Posted by Susan Stark
For decades now, the State of Israel has been able to enjoy the status of being “the only democracy in the Middle East”. I’ve personally known this to be a pretense for years, although most people in the US still believe it. But now even that may be coming to an end. I received this disturbing email from an Israeli peace activist named Adam Keller:
“This week Israel’s security forces practiced the putting down of mass demonstrations and protests among Israel’s Arab citizens and their imprisonment in a large detention camp to be established at Golani Junction in Galilee. The exercise was based on a scenario of the riots being provoked by implementation of Avigdor Lieberman’s plan for “an exchange of populations”, i.e. massively depriving Arabs of their Israeli citizenship. A week ago Lieberman voiced this heinous idea on the podium of the UN Assembly General and Prime Minister Netanyahu murmured some weak reservations. Now it turns out that the security forces are already preparing to implement it in practice, under the responsibility of none other than Labor Party leader Ehud Barak – the Minister of Defence. It goes without saying that in a country having any pretence to be a democracy it would be unacceptable and unthinkable for the security forces to practice waging war against the country’s own citizens. Together with the racist “Loyalty Oath Bill”
which gained the support of the government, and with the demonstrative resumption of settlement construction in the Occupied Territories, it increasingly seems that Lieberman is the true Prime Minister, and that the government follows on his path, leading the State of Israel in big and rapid strides into the abyss.”
Susan
8 Comments.
It’s simple, really, the Jews own the media.
They want to paint a pro-Israel and anti-anti-semite/zionist image. And they’ve done so for decades now.
But, like any other “One issue” party, they care NOTHING for anything else. And the “media” was a strong part of America. Once they silenced other voices, the remaining voice was just petty entertainment and fake news with no teeth. The real damage was done by the corporations, but since those guys were at least non racist, they only cared about money, the media did nothing (IMO was kept from doing anything) and just let the public info decay to crude entertainment and pro Zionist propaganda.
Two awkward generalizations there, “jews” and “media”. One imply all jewish people, the other *all* media.
I must confess that given all the bad circumstances around Israel, with Israel having alot of military hardware and knowhow, I can see how asking questions about special interest groups is tempting, given the power of the media.
Racism has more than one side to it. One being mistreatment of others, the other being any and all associations (good or bad) projected or juxaposed to any group stereotype.
My point in the end, was about how easy and probably unavoidable “racist thoughts” are when generalizing and using group stereotypes, like “americans”, “jews”, “christians” etc.
>>They want to paint a pro-Israel and anti-anti-semite/zionist image. And they’ve done so for decades now.>>
Well that image is beginning to slip, thanks to the 2008 Gaza massacre. But the disenfranchisement of Israeli Arabs is going to finish off whatever credibility Israel had at painting itself a democracy. And this Avigdor Lieberman character was actually dumb enough to state his intentions in front of the UN, so it’s all on record.
Of course, the stupidity of Lieberman doesn’t come as any surprise, since Israel has experienced a significant brain drain for the past ten years starting with the Second Intifada. Bright young people have been moving out in droves.
Well well well, here come the Jew haters.
US 395, as a Jew with strong connections to Israel, your remark strikes me as inane to the extreme. If there is one thing that Jews have a long history of doing, it is arguing amongst themselves. So if Jews (and Israelis) debate the merits of Israel’s actions, this has nothing to do with “Jew hating.”
It is not unlike the right of Americans to debate the legitimacy or efficacy of the U.S. govt, a la tea partiers or liberals. Wanting to improve living conditions and democracy in one’s country is the epitome of patriotism.
Actually Liebchen, I like to give the left a bit of their own medicine.