Two incidents last week underscored how broadly and deeply in Israeli society runs a streak of hatred against Palestinian Arabs. In one, seven Israeli teenagers, including two girls—one thirteen years old—were arrested for what witnesses described as an attempted lynching in West Jerusalem of several Palestinian youths, one of whom was beaten unconscious and is still hospitalized. In the same hospital lies one of the victims of the other incident: the Palestinian driver of a taxi that was firebombed near a West Bank settlement.
As with violent crimes elsewhere that involve hatred against particular ethnic, racial or religious groups—and for those eager to highlight commonalities between Israeli and American society, this unfortunately has to count as one of them, given the history of hate crimes in the United States—the specific manifestations of such hatred are varied. They range from full-blown terrorism to less violent actions. The unofficial resort by Israelis to force and violence against Palestinians has in recent years been most associated with West Bank settlers. (For an excellent analysis of this particular brand of Israeli terrorism, see the recent article on the subject by Daniel Byman and Natan Sachs.) As the assault in West Jerusalem demonstrated, however, the problem is not limited to settlers or to the occupied territories.
Also as with hate crimes elsewhere, there are multiple causes and explanations. Large-scale violence earlier this year against African migrants in Tel Aviv demonstrated that Palestinians or Arabs are not the only targets of Israeli hatred. That in turn suggests that one of the roots of what we are seeing is a generalized bigotry not unlike what we unfortunately have seen in the United States. But the very relevant and distinctively Israeli circumstance that has the most power to give rise to widely held hateful attitudes is the unresolved conflict with the Palestinians. As a conflict that dates back to before the founding of Israel and that has accounted for so much of the violence that has been inflicted both on and by Israelis, it could not help but have that power.
It is not just a few radical settlers or violent teenagers who have gotten into a habit of regarding all Palestinians as dangerous aliens, as the enemy or as terrorists. The rightist Israeli governments of recent years, by making it quite apparent that they see no place for free Palestinians in a peaceful picture with Israel, have reinforced a nationwide tendency to view Palestinians as something less than human beings with inalienable human rights. And that tendency leads to a legitimization of violence against them. In speaking critically about the effects of such legitimization, Professor Gavriel Salomon of Haifa University notes, “Suddenly it's not so terrible to burn Arabs inside a taxi.”
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly condemned the latest violence, as he has earlier instances of it. But serious questions remain about the official posture toward the unofficial violence. Israeli policing of anti-Palestinian violence has been at best spotty. Former chief of staff of the Israeli Army Dan Halutz has stated that Israeli authorities have not done enough to crack down on the anti-Palestinian terrorists and vandals among West Bank settlers. “If we wanted,” said Halutz, “we could catch them and when we want to, we will.”
There also is incitement through inflammatory remarks by religious leaders associated with the Israeli government or governing parties. For example, the government-paid chief rabbi of settlements in Hebron and Kiryat Arba, in speaking at a conference last year, described Arabs as “wolves” and “savages.” The chief rabbi of Safed, also paid by the Israeli government, told reporters last year that “Arab culture is very cruel,” that “a Jew should chase away Arabs,” and that “expelling Arabs from Jewish neighborhoods is part of the strategy.” Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of the Shas Party—which is part of Netanyahu's governing coalition—has said in sermons that Palestinians are “evil, bitter, enemies” whom God ought to “perish from this world,” that “it is forbidden to be merciful” to Arabs, that Arabs are “evil and damnable,” and that “you must send missiles to them and annihilate them.” One wonders what Israeli government officials think of such remarks when they or others attempt to call to account Arab leaders for anti-Israeli invective voiced by anyone in their constituencies.
Comments
Rabbi Yousef's language is identical to Ahmadinejad's: "perish from the world...annihilate them.'
Pillar continues to perpetuate the myth that the Arab League's peace initiative recognized Israel's right to exist. If that is the case, how does he explain Mubarak's explicit comment in 2009 that the peace initiative did NOT contain such a recognition? Was Mubarak making that up? I do not excuse this so-called "culture of hate" (I believe he overstates its influence, although clearly it is a cause for concern); hatred on either side is not helpful. But if hatred is growing in Israel, perhaps it is due to the unending hatred of the Middle Eastern Muslim states to Israel's continued existence. Surrounded by existential threats from the date of its creation, and dealing with an American President who is at best a lukewarm friend of Israel, we should not be surprised if such sentiment arises in the Jewish state.
The existential threat, dear currieken, is of the European based Zionist program of destroying the Palestinians and creating an ever expansing state on what was Palestinian land. Israel, dear currieken, is not the victim, and never has been. The people wh came to destroy the indigenous people and capture their land, are the victimizers, not the victime.Israelis wallow in self victimhood. Far easier than looking in a mirror.
Pillar is being coy here, and that coyness is particularly unfortunate in obscuring what should be a very important and sobering thought governing U.S. policy. Just as Islamic societies are susceptible to xenophobia about non-moslems because Islam does not have universalist pretensions, so is Israel susceptible to xenophobia about non-jews because judaism lacks such pretensions too. Both religions, that is, see their members as being extraordinarily different and special, and while that can also be somewhat true of some strains of Christianity, it is not so to nearly the same degree. And this is important for the U.S. in terms of posing the question whether we really want to immerse ourselves in a fight between two unalterably opposed, highly supremacist societies/civilizations. Of course the answer to that is that it's somewhat crazy to do so, because the chances of ever getting the parties to find common ground and to live peaceably with each other is vanishingly small, and of course chronic warfare on one level or another is exactly what we've seen for the last 100 years between the moslems and the jews in the Middle East. And not only is it not our place for us to demand of Islam or Judaism that they change their fundamental tenets, but it would be fruitless besides. Thus the only smart thing to do vis a vis their conflicts is to stay as far out of them as possible. And yet Pillar's weak-tea of a comment here suggests that no, these sorts of inter-ethnno/racial explosions and horrors are extraordinary and can be reasonably kept in check and stamped out, all of which just encourages the idea that sure, the U.S. should be deeply deeply involved in their fights because some solution is right around the corner. How many more decades of crap and ME wars is the U.S. going to have to be involved in then before the realization dawns that this just isn't so however, and the U.S. should just stick to trying to improve itself instead of crusading around the world, expending our blood and treasure, in ever more stupid attempts to change everyone *else's* fundamentals?
The points that Nimrod Aloni makes are correct, but there is no need for him to insert the "chosen people" business into this discussion, unless he wanted to give false ammunition to the anti-Semite of the world; Racism in Israel exist also toward Ethiopian Jews who are part of the "chosen people." The reason why the incidence in Jerusalem has gotten so much attention inside and outside of Israel is because racism is such an anathema to Judaism and so contrary to notion of "chosen people," and because the world holds Israel to higher standards (yes I know it is a cliche, but true), which unfortunately Israel does meet these days. The kind of incident that took place in Jerusalem takes place in the US against blacks and in Europe against migrants quiet often, without getting this kind of national and international attention. For the first time in 2500 Jews feel physically and economically strong and relatively safe in there own country, and have not yet learned how to handle that newfound strength according to Judaism. Unlike the international political bias against Israel, Israelis should welcome the criticism of racism since it will force them to deal with the problem. However, the world should remeber that Israel is only 65 years old and has absorved multiple times its original population with people from very different cultures. No other country has ever been able to do that.
The world holds Isreal to higher standards? When? Where? How? Who?
Israel is held to exactly the standards it purports to have.Israel is not being criticized for its treatment of non-Jewish citizens as third class citizens.Israel is being criticized for its tyrannical foreign military dictatorship.
Feel safe? It is sort of unpatriotic in Israel to point out that today Israel is the most dangerous place in the world for Jews to live bar none. Years before Hitler was born the Zionist plan to take over Palestine and expel the population it was the most dangerous place for Jews to live including Tzarist Russia. The Zionists collaborated with Hitler in the Transfer Agreement and in the process convinced him they were a "people" instead of merely a religion for whom conversion would substitute for extermination. SINCE 1948 Palestinians have exercised their moral and lawful right to use deadly force to reclaim the private property stolen from them by Jews which were given the color of law by the Absentee Owner laws including the height of criminal laws the "present absent owner" laws which allowed theft from those forced into concentration camps inside Israel. (People caught outside the camps after curfew were summarily executed, aka murdered, as were those driven out who tried to return.) ADULTS know when one does such a thing to so many people they are choosing to live forever under the moral and lawful attacks by the victims.
The problem is more serious. Racism, and attitude of Jewish superiority, hatred of non-Jews, and a need for separateness is intrinsic to Zionism and the foundational principles of the State of Israel.Further, the attitude, propagated by the Israeli government, of innocent victimhood, of being the objects of anti-semitism, of being the objects of an intent on the part of Arabs to "throw Jews into the sea" (an invention of David Ben Gurion) is the political driven ideology which forms the glue holding the state together.Israeli racism against non-Jews will persist as long a the State of Israel continues to exists.Hopefully, someday, Israel will be replaced by one egalitarian state which bans discrimination agaisnt race, religion or entnicity.
Isreal today is no better than Germany was in the 1930s. The irony, eh?
See: http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/07/the-zionist-nazi-collaboration/
Here's an excellent piece published by The Daily Beast which addresses this disturbing trend in great detail:Lynching “Demographic Threats” by Yousef Munayyerhttp://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/23/lynching-demographic-threats.htmlAs I said above, Isreal is more and more reminiscent of the 1930s Germany every day.
When the police or military governor can convict non-Jewish perps before they become suspects but are unable to find Jewish suspects or never bring indictments or at best get slap-on-the-wrist convictions even for the crime of murder this is to be expected. Not just simply expected but can only be seen as active encouragement under the thin guise of inability to act. DEEP introspection and moral hand-wringing has never excused the absence of a top-down house cleaning to rectify the situation. The time for that was 1949. TODAY in 2012 the only shocking thing in the event is that it was a mob of children and the only thing bringing it to national attention was the near death of the victim. To a greater or lesser extent similar events are a regular occurance all around Israel, occupied Jerusalem and in the occupied territories. They are reported in Israeli newspapers at least weekly. THIS is the way it has always been in Israel. THIS is the way it will continue to be as nothing will be done do clean up the police and justice system.