The movement that dare not speak its name in Israel

[Galraedia]

Gideon Levy doesn't want to meet in a coffee bar in Tel Aviv. He is fed up with being hassled in public and spat at, with people not willing to share the table next to him in restaurants. And now he is fed up with the constant presence of his bodyguards, not least because they too have started giving him a hard time about his political views. So he doesn't go out much any more and we sit in the calm of his living room, a few hundred yards from the Yitzhak Rabin Centre. Rabin's assassination by a rightwing Orthodox Jew in 1995 is itself a sobering reminder of the personal cost of peacemaking in Israel.

In his column in Haaretz, Levy has long since banged the drum for greater Israeli empathy towards the suffering of the Palestinians. He is a well known commentator on the left, and one of the few prepared to stick his head above the parapet. Consequently, he is no stranger to opposition from the right. But this time it is different. Yariv Levin, coalition chairman of the Likud-Beytenu faction in the Knesset, recently called for him to be put on trial for treason – a crime which, during wartime, is punishable by death.

"It is time we stop regarding despicable phenomena like this with tolerance," Levin said of Levy. Soon after that interview Eldad Yaniv, a former political adviser to ex-prime minister Ehud Barack, wrote on his Facebook page: "The late Gideon Levy. Get used to it."

Levy's unpardonable crime is vocal opposition to the war and to the bombing of Gaza. According to recent polls support for the military operation in Gaza among the Jewish Israeli public stands somewhere between 87% (Channel 10 News) and 95% (Israel Democracy Institute). Even those who are secretly against the war are cautious about voicing their opinion openly.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/06/gaza-israel-movement-that-dare-not-speak-its-name

[Larkspur]

1. So much for democracy in Israel

Sounds like Israel is heading towards fascism. What an historical irony if it goes all the way there!

[oberliner]

2. If only they had as vibrant a peace movement as we do in the US

Anti-war activists certainly don't get hassled here!

What a historical irony it would be if they did!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

4. ......heh......

[frylock]

16. has any former US President posted anything on FB like Ehud Barack did?

[JI7]

48. it was written by an advisor to Barak, not by the former pm himself

[2banon]

28. you forgot to insert "sarcasm" ;)

[Spitfire of ATJ]

3. This is the result of claims by the Right that war makes you "strong" and peace is a weakness.

[billhicks76]

19. What A Bunch Of BS

Israel pretends to be a democracy. And democracies don't get a free pass to commit murder and start wars. Remember George Bush and Dick Cheney? They deserve to rot in prison or worse.

[ReRe]

37. Oh, yeah....

... and an apologist on here somewhere a few days ago, for some reason out-of-the-blue, informed me that Tel Aviv is Secular. I had made no insinuation about religion in any way, did now utter the word "Jew(s)'. Of course it might "look" secular, and democratic, but if they don't have real freedom of speech, if they can't speak their minds about their opinions, especially when their opinion runs against TPTB, then what kind of democracy is it? A partial democracy? Now what they probably have is a society that knows it's place, a society that knows what it can say and what it can't say publicly. I seen a clip a few weeks ago of how they treated some anti-war protesters when the current blood-letting started. It wasn't positive.

[elleng]

5. Here he is on Democracy Now!

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/22/israeli_writer_gideon_levy_if_netanyahu

Thanks for the post, Galraedia.

[ReRe]

40. Thanks, elleng

... for the link.

[kelliekat44]

49. I listen to Democracy Now every day either live or by Internet audio. Stay informed...listen too.

Interviews and stories you will never hear anywhere else. No interruption of guests who can actually tell their whole story. There are differing points of view but seldom, if ever, mean talk.

[elleng]

54. Absolutely.

[Comrade Grumpy]

6. The ugliness in Israeli society grows ever more evident.

It's really starting to look like a whole nation of racist thugs, right from the top of the government on down.

Yes, Oberliner, I know, us, too.

[progressoid]

7. Amurica once supported Bush and his Iraq war with numbers like that too.

Still doesn't make it right.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

9. they will grow to regret it, just like most americans did.

[TeeYiYi]

11. It never reached 95%...

I remember it as being between 50% and 60% support before the war and then much lower after Shock & Awe.

That 95% of Israelis support what their military is doing to Palestinians is mind blowing to me.

TYY

[progressoid]

12. Depends on how you look at it.

Regardless, the numbers are too high. War is still popular apparently.


Bush was sinking after 9/11 but the Iraq war gave him a temporary boost.





from Pew:

[ReRe]

42. I don't think it's a true number....

Yes, when polled, that may be the actual number. But in that society, people don't feel free to speak the truth without some sort of backlash, so they go-along-to-get-along. I know a place like that right here in this country, believe it or not (small town in the midwest.)

[BobbyBoring]

17. The Iraq war?

Don't think so. Afghanistan maybe but not Iraq.

[progressoid]

21. Sure, Afghanistan was more "popular" but both had huge support.

May 2003: A Gallup poll made on behalf of CNN and USA Today concluded that 79% of Americans thought the Iraq War was justified, with or without conclusive evidence of illegal weapons. 19% thought weapons were needed to justify the war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_opinion_in_the_United_States_on_the_invasion_of_Iraq

Of course, that support didn't last long.





Afghanistan started out even higher, but also has lost it's luster.






Regardless, both were a colossal waste of time, money and people. Wonder if the Israelis will similarly change their minds.

[2banon]

30. Right Wing Poll, skewed their sampling, we knew that at the time.

[billhicks76]

23. Never That High

And Bush and Co should all be on trial. Thank Obama for letting off the pressure to "look forward". That means setting things up so Jeb Bush can usher the Bush Crime Family back into power. If somehow they lose at least they will have their preferred Democratic candidate and team player, Hillary Clinton. It's all too transparent the deals that have been made. Thanks Bill Clinton for setting stage for Bush in 2000. They all deserve punishment.

[4now]

8. What he is up against in Israel - Good Night Left Side

Last edited Wed Aug 6, 2014, 06:16 PM - Edit history (1)

[christx30]

22. I don't get the logo.

I've never hated anyone enough to beat them with a bicycle.

[4now]

24. I couldn't figure out what that was.

but it looks like a bicycle.
I guess they hate lefties and bicycles.

[Scootaloo]

31. These shirts are imported from Europe

Where cycling is often associated with the left - as in US, it carries the connotation of low-impact and environmentalism. This is why they're in english rather than Hebrew, as well.

Since display of nazi symbols is illegal in Israel, Israeli nazis - and there's not a fucking other term, so spare me bullshit, people - are using these "under the counter" symbols and gestures. Sort of like how French nazis have adopted the quenelle instead of the nazi salute.

[2banon]

43. wow, so I just wiki'd quenelle to learn what that word means

Never seen it before.. interesting read at wikipedia

[arikara]

36. They have become something vile and disgusting

Look at those men, they look brainwashed. Their eyes are crazy. How can anyone in their right minds support that?

I know its not pc to use the nazi comparison, but there is no other. They are using the exact same tactics, stirring up the population with propaganda all the while indiscriminately butchering Palestinian civilians, they have their programmed thugs like these guys enforcing any opposition... it boggles the mind.

They really have become what they fear.

[lpbk2713]

10. Have they forgotten who Martin Niemöller was?

Or Santayana ... Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Levy is speaking out for what he sees as intolerable and unjust and is being made to pay for his outspokenness.

[Garthem]

27. But then there's the corollary:

"History teaches that Man learns nothing from history."

[hifiguy]

13. Here's to you, Mr. Levy.

Thank you for having the nerve to stand up and be heard.

[Fred Sanders]

14. Pictures were similar in Ukraine before the fascist coup.

[Dustlawyer]

45. Thank you Mr. Levy, thank you Phil Donohue, thank you Dixie Chicks!

To bad they do not regain their lost stature after the blood thirst is sated and the people realize what they have done was wrong. I guess they remind people how unjustly they treated these brave people and they cannot face up to what they did.

[truedelphi]

15. Any time a media broadcasts support for a program of more than 85%,

It is a strong indicator of Totalitarian control.

And between 1980 and 1999, the leaders of eighteen "moderate" organizations were murdered. With the blame being assigned to the PLO. But cynics felt that some of the murders were attributable to the RW Likkud members, who love the ability to participate in profits from weaponry sales.

[Galraedia]

18. "Sept 11 was good for Israel." -- Netanyahu

Source:http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/its-very-good-recalling-benjamin-netanyahus-words-day-911-attacks



Source:http://www.haaretz.com/news/report-netanyahu-says-9-11-terror-attacks-good-for-israel-1.244044

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

29. I noticed that a number of times when Israeli spokesmen came on MSNBC

their talking points included making sure everyone knew 'Hamas danced in the streets and cheered' after 9/11.

Given that we send Israel 3 billion a year to help oppress Palestinians, I'm not sure why we would expect anyone there to not hate our guts.

[Galraedia]

44. Yet they fail to mention the claims that the Israeli Defense Agency

sent a film crew to hand out candy to Palestinians in order to induce them into staging a celebration. Whether or not a few celebrated is irrelevant though. There are videos captured from around the world of people celebrating what happened on 9/11. In France, Germany, Iran, Israel,...etc. There are also videos of people mourning what happened on 9/11 in those very same countries as well. So why single out the Palestinians, especially when they had nothing to even do with the attacks? The most likely answer to that is in Benjamin Netanyahu's own words...

"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq" - Benjamin Netanyahu

[hifiguy]

46. Caliing Netanyahoo a thug, a goon and a cheapjack bully

is an insult to thugs, goons and cheapjack bullies everywhere.

He is one of the most disgusting people on the planet.

[Galraedia]

55. The hits just keep on coming....

U.S. intelligence sources report that the one Israeli who is considered an extreme threat to U.S. national security is former prime minister and current prime minister hopeful Binyamin Netanyahu. Not only has Netanyahu visited convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard in his North Carolina prison cell and advocated strenuously for his release, but he was once overheard by an ex-CIA agent as saying to a group of his supporters, “Once we squeeze all we can out of the United States, it can dry up and blow away.” Considering the damage the neocons and their Israeli facilitators are causing for U.S. national security, Netanyahu may soon have his wish.

Source: http://www.democratic-republicans.us/enationalist/netanyahu-squeeze-america-dry-and-let-it-blow-away

[hifiguy]

56. That fucker belongs behind bars for the rest of his life

in the cell between Cheney and Wolfowitz.

[Douglas Carpenter]

20. knr

[Chemisse]

25. Death for Dissent?

Watch out, Israeli leaders - you're fascism is showing.

[Jackpine Radical]

26. Does this remind anyone of anything?:

"Even those who are secretly against the war are cautious about voicing their opinion openly."

[stevenleser]

32. Yep, US-->Iraq, Russia-->Crimea. Not an uncommon phenomenon unfortunately.

A war, particularly one that a country is winning/has won (at least seemingly) is still popular in general.

Its a sad commentary on the lack of human evolution.

Wars don't become unpopular until something about them starts to hurt.

[Jackpine Radical]

35. Along with a whole lot of other people, I demonstrated against the Iraq war

both before & after it began. I wrote against it, as did many. Even in the depths of the Bush years, we felt no need to be circumspect in expressing our politics, our flat-out opposition to our government's criminal policies. That is obviously not the case in Israel.

[stevenleser]

51. I also protested before and afterwards. Several of our group were assaulted and harassed.

It probably depends on where you were. I was in St. Petersburg, Florida protesting with a group called St. Pete for Peace.

[Jackpine Radical]

53. West-central Wisconsin.

There is still a group that stands for peace every Saturday in my small (pop<14000) town. My wife still participates most Saturdays, as I also used to do. Other than a few middle fingers, there are no incidents.

[2banon]

38. one would think it would..

The list of silenced dissenters world wide would be too long to list in this post.. but important point.

[KamaAina]

33. "During wartime"?

Hasn't Israel been at war since its inception?

[countryjake]

34. The Left is always the first attacked...

and then eliminated, when Fascist ideology is accepted and allowed to become the norm.

I fear for Gideon's well-being now, as I do for suspended Knesset member, Haneen Zoabi, and several others who have made attempts to appeal to reason within Israel.

[Jackpine Radical]

39. Jeez, Jake--

Are you implying you see this as a threat?

"The late Gideon Levy. Get used to it."

[countryjake]

50. The very reason that the term "going underground" was coined.

Jack, I feared for his life even before he wrote that piece on the pilots.

Israel has no use for any journalist who even tries to report what actually goes down during one of their offensives, let alone one who condemns such an action. They permanently silenced 13 of them in Gaza during the past month.


Free Palestine!
Let Gaza Live!

Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions
Free Palestine!

[Turbineguy]

41. Maybe Israel should consider

giving ordinary Palestinians what Hamas can't. Employment and Peace.

[emsimon33]

47. Very interesting article

Thank you

[sabrina 1]

52. Some democracy that is. But not all that different to our own in so many ways. Our own

version of those right wing radicals from the Knesset etc were calling for the arrest of anyone who dared to oppose the Iraq War.

He's a brave man, maybe for his own safety he should leave Israel.

Peace is a crime it seems. Not just there, but here also.