Almost half the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have joined the mass hunger strike protesting against the widespread use of administrative detention. Two of the strikers have reached Day 77 of their strike and Israel’s Physicians for Human Rights NGO says no previous individual has fasted for more than 75 days. Meaning the Palestinians have achieved a grim record. There are reports in Haaretz that Egyptian and Palestinian negotiators are near striking a deal that would allow family visits, which Israel withheld during Gilad Shalit’s confinement but never restored after he was freed. Part of the deal would also restrict the arbitrary use of solitary confinement though it unclear what the specifics are. One Palestinian prisoner has been in such confinement for ten years. Though Haaretz mentions administrative detention as being part of the deal it does so in a vague way that offers no details. The right-wing Times of Israel says Israel has agreed to “soften” the terms under which such detentions are used, which means…I don’t know, what does it mean?
Such deals are notoriously fickle and evanescent, though Israel does have a gun to its head in the form of potential corpses piling up just before Nakba Day (Tuesday). Recently it arrived at deals preventing the deaths of two previous hunger strikers who won their release. So one hopes that the prospect of mass deaths will focus Israel’s mind.
I’m struck by the Israeli media coverage of the hunger strikes which loudly proclaims the position of the security establishment. Though the rest of the world sees the strikers as non-violent heroes, the IDF sees them as terrorists whose death is meant to provoke anti-Israel violence. An anonymous security official (all such officials are anonymous in the Israeli media–God forbid they should have to attach a name and identity to their distortions and lies) even calls them “ticking bombs” (Hebrew), the same terminology used by Israel to describe suicide bombers on their way to carry out an attack.
This is the very sort of non-violent resistance liberal Zionists like Peter Beinart and Gershom “Where’s-the-Palestinian-Gandhi” Gorenberg have demanded of the Palestinian people, yet when they embrace the tactic neither the liberal Zionists or the security apparatus credits it as such. Instead, the victims are seen as terrorists by other means (than weapons).
The Walla article to which I linked also notes the satisfaction of the security establishment with the fact that the PA security services are expected to stamp out any angry Palestinian protests should any prisoners die. In this sense, the PA is playing a role not unlike that of Jewish police collaborators in the Warsaw ghetto and elsewhere who helped the Nazis manage the captive Jewish population.
Related articles
- 2,000 Palestinians are on Hunger Strike – Tell Hilary to Break Her Silence! (rabbibrant.com)
- State Dep’t has nothing to say about hunger strikers ‘one way or another’ (mondoweiss.net)
I find your ending analogy to be not only extremely offensive and unprofessional but inaccurate.
How dare you compare an elected “authority” with their own ability to choose how they wish to respond or not- to the Jewish prisoner Kapos (they were not free people) in the Ghetto, many of whom had to choose between imminent life or death in their forced actions against their brethren under the Nazis. You belittle and distort their circumstances and desecrate their lives.
It’s an offensive analogy without base and unprofessional (well, you are just a blogger, so you don’t have to worry about journalistic ethics I guess-make all the exaggerated and inaccurate comparisons you’d like).
The Walla article you noted, if you cared to accurately reflect what was mentioned about the PA was that Israel’s Beni Gantz noted that he felt secure that the PA wouldn’t let the demonstrations get out of control (quote: לא יאפשרו להפגנות ולעצרות להידרדר.). I didn’t see any reference to stamping out angry protesters, just those demonstrations that “deteriorate”, which implies civil unrest and an increase in violence and damage.
Gee, maybe the PA is interested in trying to quell violence instead of insight it? Perhaps they have a sense of order and desire to keep civil unrest at a minimum besides acting according to what “Israel might do”?
And of note… I saw NO reference about anyone denying the right to demonstrate or show solidarity with those on the hunger strike.
As usual, you make some grievous errors. Could you please tell us who “elected” the PA to anything? The last real election made Hamas the plurality-elected political force in Palestine. The PA engaged in a coup d’etat which made them an unelected rump who assumed control by force & maintain control by force.
Every Jew had a choice in the ghetto, even the Jewish police. Their choices may’ve been more limited than those truly free, but they still had & made choices. I could argue that Palestinians face a set of constricted choices as well due to Isarel’s illegal Occupation, though they have more options than the Jews of the ghetto.
Holy shit! You’re defending the Holocaust era kapos. That’s so touching. Do you even know the first thing about what these people did to their fellow Jews?
The PA does indeed have “a sense of order” and “desire to keep civil unrest at a minimum” as you say…for their Israeli masters.
Am I wrong or are there two David with more or less the same symbol/color but with very different opinions ?
Yes, 2 different ones. I’ve suggested that anyone with a common first name use a more individual nickname so as not to face this issue.
I am the other “David”, not to be confused with “David” above. Henceforth, I will be “Davey” and that’s that.
Vichy French police assaulted Jews, even murdered some, for their Vichy and German masters. Kapos made a choice to get a marginally better deal at the expense of their landsmen. I believe the PA collaborates with the enemy in much the same way. Nothing wrong in pointing out the similarity.
Your damn right the Palestinians have more choices than any of the Jews in the Ghetto.
How nice of you to sit there in your nice home in Seatle and pontificate and smugly assume that kapos made their choice like choosing which flavor of ice cream to eat after dinner. I never defended their actions, many of which were indeed cruel and inhumane… but they weren’t all lining up like the Ukranian “collaborators” who freely chose to help with added gusto the SS and their heinious work.
You tread on very thin moral ice when you try judge those Jews who had to make life or death “choices” under the Nazis. NOTHING like today. Wonder what you would do when given the choices they had to make. Best stick to analogies YOU better understand.
As to what you say about the PA. Okay, then, back to the drawing board, Israel has no “partner for peace”, right? So the PA are thugs ruling by force… So I guess there is no one agreed-upon Palestinian leadership. Hamas and the PA have been battling it out these past years and neither has firm control.
Would you also say that Hamas is also operating “for their Israeli masters”? Would they not try and control Palestinian violence and actions that don’t fit to their own “playbook”?
Let the Palestinians figure out their mess and get their “ducks in line” before coming to Israel looking to negotiate any type of agreement.
Palestinians have more choices than ghetto Jews, but they have by no means nearly as many choices as Israelis have. They live under Occupation & in Gaza they live in a prison which is more akin to a ghetto, though it is a Gaza ghetto and not the Warsaw ghetto.
Stop bellyaching about where I live and my “nice home.” Scores of hasbarists before you have made the same insipid non sequitur claims. It’s a real turnoff to try to introduce my personal life into the comment threads. If you want me or anyone else to listen to you take a different tack.
You did indeed speak with understanding akin to sympathy about the choices Kapos made and claimed they had none, when they did.
And don’t tell me I’m treading on thin moral ice. Hasbarists have no right to lecture anyone about morals since they defend an immoral system called Occupation. And I’ll judge Kapos when & where I choose to with no interference from you. I don’t take well to lectures from the likes of you. Keep it up and you’ll be gone right pronto.
Hamas too attempts to maintain control of its border with Israel but it does not do so for the sake of Israel’s interests as the PA does. Hamas has nothing invested in relations with Israel as the PA does since Israel does everything it can to undermine Hamas. Hamas generally maintains the peace because it is in the interests of Gaza. It is a genuine Palestinian national movement. As for the PA, I have no idea what it represents other than the personal interests of its leaders & their business cronies & Israeli masters.
The mess Palestinians face is ISRAEL’s fault. Israel made the mess and you won’t get away with foisting this off on Palestinians.
Quit refering to me as a hasbarist, as if it were some title… I’m expressing my opinion, not based on any propogandic (cetainly not paid) basis, as I would hope you and other commenters here are doing.
The fact that my thinking doesn’t fall in-line with yours makes for debate… your labeling everybody and anybody who disagrees with you a “hasbarist”… which isn’t even a real word, is pretty pathetic. Should I label people who bring a pro-Palestinian POV as “Propa-Pals”… obviously not and simply an absurd tactic for rebuking anybody who dis-agrees with you.
The “where you live” issue wasn’t directed at specifically you and your house/home, but the mere concept of freedom, having those choices available. The Jews under Nazi rule did not have the luxury you and I and others enjoy.
I still claim that the “choices” that befell the Jews of the Ghetto were practically nill. Being a kapo was no honor and as much as I hate what most of them did, I prefer not group judge them as all bad… I don’t have the insight to be able to so quickly judge this group of people in situation like that with such a broad brush of guilt. Even if one (hypothetically) claims 98% were guilty, 2% were not.
Are you changing your comment rules to tell commenters that we can’t “call you out” when you say something we think is offensive? If I think you’ve crossed some line, it’s my opinion… don’t agree to it, fine, but that isn’t a call for censure… you seem not to have no problem doing the same to those whom you don’t agree with. If I’ve violated a comment rule, then let me know, yet I’d expect some fairness/equality in that issue.
As to Hamas… you’re right about protecting their border. Yet check out what the journalist says about Hamas security people swinging their clubs to keep back Gazians (sp?) from crossing the border into Israel back in April 2012?:
http://the-eyeontheworld.blogspot.com/2012/03/israeli-forces-clash-with-palestinians.html.
And as to the Hamas as a genuine Palestinian nat. movement… I’ve seen and heard enough to know that they have their own croni-isms, and personal interests with sometimes very violent retribution to Palestinians who don’t see things the way they do.
Lastly… real easy to try and lay the blame on Israel. Looks to me more like the Palestinians made enough mistakes to take plenty of credit of blame for their (and Israel’s) lot. I’d start from the biggest mistake… rejecting a 2-state solution back in 1947/8.
‘The PA does indeed have “a sense of order” and “desire to keep civil unrest at a minimum” as you say…for their Israeli masters.’
Richard, you speak like a Hamasnik. Are you disappointed that the PA behaves rationally, quelling violence rather than incite it?
You peddle dangerous and destructive ideas, and while you individually have no influence, the radical left is trying to pull this region into chaos and violence, by providing moral support to Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.
You speak like a hasbarist. I speak like a humanist. I know which I prefer. Who says the PA behaves “rationally?” By “rational” you mean it “serves Israel’s interests,” which isn’t necessarily one & the same thing. BTW, Hamas quells violence too or don’t you read Israeli newspapers which confirm this? And since when is quelling violence the be-all and end-all to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. I’d rather quell injustice, myself.
My ideas aren’t dangerous & destructive except to the hasbarafia. They dangerous & destructive to injustice, which you represent. As for pulling the region into chaos, Israel is doing a pretty damn good job of that without my help.
The claim that my ideas are dangerous & likening me to a Hamasnik violate my comment rules & border on comment moderation.
“In this sense, the PA is playing a role not unlike that of Jewish police collaborators in the Warsaw ghetto and elsewhere who helped the Nazis manage the captive Jewish population.”
It cannot be said that Israel learned nothing from the Jewish experience with the Nazis.
The chief lesson from the Nazis, however, seems to have been Munich: Israel appears to have so frightened the nations that they, all international agreements and law notwithstanding, refuse to intervene in Israel’s 45-year illegal settlement program (and, by all evidence, land-grab) much as UK, Italy, and France declined to intervene when the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland.
I am stunned that you would introduce a comparison to Nazi Germany in this post in light of your comment rules.
Unsurprisingly, a commenter has taken your comparison and run with it.
Is: “Israel learned nothing from the Jewish experience with the Nazis” the sort of sentiment you want affiliated with this website?
Oh my ! Bob Mann, the moral gatekeeper of Richard’s blog is back on duty.
In fact, Pablemont wrote the contrary of what you state as he wrote “It cannot be said that Israel learned nothing from the Jewish experience with the Nazis”.
And he’s right. On many levels. In Tantura, for exemple, the Hagannah (or was it Palmach ?) make young men from the neighbouring village of Fureidis dig mass graves before they aligned the inhabitants on the side and shot them, so they falled directly into the graves. According to some Israeli historians (cf. Ilan Pappe, Teddy Katz), this was a procedure that the Jewish soldiers – of whom many were Holocaust survivors – had seen personnally in the camps.
From a moral point of view, the Israelis, collectively, have learnt absolutely nothing from their experience during the Holocaust except “never again…for us !”, and after all, being a former victim doesn’t give you any kind of immunity to commiting evil yourself.
By the way, Richard’s only ‘comparison’ with Nazi Germany is stating that the PA is playing a role not unlike that of Jewish police collaborators in the Warsaw Ghetto and elsewhere. Are you trying to protect the ‘good memory’ of the kapos ?
Maybe the lesson learned from the Holocaust is that latent antisemitism can manifest itself in unimaginable horrors if allowed to fester for too long.
In any case, I found the analogy extremely surprising, but, as the blog owner noted, that may have been part of the point of his making it.
I also find the antipathy towards the Palestinian Authority to be a bit strange as well.
Clearly my perception is not entirely synchronized with the owner of this blog at this point in time.
“Maybe the lesson from the Holocaust is that latent antisemitism can manifest itself ….”
Like navel-gazing people such as Elie-the-Unspeakability-of-the-Holocaust-but-pay-me-500.000-bucks-to-speak-about-it-nevertheless-Wiesel, your lessons from the Holocaust are not universalistic but only concern the Jews ?
As I wrote in my first comment, the only experience that many seem to have learnt is “Never again…for us”. Do you know how many Roma-Sinti were exterminated during the Holocaust ? Do you know that the Nazi considered people of only 1/16th Roma descent to be Roma, taking the ‘racial profiling’ even further than concerning the Jews ?
Your remark reminds me of the people here in France, Claude Lanzman particularly, who have more or less managed to impose the Hebrew word ‘Shoah’ thus trying to make the Holocaust a uniquely Jewish experience, but it wasn’t.
Africans or African-Caribbeans living in France were deported too. Did you know that ? I heard a historian a couple of years ago who does research on the oral history – à la “Roots” – of a family that started out in Senegal, brought to the Americas in slavery, scattered throughout the US, the Caribbean and Brazil, and in the 1920’s or so, one of the descendents – the woman whose story he had come across by coincidence – settled down in Europe. She later died in a extermination camp – for being ‘colored’.
Your “perception is not entirely synchronized with the owner of this blog at this point in time”
Now I understand your nitpicking: I mean what is 1500 Palestinians on hungerstrike or the Samouni-family being massacred – or the destruction of Palestinian society
on a higher level – if you can find a detail to highlight.
By the way, do you think the “synchronization” will come through you persuading Richard or the other way around ?
Richard shares the antipathy towards the PA with a huge amount of Palestinians, and seeing who defend the PA shows that he’s damn right !
Thank you for taking the time to respond. I appreciate you sharing your insights into African-Caribbeans living in France. Quite a tragic story with respect to that family from Senegal. Do you have more details (such as the name of the family or of the history)? I’d be interested in learning more.
With respect to your questions about the Holocaust, I was just saying that different people could have learned different lessons, some universal, others not. I would certainly not tell Ellie Wiesel or any other Holocaust survivor what lesson they need to have taken from that experience.
With respect to your other question, I think probably we will never be entirely in sync, As I think I’ve mentioned before, my opinions are more aligned with the 2003 incarnation of this blog.
Though I must say that I still greatly appreciate this blog for the stories it covers that often go unnoticed in the mainstream media and am grateful to be able to exchange comments with the various folks who populate this blog, yourself very much included.
Thank Bob. I appreciate that.
“I would certainly not tell Ellie Wiesel or any other Holocaust survivor what lesson they need to have taken from that experience.”
Why not, actually?
I never said I have any insight into Afro-Caribbeans living in France. I gave you an exemple of other categories who were targeted by the Nazis.
Concerning the tragic story of Rose – I think that was her name – it was a case study (horrible word to use for centuries of sufferings) that Jean Hébreard, professor at the EHESS in Paris and University of Michigan exposed as part of a weekly seminar of social scientists sharing their present research.
As far as Elie Wiesel is concerned – the biggest joke as Nobel Prize Winner (with Obama actually, and Shimon Peres and …) – he has the right to take the lessons he wants from the Holocaust, and to exploit the Holocaust Industry (cf. Norman Finkelstein) as he likes, but being a survivor doesn’t give him any moral superiority, and he in fact is a lousy person. He opposed that the Holocaust Memorial in Washington DC mentioned the Roma alongside the Jews, he never has anything to say on what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians, and when Hedi Epstein and a couple of other courageous women interrupted him in one of his usual speeches on Humanity, i.e. his own humanity, to ask what he thinks about Gaza, he had absolutely nothing to say, he just stood there silent, and I recall images of him on the Lebanese border in 1982, praising the Israeli invasion.
You haven’t read my comment rules carefully. I did not say ALL such comparisons were forbidden. I said comparisons would be allowed that were carefully & cautiously constructed so that they didn’t overstate, exagerrate or demonize one party or the other. The notion that the PA security forces are collaborators & do Israel’s dirty work in maintaining the Occupation is commonplace. I didn’t say the PA or Palestinians were Nazis. I likened them to the Jewish collaborators. My comparison was carefully constructed.
I’m glad you were stunned. I hope it made you think a bit about your own pre conceptions.
If the PA are the Jewish collaborators then what does that make Israel in your analogy?
I don’t believe I mentioned Israelis in that analogy nor did I intend to. You may make any analogies or analysis you wish, but I thank you not putting words in my mouth.
In other words, I said what I meant. What I didn’t say I didn’t mean.
Palestinian prisoners end hunger strike
A deal to end the hunger strike by around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners has been signed, an Israeli government official has confirmed.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/14/palestinian-prisoners-end-hunger-strike?newsfeed=true