Direct Link to Latest News

 

Settlers Kill Israel's "Better Self"

March 14, 2017


SETTLERS.jpg
(Left, Settlers) 

"The Israeli state has been colonized by its own colonizers. 
The small minority of settlers and their extremist supporters have taken over most of the country's positions of power - the Knesset, the government, the military, the police, almost the entire media - and subjugated them to their immoral, fanatic colonialist project."
Many Israelis would gladly accept a two-state solution but expansionists are in charge. Israeli academic Ran HaCohen describes how Israeli's democratic ideals have been eroded and hopes for peace diminished. 




by Ran HaCohen
(Abridged by henrymakow.com)

Israel's vanishing democracy stands out even while the entire world is drifting away from democratic values. Netanyahu's coalition government is systematically emptying the country's democracy, passing a new law every other day aimed at intimidating and silencing any dissenting voice.

Thus, whereas the right-wing enjoys major donations from abroad - from Sheldon Adelson to American evangelists to Jared Kushner - left-wing NGOs in Israel are being singled out and delegitimized, in a Putin-like manner, by a series of laws for "being financed by foreign governments", and their activity is progressively hampered.

A moderate left-wing NGOs like Breaking the Silence (former Israeli soldiers who talk critically about their occupation experience) is denied access to schools, with an art gallery closed after hosting an evening with it.

If several years ago it was radical Noam Chomsky who was not allowed to enter the West Bank, now a law prohibiting entry of all BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) supporters is coming up. Recently, even the vice president of a liberal Zionist Jewish-American organization that donates millions to Israel was detained at Ben-Gurion airport, undergoing hours of a humiliating interrogation with insinuations of "disloyalty".

PERSECUTION OF ISRAEL ARABS

r960-8a46e364b320551c9a115790cc7a60e2.jpg
Much more than leftists, government-directed violence and incitement is aimed at the 21% Palestinian minority in Israel, as can be seen in the recent incident in Umm al-Hiran, a Bedouin village in the South. Its inhabitants - Arab-Israeli citizens, some of them serving in the army - had been moved to that location sixty years ago by Israel, that now decided to dump them at yet another location in order to construct a Jewish suburb on the village ruins. Arriving to demolish the village armed to the teeth, Israeli forces claimed an ISIS-inspired resident accelerated his car towards the forces, killing one policeman, and consequently shot dead. This story - reminiscent of the terror attacks in Berlin and Nice - was immediately propagated by police and cabinet ministers in an outrageous campaign of incitement smeared all over the media and social media.

By now, however, pressed by NGOs and remnants of the critical journalism, investigation has revealed that the Bedouin car driver, an admired 50-year-old schoolteacher, had no affinity whatsoever to any Islamist radicalism, no intention to commit any attack, and was just leaving the village with some of his belongings after telling his wife (herself a PhD college professor) he didn't wish to witness the demolition of his home. He was first shot in his right knee by the police, consequently lost control of his car on the steep slope, and was finally left bleeding to death in his car, while police were preventing medical assistance that could have saved his life.

This is the typical treat Netanyahu's government is giving its Arab citizens: discrimination, ruthless violence, incitement and fake accusations. Remember how Netanyahu portrayed Israeli Palestinians as "heading to the polling stations in droves, taken in buses by Left-wing NGOs" in the last elections, how by the same token he passed a law to impeach elected Knesset members, and so on.

Israel's critical media too has been under fire for very long, pushing the country to place 101 in the 2016 World Press Freedom Index, next to Uganda and Kuwait, worse than Tunisia or Lebanon. Netanyahu is in control of the biggest Israeli daily, financed by his "friend" Adelson, while several other media are owned by other rich "friends" and allies or dependent on Netanyahu's authority as Minister of Communications. Freedom of speech has been amended to exclude calls for boycotting settlements or settlers, with a follow-up law now in consideration to cut funding to universities with lecturers who back such a boycott. The list is getting longer every day; That's not what democracy looks like.

JEWISH? NOT ANYMORE

Does this sellout of democracy go hand-in-hand with enhancing Israel's Jewish character? The very opposite is true. The Ten Commandments, the quintessence of Judaism, are permanently, consciously waived.

Having coveted their neighbors' lands, water and all other resources for decades, Israel has now replaced "Thou shalt not steal" by the notorious "Regularization Law", which only Ha'aretz keeps referring to by its true designation: the Land-grab Law. This law - which even Netanyahu had claimed "it would take us to [the International Criminal Court in] the Hague", but later, as a leader of principles, supported it - represents a new peak in the Israeli land-grabbing in Occupied Territory. So far, Palestinian lands have been massively confiscated if they could be declared "state lands" with no private ownership - as if Israel were the state to whom the Palestinian occupied territories belonged. Other lands, including private ones, have been confiscated "for public use" - for the construction of roads, industrial zones, military and security installations of any imaginable kind, and so on - with the "public" in mind being always the Jewish settlers, never the Palestinian inhabitants. All these methods and other dubious practices, however, have not satisfied the settlers' appetite, who have their houses built on undisputedly privately owned Palestinian land in dozens of Jewish settlements. The new Land-grab Law legitimizes this theft as well: now Israel sanctifies taking private lands from Palestinians not just "for public use," but also to build private homes for Jewish settlers. "Thou shalt not steal," settlers exempted.

The case of Elor Azaria shows how Israel waives the Commandment "Thou shall not kill" as well - "thou shall not murder" in the Hebrew Bible. Azaria, a young soldier, arrived at a scene in occupied Hebron after a Palestinian had tried to stab a soldier and had been shot. The Palestinian was lying severely wounded on the ground, surrounded by many soldiers and constituting no danger to anybody, when Azaria cold-bloodedly shot him to death. Since the whole incident was recorded by cameras, cover-up failed and the soldier was put to trial. He was accused of man slaughter, not of murder, and sentenced to ridiculous 18 months in prison. More importantly, his trial exposed massive support for his crime not just among the rabble, but also by senior politicians up to PM Netanyahu. Not surprising, given that even a so-called liberal like MK Yair Lapid claimed "you have to shoot to kill anyone who pulls out a knife or screwdriver," not just the far-right-wing like Minister Bennett, who added "I killed a lot of Arabs, and there's no problem with that." "Thou shall not kill" - unless its Palestinians.

THE SETTLEMENTS ABOVE EVERYTHING 

Why did all that happen? Why has Israel stopped being democratic and Jewish? Because the Israeli state has by now been colonized by its own colonizers. The small minority of settlers and their extremist supporters have taken over most of the country's positions of power - the Knesset, the government, the military, the police, almost the entire media - and subjugated them to their immoral, fanatic colonialist project.

 New Supreme Court judges have just been nominated: even in this liberal stronghold, settlers are now over-represented by a factor of 3: less than 5% of the population, almost 15% among Supreme Court judges are settlers. Each of the anti-democratic and anti-Jewish measures mentioned above can be traced back to the interests of settlers and settlements - including the willingness to turn a blind eye on anti-Semitism in the new American government for the hope it would give Israel a green light to entrench the Occupation, to confiscate and annex even more Palestinian land. The settlements have always been the greatest obstacle to peace - even Mr. Trump understands the notion that "every time you take land for settlements, there is less land left" - but now they destroy not only Israel's chance to live in peace, but also its very existence, and its justification, both as a democratic and as a Jewish state.

---
Makow comment- Noteworthy that HaCohen can find nothing more to define "Jewishness" than the Ten Commandments which likely were not intended to apply to non Jews. 

Related- US Jews React to Israel Travel Ban against Critics
-----------------The Settlers- Important Documentary About Destruction of Two-State Solution 
-----------------Israel Detaining, Deporting BDS Advocates 



Scruples - the game of moral dillemas

Comments for "Settlers Kill Israel's "Better Self" "

CR said (March 14, 2017):

It's quite likely that the ten commandments were not intended to be applied to relations between non-Israelites, and certainly not enemies. However, there is no way to misinterpret this:

Leviticus 19:33-34
“Do not mistreat foreigners who are living in your land. Treat them as you would an Israelite, and love them as you love yourselves. Remember that you were once foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. "


Imran said (March 14, 2017):

The BDS has globalist support behind it and serves their objective to keep pressure on the legitimate (not government led) opposition in Israel to the peace process. Their influence would wane considerably, or else they would be given new marching orders, if they achieved the globalists' objectives for the peace process; which includes making Jerusalem the center of a new world religion.

Finally, the settlers and Palestinians themselves have had false flag terrorist attacks and assassinations to advance the "peace process". In addition to this many of the main names of groups who are against peace are
co-opted by the various Israeli security services so they do not pose a risk to globalist objectives for the peace process.

Ran is a victim of a dividing tactic by the media which just serves globalist ends.


Henry Makow received his Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Toronto in 1982. He welcomes your comments at