It’s been one damned thing after another. And yesterday, the Knesset managed to top it all. I spent the evening trying not to think about it, but today I can think of nothing else.

You see, dear readers, for a while now people in Israel have sensed that our state is losing its legitimacy in the eyes of the world. However, the nationalistic Israeli mainstream can hardly imagine such a thing happening as the result of the state’s actions and character. We were all taught that Israel is a model of democracy, a holy state of utmost morality, and, of course, that there are Antisemites everywhere and anyone who questions Zionism is likely doing this because they secretly think Hitler was a good guy. So instead of realizing that we’re losing legitimacy because of decades of repugnant occupation on the West Bank; instead of seeing that we lose credibility as a state every time our army hurts people and goes through seven different stories in three days about how we didn’t do it, or they started, or they didn’t start it but we were right to do it, or all of the above; instead of seeing that the popularity of populistic nationalistic jingoistic nearly-fascistic politicians makes the world doubt us — instead of all that, people have let politicians and provocateurs convince them that the de-legitimization of Israel is a broad conspiracy of lefties who hijack the human rights discourse as part of some kind of evil Antisemitic plan to destroy the State of Israel, starting by putting IDF war criminals on trial.

This has been going on for a while now and I’m not the first to have said all this. The entire time, my impression has been that the claims of a delegitimization conspiracy are fantasy of the blood-libel variety: lies invented by those fixing to wipe out the opposition. As someone who eagerly reads this movement, all I’ve seen is very open discourse in the spirit of honest criticism and disagreement, with no hint of the cabal mentality needed for an international conspiracy. Besides, the human rights organizations in Israel are models of transparency, as opposed to the groups calling for them to be banned. And besides besides, what the hell does calling for war-crimes trials against a state’s war criminals have to do with delegitimizing it?? The Bush administration should be put on trial for Iraq, but that doesn’t mean the USA is any less legitimate for it.

For the time being, this is a lost fight. Those trying to save the legitimacy of Israel as a moral state and a democracy are now being targeted by the state’s parliament. Democracy has finally turned into a tyranny of the majority (a majority of parliamentarians, that is.) They will be investigated in a context that has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with internal political posturing. As Yossi Gurvitz points out (Hebrew here, English here), if this were a matter of justice there’s a justice system to deal with it. The Knesset is not an assembly of judges, neither by job nor by qualification. As always, they’re out to point to imaginary threats and make believe they’re dealing with them.

There’s bitter and obvious irony here, going after the human rights organizations, one of Hasbara’s last excuses to call Israel a democracy, under the banner of getting rid of those who would delegitimize Israeli democracy. It makes my head spin.

Time will tell whether this is the beginning of the end in a good way or a bad way.

All I am left to do is hope that the people I love will not be hurt in the process. That, and choose which organizations to donate to in this dark hour. I’m thinking NIF, B’Tselem, and Breaking the Silence… I can’t donate much, but you know, if everyone donates a little it might help. (h/t Noa Raz for proposing this [here, Heb]) I wonder who needs it the most. Any suggestions?

(WARNING: Viewers who don’t strongly identify with the Israeli state may experience nausea!)

The music is quite good, but the words are more problematic. I couldn’t find the lyrics in English, but they can be found in German.

Back on Facebook, I commented on the video, and for a reason I don’t know yet and might never understand, my comment was deleted. Luckily, I saved a copy of it, so I decided to repost it here where people can respond to it freely:

Great music! Too bad the words are so…misguided.

I don’t know which “world” the writers mean; naturally in Israel you hear more about criticism towards Israel. But in my experience, people in the Western world are aware, and critical, of many different oppressive regimes, some of which people in Israel hardly hear about because of how preoccupied everyone is with the Middle East. (For example, my roommate told me a few weeks ago about how Thailand [or was it Vietnam?] was systematically killing journalists.)

But Kela’s right – comparing Israel with the insane people running Sudan, the Russian Federation, and Iran is not really where we want to be. Israel is not part of the third world like they are (Russia is perhaps a special case, but Putin has made sure to distance Russian from the West in almost every way possible short of war). Unlike those countries, Israel today is part of the Western world.

But maybe the most important difference is how we define ourselves. Israel defines itself as a highly moral country and a place of refuge for a refugee people. Sudan, Iran and Russia have never claimed any such thing. And when refugees from Sudan take the shortest land route to democracy, well, they reach Israel’s border with Egypt. And then if they manage to enter that democracy, they find out how difficult it is to be recognized as a refugee in Israel if you’re not a Jew. And they discover that the government is running campaigns to hunt them down and kick them out.

So yeah, there are worse states than Israel. Far, far worse states. But Israel is probably unique in having such a clash between what it claims to be and what it is apparently doing.

And anyway, whining that “everyone is picking on me” has never been a very good way to make people like you. This video will make mainstream and right-wing Israelis happy and make basically everyone else like Israel even less. I can understand trying to make Israel’s case to people, but this video is definitely a bad idea for that cause.