A well-groomed gentleman appeared on TV. He was identified as the chief of an association called Re’uth (“Sight”), whose aim is to monitor the groups which deny the legitimacy of the State of Israel.
What they have uncovered is indeed frightful. The enemies of Israel, we were told, no longer believe that they can destroy Israel by force of arms. Instead, they have adopted a new strategy: to bring about the collapse of Israel by denying its very legitimacy.
The initiatives of small local groups in various countries are not what they appear to be. Far from it! They are part of a world-wide, organized and coordinated conspiracy, which uses every means to achieve their nefarious aim. Unlike the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, the forged document that was produced a hundred years ago, this is a genuine plot, something like the “Protocols of the Elders of Anti-Zion”.
Only one detail was missing in the disclosure: where is the secret headquarters of this international conspiracy?
PEOPLE ENDOWED with sensitive political ears were startled this week by two words, which, so it seemed, escaped from the mouth of Binyamin Netanyahu by accident: “Eastern front”.
Once upon a time these words were part of the everyday vocabulary of the occupation. In recent years they have been gathering dust in the political junkyard.
THE VERBAL couple “Eastern front” was born after the Six-day War. It served to buttress the strategic doctrine that the Jordan River is Israel’s “security border”.
The theory: there is a possibility for three Arab armies – those of Iraq, Syria and Jordan – to gather east of the Jordan, cross the river and endanger the existence of Israel. We must stop them before they enter the country. Therefore, the Jordan Valley must serve as a permanent base for the Israeli army, our troops must stay there.
I AM composing these lines while looking through the window at the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea, and thinking about the young man who is being held not far from this sea, a few dozen kilometers from here.
Can Gilad Shalit look out on the same sea through his window? Does he even have a window? How is he? How is he being treated?
He has been in captivity for four years and one day today, with no end in sight.
Gilad Shalit has become a living symbol – a symbol of Israeli reality, of the inability of our leaders to make decisions, of their moral and political cowardice, of their inability to analyze a situation and draw conclusions.
IF THERE had been an opportunity to free Shalit through military action, the Israeli government would have seized it eagerly.
It appears that the limits of stupidity and carelessness are historically-concretely determined. Meaning that, in normal conditions, any organism which rushed blindly, stupidly and carelessly into one catastrophe after another would simply disappear as the result of its folly. It is a tough world out there and the stern lessons of history are that most s mortals have to pay dearly for their mistakes.
The Neyanyahu-Barak leadership is apparently not subject to this norm. Its political stupidity, infantile grasp of reality and its criminal negligence will in no way endanger or even impair its status where it counts for them. The Israeli military-political cabal has an unlimited insurance policy issued by the United States. It can perform with impunity risky, outlandish operations, e.g., the assassination in Dubai, which would cause any almost any government to suffer clear international condemnation and sanctions. The secret of Netanayahu-Barak not having to pay for the consequences of their actions either internationally or domestically is that the United States will cover for them and prevent them from facing up to the consequences of their policies and decisions. It is not that they can do no wrong. It is simply that they do not have to pay for their mistakes.
When the commander of the Israeli navy, Admiral Eli Marom, announced at a press conference that the navy was about to intercept the flotilla of humanitarian aid ships to besieged Gaza “according to the best values and morality of the IDF,” it was clear to me that there was going to be trouble.
On 5 June this year we mark 43 years of Occupation. The army that has ruled over another people for decades now, its foot on its neck, killing its children and civilians and imposing an apartheid regime on the Occupation zone, is an army that has gone from being a defence army to an army of war criminals with corrupt values.
And indeed the fears turned out to be justified. The sea commandoes, soldiers of Shayetet 13 [1], who are known in Israel as the best of the best and the elite of the elite, showed themselves as to be a gang of murderers when they hijacked the Turkish ship the Mavi Marmara, which in addition to its humanitarian cargo was carrying over 600 people on its decks, people of various nationalities including women, all of them unarmed civilians who wanted only to protest against the Israeli siege of Gaza.
After sixty-two years of the existence of the State of Israel, we must ask: is there is any chance whatsoever for peace and reconciliation with the Palestinian people? As things appear at the moment (and as they have appeared throughout all the years of the state’s existence), the chances are very slim indeed. One important factor is the complete hegemony of the Zionist ideology in the public consciousness. That ideology is inculcated in Israelis from their earliest years up to the end of university. It is disseminated by all the media – both public and private, from the lips of leaders, official spokespeople, and select representatives of the army, entertainment world and general public. For all practical purposes there is no way for the average Israeli to escape the influence of Zionism.
An investigation conducted by industrious journalists from (the Israeli daily newspaper) Yedioth Ahronot revealed that South African Judge Richard Goldstone served the polluted and racist Apartheid regime (1948 until 1994, although it was essentially annulled in 1990) in his country, and even sent black defendants to the gallows when he enforced the abhorrent racist laws of the white establishment. It must be recalled that Apartheid was grounded in a long list of racist laws that excluded the black population from the political and economic processes, revoked citizenship from many and reminded the enlightened world of Adolf Hitler’s Nuremburg Laws. The association with Nuremburg is not simply rhetorical in this context. Amongst the laws of the apartheid regime, which did not bother people such as Shimon Peres from cultivating particularly close relations with South Africa, included a law prohibiting “mixed marriages,” a “morality law” which prohibited sexual relations between blacks and whites, and laws of citizenship and movement which excluded the black majority and deprived them of a life of dignity.
American politics continue their plunge into ritual farce. Last week we had the spectacle of progressives rallying to the right-wing Elena Kagan, largely on the grounds that it’s improper of dirty minded Republicans, not to mention Glenn Greenwald, to suggest that sexual identity might be a relevant element in assessing a candidate for the US Supreme Court. In other words, 41 years after Stonewall, long live the closet!
Now we have the uproar over Rand Paul, the libertarian Tea Bagger who just won the Republican primary in Kentucky. His grilling by Rachel Maddow of MSNBC on his lack of commitment to every Title of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is being cast as a political encounter as momentous as that between Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan in the Monkey Trial. Turn on the radio and you’ll hear howls about Rand on every liberal and leftist frequency. Because Paul had deprecated the ADA, on Democracy Now! on Friday morning Amy Goodman even fished some spavined old nag from that dismal body to join her in execration of the Slouching Beast that is Rand. David Corn herded him into the 9/11 nutball corral, because Paul had gone on the Alex Jones Show (though he’s never endorsed 9/11 conspiracies). By the same token he’s a liberal for having gone on the Maddow Show.
EVERYONE HAS the right to change his or her mind. Even Danny Tirzeh.
Colonel Tirzeh was responsible for planning the wall that “envelopes” Jerusalem – the one that cuts the city off from the West Bank in order to turn it into the United Capital Of Israel For All Eternity.
And now, suddenly, Tirzeh pops up as the main opponent of the wall he himself planned. He wants to move it, so as to leave the lands of al-Walaja village on the “Israeli” side.
The Colonel has ceased acting on behalf of the Israeli army and now represents private entrepreneurs who want to build 14 thousand housing units for 45 thousand Jewish souls. All this, of course, for the greater good of Zionism, the Jewish people, Israel’s Eternal Capital, and many tens of millions of shekels.
I MET Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Prime Minister, two weeks ago, and was again impressed by the calm and modesty he radiates.
Generally, I meet him at demonstrations, such as those at the Bil’in fence. This time, too, there was no opportunity for more than a perfunctory handshake and a few polite words.
We appeared together at the Land Day event in a small village near Qalqilyah, whose name is known only to a few: Izbat al-Tabib. The village was established in 1920, and the occupation authorities do not recognize its existence. They want to demolish it and transfer its extensive lands to the nearby Alfei Menashe settlement.
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