The world is full of unattractive regimes. Israel is not that unusual. But what Israel has become, fills many of us Jews with shame.
We are not shamed by North Korea, or Turkey, we do not feel responsible for what various dictatorships are doing, but most of us Jews feel uncomfortable when the "Jewish state" turns out to be an Apartheid state. Pure land greed has turned a dream to a nightmare.
Here's a short video, worth watching. It is an adress by an israeli comedian, made several days ago on Israeli TV. It is in Hebrew... but, there are English subtitles.
Worth watching.
PS: Some of my Jewish friends will be annoyed at me for posting this. The time has come for diaspora Jews – at least those who abhor apartheid elsewhere – to stop defending this kind of Israel.
As you will know by now, I do not agree with the Left view of life in Israel and the video is monotonously from that perspective – it says nothing new. That view has already been rejected by Israeli society not because that society is unfeeling and overwhelmingly racist (far from it), but because it is the only practical way forward.
ReplyDeleteSet aside the decades long history of Palestinian and Arab rejection of Israel’s right to exist and the failure of their leadership to grasp the many opportunities to move forward with peace and just examine the realities of today.
Hate and violence spews out of Gaza (Hamas) and out of Lebanon (Hezbollah) – both have been and are being armed by Iran, the new regional and maybe soon to be nuclear power in the region - Iran - the autocratic theocracy that is seeking to establish an arc of power and control across the Middle East. Iran is the biggest exporter of global terror, arming violent fundamentalists in conflict from Yemen, through Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza and even beyond the Middle East itself.
Israel society simply does not trust those Israel army generals who say don’t worry, we don’t need the West Bank to protect Israel, it will all be OK. Not only have the Israel army generals been proven seriously wrong before, but the Israelis themselves know a dangerous enemy (Iran) when they see one. It’s common sense they say and they would be right – look what happened after Israel withdrew from Gaza (Hamas, funded by Iran, seized power and initiated several wars and rocket violence against Israeli civilian targets). The same happened after Israel withdrew from Southern Lebanon (only this time it was Hezbollah and not Hamas that rained down Iranian funded rockets and war upon Israel’s cities).
And now, says Israeli society, at such a time of increasing danger we need another fledgling Arab state on our longest border, sitting literally within a few miles from Tel Aviv? We need another fledgling Arab state as our new neighbour ready to be infiltrated with Iranian arms and terror? We need another series of wars and rockets or worse where our sons and daughters will sacrifice their lives? We, who live in Israel, need that?
The reality on the ground has much changed over recent years – the moment in history when the Palestinians could have made peace has passed, probably forever – Israel faces a great danger, an existential one – Iran. Contrary to what they may have thought over the last 70 years, time is no longer on the side of the Palestinians.
So, it seems to me that the Palestinians in the West Bank areas can accept peaceably the reality (of a form of Home Rule in part of the West bank, perhaps administered under the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan) or continue to threaten Israel, inspire terror and wither slowly into perpetual stagnation and penury. The Israeli Arabs, those Arabs living within the borders of Israel pre 1967, have long accepted reality and are probably grateful to be the most secure Arabs living anywhere within the turmoil of the Middle East. Life for them is certainly not perfect, not yet equal to that of Israeli Jews, but infinitely better than elsewhere and amazingly so when one considers the surrounding Arab hostility to Israel over the last 70 years. Slowly, gradually, their lot is improving further – an example if one was needed for their West bank brethren to heed. The Israeli Arab dispute is positioned in a tough and increasingly dangerous neighbourhood - it is not a simple border dispute between say two Scandinavian countries. Israelis know if they get it wrong, it would likely be fatal.
Democracy, if it is to survive in Israel, must needs be tempered by the situation in which it finds itself. To ask a society, to ask those living every day within its borders, to do otherwise is not rational. To hurl again and again the Left accusation of Apartheid against Israel in such an indiscriminate fashion serves only to diminish those who adopt such polemic.
Michael
Thank you. Very well said.
ReplyDelete... Jewish friend!