Between Dome of the Rock and a Hard Place
From the category archives:
Ha’aretz runs today a stunning and thoughtful article about how Israel must learn the language of human rights. Written by a media consultant and former adviser to the Interior Ministry, Gilad Heimann, the article manages to cut through Israeli social psychology and government hasbara efforts with admirable efficiency.
The core argument is this: [...]
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This news story will not be news to anyone bothering to read the Israeli papers as Israel was attacking Gaza last winter. IDF spokespeople made it very clear Israel was going to privilege Jewish soldiers’ lives over any concerns about war crimes. This argument is, in fact, part of the Goldstone report’s case [...]
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One terrible consequence of Israeli (and Western) racism toward Arabs is that a number of what should be unnecessary defenses of Arab behavior must be made. I don’t want to be in the position of defending Hamas, for example, and yet the absurd caricature of that complex organization must be countered.
Ditto on the recent [...]
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In today’s Ha’aretz, Bradley Burnston writes an op-ed in which he fulminates against the critics of Israel’s current mission in Haiti. He starts by saying “thank you” to the IDF medical team, continues by saying “That’s it”, suggesting that’s all he wants to say, and then launches into a tirade against “Israel bashers.” [...]
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As I mentioned in my earlier post on Haiti and Gaza, Israel sent an IDF search-and-rescue team to Haiti to share “Jewish ethics” with the disaster-stricken locals. This is, of course, entirely unrelated to Israel’s desire to re-earn some of the brownie points lost in the course of, inter alia, its multiple year siege [...]
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Today’s Jerusalem Post carries the type of article that would never be published in a major US media outlet. The article examines Israeli social psychology around Operation Cast Lead and its aftermath. The article is so self-aware and penetrating, its worth an extensive quotation:
The kill ratio was 100-to-1 in our favor. The destruction [...]
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The Israeli press is abuzz with reports about the arrest of the Jewish terrorist, Yaakov Teitel, an American Jewish fundamentalist who became a settler (and much else) in the occupied West Bank. In particular, he has murdered at least two Palestinians, sent a bomb to a Jewish family with whom he disagreed ideologically, tried [...]
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In a recent interview, the brilliant Amira Hass (the only Jewish Israeli journalist to live as a full-time reporter in occupied Palestine) describes the current regime as a mixture of apartheid, military occupation, and classical colonialism. But the form of apartheid that exists in Israel/Palestine is not motivated by racism, she argues, as evidenced [...]
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Many Israelis are frustrated with the US for its unconditional support of anything Israel does, including the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and Jerusalem. Although we don’t hear many of these voices in the US, they are much more widely disseminated in Israel. I hope to bring some of these perspectives [...]
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This blog should have started on December 28th, 2008, the day the revoltingly named Operation Cast Lead began.
I had observed with a growing sense of horror the drumbeat for war in Israeli society. It reminded me of neoconservative hysteria in the run-up to America’s most recent war on Iraq. I had read with alarm the [...]
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