A political vacuum that only Netanyahu can fill - Opinion - Israel News | Haaretz
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A political vacuum that only Netanyahu can fill
If Netanyahu is correct, and Israel is a legitimate partner in American politics, then “national unity” is unavoidable amid this emptiness.
By Yitzhak Laor
Israël prisonniers palestiniens
""Le prix de notre liberté c’est leur emprisonnement. Nous sommes devenus une nation de gardiens de prison"
Pouring out our wrath
Haaretz
By Yitzhak Laor | Apr. 14, 2014
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he Israelis are not bad people, no worse than others, but for 46 years they have sat down to the holiday table after hearing the news, “With the onset of the holiday, a total closure has been imposed on the territories,” whose logic is: “Our freedom = their oppression.” Language, an effective collaborator, helps normalize the ongoing scandal: a “temporary” military regime that is expanding and settling in.
Let’s put aside the question of how the legal status of the territories is defined, or how Israel’s control over them is justified. The mechanism of control is what creates the oppressor, with the help of constant infusion of colonialist logic into our consciousness.
For example, what is the meaning of the government’s sanctions against the Palestinian Authority? You are turning to the United Nations regarding your freedom, that’s why we are suffocating you more, because we are the ones who decide what you are allowed and not allowed to do about your freedom. We are strong, and we are allowed to break into your homes, to spread out over your land and your water. And all that is part of the normal situation, of “negotiations.” And it will go on and on. Our television commentators, dressed in their blazers and omniscience, were born into this, and even when they retire in their old age it will go on. That’s the normalization process. Everything is “temporary” and everything is permanent.
Sometimes a little scandal that has yet to be normalized erupts. Settlers set military equipment on fire. The soldiers were helpless, they didn’t fire their weapons, the public is told, and good that they didn’t. The Shin Bet, they hint to us, does not torture settlers to get them to sign a confession, to convict and imprison them, and good that they don’t. And the settlers were also careful not to beat the soldiers.
Such are the rules of grammar: A Jew cannot be arrested without trial, the law of habeus corpus is valid here, beating is forbidden, torture is forbidden. On the Arab corpus, it’s permitted. They are imprisoned, without a problem, for years in nonsensical procedures, on confessions extorted by force, they are closed behind walls — let them push their way to the fences to make a living, to be healed, to live, to be dependent on us. Here in these rules the consensus is engraved, broader and deeper and more hidden than we like to think, occasionally, in times of scandal such as Yitzhar. At all other times, the entire nation, the one that is celebrating its freedom this evening, lives untroubled with the hidden wall of apartheid: Jewish freedom is engraved on the Arab body.
When the New York Times went to bat for the one-state solution -
Haaretz, By Sara Hirschhorn | Oct. 15, 2013
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Loath or lust after his ideas, University of Pennsylvania political scientist Ian Lustick created a tempest in a teapot — pardon the idiom, I’m new to Britain — with a recent polemical New York Times op-ed entitled “The Two State Illusion.” In it he heaped opprobrium and a last mound on dirt on the grave of the two-state paradigm and called for consideration of, if not resignation to, the reality of the one-state solution.
Subsequently, academicians and practitioners across the political spectrum have debated the piece. (The responses include provocative essays by leftist cultural icon Yitzhak Laor in Haaretz, right-leaning Middle East Studies scholar Martin Kramer in Commentary, Arab-American advocate Hussein Ibish and academic Saliba Sarsar of the American Task Force on Palestine in The Daily Beast, left-leaning Jewish intellectual Bernard Avishai in the New Yorker as well as letters to the editor of the Times by Kenneth Jacobson of the Anti-Defamation League and Alan Elsner of JStreet, among others.)
Seemingly the only “Washington consensus” they can concur with is how wrong Lustick is. Yet while the merits of his argument certainly require further examination, the larger questions about the agenda of the publishers and the audience for this discussion have been largely overlooked — why has Western journalism seemingly been so intent on a campaign to “mainstream” the one-state discourse, and who is really listening?
Reading Lustick’s editorial myself, I was deeply impressed by his description of the current state of affairs in Israel/Palestine: grim realities, blissful ignorances, misguided optimisms, ingrained inequalities, dangerous fantasies and violent cataclysms. (Full disclosure: I am indebted to his scholarship and assistance in my own research on the Israeli settler movement.) Few have written with such piercing yet empathetic clarity of the dilemmas and delusions of both nations under siege and how (as he wrote in a rebuttal in The Daily Beast) “the illusion” of ultimately achieving two states for two peoples has helped to justify and normalize an interim state of “systematic coercion” and “permanent oppression.”
Lustick’s is a searing cry to mobilize action that will wrest the “peace process industry” from its collective apathy and acquiescence with the two-state solution. (It should be noted that his vigorous attacks on this “industry” come more from the standpoint of an insider, bearing in mind his role in Middle East policy planning in the State Department and consulting to subsequent administrations, than the putative outsider position he takes.) He seems to be seeking “redemption” for the (retrospective) wisdom ignored by himself and others in the 1980s.
Yet, while illustrating the vastly different conclusions that political scientists and historians reach, often working with the same raw material of conflict, I consider his conclusions somewhat too “parsimonious” (as the disciplinary lingo would have it); I see the correlation but not the causation in his case study. While undoubtedly the passage of time has failed the two-state solution, this is as much a problem of praxis by politicians as with the theory of nationalist ideology.
I have yet to see a better solution — complicated by the thin descriptions of workable alternatives in a climate where the only salient scenarios are usually “one nation pushes the other nation into the sea.” Lustick himself is too facile in his willingness to be “untethered” from “Statist Zionism” and “narrow Israeli nationalism,” even if the means to do so will necessarily unleash violence.
The looming (if not current) expiry for the viability of the “land for peace” rubric and the attractions of power-sharing arrangements notwithstanding, as a Zionist, I’m still not quite ready to be an early adopter in abandoning the state system. Yet, I unabashedly admit that I am what Lustick disparagingly calls the two-state “true believer.” If, as he later suggested, the disciples of the two-state rubric are a group of messianic, faith-based, deus-ex-machina-dependent, self-deluding zealots, in contrast with those converts to the timely, rational, human-agency-enlightened evangelists of the one-state solution, than I suppose I am one of the last doomed members of that fundamentalist cult.
Yet, the fierce debate over Lustick’s high profile and pull-no-punches argument aside (which are unlikely to be resolved), the larger questions surrounding its agenda and audience remain. Lustick’s piece joins several others in The Times and other major Western media outlets from various perspectives that have sought to mainstream the one-state discourse in journalistic practice. Whether this has backfired or not in reinforcing two-state advocacy remains to be seen, yet there is no doubt that it has achieved a heightened profile and polemic surrounding this paradigm.
It is not clear, however, whether this agenda is a veritable chicken-and-egg between publishers and politicians to promote one-state alternatives of late, as evidenced by Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon’s own contribution to The Times a few weeks ago. Further, it remains to be seen whether journalists can (and should?) control the message in the months and years to come, in a hyper-competitive media landscape where the op-ed has become the new global public square.
Yet, the most important aspect of this agenda is the audience it may — or may not — be reaching. If recent items are representative of broader trends, the debate over Lustick’s piece has largely been confined to the English-language media for the politically aware (on both left and right, including the peace industry that he attacks), leaving out the apolitical indifferent and, most significantly, those actually in the region itself.
From a brief review of the Hebrew press it seems Lustick’s op-ed barely raised an eyebrow, with a rare column in the center-right daily Maariv dismissing the professor as “no lover of Israel,” one “who doesn’t get the way things are here” (a familiar brush-off that many Americans interested in Israel are subject to), and concluding that “practical Zionism, both in its classic and pragmatic [forms] is still what most Israelis are clinging to,” even if the “broad and tired” problem of the two-state solution requires “hard questions.”
Haaretz also translated Lustick’s piece into Hebrew, although it appears that some of the most inflammatory passages (the frolicking coalition of Orthodox Jews and Jihadis, Tel Aviv entrepreneurs and fellahin, Mizrahi Jews and their Arab brothers) was redacted for its apparently unprepared Israeli audience. There was scant coverage in the Arabic-language press as well, whether or not because the standard editorial line attacking Israel precluded more substantive discussion.
For all of the fuss from afar on the one-state idea, from the point of view of the relevant parties they aren’t ready for it (yet). As Lisa Goldman wrote so poignantly of the misguided turn of the discussion about the very issues Lustick so acutely illuminated: “While the debate itself was interesting and sometimes provocative, it seemed to circumvent the real elephant in the room – which was the urgency of the situation on the ground.” Perhaps there is more in heaven and earth than dreamt of in Lustick’s philosophy.
While I remain a true believer in the two-state solution and hope for its fulfillment, the time has come to at least explore other options for an open, constructive and visionary discussion of the one-state solution. An exploration of both policies, especially given current realities, is not and cannot be mutually exclusive. We must heed Lustick’s call, yet I hope for a conversation that more earnestly honors both Zionist and Palestinian national aspirations and is led by parties to the conflict — and its solution — themselves.
Dr. Sara Yael Hirschhorn is the new University Research Lecturer and Sidney Brichto Fellow in Israel Studies at Oxford University. Her research, teaching and public engagement activities focus on the Israeli settler movement, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the relationship between the U.S./American Jewry and Israel. She is writing a forthcoming book about American Jews and the Israeli settler movement since 1967.
Un poème d’Yitzhak Laor que j’ai traduit
Comme d’habitude, le matin, au lendemain d’un attentat
Yitzhak Laor
Voici le feu et le bois, peuple élu, et voici également l’agneau
Du sacrifice. J’ai abandonné mon fils au circonciseur, dans un tremblement de peur,
Je l’ai laissé le mutiler au nom de la tribu. Je hais
Tant le mont Moriah, et pourtant chaque matin
J’emmène mon fils étudier le calcul, la Tora et le culte des idoles,
Sa main douce dans la mienne, et je pense avec grand soulagement
Que le Premier ministre et le ministre de la Défense et le chef d’Etat-major dans sa doudoune,
Et le général intelligent et le commandant tout puissant et tous leurs subordonnés, s’ils
Piétinent et brûlent et détruisent et assassinent, tout de même veillent
A la sécurité de l’enfant et je le laisse là-bas,
Pleinement confiant dans le bélier et dans l’ange et dans l’agent
De sécurité russe, et alors que s’élève de la radio un cri d’horreur et un cri
D’effroi, s’élève un cri de vengeance et un cri de joie,
Je reprends la besogne du couvre-feu, qui vivra et qui ne vivra pas
(Moi, Dieu, leur maître pendant la période de réserve), j’ai toute confiance dans la liste des
Liquidations, qui empêchera une prochaine voiture piégée, et si ce n’est
La prochaine, ce sera la suivante, en encore la suivante, ou
La suivante, ou la suivante, ou la suivante
Ou la suivante, ou la suivante, ou la suivante.
Je ne ressens aucune gloire, ni aucune nausée, peu m’importe ce
Qu’il y avait au début, ce qu’il y aura à la fin, vie instantanée de l’éternité, toi Protecteur
d’Israël et son oraison funèbre, fais de moi comme il te plaira après que
Dieu t’aura vengé de tes ennemis : quelques chants, des vœux de
Rétablissement aux blessés, on attend bien sûr la vengeance, et surtout
Encore plus de terres, encore plus de terres. Nous n’avons plus de larmes mais
Encore beaucoup de sang, visqueux, et salé, et chaud,
Venez les enfants, venez, fils d’Abraham et fils de Sarah, filles de ce fils de pute d’Iftach : toute la terre est à nous, ah, cité fidèle au peuple élu, il y a tant de pus…
Copyright Traduction Rita SABAH
Lapid the professional - Opinion - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper
Choice quotes from the writings of Yair Lapid, the journalist.
By Yitzhak Laor
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Ahead of the third anniversary of the assault on the Gaza-bound Turkish ship the Mavi Marmara, after Israel apologized and promised to pay reparations to the families of the victims it killed, it would be fitting to remember the incident with the help of some choice quotes written on June 4, 2010, by then Yedioth Ahronoth writer and now Finance Minister Yair Lapid under the headline “The amateurs” (Hahovevanim).
Lapid begins, “Minister Yuli Edelstein has an interesting family. He is the one minister in all of Israel’s governments over the years whose father was a priest. When Edelstein was a child, his father converted to Christianity and over time became the priest of a village in the Kostroma Oblast in central Russia. There, in the heart of darkness, surrounded by one of the world’s largest forests, the priest Yuri taught the children about Jesus and the Virgin Mary.”
The people of Israel are confused. What is better than a forest, Jesus and children? But the emotional manipulation continues:
“Yuli Edelstein isn’t to blame,” writes Lapid. “He isn’t guilty because he is an amateur. In fact, I don’t even know if he warrants this description. Amateurs in any event understand a thing or two about their hobby, in contrast to them Yuli Edelstein understands nothing of it. He lacks any training or life experience that would prepare him for this moment.”
Neither did Papa Edelstein, but one-third of Lapid’s 900 words were dedicated to venomous incitement against his son. Moving along:
“He doesn’t understand anything about the media, anything about public relations or anything about how the international press works,” writes Lapid. “He knows nothing about enlisting public opinion, nothing about television, nothing about blogs, the Internet, fast response, going on air or the dynamics of media events. He doesn’t understand anything about all this.”
That’s it, the amateurs have been eliminated, enter the professional.
If the struggle was conducted satisfactorily, “they would have arranged on tarpaulins on the beach hundreds of rockets and arms that had been taken from previous weapons ships that attempted to reach Gaza,” writes Lapid. "And you know what the foreign TV crews would do? They would film it! And these would be the only pictures that would be broadcasted in the first hours [of the event] on all the TV stations around the world! Why? Because they didn’t have anything else to broadcast, and television stations prefer to broadcast a photo - any photo - to broadcasting nothing.
“The flotilla spokespeople would pull out their hair and try to explain that these weapons weren’t from their boats but no one would pay attention to them. Millions of viewers would automatically assume that the flotilla heading to Gaza was carrying weapons. Why? Because it’s television, you bunch of amateurs, and TV isn’t a medium that people listen to but rather look at.”
Who understands this like Lapid? Therefore it’s okay to lie, and so writes Lapid: “In the first press conference there didn’t need to be Danny of the low stool,” a reference to then Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon who had previously forced the Turkish ambassador to sit on a low stool during an official meeting to embarrass him.
Lapid continues, “But instead a soldier from the Shayetet 13 [navy commandos] who speaks English well and wears a flak jacket stained with the blood of his friends.”
And maybe anyone’s blood? Who will know? It’s television, after all.
And more: “The words ’attempted lynch’ could have easily entered into the broadcast lexicon immediately after the raid on the ship,” wrote Lapid. “It doesn’t really matter if it really was this or not, the point is that in every media event two- or three-word phrases take control, and will be displayed on the upper left side of the screen during every broadcast. Every professional knows that taking control of one of these slogans influences the audience more than a dozen speeches by [Foreign Minister Avigdor] Lieberman.”
It’s worth repeating two of these sentences written by Lapid: “It doesn’t really matter if it really happened or not,” and “Television is not a medium that people listen to but rather something they look at.” Lucky for us that this is the case, otherwise we would believe his current blabbering about “an economic emergency.” But maybe he isn’t lying and simply doesn’t understand anything about economics, despite his father never having converted to Christianity.
The ashes are silent
By Yitzhak Laor ; de la manipulation des commémorations du génocide des juifs
qui se souvient de la viste des leaders de l’Afrique du Sud de l’apartheid au mémorial Yad Vashem ?
Haaretz
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Holocaust Remembrance Day and remembrance of the Holocaust have become part of the mechanism that mobilizes the Holocaust for every issue, from the fight against anti-Zionism abroad to the authority of going after small children in the territories to the discussions about the war against Iran. The moral corruption did not start yesterday or during Likud’s time. One of the low points of Holocaust remembrance used as a tool of symbolism was during the first Rabin government: the visit to Yad Vashem in 1976 of John Vorster, at the time prime minister of South Africa, where laws like those of Nuremberg were in force.
Only by fear of international sanctions
By Yitzhak Laor
Haaretz Daily Newspaper
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Seules des sanctions internationales feront bouger le gouvernement en Israël
The tendency to blame the Palestinians for failing to compromise is part of the colonialist hauteur. We imprison Palestinians, torture, steal, spread out on their land and ask them to compromise with us? In the name of what? In the name of fear of the extreme right?
Now Avigdor Lieberman comes along and declares that a comprehensive peace deal with the Palestinians is impossible and everyone is silent. The Palestinians are actually offering a peace deal. The big obstacle and the one that grows from year to year is the settlement enterprise, which promises that no solution will be achieved until it sinks us all.
In order to put pressure on the government, it is worthwhile learning from Beitar Jerusalem and its fans’ racist war: The fear of international sanctions work. The time has come to encourage the international community to fight Israeli intransigence and pressure Israel to give up on the occupied territories and its residents, who lack a voice from the perspective of our democracy. The “La Familia” government will surrender.