In the Israel/Palestine debate, there’s a trap that both sides fall into, repeatedly – and I’m no exception – which makes it more of a mud-slinging event than a discussion.  In a nutshell, the trap is claiming the other side has a hidden agenda.

I propose we all try to avoid this trap, for everyone’s sake.  To make that possible, let’s take a quick look at what it is, and how to avoid it.

The ‘what’

The trap takes many forms.  A typical way it looks when me and other lefties fall into it is “you’re only saying that to distract from the occupation and help Israel maintain it.”  A typical right-wing version is “you’re only saying that to de-legitimize Israel and lead to its destruction.”

It may be right, or they may actually believe what they’re saying.  Either way, what it does to the debate is to change the subject.  Worse still, it’s an attack on the person you’re debating, which puts them on the defensive, and that’s usually enough to make sure they won’t change their mind even a tiny bit.  In the end, we all get angry and shit all over each other and nobody’s any wiser for it.

The ‘how’

One way to avoid the trap is to just disengage when someone makes a dangerous claim.  Just say “okay, bye.”  I don’t believe in doing that, but it’s a way.

Another way is to re-state your position and demand a response to it.

Let’s say I claim there’s apartheid in the West Bank; let’s also say you think I’m wrong and that what I’m saying endangers human lives.  What you should do is explain why you think there isn’t apartheid, and/or demand that I explain my outrageous claim.  There’s a chance I’ll change my mind, or at least that other people will learn to see things your way from watching the discussion unfold.  If you just call me a terrorist, I’ll think you’re crazy, and I’ll still believe – and tell people – that there’s an apartheid regime on the West Bank.

It’s the same the other way around.  Let’s say someone – call her Jane – attacks International Solidarity Movement activists, claiming they’re agents provocateurs and terrorists; let’s also say that you believe they’re truly working to make the world a better place.  Explain why you believe what they’re doing is good, and demand that Jane explain her accusation.  Don’t fall into the trap of accusing her of distracting from the point – even if what she’s doing is exactly falling into the trap.  Also don’t fall into the trap of defending their motivations.  Just focus on what’s actually going on.

Now let’s say you posted something about some protest you support, and Jane fell into the trap, exactly like I just described. You can engage her, even though what she’s doing is counterproductive and distracts from your original point.  It’s still better than slinging mud right back at her.  Or you can just refuse to be side-tracked, explain (again) why you support the protest, and ask her if she has anything to say about the actual issue.

Finally, you can always link to this post and ask the person you’re debating to read it.  It’s short, and here’s a shortlink you can use: http://wp.me/p1gOTH-y6

Today I had a small taste of confronting the Israeli occupation from the Palestinian side, and I confess that even my brief exposure was traumatic.

Heeding the invitation of my friend Gershon Baskin for Israelis to join him at the weekly non-violent protest in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, in the hope of mitigating the brutal force the Israeli army exerts against the protesters, I set out early Friday morning with most of the things on the list Gershon sent me – food, water, sunscreen, a towel against tear gas – in my backpack, and a sense of foreboding in my heart.

When I said I was afraid of being hurt, Gershon replied “you’re right. It can be dangerous.” He had no words of comfort, except for repeating that he was going to call the army command before the demonstration started and tell them that dozens of Israeli supporters were going to march with the Palestinians, and ask them to take that into consideration.

As planned, we arrived at 8 a.m. for the 1 p.m. event, hoping to get into the village before the army sealed it off. But it was too late: soldiers blocked the entrance and waved us off. They had also put up a sign declaring the village “Area A” – under control of the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Accords, which Israeli law forbids Israelis to enter. The village is really Area C, which Israelis are allowed into. The sign was a lie. We parked a ways up the road and then the dozen or so activists who had arrived hiked into the village through the fields for twenty minutes. On the way, Gershon advised us to speak quietly and silence our phones. The village had been declared a “closed military area,” and we were violating the law.

We soon found out that two activists who tried to enter the main way were arrested and charged with “attempting to break through an army barricade.”

After gathering in the village square, we were invited to the home of one of the village leaders, a friend of Gershon’s, with whom he had coordinated our solidarity visit. Over coffee in his spacious salon our host briefed us about the village’s struggle to reclaim its land on which the settlement of Halamish was built. He said the Israeli High Court ruled in their favor but they never got their land back or were allowed access to their fields abetting it. Settlers took over Nabi Saleh’s spring and for the past two years the villagers had tried to march to it every Friday but had been held back by the army.

Gershon told us that at first a lot of Israelis had signed up for this action, but as the week went on they started cancelling out of fear. He said he didn’t blame them. I didn’t either: after being the first one to sign up, as Gershon told me, out of a sense of outrage at the army’s brutality and my wish to join the campaign to challenge it, my fear took over. As the day neared I slept worse every night, and the last night I hardly slept at all.

While we waited for the march, there was less talk of principles of non-violent resistance than of practicalities: what to do against tear gas and how to behave if arrested. My friends and I agreed we were here to make a point by our presence but our cowardice would keep us at the back of the crowd where we would be less exposed. I kept thinking of my family worrying about me at home and couldn’t wait for it to be over, even before it started. An Israeli journalist who was with us felt that we were insufficiently welcomed by the villagers, that they could have been more appreciative of the effort and gesture we made in coming out. An activist answered her that it wasn’t for us to tell the Palestinians how to behave. I admit I had also expected a little more visible appreciation for what in my society is an extraordinary show of solidarity with those most Israelis see as enemies. But when I considered how badly they had been treated by Israelis for so long – and where were we then? – I understood their complex feelings. Besides, they did welcome us into their homes and tell us they would do everything they could to protect us.

In one of the homes we visited, our host told us his 19-year-old daughter had been beaten up by Israeli border police last month and put in the hospital. In an unusual turn of events, the police were put on trial and she was summoned to testify against them. When the same young woman admired my new wide-brimmed straw hat, I gave it to her in exchange for her showing me how to wrap my scarf around my head Palestinian-style. An activist offered me jasmine perfume to spray on the front of my scarf as an antidote to the anticipated tear gas. Another advised us to buddy up and a third said the most important thing about tear gas was not to panic.

As the event drew near, Gershon made his phone calls to the army but was not successful: at the two offices he reached – the local and regional commands – he was unable to speak to the officers in charge and left messages with unreliable-sounding young soldiers. It looked like the central plank of his initiative – informing the army of our presence and asking them to be gentle – was falling apart.

At 1:15 people started streaming out of the mosque and amassed for the march. A young man with a megaphone said a few words and I translated for my fellow activists: “Today we are marching for the martyrs who died on Israel’s borders with Syria,” referring to a protest earlier in the week. We looked at each other in confusion. Weren’t we marching for an end to the occupation and allowing the villagers to access their spring?

We didn’t have long to ponder this because within 100 meters and 60 seconds the first tear gas canister was fired from far off at the entrance of the village into its center. Immediately everyone started running back, away from the soldiers, but, as it happened, towards the tear gas: it had landed behind the group, and the only way to get away from it was to run right through it. I found myself with two of my buddies, one particularly affected and, sure enough, panicky. Although I too was gagging and tearing, this put me in the position of being the abler one and my attention was on helping my friend. The three of us found our way to the home we had been invited to use for shelter, and there we were cared for until we felt better. Our hosts had much experience with gas, as it was used in the village in large quantities every week and often fired at or into homes. When this happened, the effect lingered for days. Sometimes, furniture caught fire.

As we left to rejoin our comrades, our host said “please remember us and come back not only in situations like this, but to visit us.” I promised to remember but doubt I will visit.

Outside we could hear the repeated pounding of canisters being fired at a distance, but we stayed in the village center while the confrontation was elsewhere. I informed my friends that I had had enough, I really couldn’t take it anymore, and was ready to go home. They were too, but it was not at all clear there was a safe way out of the village: the army was likely to spread gas everywhere, even in the fields. I felt trapped and hunted. There was nowhere safe to go. It was also clear that there was nothing I could do or say, and it didn’t matter who I was: the military machine was proceeding apace, and its orders were to act relentlessly to contain and especially deter the Palestinian resistance. Activists observed that not only did the presence of Israelis not make things better, it had apparently made things worse. Huge amounts of tear gas were fired for hours and several activists and villagers were evacuated by ambulance.

We were told the village was sealed and there was indeed no safe way to leave. But my friend and I got lucky and got a lift out with a BBC van that had managed to enter the village with its press privileges.

The terror of being exposed to physical harm did not leave me for hours. I know I am not brave in that way. Besides a relatively mild whiff of tear gas I was not even hurt. But worse was the feeling of being trapped and threatened. The activists who have been experiencing this regularly for years can laugh, and the Palestinians who have no choice can scoff at my delicacy. After all, I can decide that I did my bit for the struggle, this is not for me, and go on to entertain my friends with stories of my little adventure. But if I multiply my brush with fear a million times over, I think I got a glimpse of what it feels like to be under military occupation, having no voice and living under the constant threat of violence day in and day out.

In the comfort of my home in Jerusalem, I wonder if the jasmine is blooming outside, or if that scent rising up from my neck is just lingering in my imagination.

Remember Eden Abergil, the young Israeli woman who became an instant Internet meme after posting photos from her army days in which she poses with bound and blindfolded Palestinian detainees? (If not, Google her.)

Ido Kenan over at Room 404 brings us some news from the famous Facebook profile. The Itamar massacre has prompted her to re-post one of the most memorable photos from, as the album was called, “the most beautiful time in her life” and spew some fresh unreflected racist hatred into the net.

Seen on the right, we have, from top to bottom, a video of (reportedly) soldiers abusing bound detainees, with the charming caption “death to the Arabssssssss”; then the picture that made Abergil famous with the caption of, roughly, “fuck you, stinking Arabs!!!”; and finally a video of images from the murder of the Fogel family in Itamar with the caption “let’ssssss do a Holocaust for the Arabs nowwww and immediatelyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!”.

Kenan reports that when a friend half-jokingly warned Abergil this all might wind up on TV, she replied “Death to the Arabsssss!!!! Let it show up!!!”

It’s worth noting that back after her “beautiful” pictures originally surfaced, she apologized.

H/t to Itamar Sha’altiel. This post is not a direct translation of Ido Kenan’s post, but still  mainly reproduces the information he posted, in English. Credit is due to him, I just thought this worth sharing in a way accessible to non Hebrew-speakers.

I just wanted to point out something particularly intriguing: the government’s lightning-fast decision to approve a bunch of new settlement houses in the West Bank in response to the heinous attack. As far as I’m aware, this is the first time the Israeli government admits that construction in the settlements is an attack against Palestinians. How surprising that they aren’t constructed purely out of love of the land!

(This is apparently in response to a couple of comments I made here [Heb] about the strange scare tactics the IDF is using against the popular struggle in Nabi Saleh, which you can read about in English here.)

Unfortunately this person’s user account appears to have been deleted. I was hoping to be able to talk to them (in a somewhat more polite and conciliatory way.) Oh well.

As some may have already heard, today for the second day in a row a Palestinian teenager has been killed by settler fire. Assuming for the sake of argument that the version on Ynet is not a total embellishment, what happened today was that a few settlers were out on a peaceful hike when some Palestinians started throwing rocks at them. Fearing for their lives, they responded with live fire and hit a boy in the head, who is now clinically dead. Subsequently,

[e]xtreme rightist Baruch Marzel of the SOS Israel organization urged the settler public “not to be deterred and continue traveling throughout the Land of Israel. The Arabs must take into account that Jews are not suckers and are allowed to defend themselves against those who want to take our lives,” he said.

There’s a few interesting things about this case. First of all, the settlers going for a nice stroll through the Holy Land were, obviously, carrying firearms; there’s nothing unusual about this. Second of all, they were there asserting their right to go wherever they damn well please in the Land of Israel, disregarding the established practice (and law?) of coordinating this kind of thing with the police and military.¹ Third of all, once the clash had begun, the IDF showed up and defended the illegally hiking provocateurs, wounding further Palestinian civilians.²

There’s a logic to each of these things that’s at least well-understood in Israeli society, if not outright accepted or taken for granted:

1. It really wouldn’t be safe to hike in a large group unarmed, even if in recent years it hasn’t been quite as bad as it used to.
2. Settlers have always argued that Jews should be allowed to go and live wherever they want (preposterously claiming that Arabs can, an outright lie); while most Israelis probably see this kind of thing as a provocation, the basic logic is appealing and accepted on some level. Ideally, I too wish it were possible and safe for Jews, Muslims, Christians, or just humans in general to go and live wherever they want.
3. The IDF is the military of Israel, and Israel sees its mission in physically defending the Jewish people, including any Jew, anywhere, from violence. That’s how the Holocaust justifies our statehood, after all. Also, Israeli taxpayers (which include the settlers) rightly expect the army they pay for to come to their aid when they face violence.

However, taken together, especially points 2 and 3, these things result in a tragically skewed balance of violence. Palestinians who wish to defend themselves must do so with stones. Israelis can do so not only with their own guns (which are sometimes full-fledged military-grade assault rifles) but with the assistance of an advanced modern army with a bigger budget than any other organization in the country. Combine this fact with Israel’s lenient attitude towards settler provocations, settlers can easily just “go hiking” somewhere where there are Palestinians, and be fairly certain the latter will come out of it with more bullet wounds than themselves.

I don’t mean to insinuate that all settlers are out to kill as many Arabs as possible. Some certainly are, but I’ve known too many lovely people who come from settlements to make generalizations about the whole population. However, there is an ideological settler movement which holds it to be perfectly fine to use violence against Arabs in order to maintain freedom of movement. This movement is currently not effectively reined in by the Israeli government and security establishment, and I’m not sure it ever has been. While the army regularly claims “keeping the peace” to be its motivation, such as when imposing a closed military zone somewhere, it usually ends up helping provocateur settlers rather than hindering them. In fact, settlers now know they just have to go to, say, a water hole, clash with some Arabs, and they will no longer be allowed to go there and collect water.

It should be obvious these provocations do not further our overall common interest of living in peace.

It gets worse though. Arabs prosecuted for violence towards Jews rarely win. It is common practice for the state to submit secret evidence, which the defense is not even allowed to see, and such “evidence” is often used to convict them. Sometimes, dubious information extracted from youths under duress is used as well, as it famously was in the case of Abdullah Abu-Rahma of Bil’in. On the other hand, Jews prosecuted for violence towards Arabs often have their case dropped before trial, and if convicted will always have a very lenient sentence. It’s also far unlikelier that the state will even try to prosecute them in the first place.³

The bottom line

Even if the bits of logic each kind of make sense on their own, the situation in the West Bank is currently a very vile form of apartheid. Not kinda-like-apartheid. Apartheid.⁴ If the Israeli state were truly interested in peace, public order, sovereignty, etc., the IDF would easily be able to keep the settlers from provoking violence.⁵ If the Liberman/Netanyahu/Barak government doesn’t do something quick (like, today) we may see more and more enterprising settlers go on “hiking trips”-cum-pogroms next week. And all the while, Egypt is exploding in revolution, our neighbors to the North and East aren’t looking as stable as they used to, and every week another country recognizes the Palestinian Authority as a sovereign state in the ’67 borders.

The Middle East is headed towards a world of violence, and frankly I don’t see anyone in the position to stop it. Shalom aleynu, wa salaam aleykum, wa salaam ma3hum. Peace be with us all.

Footnotes

1. This isn’t limited to the West Bank; I used to go hiking in an organized youth hiking thing and all hikes were coordinated with the security forces and escorted by an armed civilian.
2. Fourth of all, Marzel sees the armed killers as the victims, but whatever.
3. All of this is just my semi-educated impression. I may have read it somewhere, but I admit I can’t be certain. If I’m wrong, please provide data to contradict what I said! I’d be glad to be corrected!
4. It should be noted the division of rights in this apartheid is not based purely on race, but also on citizenship. It is apartheid none the less.
5. One way to do this, off the top of my head: take away weapons from all civilians in the West Bank, provide IDF protection only within settlement and in activities coordinated in advance and deemed non-provocative. Dismantle indefensible outposts as though they were unrecognized Bedouin villages.

Just a few interesting links for the moment.

“The Gaza Flotilla Inquiry: Afloat in a sea of whitewash”

Sunday, +972 Mag

Roi Maor going over some of the failings of Turkel Commission’s “investigation” of the Gaza siege and the attack of the Mavi Marmara; even information within the report, not to mention public announcements by officials, starkly contradict the Committee’s “conclusions”.

A kick in the Israeli Left’s collective behind [Hebrew]

Monday night, Friends of George

Itamar Sha’altiel is rightly pissed off at the Left’s decidedly lame reaction to the Palestine Papers, their decidedly lame reaction to everything else going on, and their decidedly lame habit of lamely reacting to everything — not to mention their preoccupation with stealing votes from one another rather than focussing on winning the public back from the Right. The Right, he points out, has mastered the steering of public discussion to the point that even their legislation of late seems mainly part of that manipulation. Meanwhile, the Left shows off its socially progressive legislative record, instead of asking the pointed questions that beg to be asked of those in power.

A truly inspiring rant of rage.

“The leaders got it all wrong: Palestinian view on Palestine Papers”

Today (Tuesday), +972 blog (guest post)

Maath Musleh discusses some of failings of the West Bank leadership (perhaps “ruling elite” would be a better word?), as well as Hamas, surrounding the Palestine Papers. The piece also points out that mere peace is not the end-goal:

What Abbas and his peers don’t understand is that peace is not the target. If peace was the target, then the Palestinians could have just left and handed over their land to the Israelis. There you go – no more war.

But this is not about peace. It is about rights and dignity. Of course everyone wants peace. But peace is not just an absence of war. Peace is a state of being, in which people have their rights and dignity. It’s a state of being whereby no one infringes on anyone’s rights. For the Palestinians, the state of peace is what will be when the occupation ends and the refugees have their rights and dignity.

I’ll leave you with that for now, and turn to doing the work I’m paid to do. (Case in point: putting together bibliography databases for the Baure Documentation Project.)

And then it hit me. Could it be? Could it be that there actually is a delegitimization campaign? One that I’ve actually been involved in without realizing it, however marginal my role? Maybe they were right all along?

Of course there’s a delegitimization campaign going on. It’s been an idea for years and has become more and more real, and the BDS movement is a central part of it. In fact, I am proud to say that in my writing here and in discussions on Facebook over the past year or two I have played a role in the delegitimization campaign. Okay, actually I’ve done almost nothing, myself. Still, it’s working.

But I’m not talking about the delegitimization of Israel. I think, like most, that Israel has a right to exist, just like any other country whose people choose to exist as a country.

No, the target of the delegitimization is the Occupation. Yes, we lefties, and sometimes the human rights organizations we support, are trying to show the world that the Occupation of the Palestinian Territories is not a legitimate enterprise. We do not want the world to forget what atrocities are involved in our government’s probably illegal and most certainly immoral policy of disrupting Palestinian life on all levels and using cheap tricks to steal more and more Palestinian land for settlements, cheap tricks which are pretty expensive for all of us in the end.

There’s no arguing whether or not we’re trying to delegitimize something. In fact, I doubt the hasbaraniks even fail to recognize that the target is the Occupation. It’s just that to them, the Occupation is an integral part of our country’s existence. They want this to go on for ever. Those bastards!

To anyone who is offended by that: please ask yourself one question — do you think the Occupation should be maintained as it is? If not, don’t be offended. Just realize that the Occupation is not legitimate, but otherwise Israel is. If it’s any less legitimate than it could be, it’s because of the Occupation.

This is a fact. It was a matter of time until the world started to show its annoyance over this illegitimate Occupation regime. The left did not make this happen. The human rights NGOs certainly didn’t make it happen, they were just enough of a mentsh to give some Palestinians legal help or catalog human rights violations (which we would be very grateful of, if only we were the victims).

If this movement’s role was in revealing an existing reality to the world, then it would have happened sooner or later, and revealing the truth is hardly the biggest of sins.

The Occupation, on the other hand, is an ongoing massive sin by any standard that can be named “morality.” It is not legitimate, it probably never was, and the sooner it ends the better off we’ll all be. If any shred of Israeli legitimacy remains, we have to hasten that day as much as we can, and start building up a peaceful future together with Israel’s neighbors. It’s that, or eternal occupation, or start building death camps. Choose your own adventure.

Related reading

• Me: “The Delegitimizers“
• +972 Magazine: “Silwan under siege after IDF forgets ammunition“
• +972 Magazine: “In the West Bank, everyone knows there’s a culture of no-accountability“
• Ynet: “Our anti-Zionist government“
• Ha’aretz: “Israel Prize laureates join academic boycott of settlement university“
• +972 Magazine: “Israel’s open prison for refugees, and other gems of doublespeak“

It’s not so surprising that Israeli democracy is going down the drain so quickly. Israel has never taken democracy, equality, or the rule of law as seriously as it takes security.

It sounds like the right attitude for a state in Israel’s situation — until you think about it a little more. The point is supposed to be keeping the people of Israel safe. So supposedly, the state should use any means, including violence, and by whatever process, even one that bypasses the safeguards of democracy, in order to get in the way of attempts to harm the state or its citizens.

The thing is the point of democracy is keeping people safe, too. Safe from the state, and safe from one another. This is actually the whole point of the whole thing. Human rights are a concept that can be very helpful for getting a handle on the moral basis of the system, but you don’t have to have a humanistic world-view to be in favor of democracy. You basically just have to oppose the concept of “might equals right.” And the Jewish people, oppressed by the mighty for centuries, ought to know better than accepting that. Or maybe it’s just that most continue to view ourselves as downtrodden Davids when we are now in many respects (but not all) a Goliath.

Israeli society has long grown to see democracy as a kind of luxury that must take second seat to “security concerns.” We are always expected to be afraid enough of a bunch of external threats (real or not) to accept the government inconveniencing us and potentially going after the wrong people. Especially since usually, the wrong people are Arabs, so we Jews probably have nothing to worry about.

So now, on the premise that organizations for human rights, rule of law, and democracy are potentially covers for giving money to our enemies, these organizations will be victimized by the “democratic” parliament.

I happen to believe it’s ludicrous to suspect this of these organizations. But even if it were true, there are excellent ways for a democratic state to deal with this fairly and without political bias. You can make stricter laws about transparency of funding sources and expenses, so as to make sure NGOs don’t get or give money from or to hostile forces (Im Tirzu might have a problem with that, B’Tselem will not). If there is any specific suspicion, the police and state attorneys can deal with it in the courts.

But we have been trained to believe that responding to security threats is something that has to be done quickly and with little process. We have been trained to accept decisions that were made with little forethought, in the heat of emotion.

Guess what. Democracies make decisions slowly, and they do this on purpose. It can be excruciatingly frustrating, as anyone in any democratic school has certainly learned, but you do it because it ensures a resolution that is well thought-through, follows prior decisions, and is agreeable as possible to all sides. As soon as you give up that slowness — and in Israel, when it comes to security issues, I think it was given up before I was born — you are allowing for bad governance that harms everyone involved.

But as someone on Twitter bitterly remarked a few days ago¹, the Katsav trial only proves that while the citizens of Israel are okay with being screwed by their leaders, we’re not okay with it being done one citizen at a time.

Footnotes

1. Claim the credit, whoever you were!

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?