Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

This is the second installment of Ben Zion Netanyahu’s Maariv interview translated by Noam Sheizaf and published originally at his Promised Land blog.

In case any of you were worried that, as in Hollywood, the sequel would disappoint compared to the original–have no fear.  You will NOT be disappointed.  The revelations of racist hatred for Arabs in general, and Israeli Arabs in particular is unabated.  Here are a few of the prime excerpts:

Netanyahu: …In the Arabs’ case, their nature and character won’t allow any compromise. When they talk of compromise, it’s a way of deceiving. They want to make the other side stop doing its best efforts and fall into the trap of compromising. The [Israeli] Left helps them with that goal…Compromise is not realistic. It weakens our positions and brings us to a state of limpness, of false believes, of illusions. Every illusion is weakening.”

Q: What is your position regarding Syria? There are those who claim that Netanyahu will try to advance there.

A: “I would not return the Golan Heights. We conquered the Golan…and anyway, you don’t give back land that was conquered in war, and for which we spilled our blood. It should be clear that parts of the Land of Israel that will fall into our hands – we will defend our right to hold them until all generations end. You don’t return land, just like you don’t return people…”

“We don’t have a real partnership with them [Israeli Arabs]. The Arab citizens’ goal is to destroy us. They don’t deny that they want to destroy us. Except for a small minority who is willing to live with us under certain agreements because of the economical benefits they receive, the vast majority of the Israeli Arabs would choose to exterminate us if they had the option to do so. Because of our power they can’t say this, so they keep quiet and concentrate in their daily life.

I think we should speak to the Israeli Arabs in the language they understand and admire – the language of force. If we act with strength on any crime they [commit], they will understand we show no forgiveness. Had we used this language from the start, they would have been more careful.

I am talking about strength that is based on justice. They should know that we will keep a just attitude towards them, but a tough one. You don’t kill or hurt people or deny their right to make a living just like that. In the villages that we rule, we need to grant them all the rights – infrastructure, and transportation and education… but they have to give things in return. If the teachers are inciting the students, we should close the schools and expel the teachers…”

Most of the disgusting rhetoric exposed here is self-explanatory and requires no rebuttal or clarification.  Any reasonable person will understand immediately what the real value of such ideas is.

But one point in particular requires refutation.  The elder Netanyahu’s claim that Israeli Arabs “would choose to exterminate us” if they had half a chance is a bald-faced lie.  One can explain this away perhaps by Netanyahu’s having no knowledge either direct (or apparently even indirect) of real Israeli Arabs due to the fact that he lived most of life in the U.S.  But any reasonably intelligent human being, even a rightist, would know that Israeli Arabs are surprisingly loyal to the State of Israel.  Every poll of this community points to an almost universal urge to be included within the overall Israeli polity, to fit in, even to assimilate if that were possible (it isn’t).

Despite the horrific crime of displacing 700,000 of their fellow Arabs in 1948, there were hardly any acts of violence committed by them against Palmach forces.  Aside from a few incidents which stand for their being exceptions rather than the rule, there have been almost no Israeli Arab acts of terror since.  Those of the Israeli right like to point to those few incidents to claim they represent the “true views” of their fellow Arabs, but this is certainly not the case.

To be forthright, today’s news reveals that a 16 year old Negev Bedouin girl fired at Israeli Border Police today attempting to avenge the Gaza assault and was killed.  But this must be balanced against the fact that the Bedouin are one of the only Arab ethnic groups with DO serve in the IDF and do so with great distinction.

Anyone who listens to Bibi Netanyahu speak and harkens not just to the actual words, but to the tone and what is “between the lines” knows that the hateful views of his father course through his veins.  The difference between them is that the father is of the old school and wears his ideas on his sleeve.  The son conceals his real views and feelings through artifice and guile.

There may be a few Middle East analysts who harbor hopes that Netanyahu, being a strong rightist in the Sharon mold, might actually be capable of negotiating an Israeli peace with the Syrians or, God forbid, with the Palestinians.  Given where this man has come from and the hatred inculcated in him by his father for all Arabs, I’d say the optimists will be sorely disappointed to place any such hopes in the new Israeli prime minister.

On a side note, given the importance of this story and the fact that no other English-language news source is yet reporting it aside from Noam and myself, you’d think that Google News would be an excellent means of distributing word about it.  But no, I’ve tried unsuccessfully for several years to get this blog included within Google News.

A few weeks ago, I noticed that Mondoweiss was now included (good for him) and so I checked to see whether their rules had changed.  I realized that they hadn’t but that Phil Weiss had added Adam Horowitz as a co-author of his blog which allowed it to be included.

Here are the wickedly dumb rules the define who’s in and who’s out:

We reviewed your site and are unable to include it in Google News at this time. We currently only include articles from sources that could be considered organizations, generally characterized by multiple writers and editors, availability of organizational information, and accessible contact information. When we reviewed your site we weren’t able to find this evidence of an organization.

While I respect Phil immensely and would love to see Mondoweiss as a powerful movement for change–to call it an “organization” is pushing it.  This rule is simply a way that Google News gets out of having to consider blogs written by individual authors.  They’d rather lose a source like me than have to waste their time considering all the faux news blogs who would claim their attention by applying for consideration.

The only problem with this approach is that not only does Google News lose out by failing to include important news sources like this story, but the work of this blog loses out through the hundreds of thousands of readers who visit Google News and will not see this story.

Google News is a major source of readers for those sites included within it.  It’s just a shame that Tikun Olam and many other legitimate news blogs are cast out of the inner circle.