ISRAEL: Israel Divides the Jews – An Analysis

Israel Divides the Jews – An Analysis by Lawrence Davidson

Posted by Dr. Lawrence Davidson on November 18, 2015 in Culture & Religion, News & Analysis, Palestine/Israel, United States, World 

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism.

The leader of the largest Jewish group in North America has criticized Israel’s policies toward Palestinians as “misguided.”

By Dr. Lawrence Davidson

  

Part I – Reform Judaism vs. Israel

Something significant recently happened in the ongoing political-ethical drama that grips Israel and, by extension, Jewish communities worldwide. As reported by the Jewish Daily Forward on on 6 November 2015, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism (a position that makes him the leader of largest Jewish denomination in the United States), publicly broke with Israel’s political and religious leadership. In a major speech at the Union’s biennial conference he said, “Asking Jews around the world only to wave the flag of Israel and to support even the most misguided policies of its leaders drives a wedge between the Jewish soul and the Jewish state.”

Going public in this fashion is significant and welcome. However, as we shall see, this aspect of his critique has a long history. 

Jacobs then got more specific: “the treatment of Israel’s minorities” and the “way ultra-Orthodox views of Judaism are being enshrined in secular law” are indications that Israeli society is “broken” and that Reform Jews will not be quiet about this. Jacobs offers the concept of Tikkun olam or “good works that benefit the wider community” and the “power and wisdom of pluralism” as antidotes that can help “repair” Israel. This is potentially powerful stuff for the situation here in the U.S., if not in Israel itself. If Jacobs moves to mobilize America’s Reform Jews behind a campaign opposing present Israeli behavior, it will constitute a major challenge to Zionist tribalism. It might also help liberate the U.S. Congress from its present role of accomplice to Israeli crimes. 

Part II – The Past as Prologue 

While the Zionists will never admit it and it is unlikely that the great majority of Reform Jews are aware of it, Rabbi Jacobs’s criticism is not new. Indeed, warnings and skepticism of what Zionism meant for the Jews and Judaism go back to the late nineteenth century and intensified with the announcement of the Balfour Declaration in 1917.

I wrote a long essay on this subject in 2004. It is entitled “Zionism and the Attack on Jewish Values” and appeared in the online journal of ideas Logos (Vol. 3, No. 2, Spring 2004). Here are some excerpts: 

Ahad Ha-am (the pen name of the famous Jewish moralist Asher Ginzberg) noted as early as 1891 that Zionist settlers in Palestine had “an inclination to despotism. They treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them without cause, and even boast of these deeds; and no one among us opposes this despicable and dangerous inclination.”

In England, on May 24, 1917, the Joint Foreign Committee of two Jewish organizations, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Anglo-Jewish Association, issued a statement which asserted, “the feature of the Zionist program objected to proposes to invest Jewish settlers in Palestine with special rights over others. This would prove a calamity to the whole Jewish people who hold that the principle of equal rights for all denominations is essential. The [Zionist program] is all the more inadmissable because … it might involve them in most bitter feuds with their neighbors of other races and religion.” 

Hannah Arendt, one of the most insightful Jewish political philosophers of the twentieth century, characterized the Zionist movement in a 1945 essay as a “German-inspired nationalism.” The result of this was a modern form of tribal ethnocentrism that led to virulent, politicized racism. In 1948 she and 27 other prominent Jews living in the United States wrote a letter to the New York Times condemning the growth of right-wing political influences in the newly founded Israeli state.

Toward the end of his life, Albert Einstein warned that “the attitude we adopt toward the Arab minority will provide the real test of our moral standards as a people.” An investigation of the conclusions drawn by every human rights organization that has examined Israeli behavior toward the Palestinians over the last 50 years, leaves no doubt that the Zionists have failed Einstein’s test.

Yet that is just the conclusion that today’s Zionists cannot face. Any revival of these early and prescient objections as part of a contemporary critique of Zionism represents, to the ardent Zionist, the promotion of supposedly traitorous anachronisms that are not only an embarrassment, but also politically dangerous. Jews who express such concerns are systematically denigrated and non-Jews who are critical of Zionism are slandered with charges of anti-Semitism.

Part III – Judaism Divided

Thus, Rabbi Rick Jacobs is the latest in a long line of important critics. Now that he has joined their ranks, the question is, Will Jacobs be able to popularize his critique while withstanding the enormous pressure that is certainly about to befall him? He will be libeled and threatened in an effort to force him to back down.The movement of Reform Judaism might itself come under fire as subversive. After all, officially Israel doesn’t even see Reform Jewry as real Jews.

Though an effort to discredit Jacobs and the Reform movement will be made, it will only make matters worse for the Zionists and Israel. Thanks to its racist policies and brutal aggressiveness, the Zionist state has become the most divisive issue for Jews  throughout the Western world. Jacobs’s pronouncement is a sure sign of this. A Zionist counterattack on Reform Jewry will make it more so. 

The truth is that Zionism has always divided Jews. On one side have been those sensitive to humanitarian issues and the religion’s traditional championship of egalitarianism and justice. And on the other side have been those who have committed themselves to a Jewish future defined in Zionist ideological terms. Before World War II those on the humanitarian side were mainly outspoken intellectuals. At that time the Zionists were better organized than those who opposed them and they were politically savvy and assertive.

However, apart from areas of Eastern Europe, the vast majority of ordinary Jews remained neutral. With the advent of Nazi persecution the entire balance shifted in favor of the Zionists, who saw vindication for their statist philosophy in the Holocaust. By 1948, few Jews said a word against Zionism and the state of Israel. 

But that pro-Zionist balance could not last. Eventually Israel’s combining of religion and state power produced the worst of both worlds. In the name of defending Judaism, Israel has conquered, persecuted, and massacred, and it has self-righteously refused to acknowledge its own culpability for the ongoing tragedy of both itself and its victims. Now, more and more Jews are disgusted and alienated, or just mightily confused, by the ongoing malfeasance of a movement that was supposed to create their ultimate safe haven. 

As the journalist Laurie Goodstein noted in a 22 September 2014 article in the international edition of the New York Times, ever greater numbers of younger American Jews are turning against the Zionism and Israel. However, older and more conservative Jews still remain ardent Zionists. These are the big donors not only at their local congregational level, but also when it comes to politics. They will continue to try to intimidate Jewish skeptics into silence and to sway members of Congress. Hopefully, the efforts of men like Rabbi Jacobs will make it easier for those Jews who support more progressive and humane policies to stand up and compete for influence. 

PALESTINE/ISRAEL: Sabra and Shatila

Remembering Sabra and Shatila as Palestinians struggle against settler violence at Al Aqsa

(WASHINGTON DC 09/15/2015) – As Palestinians have endured settler violence for three days at Al Aqsa sanctuary, we also remember the thousands of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon’s Sabra and Shatila refugee camps who were wiped out in a brutal raid on Sept. 16-18, 1982.

On that date, Lebanese Christian Phalangists, under the approving eye of then-Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, launched a three-day assault on Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila. The Palestinians were made refugees in 1948 and 1967 and were forced to remain refugees because Israeli policies prohibit their return home, in contravention of international law.

Officially, no one has ever been able to arrive at an exact number of dead, though figures range from the 1,000 corpses buried in a mass grave by the International Committee of the Red Cross to at least 3,500. Many people were buried beneath of the rubble of demolished homes and buildings and hundreds were rounded up and carried away on trucks, never to return, according to Dr. Laurie King-Irani, who has conducted research into this massacre.   Sadly, Sabra and Shatila is just one milestone on a roadmap that has paved the way for the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians since before 1948. Zionism, a racist political ideology that calls for the removal of Palestine’s indigenous population to make room for Israel, is at the heart of Palestinian suffering. Since then, Israel has engaged in an imperialist, settler colonial strategies aimed at removing Palestinians from Palestine. From rampant settlement construction throughout the West Bank, to the apartheid wall, water confiscation, random arrests and detentions, home demolitions, the siege and subsequent military assaults on Gaza, Israeli policies have contravened international and American laws with impunity for decades.

Enough is enough. It is time for the international community to find the political will to hold Israel accountable and to ends its occupation of Palestinian lands. AMP also calls upon the White House and State Department to ensure Israel complies with international law and ends the occupation, lifts the siege and allows refugees the right to return home. Nothing less will do justice the memories of those who perished in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila.

---

American Muslims for Palestine
10101 S. Roberts Road
Palos Hills, IL 60465
708.598.4267
info@ampalestine.org

Criminal Israel

 

PALESTINE/ISRAEL: IDF treatment of Palestinian kids...

Palestinians scuffle with an Israeli soldier as they try to prevent him from detaining a boy during a protest against Jewish settlements in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah, Aug. 28, 2015. (photo by REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman) 

What happens when a young Israeli soldier chases children who throw rocks

There is no way on earth to successfully deal with this kind of video clip. An armed, well-trained Israeli soldier from an elite unit, covered with camouflage paint, pursues a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, trying to arrest him. Meanwhile, the entire family arrives at the scene where they set upon the soldier with howls and screams. After all, the boy is only 12, with one hand in a cast.

Once every few weeks or months, Israel finds itself facing this kind of video going viral on the Internet, a clip that soars through digital space with the speed of light, without limitations of time or place. Go argue with these pictures. A chronicle of an inevitable Israeli rout, the clip was filmed Aug. 28 in the Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh. Now, against all odds, I will attempt to describe the same event from the soldier’s point of view, from the Israeli angle.

He is 20 years old. He was a teenager himself not very long ago, attending school. Suddenly he became a soldier. He volunteered for an elite unit (in this case, the Egoz Unit of the mythological Golani Brigade). He went through advanced combat training for a year and a half. He is trained to locate and destroy Hezbollah fighters. Last summer, his own family spent 50 consecutive days hiding in shelters in the course of the Protective Edge campaign.

He wasn’t supposed to be in Nabi Saleh at all; he was supposed to be training, but he is frequently called to combustible sites in the territories. He finds himself facing a seething civilian population that throws stones if he’s lucky, and Molotov cocktails if he’s not. He also faces lone-wolf terrorism — what the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) calls an “intifada of lone wolves” that is currently taking place in the territories. He is targeted by stones every day, all day long. His friends have been injured by stones. And the memory of Adele Biton, 4, who died of her wounds after being hit by stones, is still engraved in his memory.

Every Friday, the same demonstrations take place. Sometimes they deteriorate into violence, sometimes not. The battle is over hearts and minds, over symbols of rulership. The orders received by the soldier are to maintain order and watch out for knives. In recent months, there were innumerable stabbing attacks in the territories. Many soldiers and policemen were severely wounded. The soldier knows that his life is in danger, even from a group of protesting civilians. A knife can be whipped out quickly to stab him. In some of these assaults, the women are the attackers. At this point, children have not yet been cast into the battleground. They only parade about with symbolic detonator belts through the streets of Gaza. As far as we know, children have not yet been sent to blow themselves up.

The demonstration in Nabi Saleh gets out of control. Stones cover the road. The IDF observation post reports on one of the children as the main stone-thrower. The soldier identifies him. The weather is scorching; it’s August in Israel. The soldier decides to pursue the child. He is making a mistake. The orders are: Never break off from the central unit, operate only in groups and never remain alone on the ground. The soldier is certain that he’ll catch the child quickly and wants to teach him a lesson. Israel doesn’t keep Palestinian children under arrest for more than a few hours. The soldier is not operating logically. He is tired, he is irritable, he makes a mistake. He is 20 years old.

In fact, this is the goal of the demonstration: to force a soldier to make a mistake. This is a trap. Within seconds, he is surrounded by screaming family members, mainly women and children. After all, that’s the way it works; Hamas in Gaza hides behind women and children. That is well-known, but no one cares. In Judea-Samaria, children are the most deadly propaganda weapons of all. Every sister or aunt has a smartphone. The Tamimi family confronting the soldier has their very own independent news agency in the person of 12-year-old Muhammad Tamimi. With one hand in a cast, Tamimi became a strategic weapon last Friday, a national hero.

The soldier does not relent. He is surrounded by mothers, sisters and aunts, but now he’s fighting for his honor. There’s no way he can come out looking good from this mess; at least he should salvage some respect. If he concedes defeat and flees, he’ll be disgraced. Where is Israeli deterrence? Where is the great IDF? A Golani fighter runs away from several screaming Palestinian women? If he manages to arrest the boy after all, if he beats some sisters and aunts and completes the arrest, he emerges as a very small hero indeed. The entire world will rage and storm over this David-Goliath story. How can a person extricate himself from such a no-win situation? The way the soldier did: badly.

The Palestinian goal is crystal clear: They want the Palestinian issue to return to the top of the global media agenda. That’s not easy. The Middle East is burning, hundreds of thousands are being slain all around, the Islamic State (IS) is wreaking havoc every which way and beheadings continue unabated. Thus, only minimal attention is focused on the territories held by Israel. The Nabi Saleh event evokes the once-upon-a-time days of glory, at least for a few minutes. The Palestinian objective has been reached. Meanwhile, things are happening in the emotional struggle developing between the family and the soldier. They are holding on to the soldier, biting him, pulling up the mask over his face. Suddenly, his face is revealed. A baby face. His threatening visage has dissolved. A 20-year-old child in distress. He calls to his friends for help, but they tarry.

In the investigation conducted after the incident, the soldier is reprimanded. He could have been slaughtered there, at any given moment. One knife in the hands of an aunt or mother, and no more soldier. He is aware of this. Nevertheless, he did not use his personal weapon, didn’t even consider the possibility. And yes, he exhibited restraint. It is interesting to wonder how all this would have ended if he had been a Syrian soldier. Or an IS follower. Or a Jabhat al-Nusra fighter. The list goes on.

The boy’s family claims that with a cast on his hand, Tamimi can’t throw stones. Tamimi's sister has been filmed on numerous occasions spitting on IDF soldiers from point-blank range. Tamimi himself was photographed while throwing stones with his healthy hand. But what difference does that make? The Palestinian mission was successfully completed. And that mission is legitimate. The video clip was filmed, uploaded and then conquered the Internet. Once upon a time, armies conquered states. Today, you must conquer the Internet.

When the tear gas cloud dissipates, we remain with the following questions: What is Israel doing there, anyway? Why does a soldier have to chase after a child? By the way, this is a mistake according to the IDF standpoint, too. The soldier should not have chased the child. Now, let’s even assume that the soldier comes from a left-wing Israeli family that supports the peace process and is ready to give back most of the territories. Nevertheless, he knows that the previous time that Israel forfeited territory (the disengagement from Gaza in 2005), the IDF replaced chasing after children with rocks with pursuing terrorists launching thousands of rockets and abducting soldiers in tunnels.

The soldier, his family, his city and the entire State of Israel view reality realistically and soberly. They know that Israel has made proposals to the Palestinians a number of times about establishing a state on 95% of the West Bank territory, but this offer has never been accepted. PLO leader Yasser Arafat refused; President Mahmoud Abbas ran away. Our soldier’s family sees what happens to every site that is relinquished by the IDF. They see what is happening in the Middle East around them. They read that Hamas is the most popular organization in the West Bank, and they know that Hamas wants to destroy them. And IS is already nipping at Hamas’ heels in Gaza.

Thus, even those Israelis who believe that the occupation should come to an end (like the writer of this article), knows the bitter truth: That at this stage, until further notice, our soldiers will have to continue to run after children. That is the stuff that tragedy is made of.

An Israeli soldier detains a Palestinian boy during a protest against Jewish settlements in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah, Aug. 28, 2015.  (photo by REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman)

Israeli video pulls back curtain on IDF treatment of Palestinian kids

In the village of Nabi Saleh on Aug. 28 an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier wearing a face mask tried to detain Muhamad Tamimi, who had been spotted by a military lookout throwing stones. A group of women is trying to free the frightened Muhamad, 12, from the soldier’s headlock. The boy has a broken arm in a sling. The 3.5-minute video clip of the incident causes Israel much damage.

By Aug. 31, hundreds of thousands of people had watched the video documenting the incident in addition to its wide broadcast on many TV stations across the world.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=27&v=pvJNYjzm9jk

The soldier's father, whose name has been withheld, told the Israel military radio station that he was proud of his son’s restraint. It was not the soldier’s restraint that ended the event, but rather the wisdom of the commander of the force who instructed the soldier to let the boy go.

“I wasn’t scared,” Muhamad told Al-Monitor. “I only told him [the soldier], 'Watch out for my arm.' That’s why I looked so scared.”

Muhamad’s father, Bassem Tamimi, told Al-Monitor that his son had broken his arm two days before in another incident in the village. According to him, an IDF force entered Nabi Saleh, confronted the villagers and fired tear gas canisters. Muhamad fled the scene, breaking his arm when he fell.

He said, “I was the one asking the officer [the soldier’s commander] to help release my son from the soldier’s stranglehold. I knew that with one movement his arm would be done for. I was also afraid that shots would be fired and this affair would end in tragedy.”

An IDF spokesperson told Al-Monitor, “The incident at hand consisted of violent disturbances in Nabi Saleh during which Palestinians threw stones at an IDF force in the area. The boy in the footage was identified by an outlook as having thrown stones. This is why it was decided to detain him. During the arrest, a violent provocation by a number of Palestinians — including women and children — ensued. In view of the violent friction, the commander of the sector decided to discontinue the arrest procedure.”

According to Tamimi, the demonstrations in Nabi Saleh have been taking place regularly since 2009. He said that they started out as a protest against the nearby Halamish Jewish settlement, and have grown into a popular protest, which is aimed at raising Palestinian and international awareness of nonviolent resistance against the Israeli occupation.

Israeli and international leftist activists participate in the villagers’ weekly protest. Years of demonstrations barely got the media’s attention — until the video of Muhamad was released.

“We’ve had two fatalities since 2009,” Tamimi said. “Over the years we’ve counted some 350 wounded people, of whom 40 were children. Of all the injured, 50 were wounded seriously while 20 suffered permanent disabilities.” One of those people was his wife, Nariman, who was shot in the foot in 2014 by an IDF soldier while taking photos of soldiers dispersing a demonstration commemorating the second anniversary of the death of her brother who was shot in the back.

The video clip that was taken in Nabi Saleh has brought to the fore not only the ongoing protest of its residents, but also the issue of Palestinian youths in the territories being rounded up by IDF forces. Most are arrested during demonstrations and charged with stone throwing.

According to data collected by B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, it appears that in June some 160 youths were held in custody in Prison Service facilities, most of them pending their legal proceedings; 70 received various jail sentences.

According to Defense for Children International Palestine, approximately 500-700 children and youths ages 12-17 are arrested yearly by IDF forces.

Another ballyhooed arrest that received wide international coverage was that of Malak al-Khatib from the village of Beitin near Ramallah in December 2014. Malak, 14, was sentenced to two months in jail for having thrown stones at an IDF patrol near her school. She was held in custody pending her legal proceedings. It was only when her physical and emotional state was said to be serious that the family’s attorney agreed to a plea bargain proposed by the military prosecutor. According to the deal, she would be jailed for two months less the 22 days she had already served following her arrest. The family would also have to pay the state a fine of 6,000 shekels ($1,600).

Attorney Fadi Qawasmeh who specializes in representing Palestinians — including minors — before the military courts told Al-Monitor, “Our problem — that of the Palestinians — is that as soon as a minor is arrested, we start arguing that it was a false arrest and that the person did not throw stones. In the end the military comes up with a video clip or some other type of documentation of the event. But it is the minors’ rights that is the more important and complex issue. Emphasis should not be placed on whether the detained boy or teenager committed the offense but rather whether they were granted their legal rights during the interrogation.”

According to Qawasmeh, the rights of incarcerated Palestinian boys and teenagers are always violated. There are different laws for Israelis and Palestinians. In Israel, for example, a boy or a teenager is not held in custody pending their proceedings unless they committed an egregious offense such as murder.

He said that when it comes to the first couple of offenses, Israel does not convict a teenager or send him to jail so as not to ruin his future. By contrast, in West Bank all arrested teenagers are invariably held in custody pending trial, with only very rare exceptions.

Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein has recently had to contend with the flagrant violation of minors’ rights. On Aug. 17, he informed IDF Judge Advocate General Danny Efroni that the martial law in the West Bank had to be amended so that judges in the military courts could ask for an expert review of the incarceration of minors. Weinstein even wrote Gen. Efroni: “The underlying tenet should be that every minor is a microcosm in and of itself. A minor is a minor no matters where he lives.”

Qawasmeh said that recently judges have indeed started asking for reviews and that a social worker from the Civil Administration is even required to submit an expert assessment. “Yet these are only cosmetic changes. At the end of the day the jail time given to minors for stone throwing is harsh and exaggerated."

It seems that the IDF is trying to fight vigorously the involvement of Palestinian children and youths in demonstrations. Military doctrine is based on the assumption that arresting minors involved in stone-throwing incidents is necessary to engender deterrence. This attempt has failed. It is high time that the conduct of the military and judicial systems were revamped.

A minor is a minor. Even if he perpetrated the offense, he still has legal rights. Maybe then the heavy damage that Israel sustains due to the way its soldiers are being portrayed by the international media will diminish.

ISRAEL: Apartheid, Hypocrisy and Discrimination...

For Arab student going to Ariel, the message is 'Yalla, get off the bus'

 

Iniya Daher, a Tel Aviv resident, says security guards forced her off a bus at gunpoint on her way to Ariel University Center in the West Bank.

 

By Jack Khoury | Sep.25, 2012 | 12:50 AM

An Arab student says security guards humiliated her and forced her off a bus at gunpoint on her way to Ariel University Center in the West Bank.

Iniya Daher, a Tel Aviv resident about to begin her third year of multidisciplinary and criminology studies, uses public transportation and usually has no problems going through the Sha'ar Shomron checkpoint on her way to Ariel. A week and a half ago, two security guards heard her speaking Arabic on the bus.

"I was on my way back from the college. We reached the checkpoint and, as usual, two guards boarded the bus," she told Haaretz. "When I speak Arabic on my cell phone, it's usually enough to give them my ID for inspection, as is almost always the case with Arab students or people going though a checkpoint. But this time it didn't work."

The guards weren't satisfied with the ID.

"They began questioning me, and I explained that I live in Tel Aviv and study in Ariel. But they didn't believe me," she said. "When I offered to show them my student card, one of the guards pointed his gun at me and said crudely: 'Yalla, get off the bus.'"

Daher says she was searched by the guards and a female guard.

"The search included my computer and personal things; it was very humiliating. I have to add that this happens a lot to Arab students. I just don't understand this attitude," she said.

"A year ago I witnessed a woman who was forced off the bus because she had a head covering. I'm talking about an Israeli citizen from one of the nearby Arab villages. At the time I felt sorry for her, and now it was my turn to be in this situation."

Daher spent last weekend with relatives in Nazareth, but she's still far from cooling down. "It really hurt me, and I considered cutting my studies short, but I've almost completed my BA," she said.

"There are dozens of other Arab students at Ariel, and it's a shame someone thinks they should be humiliated at the checkpoint. That's why I feel I have to tell my story to the press. Anyone who has never gone through such a humiliation has no idea how it feels. In a second you become a suspect just because you're an Arab."

The Defense Ministry, for its part, said that in this case there had been no deviation from the directives of the police and the Shin Bet security service.

"The process ... [of] building modern crossings and using professional personnel has improved services at the checkpoints and decreased the number of complaints," the ministry said.

"Still, the checkpoints are there to protect the security of Israeli citizens, and the Defense Ministry's checkpoint authority will continue to do everything necessary, under the procedures, to protect Israel's citizens." 

Hypocrisy, discrimination, and...

JEWS: When hypocrisy is measured by the ton....

BLOGGER'S COMMENT: Though easy to detect, the reasons are more complicated for Mr. Cohen, whose image is on the left hand,  to understand. 
 
Mr. Cohen grabs the facts by their nicks and cleverly twist their contents to suite his slimy purpose. He wraps such twisted contents in golden paper and smear the whole thing with murcury so that it will shine and wave under the sunlight, hence it becomes easier to decieve the reader's mental eye.

More of Blogger's Comment  below the main article....

A difference beyond question

By Richard Cohen, 

The cultural difference between Israel and its Arab neighbors is so striking that you would think it beyond question. But when Mitt Romney attributed the gap between Israel’s economic performance and the Palestinians’ — “Culture makes all the difference,” he said in Israel — the roof came down on him. PC police the world over raised a red card, giving him demerits for having the temerity to notice the obvious.

Predictably, Saeb Erekat, chief Palestinian negotiator and a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, denounced the statement as “racist.” It was, of course, just the opposite.

This is a complicated matter. It’s true that the West Bank is under Israeli occupation and parts of Gaza have been pounded into rubble. It is also true that for years the Palestinians benefited from jobs in Israel. It is true that a good many educated Palestinians live in the diaspora, but it is also true that the early diaspora consisted of Palestinian Christians fleeing Ottoman repression. (There are about 500,000 Palestinians in Chile.)

Still, for all the caveats, Arabs themselves recognize that they have a cultural problem. The Arab Human Development Report of 2002 singled out three “deficits” of Arab society that are “obstacles” to progress. One was the lack of political freedom; another was the narrow knowledge base; and the third the status of women. All of these vary across the region — Saudi Arabia’s women are forbidden to drive — but nowhere in the region are women as free as they are in the West or, for that matter, Israel. In all of vast Arabia, about half of the potential workforce is poorly educated.

This hubbub about culture may seem esoteric, but it is really very important. The tendency to hold the Arabs blameless for their own culture is part of the predilection to hold them harmless for the lack of peace agreement with Israel. The Israelis have much to account for, but they are not alone in this matter and they are not the ones who have over and over again rejected peace plans. The adamant refusal to hold the Arabs accountable infantilizes them — a neo-colonialist mentality that is, in the end, simply insulting.

The book that Romney cited for his views on Arab culture, David S. Landes’s “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations,” goes further than I would in blaming the Arabs for their own difficulties, and it was written long before the Arab Spring. But it is a vigorously written attack on the sort of thinking that blames the West for all that ails the East and for disregarding indigenous cultural problems. Landes is particularly tough on the Muslim societies of the Middle East for the plight of women — a cultural phenomenon that does not exist in Islamic Asia but does, just for the record, among Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jews. 

Romney could have been more diplomatic and eschewed a shorthand explanation of what ails Palestinian society — he might also have acknowledged Palestinian achievements — but he identified what are, indisputably, two problems. The first is that of culture. The second is the reluctance to discuss it.

CONTINUATION OF BLOOGER'S COMMENT:

Nonetheless, I am sure that only the profound-minded readers, who have deep knowledge of the history of the Middle East; its wars, invasions from within and without, European imperialism and occupation, crusades and a great many other things the ME has been exposed to as a whole and as nations, will be able to sort it out. It is not as shallow and superfluous as laid out in this article. The real fact are: 
 

1. When Jews poured amass in Palestine, the Arabs has just come out of the Ottoman grip exhausted, weekend and lagging behind.  
2. ME countries at the time suffered from European imperialism, occupation and/or mandates (British, French, Italian, and Turkish) for long periods of economy, humiliation, bloodsucking. 
3. Jews pouring amass in Palestine came from European countries that were far more developed at the time than the Arabs. 
4. 4. Most of the Jewish immigrants to Palestine were the beneficiaries of the dominance of the world at the time by European powers.  
5. The Jews used the wealth they had accumulated in western countries to by superior weapons, which they used to mass murder and expel the the Palestinians. 
6. Global Zionism Conspiracy and assistance, political, financial or whatever it may be, to the new Jewish state and demonization of the underdeveloped Arabs. 
7. The Enormous annual financial help given to Israel by the USA along with freebie deals. Palestinians are almost given nothing compared to what is given to the Jews.  

 
So in view of the above, Mr. Cohen, you disregard many other important facts to prove your point. Would your argument hold water if applied on Black American slaves during slavery times, or other ethnic minorities? NO. 

For God sake, the Jews poured in to Palestine in amass frightening the native people. their primary thoughts were a total replacement (land without people for people without land). Their means were terrorism, demolition (500 villages), expelling Palestinians from their homes, demotion of Palestinians and Arabs (likening them with rats and cockroaches), uprooting trees, destroying fields and building illegal settlements on Palestinian lands. 
 
"Land promised to them by God",  
but I do not believe in their God or their holy book. Isn't that an imposition and coercion as far as freedom of religion is concerned?!!!

ISRAEL: The poor Dutch boy and the dyke!!!

Israeli fascists on the offensive – and Palestinians made to pay

Shin Bet Crackdown on Israeli Arab Unrest in Nazareth, Golan

Richard Silverstein, 22 July 2012

I reported a few days ago on a series of secret Shin Bet arrests of Arab minorities in different communities inside Israel and the occupied Golan. Because the arrests were under gag and my Israeli sources could obtain limited information, until now I couldn’t report in greater depth about the nature of the charges and the context to the arrests.

Thanks to a staffer for an intrepid human rights NGO, I can now do so. When I last posted, I had the least information of all the detainees, about Abdul Basset Zo’abi. It turns out he is from Nazareth. In the past few days, two other members of his family, Abdul Majid Zo’abi and Abdullah Zo’abi were also arrested under gag.

These detentions were related to provocative Kahanist rallies held there last Sunday by Baruch Marzel and MK Michael Ben Ari (who also managed to stir up religious hostility this week from Christians by tearing up, Terry Jones-like, a New Testament sent to him by an evangelical Christian). The ostensible purpose of the rally by the Jewish terror supporters was to “encourage” Israeli Palestinians to enlist in the IDF. This occurs in the backdrop of extraordinary domestic tension regarding reform of the current law that exempts most Haredim and Palestinian citizens from serving.

Marzel and his goons planned on rallying at the Nazareth home of Palestinian MK Haneen Zo’abi, a leader of the Israeli Palestinian nationalist movement. This was another bit of provocation on their part.

To give you a sense of their audacity, this is a voice message sent to 10,000 Nazareth households by the miscreants:

In the message, Marzel addresses the residents of Nazareth with the IDF march playing in the background.

“Marhaba! ['Welcome' in Arabic].

Residents of Nazareth, this is Baruch Marzel, Chairman of Our Land of Israel speaking. On Sunday I am coming to Nazareth to recruit you to the National Service in the state of Israel. So that our courageous soldiers can be free to wage war against the enemies surrounding us, I call on you to enlist and pull your weight in the work that needs to be done at this time – in construction, paving of roads and agriculture. If there are no obligations – forget about the rights. As our rabbi and teacher, Rabbi Meir Kahane, blessed be the memory of the holy tzaddik, used to say: You want equality? You want National Insurance? You want rights? First of all – [give] three years of service to the state. Only thus will we realize the 2,000-year-old hope, to be a free nation in our land.”

Our Land of Israel spokesman Itamar Ben Gvir said that the phone message is part of a campaign that will reach its climax on Sunday when activists led by MK Michael Ben Ari and Marzel will hold a demonstration near the home of MK Hanin Zouabi and the offices of the Balad party.

The Zoabis were arrested by the Shin Bet for allegedly planning to attack the rightist protest by firing LAW anti-tank missiles that would disrupt it. Israeli security services have arrested Palestinians in the past on similar charges, though there hasn’t been a single incident I know of in which such individuals even came close to securing such a weapon, let alone firing it. So I find the charge dubious.

It’s certainly possible the Zoabis were planning an act of counter-protest, one that likely would’ve or should’ve been entirely legal. But because the city was a tinder box of conflicting nationalist sympathies, the Shin Bet likely decided to arrest them on trumped up charges in order to quell Paestinian resistance.

Interesting that those who originate racist acts of hate like Marzel are not arrested, while Palestinians, whose honor has been trampled upon, are detained. The sympathies of the security police couldn’t be clearer.

Another security prisoner secretly detained was Salman Hassan Safadi of Majdal Shams. His arrest was reported by the Golani Arabic language news service, Baladee, which noted that the Shin Bet “turned his house upside down” and confiscated mobile phones and computers. Dr Eyad Jawhari had earlier been similarly arrested when he attempted to return from Syria to Israel-occupied Golan.

My NGO source informed me that the chaos inside Syria has bled into the Golan as well. A few days ago in Majdal Shams there were conflicting protests by supporters and opponents of the Assad regime. The participants even came to blows.

Israel is known to feel extremely nervous about not only the deterioration of conditions in Syria and how this may harm Israeli interests, but how the unrest might possibly transfer into Israel itself. In light of the Arab Spring, its yearning for freedom and hostility to oppressive regimes, israel sees itself as a likely target. Ehud Barak has already said Israel will forcibly prevent refugees from entering Israel. Israel is also known to be worrying about any advantage that it’s arch enemy Hezbollah might exploit by using Syrian territory to launch attacks on Israel. It is scared shitless that the Golan could turn into what the Sinai has become in post-Mubarak Egypt–a zone in which shadowy Islamist elements operate freely and mount terror attacks of opportunity. Recall that Eilat saw just such an attack two years ago that originated in Sinai (though Israel lied by claiming it came from Gaza, because it was far easier to take revenge there than on Egyptian elements it could hardly identify, let alone strike).

The first impulse of an authoritarian regime (such as Israel in its dealings with its Arab minorities) facing such challenges is to clamp down hard in hopes that a clenched fist will discourage trouble. That’s why it has arrested so many recently in the Golan. My source tells me that even more than those whom I’ve listed have been imprisoned. Most detained have been Assad supporters.

In attempting to squelch resistance by its ethnic minorities to their disenfranchisement from Israeli society (in the case of the Nazareth protest); or the suppression of resistance to occupation (in the case of the Golani arrests), the Shin Bet reminds me of the poor Dutch boy holding his finger in the dyke. Eventually, he simply doesn’t have enough fingers to plug all the holes as they spring leaks and the entire dyke collapses. At some point in the not too distant future something like this will happen to Israel. No amount of Shin Bet fingers are going to prevent the entire edifice of Jewish privilege and entitlement from falling like a house of cards. They will be replaced by an Israel that recognizes democratic rights for all its citizens without regard to religion or ethnicity. It will be an Israel that renounces claims to territory acquired through military conquest or theft.

 Rouge 

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