Opinion-Israel News | Haaretz.com

A law that tells the truth about Israel
The nation-state law makes it plain. Israel is for Jews only, on the books. It’s easier this way for everyone
Gideon Levy Jul 12, 2018 5:01 AM - Haaretz.com
▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-a-law-that-tells-the-truth-about-israel-1.6267705

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The Knesset is about to legislate one of its most important laws ever, and the one most in keeping with reality. The nation-state law will put an end to Israel’s vague nationalism and present Zionism as it is. The law will also put an end to the farce about Israel being “Jewish and democratic,” a combination that never existed and could never exist because of the inherent contradiction between the two values that cannot be reconciled, except by deception.

If the state is Jewish, it cannot be democratic, because of the lack of equality; if it’s democratic, it cannot be Jewish, because a democracy does not bestow privilege based on ethnicity. So now the Knesset has decided: Israel is Jewish. Israel is declaring that it is the nation-state of the Jewish people, not a state of its citizens, not a state of the two peoples that live within it, and has therefore ceased to be an egalitarian democracy, not just in practice but also in theory. That’s why this law is so important. It is a truthful law.

The uproar over the bill was intended mainly as an effort to continue the policy of national ambiguity. The president and the attorney general, the ostensible guardians of decency, protested and received compliments from the liberal camp. The president shouted that the law would be “a weapon in the hands of Israel’s enemies,” and the attorney general warned about the “international ramifications.”

The prospect of Israel’s veil being removed before the world prompted them to act. Reuven Rivlin, it must be said, cried out with great vigor and courage against the clause allowing community-acceptance committees to screen residents and its implications for the regime, but most liberals were simply horrified to read the reality when it was worded as a law.

Mordechai Kremnitzer, in Tuesday’s Haaretz, also cried out in vain when he said the bill would “foment a revolution, no less. It will spell the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state ...” He added that the bill would make Israel “a leader among nationalist countries like Poland and Hungary,” as if it isn’t already and hasn’t been for a long time. In Poland and Hungary there is no tyranny over another people lacking rights, which has become a permanent reality and an inseparable part of how this state and its regime operate, with no end in sight.

All those years of hypocrisy were pleasant. It was nice to say that apartheid was only in South Africa, because there everything was rooted in racial laws, and we had no such laws. To say that Hebron is not apartheid, the Jordan Valley is not apartheid, and that the occupation really isn’t part of the regime. To say that we were the only democracy in the region, even with the occupation.

It was nice to claim that since Israeli Arabs can vote, we are an egalitarian democracy. To point out that there’s an Arab party, even if it’s excluded from any influence. To point out that Arabs can be admitted to the Jews’ hospitals; that they can study in the Jews’ universities and live anywhere they choose. (You bet.)

How enlightened we are; our Supreme Court ruled in the Kaadan case that an Arab family could buy a home in Katzir, after years of litigation and endless evasion. How tolerant we are that the Arabs are permitted to speak Arabic, an official language. The latter was certainly a fiction; Arabic never was remotely treated as an official language, the way Swedish is in Finland, where the minority is far smaller than the Arab minority here.

It was comfortable to ignore that the lands owned by the Jewish National Fund, which include most of the state’s lands, were for Jews only – with the progressive Supreme Court backing that stance – and claim we’re a democracy. It was much more pleasant to think of ourselves as egalitarian.

Now there will be a law that tells the truth. Israel is for Jews only, on the books. The nation-state of the Jewish people, not of its residents. Its Arabs are second-class citizens and its Palestinian subjects are hollow, nonexistent. Their fate is determined in Jerusalem, but they aren’t part of the state. It’s easier this way for everyone.

There remains a small problem with the rest of the world, and with Israel’s image, which this law will tarnish somewhat. It’s no big deal. Israel’s new friends will be proud of this law. For them it will be a light unto the nations. And people of conscience all over the world already know the truth and have long been struggling against it. A weapon for the BDS movement? Certainly. Israel has earned it, and will now legislate it.

Netanyahu’s dark deal with Europe’s radical right -

Netanyahu likes to boast about the foreign relations he has nurtured in Eastern Europe because these ties help him block EU decisions against the occupation, but there are no free lunches in politics

Nitzan Horowitz
Jul 09, 2018 4:32 AM
| Haaretz.com
▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-pm-s-dark-deal-with-e-europe-condones-anti-semitism-and-occupation

Netanyahu’s Polish romance, much like his Hungarian romance, is part of a much bigger story. For years, Netanyahu has been promoting all sorts of ties with the radical right in Europe. He has some passionate fans there: A long list of anti-democratic movements and governments that consider Bibi’s Israel an optimal partner. The Israeli government has no problem with these entities, because they are essentially quite similar. The basis of the connection derives from overlapping interests and ideological closeness.
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Immigration is a prominent example. The right’s anti-immigration efforts (there and here) became fused with the Israeli-Arab conflict and made Israel an ally in the fight against Islam. “The Jews are our brothers in arms in the war against Islam,” Filip Dewinter, leader of a far right Flemish party in Belgium, explained a decade ago. In that same interview with this newspaper, DeWinter also argued that there was no need for laws against Holocaust denial.
The far-right political movements, some of which are the descendants of Holocaust-era political parties and regimes, understood years ago that they had to change their image if they wanted to grow stronger. And that one way to do this was to enlist Jewish communities in Israel and around the world as a source of political legitimacy and seal of approval. Many far-right parties in Europe have chosen to distance themselves from anti-Semitism, in their public declarations at least. The open anti-Semitism has been replaced with crude Islamophobia. But the Jewish communities still aren’t buying it. Just scratch the surface and the real character of these groups is revealed.
Last year, when tension was rising in the French presidential election, Marine Le Pen showed the face she’d been trying to hide. She asserted that France bore no responsibility for the persecution of French Jews, defying a two-decades-long national effort to acknowledge the terrible responsibility borne by French fascism and the Vichy regime for the murders of tens of thousands of Jews.

Netanyahu likes to boast about the foreign relations he has nurtured, especially in Eastern Europe. These ties help him to block EU decisions against the occupation and the settlements. But there are no free lunches in politics. These relations come with a price, and Israel is paying it: refraining from criticizing these countries over anti-Semitism, xenophobia and anti-democratic legislation, even when Jews worldwide are appalled, as happened in the George Soros affair. This is a two-way deal: Forgive me my anti-Semitism and I’ll forgive your occupation.
>> Yad Vashem vs. Bibi: When there’s nothing to celebrate, Netanyahu runs from the cameras || Analysis >>
But diplomatic interests are just part of the picture. The Israeli government isn’t reluctantly being forced to swallow the various anti-democratic political trends in return for diplomatic gain – because it basically agrees with these trends. Essentially, Israel’s current government has no fundamental moral dispute with this dark trend in Europe.

The profound political shift in Israel over the last generation is moving it from the side that upholds universal human and civil rights to the side that upholds a nationalist, ethnocentric view opposed to social welfare policy. This is where the far right can always be found, and where the Israeli right can increasingly be found now. This is a Putinist-Trumpist worldview characterized by social ruthlessness, racism and unabashed scorn for liberal democracy, all expressed by aversion to international institutions, nostalgia for the greatness of an imagined past, adulation of power, derision of the media and hatred of minorities.
And it’s totally reciprocal: Many in Europe’s far right talk about “shared values” with Israel and view it as a nationalist role model. Thus we see more and more right-wing Israeli figures unashamedly pursuing ties with the European fascists, and the latter touting their friends in Israel. Now, for the most part, it is only the memory of the Holocaust combined with strong resistance from the world’s Jewish communities that prevents Israel from plunging deeper into this European morass.

Israel’s stupid, ignorant and amoral betrayal of the truth on Polish involvement in the Holocaust

We accepted the mendacious official Polish narrative, and swallowed it. And we legitimized the government’s campaign to harass, fine and impoverish Polish liberals, academics, journalists and simply honest people who expose Poles’ involvement in the crimes of the Holocaust

Yehuda BauerSendSend me email alerts
Jul 04, 2018

▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-okay-so-the-poles-didn-t-murder-jews-1.6242474

The Polish and Israeli governments have reached an agreement on an amendment to the Polish law that states that claiming that Poland as a country, or the Polish people, were responsible for crimes committed by the Nazis is a criminal offense punishable by up to three years in prison. According to the agreement, this criminal aspect was removed.
The Polish government passed the law to begin with to defend its good name against accusations that many Poles took part in the murder of Jews during the Holocaust. And who will decide on the historical facts? According to the Poles, it will be the Institute of National Remembrance, which is run by the politicians controlling the country today.
And so according to the law – even after the agreement with Israel – the government will determine what happened in the past via historians in its service, and this narrative cannot be critiqued by historians, independent researchers or others. Is this acceptable to the Israeli government?
>> With Nationalists in Power, Can Jews Ever Feel at Home in Poland? | Opinion ■ The Polish were once victims of historical whitewashing. Now they are doing the same | Analysis >> 
The joint announcement by Israel and Poland also states that many segments of Polish society helped Jews. This position diminishes the heroism of Poland’s Righteous Among the Nations because the noble-spirited Polish rescuers had to hide not only from the Germans, but also, and perhaps mainly, from their Polish neighbors.
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Yad Vashem has recognized some 6,750 Polish Righteous Among the Nations. They are a small and courageous minority. Unfortunately, the social norm that was accepted in occupied Poland was completely different: The usual conduct was not to help Jews, but to harm them, and many Poles were involved in the persecution of Jews. Europeans’ cooperation with the Nazi death machine was widespread, of course, not only in Poland. But in other countries, scholars who uncover this can’t be penalized.
As for the abrogation of the criminal aspect of the law, let’s not forget that this also means eliminating the exception of historians and literary figures whose profession is to write about this subject. From now on they too, and of course also journalists, educators, politicians and others, can be sued for revealing historical truths. Eliminating the criminal aspect lifts the threat of imprisonment and fines in criminal proceedings, but not punishment in civil proceedings.
In fact, the revamped law encourages civil suits against Poles who claim that a good many Poles were involved in persecuting Jews. Naturally, this claim is correct. There were Poles who gave Jews up to the Polish police, who in turn gave them to the Germans. There were those who turned Jews in directly to the Germans, and there were those who murdered Jews themselves.

The clauses of the law that still stand can, apparently, be imposed via civil proceedings against anyone claiming that the main motives for persecuting Jews were the anti-Semitism of a good many Poles and the greed of Poles who on a huge scale throughout Poland stole the possessions of those who were deported and murdered.
The Law and Justice party now rules Poland, with a decisive majority in parliament. In fact, the government is in the hands of the party chairman, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who in this is imitating Stalin, who controlled the Soviet Union from his position as head of the Bolshevik party. Kaczynski and his party are of course anti-Communist, so their rule can be defined as Bolshevik anti-Communism.
>> Opinion: Neither Poland nor Israel can afford their fixation with the past >> 
Kaczynski announced a few days ago that preparations are already being made in civil courts to sue offenders. These people could be required to pay high fines.
Polish liberals, academics, journalists and simply honest people who want to expose the acts of harassment by Poles against Jews during the Holocaust could risk impoverishment and loss of livelihood. It may be assumed that their research funding will be reduced or eliminated, and honest people will be removed from their jobs. Poland will quickly become an illiberal democracy, the term favored by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who supports this nationalist-populist revolt and will receive a royal welcome by the Israeli government on his upcoming visit here.
The declaration by Warsaw and Jerusalem legitimizes this betrayal by the Israeli government of the historical truth, the memory of the Holocaust and the marvelous people in Poland who investigated the facts on which we base our criticism. And for what did the Israeli government sacrifice truth and justice? For its current economic, security and political interests, which are more important than some Holocaust that happened 70 or 80 years ago.
We accepted the mendacious official Polish narrative, and swallowed it. If we come now to the Americans or the Europeans with complaints against what this generates in Poland, they’ll answer us, and rightfully, that the Israeli government accepted the Polish facts. I don’t know what was going on here – ignorance, stupidity or the clear amoral victory of transient interests that will remain with us as an eternal disgrace. And perhaps it was simply betrayal.

The feminist storm troopers
The battle for equal rights is being won, but do women really want the right to perpetrate war crimes or to maintain the occupation?
Gideon Levy - Jul 01, 2018 - Haaretz.com
▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-the-feminist-storm-troopers-1.6222588

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Merav Michaeli admires MJ Hegar. She even says she would vote for her – although, as far as is known, the Israeli Knesset member has no voting rights in Texas, where Hegar is vying for a Congress seat. Hegar was a helicopter pilot who served in Afghanistan until her chopper was shot down during her third tour. She’s since been on a crusade, aimed at opening combat roles in the U.S. Army up to women without discrimination.

Michaeli, the queen of Israeli feminists and a representative of the center-left, wants to see more American female helicopter pilots in Afghanistan and Yemen – who can continue bombing no matter what, who and how much is on the receiving end. She also wants more female pilots in Israel to take part in airstrikes against Gaza, along with female tank combatants who can shell whatever the female helicopter pilots leave standing.

The Labor Party meat grinder, which distorts the moral image of anyone elected to its list, alongside blind and rapacious feminism, have caused even Michaeli – one of the most impressive and committed members of the Knesset – to temporarily lose her moral compass. Just give her more female bombers. Let them bomb and shell in Afghanistan and Gaza, only let them be women.

Four female soldiers who completed a tank commanders’ course last week induced drooling militaristic pride among numerous men and women in Israel: the feminist in the tank rules! Now there are female combatants in the air, on land and at sea, and the Israel Hayom and Yedioth Ahronoth dailies could not let the opportunity pass without spouting headlines such as “Queens of the skies” and “Armor piercing.”

Corp. Keren Beit-On will complete her Snapir course this week and join a unit of naval speedboats patrolling the Gaza coast. On a good day, she might participate in the shooting of desperate Palestinian fishermen who exceeded the boundaries of their cages for their livelihoods, or at least spray them with water cannon until, helpless, they fall off their flimsy and pathetic surfboards into the water. This time, it won’t be at the hands of a macho male combatant, but one of the first female graduates of the feminist Snapir course. Beit-On, like Hegar the helicopter pilot, will fulfill the ideal of gender equality, without any discrimination. In the air, on land and at sea.

The just and triumphant feminist train is racing ahead and no one stops to ask: Sorry, but equality in what? In oppression? In tyranny over another people? Female equality in abuse? Gender equality in perpetrating war crimes?

https://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.6222594.1530388859!/image/1299953372.jpg_gen/derivatives/size_1496xAuto/1299953372.jpg

A course instructor of the Snapir ("Fin") Unit, a mixed male and female combat unit, practicing in inflatable rubber boats in the Haifa Bay.IDF Spokesperson’s Unit

Is this what you want? Is this what you deserve? Is this what we deserve? After this goal is achieved, the feminists will be able to advance toward their next objective: gender equality in organized crime. That’s another arena where male dominion must be ended – to the barricades, until Rinat Abergil controls the family business equally with her husband Meir!

Of course, the IDF should not be compared to crime families in order to understand the depth of the darkness. In order to achieve a goal that itself is absolutely correct – namely, gender equality in society – men and women are prepared to abandon any other moral value. It is true that the entrance to many halls of power still runs through service in combat units, though happily this is diminishing. But nothing could justify turning this service – a major part of which is geared toward perpetuating the occupation and the settlements – into a desired objective for women seeking equality.

No Border Policewoman, armed from head to toe while evacuating a family in Silwan, raiding a house in Nablus in the middle of the night while brutally waking up female household members, or lording it over Palestinian passersby in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City in order to protect a handful of settlers, will add an iota of dignity to the struggle for gender equality. It will only bring shame by the fact that women are also participating in these actions.

Women, you should be proud that you don’t have an equal role in maintaining the occupation. Be proud that you don’t share equally in bombing kite warehouses in Gaza, and that there isn’t yet gender equality in the disgraceful nightly arrest raids in the West Bank. There are more than enough male occupation-serving storm troopers doing this work.

The road to equality, just and absolute, should be pursued using other, more moral, paths.

Holocaust survivor and Palestinians’ rights lawyer Felicia Langer dies in exile at 87
Felicia Langer fought, first in Israel and then from Germany, for the enforcement of international law from which Israel excepted itself
Haaretz.com - Gideon Levy - Jun 24, 2018 2:42 AM
▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-the-death-of-an-exiled-conscience-1.6200232

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I never met her, only called her two or three times in her place of exile, but I well remember what she was for me and most of my generation in our brainwashed youth: a symbol of hatred for Israel, a public enemy, a reviled, outcast traitor. That’s how we were taught to regard her and a few other early dissidents, and we neither questioned nor cared why.

Now, at 87, she has died in exile; her image glows brightly in my eyes through the distance of time and space. Felicia Langer, who died in Germany Thursday, was a hero, a pioneer and a woman of conscience. She and a few of her allies never got the recognition here that they deserved; it’s not clear they ever will.

In a place where “alumni” of a murderous Jewish terror organization are welcomed — one a newspaper editor, another an expert on religious law — and where self-declared racists are accepted as legitimate participants in the arena of public debate as they are nowhere else, there is no room for courageous justice warriors who paid a high personal price for trying to lead a camp that never followed.

Langer was a Holocaust survivor from Poland who studied law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After the occupation, was the first to open a law office dedicated to defending its Palestinian victims. In this, she followed an illustrious tradition of Jews who fought injustice in South Africa, Latin America, Europe and the United States.

Here, her sense of justice brought her into conflict with her state. Occasionally she even succeeded: In 1979, in the wake of her petition, the High Court of Justice blocked an expulsion order against Nablus Mayor Bassam Shakaa. A year later, the Jewish underground attached a bomb to his car that destroyed his legs, and Israeli justice came to light.

Langer was a pioneer among Israeli lawyers of conscience who came out for the defense of the rights of the occupied population, but she was also the first to throw in the towel, closing her law office in 1990 and going into exile. In a 2012 interview with documentary filmmaker Eran Torbiner, she explained: “I left Israel because I could no longer help the Palestinian victims with the existing legal system and the disregard for international law that was supposed to protect the people whom I was defending. I couldn’t act. I was facing a hopeless situation.” She told The Washington Post she “couldn’t be a fig leaf for this system anymore.”

She said she didn’t switch battlefronts, only her place on the front, but the front is currently at its lowest point. The occupation is entrenched as never before and nearly all of its crimes have been legitimized.

Langer came to the conclusion that things were hopeless. Apparently she was right. The fight in the military courts was doomed to failure. It has no prospect of success because the military courts are only subject to the laws of the occupation and not to the laws of justice. The proceedings involve nothing more than hollow and false legal ritual.

Even the civil legal system, headed by the vaunted High Court of Justice, has never come down on the side of the victims and against the crimes of the occupation. Here and there restraining orders have been issued, here and there actions have been delayed. But in the annals of the occupation, Israel’s Supreme Court will be remembered as the primary legitimizer of the occupation and as an abject collaborator with the military. In such a state of affairs, perhaps there really was nothing for Langer to do here. That is a singularly depressing conclusion.

What did this brave and courageous woman fight against? Against torture by the Shin Bet security service at a time when we didn’t believe that such torture existed, yet it was at the peak of its cruelty. She fought against the expulsion of political activists, against false arrests, against home demolitions. Above all, she fought for the enforcement of international law from which Israel decided to except itself on unbelievable grounds. That’s what she fought and that is why she was considered a public enemy.

In her old age, her grandson told her that ultimately the Palestinians will win and will get a state of their own. “You won’t see it, but I will,” he promised his grandmother. In the end, the grandson will be disappointed, just as his distinguished grandmother was.

In a democracy, Palestinian lawmaker Khalida Jarrar would be free - Haaretz.com | Gideon Levy | Jun 21, 2018 1:13 AM

▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-in-a-democracy-palestinian-lawmaker-khalida-jarrar-would-be-free-1

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The continued detention of Palestinian parliament member Khalida Jarrar can no longer be presented as a worrisome exception on Israel’s democratic landscape. Nor can the incredible public apathy and almost total absence of media coverage of her plight be dismissed any longer as a general lack of interest in what Israel does to the Palestinians. The usual repression and denial cannot explain it either.

Jarrar’s detention doesn’t only define what is happening in Israel’s dark backyard, it is part of its glittering display window. Jarrar defines democracy and the rule of law in Israel. Her imprisonment is an inseparable part of the Israeli regime and it is the face of Israeli democracy, no less than its free elections (for some of its subjects) or the pride parades that wind through its streets.

Jarrar is the Israeli regime no less than the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty. Jarrar is Israeli democracy without makeup and adornments. The lack of interest in her fate is also characteristic of the regime. A legislator in prison through no fault of her own is a political prisoner in every way, and political prisoners defined by the regime. There can be no political prisoners in a democracy, nor detention without trial in a state of law. Thus Jarrar’s imprisonment is not only a black stain on the Israeli regime; it’s an inseparable part of it.

A Palestinian legislator has been imprisoned for nothing for months and years, and no one in Israel cares about her fate; only a very few protest. None of her Israeli counterparts in the Knesset say anything, not even those from the hypocritical Zionist left; no jurist groups or even the enlightened High Court of Justice are working to get her freed.

There’s no point in reporting on the trivialities that the Shin Bet security service attributes to her, or to explain that she is innocent until proven guilty. There is no point in writing again and again about parliamentary immunity, lest this be considered delusional – how can a Palestinian have immunity? – nor is there any point in wasting words to describe her courage, though she is perhaps the bravest woman living today under Israeli control.

All these things fall on deaf ears. There are no charges and no guilt, just a freedom fighter in jail. The Shin Bet is the investigator, the prosecutor and the judge, three positions in one in the land of unlimited possibilities, in which a state can define itself as a democracy, even the only one in the Middle East, and most Israelis are convinced that this is the case, while the world accepts it.

Jarrar could end up spending the rest of her life in prison; there is no legal impediment to this since all the pathetic arguments used to justify her continued detention could be deemed valid indefinitely. If she’s dangerous today, she’s dangerous forever. Political prisoners, detention without trial and unlimited imprisonment define tyranny.

Of course, Jarrar is not an exceptional case; she isn’t even the only Palestinian MP in an Israeli prison. So the pretentious talk about Israeli democracy must be halted, given her imprisonment. Israel with Jarrar in prison is at most a half-democracy.

Therefore, the resistance should no longer be directed solely against the occupation. The resistance is to the regime in place in Israel. Her imprisonment is the regime and she opposes the regime under whose boots she lives. Many of the Palestinian resistance organizations, which are always defined as “terror organizations,” solely because of their means, rather than their goals, are opponents of the regime under which they were forced to live. Their goals are similar to those of others who resisted tyranny, from the Soviet Union to South Africa to Argentina. Just like the handful of Israelis who want to support Jarrar. They are not expressing only human solidarity or opposition to the occupation; they are opponents of the regime.

All those who support her continued detention, anyone who is silent while she remains in jail, and all those who make her detention possible are saying: Forget democracy. That’s not what we are. Get used to it.

#Khalida_Jarrar

Israel, a state unencumbered by democracy

The Knesset presidium has excised the principle of equality from the definition of democracy. Instead of dealing with the Balad party’s vision, they have chosen to kill the messenger.

Haneen Zoabi member of the Parliament
Jun 18, 2018 1:01 AM

▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-israel-a-state-unencumbered-by-democracy-1.6180257

In a rare move, the Knesset presidium last week refused Balad’s request to bring the party’s proposal for a Basic Law: Israel as a State of All Its Citizens before the Knesset for discussion and a vote in the plenum. The proposal reflects the party’s values, vision and platform. In a democratic country, the vision of “a state of all its citizens” should have been an existing reality that is taken for granted because it is one of the core principles of a democracy.
A democracy does not exist without equality among its citizens and if there does exist a certain deviation from this, then the principle of equality should be what directs it. That is, any deviation from equality should be done for purposes of “compensating” some weakened group (and not to grant privileges to the strong group), the aim of which is to enable that weakened group to achieve fundamental equality with the others.
A selective democracy is not a democracy. The granting of privileges to a strong group does not accord at all with the democratic principle. An egalitarian state is supposed to grant its citizens rights at the individual and collective levels in an equal way and therefore it cannot be identified with a specific national group.
However, the Knesset presidium believed otherwise. It excised the principle of equality from the fundamental definition of democracy and reduced it to the individual plane only. (What else is left?) However, when the state expropriates lands from us, the Palestinians, to benefit the Jews, or when it damages our national rights – does this not damage us as “individuals”? Is it possible for an individual to exist when cut off from his historical affiliation, identity or culture?
The difficulty with dealing with Balad’s vision has always been a key characteristic of the relations between the party and most of the elements in the political arena. The repeated attempts to prevent the party from participating in elections and the campaign to delegitimize its Knesset members reflect the difficulty the state and its political elite have in dealing with its messages. Instead, they have chosen to kill the messenger.
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Second shoe drops
And if the stupidity of denying a discussion of the proposal for the law were not enough – it has been barred from public discourse because of the excess of democracy inherent in it – less than two weeks after its rejection came the draft law on party funding proposed by Likud MK Yoav Kish. This bill limits the number of parties that can receive funding in a union of parties such as the Joint List. The aim of the law, as explicitly stated, is to eject Balad, which has been defined as its most “extreme” element, from the Joint List.
If we are “extreme” from a nationalist perspective, go ahead and rein us in by means of the vision of equal citizenship we proposed to you two weeks ago. But no, it turns out that accusing us of “extremism” is only an excuse. The truth is that we are “extreme” because we are not even granted any partial, distorted or demagogic definition of democracy, and because of our insistence on realizing a democratic vision, even when it collides head-on with the privileged status of the dominant group.

Killing a child is ’not right’, but not wrong enough for an indictment -

Israeli prosecutors concluded that the two soldiers acted properly when they shot and killed an unarmed teenager 10 meters away as he ran away from them

Gideon LevySendSend me email alerts
Jun 14, 2018

▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-killing-a-child-is-not-right-but-not-wrong-enough-for-an-indictmen

A.G. and A.D. presumably celebrated. Maybe they raised a toast with their lawyers at some fashionable pub, or perhaps they just basked in the good news with their families. It was the relief of their lives. The poor souls’ nightmare is over. How they harassed them when the teenager was killed, but all’s well that ends well: The central district prosecution decided last week to withdraw the indictment against them, two-and-a-half years after it was filed.
True, it was sickeningly ridiculous that they were charged with “an act of haste and negligence” for shooting an unarmed, already wounded teenager in the back as he was running or his life. Still, it was an indictment, which itself was only filed after the deceased’s family and B’Tselem petitioned the High Court of Justice.
For a moment it seemed as if the two would be given a suspended sentence of maybe a day, or even a one-penny fine for killing a boy who had not yet turned 16, even though he didn’t pose any danger or threat to them. But even this faint hope for a remnant of delayed and symbolic justice – for even the faintest likeness of justice – was dashed, and what could be more predictable than that?
The indictment was withdrawn. A.G. and A.D. acted properly when they shot an unarmed teenager from a range of 10 meters as he ran from them. They violated nothing. Their act of killing wasn’t even hasty or negligent. They are good soldiers, excellent ones, even though the day after the killing a senior officer said, “Something that wasn’t right happened there.” Not right, but apparently not wrong enough. So go ahead, dear soldiers; continue to kill Palestinian teenagers who don’t endanger you. You can even kill them as they run away, because no harm will come to you.
A.G. and A.D. were a platoon commander and a soldier from the 71st Battalion of the Armored Corps. They shot from behind and killed Samir Awad, who tried to cross the fence that constricts his village, as he ran from an ambush the soldiers had set up in the prickly-pear bushes. They shot him in the back and will never be punished for their act. They shot him in the leg first, and after he fell wounded and got back on his feet they managed to grab him by the arm, but he got away from them. Then they shot him twice from behind, a bullet to the back of his neck and a bullet in his back, killing him. So now they can calmly fly off to India or Costa Rica for their post-army trip – perhaps they’ve already done so – and forget everything. But the home of the boy they killed in Budrus will never be the same again.

Silwan, a model for oppression - Haaretz Editorial
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The state and a right-wing group are shamefully fighting to evict Palestinians from a Jerusalem neighborhood, citing technical grounds

Haaretz EditorialSendSend me email alerts
Jun 11, 2018 4:42 AM

▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/silwan-a-model-for-oppression-1.6163339

Even given the corruption and legal chicanery typical of the settlement enterprise, the case of the Silwan neighborhood’s Batan al-Hawa section stands out. In this case, the state, through the Justice Ministry’s administrator general, transferred an entire neighborhood of 700 people to right-wing group Ateret Cohanim without bothering to inform the Palestinians living in this part of Jerusalem.
To be more precise, in 2002 the administrator general released the land in the center of Silwan to a trust established way back in 1899. A year earlier, with the administrator’s approval, three Ateret Cohanim activists were appointed trustees. Since then, the organization has invested considerable efforts to get rid of the Palestinian families; to date a number of families have been evicted and dozens are conducting legal battles to fight eviction.
On Sunday, around 100 Silwan residents came to the Supreme Court building for a hearing on their petition to the High Court of Justice against the original decision to release the land to the trust. The petition addresses the question of whether the original trust was for the land or for the buildings on it, all but one of which was demolished in the 1940s.

After killing Razan al-Najjar, IDF assassinates her character Haaretz.com - Gideon Levy | Jun. 10, 2018 | 12:47 AM
▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-the-israeli-army-doesn-t-believe-in-its-own-cause-1.6158727

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A few short words – “Razan al-Najjar isn’t an angel of mercy” – sum up the depths of Israeli propaganda. Avichay Edraee, the Israeli army’s Arabic-language spokesman, who also speaks in my name, is a representative of an army of mercy that has also now appointed itself the judge of the measure of mercy in a medic treating Palestinian wounded on Gaza’s border with Israel, and who Israeli army soldiers mercilessly killed. After killing her, it was also necessary to assassinate her character.

Propaganda is a tool that serves many countries. The less just their policies are, the more they expand their propaganda efforts. Sweden doesn’t need propaganda. North Korea does. In Israel, it’s called hasbara – public diplomacy – because why would it need propaganda? Recently its propaganda has sunk to such despicable lows that nothing can better prove that its justifications have run out, its excuses gone, that truth is the enemy and that all that’s left are lies and slander.

It is directed mostly for domestic consumption. Around the world, few gaza people would buy it in any event. But as part of the desperate effort to persist in the psychological repression and denial, in the failure to tell ourselves the truth and the evasion of any responsibility – everything is acceptable when it comes to these efforts.

A medic in a nursing uniform has been shot to death by Israeli army snipers – as have journalists with press vests and an amputee in a wheelchair. If we rely on Israeli army snipers to know what they are doing, counting on them to be the most accurate in the world, then these people have been shot deliberately. Surely if the army had believed in the justice of the military campaign that it is waging in Gaza, it would have taken responsibility for these killings, apologizing, expressing regret and offering compensation.

But when the earth is burning under our feet, when we know the truth and understand that shooting at demonstrators and killing more than 120 of them and rendering hundreds of others disabled is more akin to a massacre, one cannot apologize or express regret. And then the army spokesman’s aggressive, clumsy, embarrassing and shameful propaganda machine springs into action – a thunderous voice from the Defense Ministry that only compounds what has been done.

Maj. Edraee released a video on Thursday in which a nurse, perhaps Najjar, is seen from the back, flinging away a smoke grenade that soldiers had thrown at her. Edraee would have done the same himself, but when it comes to desperate propaganda, it’s a smoking gun: Najjar is a terrorist. She had also said that she was a human shield. Certainly a medic is a human defender.

An Israeli army investigation, based only on the testimony of the soldiers of course, showed that she had not been deliberately shot. Clearly. The propaganda machine went further and hinted that she may have been killed by Palestinian weapons fire, which has rarely been used over the past two months.

Maybe she shot herself? Anything is possible. And do we remember any Israeli army investigation showing otherwise? Israel’s ambassador in London, Mark Regev, who is another top, polished propagandist, was quick to tweet about the “medical volunteer” in quotation marks, as if a Palestinian could be a medical volunteer. Instead, he wrote, her death is “yet another reminder of Hamas’ brutality.”

The Israeli army kills a medic in a white uniform, in an outrageous violation of international law, which provides protection for medical personnel in combat zones. And that’s despite the fact that the Gaza border does not constitute a combat zone. But it’s Hamas that is the brutal one.

Kill me, Mr. Ambassador, but who could possibly follow this twisted, sick logic? And who would buy such cheap propaganda other than some of the members of the Board of Deputies of British Jews — the largest representative organization of U.K. Jewry – along with Merav Ben Ari, the Knesset member who was quick to take advantage of the opportunity and state: “It turns out that the medic, yes that one, wasn’t just a medic, as you see.” Yes, that one. As you see.

Israel should have been shocked by the killing of the medic. Najjar’s innocent face should have touched every Israeli’s heart. Medical organizations should have spoken out. Israelis should have hidden their faces in embarrassment. But that only could have happened if Israel had believed in the justice of its cause. When fairness is gone, all that is left is propaganda. And from that standpoint, maybe this new low is a herald of good news.

#Razan_al-Najjar

Anonymous snipers and a lethal verdict

We may never know the name of the soldier who killed Razan al-Najjar. But we do know the names of those who gave the order enabling him to kill her

Amira Hass Jun 05, 2018

Haaretz.com
▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-anonymous-snipers-and-a-lethal-verdict-1.6151967

We know her name: Razan al-Najjar. But what’s his? What’s the name of the soldier who killed her, with direct fire to the chest last Friday? We don’t know, and we probably won’t ever know.
In contrast to the Palestinians suspected of killing Israelis, the Israeli who killed Najjar is protected from exposure to the cameras and an in-depth breakdown of his family history, including his relatives’ participation in routine attacks on Palestinians as part of their military service or their political affiliation.
Demanding Israeli microphones will not be pushed into his face with probing questions: Didn’t you see she was wearing a paramedic’s white robe when you aimed at her chest?
Didn’t you see her hair covered with a head scarf? Do your rules of engagement require you to shoot at paramedics, men and women as well, and at a distance of about 100 meters (some 330 feet) from the border fence? Did you shoot at her legs (why?) and miss because you’re useless? Are you sorry? Do you sleep well at night? Did you tell your girlfriend it was you who killed a young woman the same age as her? Was Najjar your first?
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The anonymity of our soldiers picking off and killing Palestinians is an inseparable part of the culture of Israeli impunity. We are above it all. Immune from everything. Allowing an anonymous soldier to kill a young paramedic with a bullet that hit her in the chest, exiting from her back, and continuing on with our lives.
>> ’We die anyway, so let it be in front of the cameras’: Conversations with Gazans
There are lots of pictures of Najjar on the internet: She stood out as one of the few women among the first aid teams operating at the “March of Return” protest sites since March 30.
After two years’ training, she volunteered for the Palestinian Medical Relief Society. She happily gave interviews, including to The New York Times’ correspondent in Gaza, speaking about the ability of women to act under difficult conditions no less so than men – and even better than them. She knew how dangerous her job was. A paramedic was killed by Israel Defense Forces fire on May 14, dozens of others were injured and suffocated as they ran to rescue the wounded.
Najjar, 21 at the time of her death, was from the village of Khuza’a, east of Khan Yunis. In interviews, she was not asked about the wars and Israeli military attacks during her childhood and later. It is hard to find their scars in her pleasant face seen on screen. In every interview, she is seen wrapped in a head scarf of a different color – and each time it is wrapped around her head stylishly, meticulously, showing an investment of time and thought. The color reveals a love for life, despite all she had gone through.
We do not know the name of the soldier, but we do know who is in the chain of command that ordered and enabled him to kill a 21-year-old paramedic: Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir. IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot. Military Advocate General Brig. Gen. Sharon Afek and Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit, both of whom approved the wording of the rules of engagement, as the High Court justices were told before they denied petitions against the shooting at protesters along the border fence.
Despite all the testimony about civilian fatalities and horrifying injuries, the justices chose to believe what they were told in the name of the military by Avi Milikovsky, a lawyer from the State Prosecutor’s Office: The use of potentially lethal force is taken only as a last resort, in a proportionate manner and to the minimal extent required.
Please explain how this tallies with the death of Najjar, who was treating a man injured directly by a tear-gas canister. An eyewitness told The New York Times that while the injured man was being taken to an ambulance, her colleagues were treating her because she was suffering the effects of the tear gas. Then shots were heard and Najjar fell.
High Court Justices Esther Hayut, Hanan Melcer and Neal Hendel presented the army with an exemption from investigation and an exemption from criticism on a silver platter. In doing so, they joined the chain of command that ordered our anonymous soldier to fire at the chest of the paramedic and kill her.

Miri Regev found another enemy: Bedouin women with cameras - Opinion - #Israel News | Haaretz.com
▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-miri-regev-found-another-enemy-bedouin-women-with-cameras-1.615201

https://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.6152046.1528153834!/image/2681044501.jpg_gen/derivatives/headline_1200x630/2681044501.jpg

It’s hard to believe that the culture minister perceives a threat from women who have learned, for the first time, to hold a camera and look at the reality of their lives

“#menaces”

Israel uses Diaspora Jews as human shields

Israel is happy to exploit the world’s Jews, but doesn’t care that its actions put them at risk

Yossi Klein May 31, 2018

▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-israel-uses-diaspora-jews-as-human-shields-1.6135014

Israel is a danger to the world’s Jews. It calls itself their protector, but doesn’t care about the consequences for them of its actions. Jews abroad pay the price of hostility to Israel, yet the state insists on wrapping them around it like a suicide vest. You want to hurt me? Okay, but be aware that they’ll blow up first.
The effects on overseas Jews aren’t part of Israel’s military calculations. It will do what it does even if it hurts them. But that won’t keep it from claiming to represent them, to speak in their name and to use them as hostages. They are the human shield. Your loyalty to your Judaism, it says, comes before your loyalty to your homeland.
The Judaism in whose name the state speaks is not that of most Diaspora Jews. Israel limits or excludes their Judaism. Israel’s Judaism is that of a minority that took over the country, and in the United States it is more attentive to evangelical Christians than it is to Reform or Conservative Jews. The state fights them, yet uses them.
Israeli governments always used Diaspora Jews. Israeliness hid behind Judaism. The dangers to which Israel exposed Diaspora Jews never deterred it. In 1956 it used Egyptian Jews to sabotage their state. It sent Jonathan Pollard to spy against his own country. It imposes itself on the world’s Jews, forcing them to debate their loyalties while insisting on equating criticism of Israel with an assault on Judaism and all Jews — that is, anti-Semitism. We have plenty of that kind of anti-Semitism right here. By this formula, half of Israel is anti-Semitic because it can’t stand the government. But the efficacy of accusing the world of anti-Semitism is waning. Overuse has worn out the shame mechanism and moved up its expiry date. Gone are the days we could justify a strike on Gaza with what was done to us in Auschwitz.
Israel won’t admit this, but from its perspective there’s an upside to anti-Semitism: It “proves” foreign countries’ failure to protect their Jews. Their negligence underscores our excellence. The head of state, who is also the head of the world’s Jews, is proud of the security he gives his Jews. Three years ago, after terror attacks against French Jews, he called on the community to come to Israel because their country can’t protect them. (Some 5,000 Jews have died in terror attacks in Israel.)

The bill to protect Elor Azaria - Haaretz Editorial

Israel is set to consider a proposal banning any photographing of soldiers if carried out with the intention of ’undermining the morale of Israel’s soldiers and residents’

Haaretz Editorial May 27, 2018

▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/the-bill-to-protect-elor-azaria-1.6117404

With Elor Azaria’s release from prison this month, Israel seems to have drawn the wrong conclusions from a serious incident. Today the Ministerial Committee for Legislation is set to consider a dangerous proposal banning any photographing, recording or filming of soldiers in the course of their duties, if it is carried out with the intention of “undermining the morale of Israel’s soldiers and residents.” The bill also bans the publication of photos or videos in the media or on social networks with similar intentions. Anyone who breaks the law is subject to five years in prison.
The message is clear: B’Tselem, not Azaria, is the real criminal and Israeli democracy must protect itself from the human rights organization’s future crimes. The bill’s aim was made clearer in its explanatory notes and that is to silence criticism of the army, and in particular to prevent human rights organizations from documenting the Israeli army’s actions in the territories.
It might be noted that any footage of soldiers on such missions can be presented as an attempt “to undermine the morale of Israel’s soldiers and residents.” The bill in fact seeks to almost entirely prevent the photographing of soldiers, even if it is to verify that they are upholding the law of war and the army’s orders. The immediate result of such a prohibition is serious harm to the possibility of protecting human rights and overseeing the army’s activity.
A democratic country cannot base criminal offenses on such a vague foundation, certainly not when it comes to an offense relating to freedom of expression. The bill does serious harm to freedom of the press and the public’s right to know. The public has a right to know what the reality is and especially what the “people’s army” is doing in its name and on its behalf. That is why censorship can only be exercised in cases of serious danger to state security and not in an effort to head off criticism of the army.
The message such legislation would convey, if passed, is that Israel has a great deal to hide regarding the IDF’s activities. Such a message, beyond its profound damage to Israel’s status as a democracy, also has harsh legal repercussions. The main protection against indicting Israeli soldiers and commanders in international tribunals for violating the law of war is the assumption that Israel investigates complaints against its soldiers itself, and deals with them fairly. The more Israel acts to cover up its soldiers’ actions, the more the opposite assumption is substantiated — laying the ground for the indictment of Israeli soldiers and commanders in such criminal proceedings.
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As “sunlight is the best disinfectant,” so too camouflage and concealment are the most effective contaminators. A country and army that have nothing to hide, that act to seek out and punish those who violate their code of combat, don’t need legislation in this spirit and must oppose it.

Still too ‘tough on Arabs’ - Haaretz Editorial - Israel News | Haaretz.com
Police violence against the Arab community in Israel appears part of a racist policy led by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government

Haaretz Editorial May 21, 2018

▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/still-too-tough-on-arabs-1.6098764

Over the weekend there was a demonstration in Haifa protesting the killings along the Gaza border fence. The violent suppression of this protest and the detention of 21 demonstrators, including Jafar Farah, the director of the Mossawa Center that advocates for Israeli Arabs’ rights, are a further sign of the growing restrictions on the democratic space available to this community.
The harsh events in Gaza should have brought multitudes out onto the streets, particularly in light of the complexities plaguing relations between Arab citizens and the state. In practice, the protest in Arab society was minor and measured: a partial strike lasting only a day and local protest gatherings. Despite this, the police failed to contain the demonstrations.
True, the protest in Haifa on Friday evening had no permit, but these are precisely the times when the police must use their discretion and show restraint. They should have used the presence of Farah, a veteran activist who once headed the Arab student union and who for years has been a partner to civic initiatives for Arab civil rights and against racism. A wise police force would have seen his presence as a channel for dialogue and an opportunity for calming tensions. Instead, the police used him to quell the protest.
In footage taken at the demonstration one sees that the police did not suffice with arresting him but marched him handcuffed through Haifa’s streets as a warning to others. Even though Farah was seen walking, he was hospitalized the next day; relatives said one of his knees had been broken in detention.
The Arab community is calling for an investigation into the police’s conduct in the demonstration, and the police are expected to carry out an internal probe into the Farah case. But this doesn’t suffice; the violence by the police against Arab protesters appears not random but intentional, part of an inflammatory and racist policy against the Arab community in Israel that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is leading.
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Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan and Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich talk a lot about the importance of making police services more accessible to the Arab community, using every public platform to announce the opening of new police stations and the recruitment of Arab police officers. But the conduct in Haifa shows yet again that the police showed unwarranted “resolve” while ignoring the ramifications on the Arab community’s faith in law enforcement.
The Public Security Ministry and police brass must understand that the delegitimization of elected Arab officials and prominent Arab activists, as well as the suppression of any political protest by brutal arrests, won’t contribute to a sense of trust. On the contrary, police violence against Arab citizens widens the circle of mutual suspicion and deepens this community’s alienation.

60 dead in Gaza and the end of Israeli conscience - Opinion - Israel News | Haaretz.com
On the night of the Palestinians’ slaughter, Zion exulted an embassy and a Eurovision. It’s difficult to think of a more atrocious moral eclipse
Gideon Levy May 17, 2018 12:16 AM
▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-60-dead-in-gaza-and-the-end-of-israeli-conscience-1.6095178

https://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.6095323.1526492410!/image/3940274000.jpg_gen/derivatives/headline_1200x630/3940274000.jpg

When will the moment come in which the mass killing of Palestinians matters anything to the right? When will the moment come in which the massacre of civilians shocks at least the left-center? If 60 people slain don’t do it, perhaps 600? Will 6,000 jolt them?

When will the moment come in which a pinch of human feeling arises, if only for a moment, toward the Palestinians? Sympathy? At what moment will someone call a halt, and suggest compassion, without being branded an eccentric or an Israel hater?

When will there be a moment in which someone admits that the slaughterer has, after all, some responsibility for the slaughter, not only the slaughtered, who are of course responsible for their own slaughter?

Sixty people killed didn’t matter to anyone – perhaps 600 would? How about 6,000? Will Israel find all the excuses and justifications then also? Will the blame be laid on the slain people and their “dispatchers” even then, and not a word of criticism, mea culpa, sorrow, pity or guilt will be heard?

On Monday, when the death count spiked alarmingly, Jerusalem celebrated the embassy and Tel Aviv rejoiced over Eurovision, it seemed that such a moment will never come again. The Israeli brain has been washed irrevocably, the heart sealed for good. The life of a Palestinian is no longer deemed to be worth anything.

If 60 stray dogs were shot to death in one day by IDF soldiers, the whole country would raise an outcry. The dog slaughterers would be put on trial, the nation of Israel would have devoted prayers to the victims, a Yizkor service would be said for the dogs slaughtered by Israel.

But on the night of the Palestinians’ slaughter, Zion rejoiced and was jubilant: We have an embassy and a Eurovision. It’s difficult to think of a more atrocious moral eclipse. Neither is it difficult to imagine the reverse scenario: 60 Israelis are killed in one day and the crowds celebrate the embassy in Ramallah and rejoice over a concert in El Bireh to cheer the winning of the Arab “A Star is Born,” while television hosts and interviewees giggle during the live broadcasts. Oh, those Palestinian animals, oh, the monsters.

On the eve of this black Monday I found myself sitting in one of the television studios beside a giggling right-winger. Giggling isn’t the right term, he was bursting with laughter. It made him laugh so hard, the mass killing, and he found it even funnier that someone was appalled by it. Israel Hayom opened with the “Shehecheyanu” blessing in its main headline about another matter, unaware of the dark irony. Yedioth Ahronoth held a learned discussion over whether Hamas leaders should be eliminated now or not, who’s in favor of the murder and who’s against it. Imagine a discussion in a Palestinian newspaper: for and against murdering Gadi Eizenkot.

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 any longer. Not from within or from without.

Apart from the usual lip service, the Trump-era world won’t lift a finger, even when Gaza becomes, heaven forbid, Rwanda. Even then our observers and analysts will recite that the IDF has accomplished its goals, that the IDF displayed restraint, that it’s the most moral and “what would you suggest doing instead?”

The chief of staff would be crowned man of the year, the moderate, good man, the opposition would tweet their applause. In the town square the “leftist” singer’s victory will be celebrated, nobody would even think of canceling the party going on, or at least set aside a moment for the dead.

We’re already there. That moment is here. Rwanda is coming to Gaza and Israel is celebrating. Two million human beings we’ve imprisoned already, and their fate matters to no one. The pictures that occasionally flicker of children without electricity and parents without water, of crippled people being shot to death and of leg amputees, all children of refugees from the 1948 disaster we landed on their heads.

What has that to do with us? It’s Hamas’ fault. Sixty individuals killed in one day, and not a shred of sorrow has been sighted in Israel. From now on, it never will be.

Dear occupiers, sorry if we hurt your feelings - Opinion - Israel News | Haaretz.com
Not one Israeli statesman today intends to apologize for the Nakba – not for the ethnic cleansing, nor for the exiling. But Abbas had no choice but to apologize for his Holocaust remark

Gideon Levy May 06, 2018

▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-dear-occupiers-sorry-if-we-hurt-your-feelings-1.6055095

It’s hard to imagine a more unfounded, bizarre and insane scenario than this: The leader of the Palestinian people is forced to apologize to the Jewish people. The one who was robbed apologizes to the robbers, the victim apologizes to the rapist, the dead to the killer.
After all, the occupiers are so sensitive – and their feelings, and only theirs, must be taken into account. A nation that hasn’t stopped occupying, destroying and killing, and has never considered apologizing for anything – anything – gets its victims to apologize for one measly sentence by their leader. The rest is known: “apology not accepted.” What did you think would happen? That it would be “accepted”?
You don’t have to be an admirer of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to understand the depths of the absurd. You don’t have to be an Israel hater to understand the extent of the chutzpah.
Israel holds a magic card, the lottery of the century: the horror of anti-Semitism. The value of this card is on a dizzying rise, especially now as the Holocaust recedes and anti-Semitism is being replaced in many countries by criticism of Israel. Playing this lucky card covers everything. Its holders not only can do anything they please, they can be insulted and put on the squeeze.
The world became agitated over Abbas like it never was over any Israeli incitement – the chorus of the European Union, the UN envoy and of course, the ambassador of the settlers, David Friedman, who never denounces Israel for anything, only the Palestinians. Even The New York Times took on an amazingly sharp tone: “Let Abbas’ vile words be his last as Palestinian leader.”
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It’s hard to imagine that the newspaper the Jewish right has marked as an Israel hater, baselessly of course, would use similar language against an Israeli prime minister; the one responsible, for example, for the massacre of unarmed protesters.

There’s a double standard in Israel as well: It will never attack the anti-Semitic right in Europe as it attacks Abbas, who is certainly much less anti-Semitic, if at all, than Austrian Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache or Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Abbas said something that should not have been said. A day later he apologized. He regretted and retracted what he said, condemned the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, and reaffirmed his commitment to the two-state solution. It wouldn’t have taken much more for him to bend his knee to Israel’s hobnail boots and ask forgiveness for continuing to live under them.
But Israel won’t let any apology stop its nefarious gloating. Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman was quick to damn the other side, as usual: “despicable Holocaust denier apology not accepted.”

Pour la prétendue « justice » israélienne, la vie d’un jeune Palestinien n’a aucune valeur
26 avril 2018 – Al-Jazeera – Traduction : Chronique de Palestine
▻http://www.chroniquepalestine.com/pour-pretendue-justice-israelienne-vie-jeune-palestinien-aucune-

http://www.chroniquepalestine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/01-45.jpg

Les proches d’un adolescent palestinien désarmé, tué par un officier israélien il y a quatre ans ont violemment dénoncé une peine de neuf mois prononcée par un tribunal israélien à l’encontre des membres des forces de sécurité, affirmant que le système judiciaire israélien est « injuste ».

Le policier des frontières israélien Ben Deri a été filmé en train de tirer sur Nadim Nuwarra en mai 2014 lors d’une manifestation au barrage militaire de Beitunia en Cisjordanie occupée, alors que l’adolescent de 17 ans ne présentait aucun danger.
(...)
En vertu de l’accord avec le tribunal l’an dernier, Deri avait réduit son accusation initiale d’homicide involontaire à une l’utilisation négligente d’une arme à feu. Les procureurs ont accepté l’affirmation de Deri selon laquelle il avait, par erreur, chargé une balle dans son fusil alors qu’il avait l’intention de tirer une balle en acier enrobée de caoutchouc.

La famille de Nuwara à l’époque avait qualifié l’accord avec le tribunal de « ruse » et de « honte pour la justice israélienne ».

#Honte

Putin’s gambit could backfire

For the first time since the beginning of the Russian intervention in Syria, Putin may find himself in direct confrontation with Israel

Moshe Arens May 01, 2018
–
Opinion - Israel News | Haaretz.com
▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-putin-s-gambit-could-backfire-1.6045735

Vladimir Putin has shown himself to be quite astute in establishing a Russian presence in Syria. After waiting for the Americans to make it clear that they did not intend to get involved in the fighting there, he moved into the vacuum quickly and massively. He has established Russian naval and air bases and has provided military support to Syrian President Bashar Assad. Having saved Assad from defeat, Putin became Assad’s patron.
Now Assad is indebted to Putin and relies on him for further military support, which includes Russian aircraft and missiles. The use of Russian mercenaries for fighting on the ground allows Putin to claim that no Russian ground forces are involved in the fighting and that the Russian military presence on the ground is limited to the Russian naval and air bases. The use of mercenaries is a ruse that was already used to cover the Russian involvement in Ukraine. Although quite transparent, it seems to be working. It has become part of the inventory of methods used to spread Russian influence beyond Russia’s borders. The world seems to be getting used to it.
Whether to his satisfaction or not, Putin has become an ally of the Iranians, who are also supporting Assad through Hezbollah as well as with Iranian forces on the ground. They have all well situated themselves in Syria.
On more than one occasion, Israel has made clear to Putin that it opposes the supplying of weapons to Hezbollah via Syria and that it is determined to keep Iranian forces from approaching Israel’s borders. Various arrangements have been made between Russia and Israel that are supposed to ensure the avoidance of conflict between Israeli aircraft operating over Syria and Russian aircraft. This seems to have worked so far.
Now Putin is now considering supplying S-300 surface-to-air missiles to Assad, which would provide the Syrian president with the ability to engage Israeli aircraft attacking targets in Syria. This could bring about a dramatic change in the situation in Syria, and is liable to increase the prospect of a direct conflict between Russia and Israel. From Putin’s standpoint, this is a gamble whose outcome is hard to predict.

Anti-Zionist law - Haaretz Editorial - Israel News
Knesset sought to make clear that the purpose of the nation-state law is to fundamentally change the balance between Israel as a Jewish state and a democratic one

Haaretz Editorial Apr 30, 2018
▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/anti-zionist-law-1.6035579

Two weeks after the historic celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the state’s establishment, the Knesset is busy with another historic process. On Monday, it is expected to hold the first of three votes on the proposed Basic Law, which states that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people. The nation-state bill is meant to be the state’s identity card, equivalent to the preamble of a constitution, which defines its identity and values.
One of the “compromises” of the committee that prepared the law for its first vote was the removal of the section that established the explicit supremacy of the nation-state law over all other laws. Also removed was a paragraph stating that the law’s purpose is “to enshrine in a Basic Law the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state in the spirit of the principles of the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel.”
In other words, the Knesset sought to make clear that the purpose of the law is to fundamentally change the balance between Israel as a Jewish state and a democratic one, and to undermine the values of the Declaration of Independence, which promised a state that grants full equality to all its citizens. Apparently the combination of “Jewish and democratic” and the values of the Declaration of Independence have became inconceivable concepts — just like the words “equality” and “human rights,” which the Knesset refused to include in the law.