Between Dome of the Rock and a Hard Place
An outrageously large number of Israeli politicians express violently racist sentiments in public. What must they say in private? Today’s case study in Israeli racism toward Arabs/Palestinians/Persians/Muslims (aren’t they all the same anyway?) comes from Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who is the spiritual leader of Shas, a right-wing, religious party in Israeli with 11 Knesset seats [...]
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There might have been a window for a two-state solution, which was open for a brief period decades ago. Israelis as a collective chose instead to allow—indeed, to aid—its most extremist elements in destroying the two-state framework. And because we allowed the settlers to do it, because we gave them our money, the lives of [...]
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There exist strong domestic political reasons for Netanyahu to get down on his knees to beg the settlers to allow him to kiss their ass. What brown-nosing do I mean? I mean Netanyahu’s sycophantic efforts to bring his own version of global warming to the very temporary, very partial settlement freeze, all the while extolling [...]
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Ephraim “Effi” Eitam is no marginal figure in Israeli politics, even if he relatively right of mainstream opinion. He is a decorated Brigadier General in the Israel Defense Forces, having won a Medal of Distinguished Service during the Yom Kippur War. He commanded the Givati Brigade during the first intiffada (1988–1993), a unit which was [...]
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How can Israelis argue in public or private that they want peace? They can’t even adhere to their sickeningly weak “partial settlement freeze”, which is already far less than the entire world (and international law) demands. From Haaretz: Defense Ministry officials denied that an announcement on Wednesday that 84 new buildings [492 housing units] would [...]
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Israel panders to racist, terrorizing, fundamentalist colonizers on a daily basis. This is now a commonplace notion. For example, Didi Remez of the excellent Coteret blog publishes the following translation of a column written by Yaron London, a widely respected Israeli journalist with a “reputation for saying what other [Israelis] think”. The problem does not [...]
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One aspect of the settlement project that must be grasped is the extent to which ideological settlers embody a perverse mixture of religious fundamentalist, terrorist, and anarchist. To help convey this point, I introduce the settlers’ “price tag” policy, an effort to create a heavy price for any Israeli state regulation of their illegal activities. [...]
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There was always a certain paradox with claiming you are an Israeli progressive who believes in freedom and democracy and other universal ideals ethnic exclusion and demographic threats. But recent events are bringing these contradictions to the fore in what I would argue is a new way. Yitzhak Laor expands on this theme in Haaretz: [...]
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We often hear about Israeli discrimination against its Arab citizens and against Palestinians under occupation. It is in fact “common knowledge”, according to Judge Yuval Shadmi. One aspect of discrimination that we don’t often hear about is Israel’s formal system of discrimination against Jews. What do I mean? Israel is not a secular state. Its [...]
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Yesterday I posted an article about the evolution of Israeli responses to the currently tabled Palestinian threat to unilaterally declare independence. First, there was silence and confusion from Israel. Then, in sequence, the reactions moved from pleading with the Palestinians to threatening them if they took their case to the UN Security Council. Today, MK [...]
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