the total recruitment of the media, not just biased reports and commentaries on TV and radio, but more important, actually calling on the government to escalate the conflict. This is [inaudible] so far. I mean, the marginal spaces that the Israeli media had in the past for some alternative voices are being shrunk, not to say, totally cleansed.

JC: But there's Haaretz. That's a very pro-Palestinian newspaper. It's a free and diverse media.

MS: Well, I don't think Haaretz is pro-Palestine, although it has a few, brave journalists such as Gideon Levy and Amira Hass. But I would like to tell you that (only) last week in Ashkelon Gideon Levy was physically attacked, and what is more, yesterday Matti Golan, a well known publicist working for the daily financial newspaper Globes called on the government to put Gideon Levy and Amira Hass in administrative detention for what he claims to be the use of freedom of expression that [inaudible]. So I think that these kinds of calls are pretty much new in the Israeli media.

JC: OK, if that's the media, what are the other two?

MS: The second phenomenon is the organised counter-demonstrations of right-wing groups showing up at anti-war protests. I'm talking about thugs showing up at leftist demonstrations wearing neo-Nazi t-shirts, those used by European neo-Nazis, saying GOOD NIGHT LEFT SIDE, with an image of a man attacking a left-wing activist... They outnumber the leftist protestors...

JC: What do the t-shirts say?

MS: They say GOOD NIGHT LEFT SIDE.

JC: GOOD NIGHT LEFT SIDE? It's a contradiction in terms. A neo-Nazi is an Israeli?

MS: Well, sadly, it isn't if you introspect into the social patterns and behaviours of Israeli society. But what is happening is that they chase the leftist protestors chanting DEATH TO THE ARABS, DEATH TO THE LEFTISTS, and they beat them up while the police just look on. All they do is arrest Palestinian citizens at the end of the demonstration.

JC: What happened when the ambulance took some of the victims of these beatings away?

MS: This happened in Haifa. Two Palestinian citizens were beaten and taken by ambulance to hospital. Some of these thugs stopped the ambulance, opened the door and asked, 'Jews or Arabs?' with the intention of taking these people out of the ambulance, if they were Arab, just to finish the job. The third phenomenon is the enjoyment of the spectacle of war. Israelis are gathering on a hilltop close to Gaza to cheer and whoop as Israeli bombs rain down on Palestinians. They bring their tables, chairs and picnic baskets as if they were watching a football match, only they get excited if a player is the death of human beings. I think this is pretty appalling.

JC: You're talking about Sderot.

MS: Yes, near Sderot.

JC: Well, that town in the past two weeks, Hamas has launched 1,500 rockets in 14 days. They would say you're playing the victim.

MS: We can also quote in that respect President Obama and other western leaders claiming no country on earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its border... but James, which nation would agree to be oppressed for nearly half a century of colonisation? Which nation would remain silent in the face of an ongoing ethnic cleansing? For instance, would Australian citizens peacefully agree to be stripped of their natural rights and their lives be dictated by an external power?

JC: So when the Israeli government says why do people single out Israel, you're saying why single out Palestine as the only nation to endure occupation?

MS: Exactly. And we need to contextualise the violence of Hamas. What is happening here is that the West blames the victims for fighting back. This is an absurdity.

JC: Israel says that resistance is a code word for terrorism.

MS: Resistance is the right of an occupied and oppressed people. It's a natural right.

JC: But not to individually target civilians.

MS: Well, this is something we need to ask the Israeli government about. After 600 Palestinian deaths, including more than 100 children, about 3,000 injured, with nowhere to go. I mean, the claim that Israel's violence is an act of self-defence is an oxymoron. No occupying power has a legitimate right of self-defence but [rather] an international obligation to withdraw.

JC: You are not a Zionist, are you?

MS: No, I'm not.

JC: Does that put you on the extreme of Israeli society?

MS: I think that puts me on making sense of reality.

JC: But it's a view not shared by many of your former countrymen?

MS: To say the least.

JC: Well, the argument then is, from an Israeli perspective, why should Australia get to have Australia, the Chinese China? We all have our own countries except why are Jews singled out to be denied their homeland in their historic birthplace.

MS: I think there are 3 answers to that. To begin with, the parallel between Australians, French or Japanese and Jews is not exact because we're mixing up here nation, religion, ethnic belonging, and other factors. The second answer is that if a country of Jews or Australians is [all] about privilege for a particular group, that's unacceptable.

JC: You mean anyone can come to Australia provided they apply to migrate, and once they're here, they're first class citizens?

MS: Well, it should be. Israel was established as a society built on...

JC: Well, if it's not true in Australia or Israel, why single out Israel?

MS: Well, it is the society I come from...

JC: Sure.

MS: ... and I have a particular interest in Israel because I have family and friends there and most of my past is there.

JC: But the other point is when you come to Australia you can take an Australian nationality fully but when you migrate or are the independent population of a Jewish state, if you are not a Jew either ethnically or in terms of religion that's more problematic.

[More problematic? Is this ignorance or sheer cussedness? Let me spell it out for Carleton: if you are a diaspora Palestinian you cannot return to your Palestinian homeland (stolen and renamed 'Israel') because you do not have a Jewish mother.]

MS: Well, here comes my 3rd answer, which is that the Jews or the Hebrew [-speaking] people are not the only, if we accept that claim, indigenous people of the land of Palestine. We cannot dismiss the fact that the Palestinian people are the more indigenous people of the land.

JC: So, you're calling for a one-state solution democracy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, but the Israeli Jewish fear is that that will necessarily mean an Arab majority and the best case scenario is a democracy where Jews are second class citizens. The worst case scenario is an annihilation or second holocaust.

[Can you believe this guy! A 'Jewish' majority is no problem for him, but an Arab majority, that's going too far.]

MS: This is all speculation, but we have now, as fact, that the so-called only democracy in the Middle East is a fascist regime with 1st, 2nd & 3rd class citizens acting as an occupying power for 50 years, and established on a basis of ethnic cleansing - 700,000 indigenous Palestinian people. So if you take the historical facts on the one hand, and a kind of suspect politics of pre-emption on the other, I'm not sure which one we should choose.

[Marcelo Svirsky's important new book on how Jewish-Israelis can and need to "divest themselves of Zionist identities by engaging with dissident rationalities, practices and institutions," is just out. It's called After Israel: Towards Cultural Transformation. Here's the opening sentence from the book's Statement: "Israel was a bad idea from its inception." I'm looking forward to reading it. Re the emerging Israeli fascism cited by Svirsky, I urge you all - as I have earlier - to read Max Blumenthal's recent expose, Goliath: Fear & Loathing in Greater Israel.] 

The Making of Prisoner X

"Ben Zygier was a zealot. Intelligent, restless, he dreamt of working for Mossad. His dream ultimately killed him." So runs the blurb for Jason Koutsoukis' feature article, How life of spy Ben Zygier unravelled in the Sydney Morning Herald of March 25.

Koutsoukis' portrait of Zygier is remarkably accommodating of the young man's Zionist fantasies, with Zygier described as "a passionate Zionist, a young man who had so aspired to a life of heroism" and as "ready to defend Israel against its enemies, no matter what the cost." 

His sketch of Zygier's life journey - son of a prominent Melbourne Zionist, graduate of Melbourne's Bialik College*, member of the Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair, kibbutznik (1995), and eventual Israeli citizen (2003) - is nowhere the occasion for the raising of an editorial eyebrow. All, or so Koutsoukis' treatment of his subject suggests, is as it should be for a young Australian Jew. One simply can not imagine a young Arab-Australian, motivated by a burning desire to defend his people in Gaza or Lebanon, being handled with such kid gloves. 

Likewise Koutsoukis' tolerance of Zionist dogma. He blithely refers to Australia's Jewish community as "diaspora Jews," cluelessly giving currency to the Zionist notion that Jews such as the Zygiers, who live outside Israel, are somehow in exile from their real, Jewish homeland.

Equally problematic is Koutsoukis' characterisation of Israel as a "tiny strip of a nation surrounded only by countries either overtly or surreptitiously hostile to its existence." Anyone who's taken the trouble to acquaint himself with the history of this tiny strip of land will have no trouble in tracing this hostility back to imperial Britain's imposition of a European settler-colonial movement on an unwilling indigenous population. Apparently, it's too much to expect a little historical context here.

Then there's Koutsoukis' description of Mossad as "engaged in a furious shadow war against [Israel's] enemies." Now I'd always thought of wars as a matter of tit for tat, but all Koutsoukis can come up with is Israeli 'tat': "Mossad's most recent exploits include the car-bomb assassination of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh in 2008, the January 2010 killing of Hamas operative Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in Dubai and at least 5 Iranian nuclear activists." God forbid any suggestion that Mossad is really little more than a glorified death squad.

There is, of course, another way of looking at the story of Ben Zygier, and that is as a case study in Zionist indoctrination. As one who appears to have taken the Mossad mystique more seriously than most, Ben Zygier may be seen as merely an extreme example of what can go wrong when a young Jew, whether in Israel or elsewhere, is raised on the Kool-Aid of Zionist ideology and fairy tales.

As it happens, Israel's preeminent critical journalist, Gideon Levy, has relieved me of the need to spell it out, having done a superb job, under the heading Hating Arabs is Netanyahu's gift to Israelis (Haaretz 7/3/13), of explaining just what it is that goes into the making of a young Israeli today. One need only extrapolate in Zygier's case.  (NB: While Levy focuses on the current Israeli prime minister, the racism at the core of Israeli apartheid is as old as the Zionist movement itself and its distorting effect on all who swallow the Zionist narrative uncritically can be profound.):

"Benjamin Netanyahu's children attacked an Arab cleaning man on the seaside promenade in Tel Aviv and caused him serious injuries. They attacked an Arab waiter in a Tel Aviv restaurant with chairs and their fists. They attacked an Arab from Upper Nazareth at the shore of Lake Kinneret because they heard him speaking Arabic. Netanyahu's children waved hate-filled signs against Muslim players of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team and set fire to its club house. Netanyahu's children attacked an Arab woman on a Jerusalem light rail train just because she was an Arab. All these events took place in Israel within a few days. The attackers were not of course the prime minister's biological children, but they were all the creation of his spirit, students of his views and pupils of his government's policies. These Israeli skinheads are the fruits of the nationalistic and racist atmosphere that has grown greatly in recent years, the Netanyahu years.

"Such a streak of anti-Arab violence is not just a coincidence of course. So many of these kinds of violent acts in such a short time never happened here before. Their source is planted deep within the Israeli experience that Likud-led government's have acted to nurture. A Jewish child in Israel grows up with the feeling he is a member of the chosen people, one who is allowed to do almost anything. He learns that only his people have rights to this land. This child knows his country must be Jewish, and only Jewish. During the Netanyahu years the child grew up with a feeling of continual danger, usually exaggerated and hollow. He hears all day long of the dangers lying in wait for him, all at the hands of Arabs and Muslims. He learns he is a member of the people who are always the greatest victims, there are no other victims. There are those who repeat for him that the Arabs are not people like he is, it is doubtful whether they are human beings at all; just suspicious objects, terrorists. They all want to throw him into the sea, stab him, plant a bomb, shoot a Qassam rocket at him or blow themselves up next to him. The child learns that Israel's Arab citizens are a cancer, a stab in the back of the nation and a fifth column; and it is necessary to strip them of all their remnants of rights. He learns that Israel 'gives' the Arabs too much.

"He sees alongside the road a fancy house in an Arab village and tells himself: Look at that. He hears Arab members of Knesset and tells himself: Look at us, what a democracy! He sees a veiled woman or hears someone speaking Arabic and knows this means danger. He doesn't even think to compare the treatment of Jews in Europe in the 1930s to the treatment of Arabs in Israel. He has never met an Arab Israeli for a real conversation, and there is absolutely no chance of that with a Palestinian from the territories.

"This child knows nothing about the Nakba, except that it is an invention of Israel-haters and the very mention of it is treason. Of the hundreds of villages that were destroyed and the fate of their hundreds of thousands of residents, some of whom still live in Israel, torn away from their families, banished from their lands and villages - he knows nothing at all and wants to know nothing. He has no idea what it means to be an Arab child his age in Israel who hears the prime minister of both of them describe the Arab child as a demographic threat. The Jewish child has never heard a single good word from the prime minister on a 5th of the citizens of his country, only condemnation, threats, exclusion and danger. All this he learned in even more forceful terms in recent years, the latest Likud years."

[*For Bialik College see my 21/6/12 post Mystery Man.]

Apartheid Israelis

"Many readers were surprised, as I was, to read a headline in The Weekend Australian: Living under the cloud of Israel's cruel apartheid. The headline did an injustice to the story, which only used the word apartheid in reporting the comments of one person who was interviewed. The editor of this august journal has confirmed to me that the headline was a mistake, the sort that creeps into newspapers where staff are always battling the pressure of deadlines. The Australian believes, and certainly I personally believe, the word apartheid has no application to Israel, which is a democracy in good standing, which extends basic rights to all its citizens, whatever their race or creed. Too often the misuse of such a word is designed to demonise Israel, wholly unjustly. In this case, it was just a mistake." (Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of The Australian, writing in an addendum to his column EU piggies won't go to market, 10/5/12)*

A just-released Israeli survey based on a sample of 503 interviews, commissioned by the New Israel Fund's Yisraela Goldblum Fund and conducted by the Dialog organisation based at Tel Aviv University, has found that:

Most Israeli Jews support the establishment of an apartheid regime in Israel if it formally annexes the West Bank: 

74% of Israeli Jews favour separate roads for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank.
69% object to giving Palestinians the right to vote if Israel annexes the West Bank.
38% want Israel to annex the Palestinian territories with settlements on them. (48% object)

A majority of Israeli Jews explicitly favours discrimination against Israel's Arab citizens:

59% of Israeli Jews want preference for Jews over Israeli Arabs in admission to jobs in government ministries.
58% believe Israel practices apartheid against Arabs.
49% want the state to treat Jewish Israelis better than Arab Israelis.
47% want part of Israel's Arab population transferred to the Palestinian Authority.
42% don't want to live in the same building with Arab Israelis or have their children in the same class with Arab Israeli children.
36% support some transferring some Israeli Arab towns from Israel to the PA in exchange for keeping some West Bank settlements.
33% want a law barring Israeli Arabs from voting for the Knesset.

NB: Anti-Arab views were most extreme among ultra-Orthodox Jews, and least extreme among secular Israelis. Source: Israel's dark reality: majority support apartheid, according to new study, Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 23/10/12)

[*For the full story of the headline that got away, see my 11/5/12 post Magic Happens and the accompanying list of posts which relate to it. (It's as easy as clicking on the Israeli apartheid label below.) Needless to say this poll wasn't reported in The Australian. A report on it by Fairfax's Middle East correspondent Ruth Pollard, however, appeared in both the Sydney Morning Herald (Poll finds Jewish Israeli support for segregation, 25/10/12) and The Age.]

Perpetual Nakba

The Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that began with the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948, celebrated by Israel and its affiliates around the world as Independence (from Palestinians?) Day, just keeps on keeping on.

An absolute must-read for today - Nakba Day - from Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy:

"It happened on the day after Independence Day, when Israel was immersed in praise of itself and its democracy ad nauseum, and on the eve of (virtually outlawed) Nakba Day, when the Palestinian people mark the 'catastrophe' - the anniversary of the creation of Israel. My colleague Akiva Eldar published what we have always known but for which we lacked the shocking figures he has revealed: By the time of the Oslo Accords, Israel had revoked the residency of 140,000 Palestinians from the West Bank. In other words, 14% of West Bank residents who dared to go abroad had their right of return to Israel and live here denied forever. In other words, they were expelled from their land and their homes. In other words: ethnic cleansing.

"While we are still desperately concealing, denying and repressing our major ethnic cleansing of 1948 - over 600,000 refugees, some who fled for fear of the Israel Defense Forces and its predecessors, some who were expelled by force - it turns out that 1948 never ended, that its spirit is still with us. Also with us is the goal of trying to cleanse this land of its Arab inhabitants as much as possible, and even a bit more. After all, that's the most covert and desired solution: the Land of Israel for the Jews, for them alone. A few people dared to say it outright - Rabbi Meir Kahane, Minister Rehavam Ze'evi and their disciples, who deserve a certain amount of praise for their integrity. Many aspire to do the same thing without admitting it.

"The revelation of the policy of denying residency has proved that this secret dream is in effect the establishment's secret dream. There one doesn't talk about transfer, heaven forfend; nobody would think of calling it cleansing. They don't load Arabs onto trucks as they once did, including after the Six-Day War, and they don't shoot at them to chase them away - all politically incorrect methods in the new world. But in effect that's the goal.

"Some people think it's enough if we make the lives of the Palestinians in the territories miserable to get them to leave, and many have in fact left. An Israeli success: According to the Civil Administration, about a quarter of a million Palestinians involuntarily left the West Bank in the bloody years 2000-2007. But that's not enough, so various and sundry administrative means were added to make the dream come true.

"Anyone who says 'it's not apartheid' is invited to reply: Why is an Israeli allowed to leave his country for the rest of his life, and nobody suggests that his citizenship be revoked, while a Palestinian, a native son, is not allowed to do so? Why is an Israeli allowed to marry a foreigner and receive a residency permit for her, while a Palestinian is not allowed to marry his former neighbor who lives in Jordan? Isn't that apartheid? Over the years I have documented endless pitiful tragedies of families that were torn apart, whose sons and daughters were not permitted to live in the West Bank or Gaza due to draconian rules - for Palestinians only.

"Take Dalal Rasras, for example, a toddler with cerebral palsy from Beit Omar, who was recently separated from her mother for months only because her mother was born in Rafah. Only after her case was publicized did Israel let the mother return to her daughter 'beyond the letter of the law' - the cruel letter of the law that does not permit residents of Gaza to live in the West Bank, even if they have made their homes there.

"The cry of the dispossessed has now translated into numbers: 140,000, only until the Oslo Accords. Students who went to study at foreign universities, businessmen who tried their luck abroad, scientists who went abroad for professional training, native Jerusalemites who dared to move to the West Bank temporarily - they all met the same fate. All of them were taken by the wind and expelled by Israel. They couldn't return.

"Most amazing of all is the reaction of those responsible for the policy of ethnic cleansing. They didn't know. Maj. Gen. (res.) Danny Rothschild, formerly the chief military governor with the euphemistic title 'coordinator of government activities in the territories', said he heard about the procedure for the first time from Haaretz. It turns out that not only is the cleansing continuing, so is the denial. Every Palestinian child knows, and only the general doesn't. Even today there are still 130,000 Palestinians registered as 'NLR', a heartwarming IDF acronym for 'no longer a resident', as though voluntarily, another euphemism for 'expelled'. And the general who is considered relatively enlightened was unaware.

"This is an absolute refusal to allow the return of the refugees - something that would 'destroy the State of Israel'. It's also an absolute refusal to allow the return of the people recently expelled. By next Independence Day we'll probably invent more expulsion regulations, and on the next holiday we'll talk about 'the only democracy'." (12/5/11)