Israel/Palestine
Related: About this forumPhilip Weiss: Among the settlers
Source: Mondoweiss, January 25, 2016
On my first night in an Israeli settlement, David served chicken soup left over from Sabbath and told me an unsettling story about the birth of Israel. His great uncle had escaped Europe to come to a Jewish kibbutz called Ein Harod. On the next hill was a Palestinian village. When hostilities broke out between Jews and Palestinians in 1948, the Jews went up to the village and announced that the next day they were bringing bulldozers to level the place, the people should leave. The next day they went back and were surprised to find that the Palestinians had all fled fearing a massacre like the one that took place in Deir Yassin. The Jews then leveled the village and used the stones to build a stadium in their kibbutz. David said his uncle had told this story with a twinkle in his eye.
David was not the only settler to tell me stories of the Nakba. And the meaning was clear: A previous generation of Zionists had done terrible things to Palestinians in order to build the state of Israel. Now David and the other settlers were taking that same project Zionism, the renewal of the Jewish people in their landto the next part of the land of Israel. And they were doing so without destroying Palestinian villages, as their socialist predecessors had done.
The settlers told me that the great political development of the last year or two is that the Tel Aviv elite now concede that the settlers are never leaving. The elites give lip service to a Palestinian state because the world wants to hear that. But few in Jewish Israeli society even want that to happen; it would tear the country apart.
I spent five days in the settlements in mid-January using the Airbnb service. My original plan was to expose the fact that Airbnb is doing business inside the occupation. But that story broke when I got to Palestine (with Jewish Voice for Peace and others calling on the company to end the service). I followed through on my bookings because I have always been curious about settlers. I slept in four settlements and visited a half dozen others. I ate with settlers and prayed with them. I saw a bris and a bar mitzvah. Half my hosts were American-born, half were Israeli. I gave my real name to my hosts, but I misrepresented myself, saying that I sell houses in New York (I have supported myself in part by flipping houses), because it was clear that I would never be accepted in these places if I was forthcoming. The settlers are engaged in what the world sees as illegal activities, and imposture was the only way for me to get this story. All my hosts were kind to me; I am masking their identities.
Read more: http://mondoweiss.net/2016/01/among-the-settlers
note: Long article.
Israeli
(4,159 posts)Interesting perspective .....my first thoughts were ....well if they did not know who Philip Weiss is ...if as he says he gave his true name ...they sure as hell know who he is now .
So what did you think of both parts Little Tich ?
I've seen and read better in english .......examples :
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/israel/
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/louis-theroux-ultra-zionists/
IMHO nothing beats Dror Moreh's film " The Gatekeepers " ....its a must see for anyone trying to understand this conflict .
ref : http://www.thegatekeepersfilm.com/
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)as is the gatekeepers however the settler's have firmly entrenched themselves in Israel's government, sadly I have come to believe the 2 state solution is dead, right now it is being given the appearance of life by artificial means-the mouthing of politicians both Israeli and American who stylize their words to make it more palatable to the public
Israeli
(4,159 posts).....the night they murdered Rabin azurnoir.
Everything since then has been nothing but ....the mealy mouthing of politicians both Israeli and American who stylize their words to make it more palatable to the public.
shira
(30,109 posts)In fact, Rabin may have been close to calling-off the Oslo process, according his daughter Dalia. Three years ago, she told Yediot Aharonot (October 1, 2010) that many people who were close to father told me that on the eve of the murder he considered stopping the Oslo process because of the terror that was running rampant in the streets, and because he felt that Yasser Arafat was not delivering on his promises.
Father after all wasnt a blind man running forward without thought. I dont rule out the possibility that he was considering a U-turn, doing a reverse on our side. After all he was someone for whom the national security of the state was sacrosanct and above all, former deputy defense minister Dalia Rabin said.
In his book The Long Short Way (Yediot Aharonot Press, Hebrew, 2008), current Defense Minister Moshe Bogie Yaalon wrote that a few weeks before the assassination, Rabin told Yaalon (who was then chief of IDF Military Intelligence) that after the next election, he (Rabin) was going to set things straight with the Oslo process, because Arafat could no longer be trusted.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Yitzhak-Rabin-was-close-to-stopping-the-Oslo-process-329064
Little Tich
(6,171 posts)That it was written by Philip Weiss was just a bonus.
I think it's striking that the settlers see themselves as struggling on the frontier, when they're just enjoying the fruits of Palestinian labor. That's just the way I remember how the whites in Apartheid South Africa justified themselves.
I was already convinced that the two-state solution has become impossible, and that it's mainly because of the settlements. There's no future government that will agree to remove the settlements, and therefore, a two-state solution can't happen. Philip Weiss has only reinforced that belief. Israel has managed to create a monster, and it won't go away.
I'm frankly not too optimistic about the future, the Apartheid in the West Bank will only get worse for the Palestinians and the settlements will continue to expand. It's even possible that Israel will lose its democratic character, and become an Apartheid state.
I believe that in the end, Israel will become a democratic state with equal rights for all, Palestinians and Jews. The follies of the settlers won't be accepted in a democratic Israel, and they will have to adapt, which actually isn't so hard.
I haven't seen the "Gatekeepers" but I would like to. It's always interesting to hear things from the horse's mouth, so to speak.
Israeli
(4,159 posts)... " There's no future government that will agree to remove the settlements, and therefore, a two-state solution can't happen. "
At best the status quo will continue ........at worst they will annex .
If you have not seen " The Gatekeepers " you really should Little Tich .
Israeli
(4,159 posts)Israelis hardened hearts dont let them understand that Palestinians are responding to the despair and purposelessness that characterizes their lives.
Daniel Blatman Feb 01, 2016
Last month Amira Hass brought more evidence of historic significance regarding events in the occupied territories (The Duma murder is an exception to the already violent rule, January 13), by describing how Amiram Ben Uliel used Yishuv Hadaat, one of many illegal outposts near the Palestinian village of Qaryut, as an observation post to allegedly plan the murder of the Dawabsheh family.
The land on which the outpost is situated belonged to the Musa family, which made its living by working the land and raising sheep and goats. Under the auspices of the Israel Defense Forces, which did nothing to stop the settlers repeated attacks on the family, the Musas were forced to leave their land in 2001. The dispossessors seized their property; the dispossessed were forced to be laborers for the Jews. This was the soil on which Ben Uliel was raised and nurtured. There are many others like him in the land of settlement and dispossession.
In Israel the knife-wielding Arab youths sacrificing their lives are regarded as dangerous terrorists. This approach is, of course, the most comfortable one for the regime, which embraces the dispossessors and gives key positions in the military, police and the legal system to those who identify with them and their opinions. The Shin Bet security service makes sure to convey the well-known message the youth who brutally murdered Dafna Meir in Otniel was incited by Palestinian television. The 13-year-old girl who was shot to death by a policeman in Anatot set out to stab someone because shed fought with her parents, as if its common for a child who fights with his parents to grab a knife from the kitchen and aim for a guard armed with an automatic weapon. Who even noticed the leaky tent, planted between piles of mud and garbage, in which she lived, facing the settlers red-roofed villas?
Who in this racist and violet government even thinks about these kids? The Israelis hardened hearts dont let them understand that they are responding to the despair and purposelessness that characterizes their lives. Perhaps they cannot explain it as such, but they are making a pretty hopeless attempt to prevent Israel from reaching the last stage of implementing its policy of colonialism, dispossession and apartheid in the territories.
In Israel, as in other places that developed through colonialist settlement and dispossession (North America, Australia, South Africa, Namibia), this colonialism did not begin with aspirations of sovereignty. The early Jewish settlers came here for economic reasons, to escape anti-Semitic persecution, or out of some romantic fantasy of building a new society.
But their descendents, as well as other groups that arrived over the years, saw the place as their homeland and wanted to be sovereign there. This Jewish demand received support and recognition after the Holocaust. Today no international body, including the Palestinian leadership, denies the legality and historic legitimacy of this sovereignty within the pre-1967 borders.
But since that year there has developed a colonialist project of dispossession in the occupied territories; it is still unfinished because it has not yet used the most extreme tools of colonialist dispossession, namely ethnic cleansing or genocide. It has, however, reached some very advanced stages that characterized similar efforts in the past uncontrolled land seizures, economic, political, and cultural strangulation of the local population, terror and violence to which state officials turn a blind eye, ethnic separation and in particular, the conveying of an unequivocal message that this colonial presence is not temporary but permanent.
The local population gets the message and is waging a desperate struggle to reclaim what it senses it is about to lose forever. It resists, rebels and uses terror. In Namibia, North America and Australia, the response to this resistance was genocide.
There is a complex relationship between the settlers and the state. The loyalty of the settlers to the sovereign is conditional on its desire and ability to continue to preserve their privileges.
When it seems as if the government isnt doing exactly what they think it should be doing, they do it themselves, believing the state that supports them will eventually use its powers to finish what they started. Thats what the French settlers did in Algeria when they conducted a terror campaign against the Muslims, and thats what the German settlers did in Namibia to the Herero people in the early 20th century. Thats what the Jewish settlers are doing in the territories; they are dragging Israel to the stage at which it will have to realize their messianic aspirations. The latest dispute over the two buildings in Hebron is just one example of many.
Settler messianism, which they arrogantly present as the continuation of historic Zionism, sees the Bible as its deed to the Promised Land. This gives settlement in the territories an especially murderous potential. The German, French or British colonialist saw himself as belonging to a group that deserved to inherit the land because of its racial and cultural superiority; because they belonged to a preferred, elevated civilization than that of the natives. By contrast, the Israeli settler doesnt merely see himself as moral, cultural, religiously (and sometimes even racially) superior; he sees himself as the historic native, the sole owner who was temporarily exiled from his homeland.
Colonial dispossessors always expected the natives to play the game, i.e. to agree to the seizure of their lands and possessions, to loyally serve the settlers as manual laborers, and so on. As long as they behaved, their existence was tolerated. But the Jewish settler cannot, over the long term, tolerate the existence of the Palestinian native, not just because the latter refuses to play by the rules and responds with violence, but because his physical existence is a constant challenge to the main question: Who is the true native of this land?
As a result, the final objective of the settler ideology in the territories is not the Palestinians obedient submission to Israeli brutality, but their total disappearance. In instances of colonialism where there were fewer components of identity and messianic faith involved, it still ended in expulsion or genocide. The reality in the territories is sliding toward this danger. There are enough West Bank settlers working to make that moment happen.
The writer is a historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Source: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.700653
shira
(30,109 posts)Or maybe believe those killing the Dawabshas have a right and duty to resist to Palest'n terror?
I ask because both the Dawabshes and Amira Hass are mentioned in your article.
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)while they terrorize Palestinians get back to us and oh BTW didn't the suspects in the Duma murders also threaten IDF before they were finally arrested?
shira
(30,109 posts)Then why not the same standard for the murderers of the Dawabshas?
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)and as I added they were not arrested until after some of the suspects threatened Israeli security, much like Yaakov Teitel
shira
(30,109 posts)There's your reason. Terror attacks preceding the state of Israel that continue to this day...
So?
Is that resistance "natural"? Do they have a right & duty to it?
I say hell no, but to both sides. You have a double-standard....Why?
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)shira
(30,109 posts)You're justifying it when the Palestinians do it, but not so much if it's settlers - is that correct?
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)no subject change at all
shira
(30,109 posts)Or are you just pretending not to?
All of a sudden you're speechless on settlers doing the Duma murders. Why? It's offensive to call that natural, isn't it? Or that the "cause" is legit, right?
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)as to the Duma murders as I said there is no justification for settlers to terrorize the population they are oppressing with the protection, blessings and help of their government
These Duma settler terrorists were arrested after it was revealed they had also threatened Israeli security
shira
(30,109 posts)There's the so-called justification.
But you're slipping. You're acknowledging that when Palestinians murder babies, elderly, and pregnant women that it's justified.
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)shira
(30,109 posts)Therefore the cause of settler violence is 100 years of Palestinian terror vs. Jews.
What's there to argue?
A natural reaction (according to Ban Ki-Moon) is to murder random people in response - right?
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)aand nothing will change that
shira
(30,109 posts)He says it's natural to murder innocents in response to occupation.
1. This was happening to random Jews 100 years ago when there was no occupation. So Ban is wrong, yes? Or was it UNNATURAL then, but NATURAL now? Please, do tell...
2. If it's natural to murder random innocents due to occupation, then that should hold for any type of oppression anywhere on earth. Correct?
How about some real answers? My bet is you punt or deflect....
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)was there a what is now called a stabbing intifada 100 years ago? if not let's see an example of what your going on about
shira
(30,109 posts)Stabbing Intifada? There are also car-rammings.
Are these attempts at murder somehow more justified than suicide bombs, rockets, or deliberately shooting random innocents?
Murder is murder, right? Palestinians behind Hitler's favorite Mufti were murdering Jews nearly 100 years ago before the occupation. What's the damned difference between then and now?
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)but again Ban Ki Moon was absolutely correct in his assessment
shira
(30,109 posts)Funny how you think he is correct, but you can't defend his bullshit.
Of course you don't see how ridiculous that is, do you?
=============
You mentioned stabbing Intifada - as if this one, of all intifadas or terror assaults - is different and somehow more understandable and natural.
Explain?
I don't see the damned difference when people are incited to murder Jews, then they're rewarded. I see nothing natural about that.
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)shira
(30,109 posts)azurnoir
(45,850 posts)shira
(30,109 posts)...to murder random kids, elderly, and pregnant women due to desperation & oppression.
I'll save you the time & energy because I know and you know you can't.
So no - you cannot defend Ban & yet you "agree" with him.
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)shira
(30,109 posts)...in any other conflict worldwide.
Thus, it's bullshit.
You know that - and cannot defend it.
Israeli
(4,159 posts)I agree with this ....
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)that the guy from Moscow is native to Scandinavia, millennia ago their ancestors lived there
Israeli
(4,159 posts)Thats how we find ourselves with Bennett, with Miri Regev and with Lapid, inciting against Breaking the Silence, competing in their various fashions over the exalted definition of the petit bourgeois life, and over the purification of its spirit: The flag. The state. The army. Family. Loyalty. Settlements. Culture. A holy war against the sanctification of the democratic minoritys profane way of life.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.700787