THE CONSCIENCE OF HONEST ISRAELIS
By Rev. Ted Pike
1 Feb 10
If anti-Semitism is “strong criticism of Israel,” as
the Anti-Defamation League and the government of Israel now insist,
then some of the world’s most outspoken anti-Semites exist where
one would least expect them—in Israel. Increasingly, Jewish writers
for Israel’s largest dailies, the Jerusalem Post and Ha’aretz,
vilify Israel’s inhuman treatment of Palestinians. They use language
which would arouse a chorus of outrage as “anti-Semitic” in
any American church, university or legislative body. Christian evangelicals,
it’s time to listen.
For the past century, relations between Jews and Arabs in the war-torn
Mideast have not been governed by the golden rule. If they had, the
Mideast would be unrecognizable for its calm and cooperation. But in
a refreshing article in the Jerusalem Post, Larry Derfner
does what he claims is unthinkable for most Israelis. He requests Israelis
to consider how they would feel if the inhabitants of Gaza treated
them as despicably as Israel treats the Palestinians.
“The question we have to ask ourselves is this: If anybody
treated us like we’re treating the people in Gaza, what would
we do? We don’t want to go there, do we? And because we don’t,
we make it our business not to see, hear or think about how, indeed,
we are treating the people in Gaza. All these shocked dignitaries,
all these reports, these details, these numbers—thousands of
destroyed this and tens of thousands of destroyed that, rubble, sewage,
malnutrition, crying babies, humanitarian crises—who can
keep up? Who cares? They did it to themselves. Where to for lunch?
But is that how we would react? Is that what Israelis would do
if a foreign army did to this country what the IDF did to that one
a year ago? If another country sent F-16s, Apache helicopters, white
phosphorus, drones, tanks and battalions into Israel, if any nation
bombed and killed over here like we bombed and killed in Gaza, then
rubbed our noses in it afterward, would we want to make peace with
them?...what we make 100% sure to forget is that we do all sorts
of hateful things to Gaza that they don’t do to us, and that
this is the way it’s
been since 1967…We have to dare to put ourselves in those
people’s
place. And we have to stop doing to them what we would never allow
anyone to do to us. Otherwise, we Israelis have no conscience,
and little by little we become capable of anything.” (Rattling
the Cage: A taboo question for Israelis, Dec. 30, 2009)
In Haaretz’s article, “Israel’s 10 Worst
Errors of the Decade,” Bradley Burston lists “The siege
of Gaza” as number one through number ten. He says,
It was a decade framed by a fundamentalist Palestinian belief in
salvation through suicide and a fundamentalist Israeli belief in
salvation through brutality. The decade ends as it began, clueless,
hopeless, exhausted. For having lived through this, we are, all of
us, somehow much more than ten years older, yet none the wiser…The
effect of this siege has been to focus and intensify Palestinian
anger against Israel…In the eyes of the world community, the
overwhelming collective punishment—and the relative silence
of Israelis in response—has gutted Israel’s claim to
the moral high ground…The
fact that the siege has failed so completely in achieving its stated
aims reinforces the impression that its real purpose is punitive…The
siege corrupts the moral values of all Israelis, who, whether or
not they are aware of what is being done to the people of Gaza,
bear ultimate responsibility for all acts being carried out in
their name.” (Israel’s
10 Worst Errors of the Decade, Jan.
6, 2010)
The title of Akiva Eldar’s Ha’aretz article asks, “Is
an Israeli Jewish sense of victimization perpetuating the conflict
with Palestinians?” He cites a study by Daniel Bar-Tal, “one
of the world’s leading political psychologists and Rafi Nets-Zehngut,
a doctoral student, which alleges,
Israeli Jews’ consciousness is characterized by a sense of
victimization, a siege mentality, blind patriotism, belligerence,
self-righteousness, dehumanization of the Palestinians and insensitivity
to their sufferings…the
public practices self-censorship and accepts the establishment
version, out of an unwillingness to open up to all alternative information—they
don’t want to be confused with the facts. We are a nation
that lives in the past, suffused with anxiety and suffering from
chronic closed-mindedness. (Is
an Israeli Jewish sense of victimization perpetuating the conflict
with Palestinians?, Jan.
30, 2009)
Gideon Levy, in Ha’aretz, takes the occasion of Holocaust
Remembrance Day to preach, not against a hostile world but against
increasing Israeli oppression of the Gazans, which he alleges fans
the flames of anti-Semitism.
Wednesday was international Holocaust Remembrance Day, and an Israeli
public relations drive like this hasn’t been seen for ages…It
won’t help much. International Holocaust Remembrance Day has
passed, the speeches will soon be forgotten and the depressing everyday
reality will remain. Israel will not come out looking good, even after
the PR campaign….Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at
Yad Vashem. ‘There is evil in the world,’ he said. ‘Evil
must be stamped out at the beginning.’”
No remembrance speech will obliterate the xenophobia that has reared
its head in Israel…We have a prime minister… who
speaks about evil but shares the crime of the Gaza blockade now
in its fourth year, leaving 1.5 million people in disgraceful conditions…a
prime minister in whose country people perpetuate pogroms against
innocent Palestinians…against whom the state does nothing…How
beautiful it would have been if on this international day of remembrance
Israel had taken the time to examine itself, look inward and ask,
for example, how it is that anti-Semitism has reared its head in
the world precisely in the past year, the year after we dropped
white-phosphorus bombs on Gaza…A thousand speeches against
anti-Semitism will not extinguish the flames ignited by Cast Lead,
flames that threaten not only Israel but the entire Jewish world.
As long as Gaza is under blockade and Israel sinks into its institutionalized
xenophobia, Holocaust speeches remain hollow. As long as evil is
rampant here at home, neither the world nor we will be able to
accept our preaching against others, even if they deserve it.” (Holocaust
remembrance is a boon for Israeli propaganda, Jan.
28, 2010)
Antony Loewenstein, in Ha’aretz, underscores that:
The decades-old ability of Zionist groups to manage the public
narrative of Israeli victimhood is breaking down. Damning [Israel's]
critics has therefore become a key method of control.
‘But,’ writes Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald, a leading
Jewish-American blogger, ‘whereas the smear tactics once
inspired fear in many people, now they just inspire pity. They
no longer work.’
“Defining a humane Judaism in the 21st century means condemning
the brutal Israeli occupation in the West Bank and resisting the
ongoing siege of Gaza.
“Mainstream Zionism wants to completely shield Jews from
the uncomfortable facts of the Israeli occupation and Palestinian
self-determination.
“But facts have an uncomfortable way of seeping back into
view. Colonel Itai Virob, an IDF brigade commander in the West Bank,
recently told an Israeli court that, “a slap, sometimes a punch
to the scruff of the neck or the chest, sometimes a knee jab or strangulation
to calm somebody [a Palestinian] down is reasonable.” (Why
aren't Jews outraged by Israeli occupation?, June
17, 2009)*
*Virob’s admission barely scratches the surface of the fact
that the most widespread and fiendish Israeli tortures of thousands
of Palestinians have occurred over at least the last 40 years and are
still being inflicted in Israel’s prisons today. An average of
10,000 Palestinians, including women and minors, largely arrested and
incarcerated without due process, are vulnerable to unspeakable cruelties
at the hands of IDF and Bet Shin, Israel’s secret police every
year. Such inhumanity, worthy of a Nazi concentration camp, is blacked
out by the Israeli military, police, and media and Western media (including
Christian). But it is extensively documented in my six-page article, Torture
in Israeli Prisons at www.truthtellers.org.
It is well known that Israeli torture experts were on the scene during
American torture of Iraqis at Abu-Ghraib. There can also be little doubt
that the same Israeli influence, as partners with the US in the “War
on Terror” during the George W. Bush administration, led to very
un-American and shocking incorporation of Israeli-style torture into
US interrogation of Muslim prisoners.
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