Yesterday morning, me and my mother embarked on a tour of the South Hebron Hills guided by Breaking The Silence. I highly recommend the tour, if you ever have an opportunity to take it. I was impressed at how positive it was. No anti-Zionistic sentiment seemed to be involved, just a sense of collective responsibility. During the tour, one of the things that repeatedly struck me was how beautiful the West Bank is — and what an eye-sore the occupation is, with its soldiers, vehicles, barriers and all.

Just now I was at the weekly demonstration in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem, and again I was struck by the ugliness of the occupation. The Palestinian houses seem to be in much better shape than the homes occupied by settlers, which in one case sported badly graffiti’d stars of David all around its door.

I can easily understand why someone would want to build a house on the West Bank and live there, somewhat in isolation, surrounded by the charming hilly landscape. The thought is quite tempting, really.

But what are we doing to this country? The occupation disrespects not only the people who live here, but the very land itself! How do self-professed lovers of Israel support the regime that scars the landscape with vandalism and the colors of concrete and steel, jeeps and uniforms? You’d expect them to take better care of what they call a Holy Land.

Do those in favor of the settlements and occupation have some kind of fetish I’m not aware of, or are they simply intent not only on performing ugly deeds but on deforming a beautiful landscape?

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“