Among the latest oddities and outrages in the Israeli media (including social and news media) are these:
An Israeli Facebook user, Nati Mor, posted this “panegyric” to the Palestinian people (translation by Ronnie Barkan, who found this gem). Though it’s one of the most extreme statements I’ve read in some time, it’s important because it represents the views of so many more Israelis, including many who would never be so bold as to express themselves like this publicly:
I have sought the original post in his Facebook page but cannot find it. Likely, either his friends warned him to remove it or, as is often the case, the Israeli military censor monitors such social media sites and contacts users to remove such incendiary posts.
Second oddity is a new children’s book about two street kittens rescued in Gaza by IDF soldiers during Operation Protective Edge (Tsuk Eytan in Hebrew). The book offers a severely truncated version of events leading to the war and focuses solely on the hardship and suffering it inflicted on Israelis. In fact, in the book Palestinians don’t exist, which seems fitting for contemporary views of them in Israel. The cats had no previous owners. They just came to the Israelis naturally as if they’d always known them and owned them. The names of the kittens? Tsuk and Eytan, of course.
The ending is a beautiful, warm dream with the kittens sitting in the soldier’s bedroom enjoying their safe, secure new home.
Israeli media, as I’ve written here, doesn’t consider its mission solely to report and analyze the news. Unlike all other western media, it also considers itself the cheerleader for the nation. It sees its role as holding the banner of national pride high for readers and the world to see. As an example, Yediot recently devoted an entire week to headline articles attacking BDS.
Now, Ronen Bergman, one of Israel’s best investigative journalists, profiled Dutch BDS activist, Frank van der Lind in Yediot. The article is quite interesting. But Ronnie Barkan brought to my attention the yellow box right next to the picture of van der Lind announcing future Yediot articles attacking BDS. It intrudes on the otherwise serious profile of the Dutch activist (Bergman had nothing to do with it or its placement), saying:
The baseless rumors about murders of children. Lies about apartheid. Inventions about ethnic cleansing. And the factual responses to all of these. How to beat BDS incitement against Israel.
The best analogy I could think of was a high school principal who, fearing its students would all fail their matriculation exam, prepared a cheat sheet offering the answers to the test. Israeli media are so frightened of BDS that they have to offer a primer for rebutting the arguments it offers. They fear that if Israelis don’t prepare for this onslaught of propaganda that the very state itself might topple.
Wake up time – Now that Putin has “invaded” the Middle East, where does Israel go from here. Is it far-fetched to not believe that any given history point if and when it is convenient for Putin to cut Israel’s field of action over the Palestinians? If Assad won Putin’s consent to bring his men into Syria, why wouldn’t Abbas or any other Palestinian may envy it and even request it. Where’s the stopper. After all Putin is not about making friends with Obama.
It is not a dismiss-able notion that this may come to be view to current downward friendship trend.
It is not a dismiss-able notion that this may not take root in some Palestinian leader, only for it see the “REACTION”
yes Russia is part of the group “looking” a “solution(yeah rite)” but that 1+5 has not stopped the US for doing all it is, why wouldn’t the Palestinian look for a “wing” to crawl under?
Let’s put it in a clear way. The middle east is no longer a “solid” formation of “states”, it HAS disintegrated into NOTHINGNESS not dissimilar of Somalia, Lebanon, Syrian, Iraq, Afghanistan (and to a sort even) Pakistan are all led by “warlords” that are looking for nothing than to create their “STAN”, just as England did in th 19th century, history is about to be remade in the 21st. this time Russia will take the reins as England did back then,
Please call me back in 20 years and ask me where is Israel.
Hi Richard,
I read the Ronen Bergman article in Yediot english language edition, but it neither contained the yellow box nor the message.
@ Lost Dutchman: I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. Presumably, Ynet (which is not the same as Yediot, the newspaper) decided that its English language audience didn’t need a cheat sheet about BDS; or that this would be look too much like pro Israel boosterism/apologism.
so?
if i look for an hour i can produce atleast 200 palestinians who advocate an israeli genocide.
if i look for an hour i can produce similar numbers of europeans who advocate a second jewish holocaust.
can draw any conclusions? nope.
“it’s important because it represents the views of so many more Israelis, including many who would never be so bold as to express themselves like this publicly”
says who?
@ Guy: So you’re claiming only 200 Israelis support ethnically cleansing or exterminating the Palestinians? That’s rich. And you bet I can draw conclusions. THis blog has for 12 years documented thousands of examples of this sort of Israeli hate. Not to mention Israeli polls that confirm it. I admit no poll question has ever asked whether respondents support a Holocaust against Palestinians. But I guess now that Nati Mor has let this nasty cat out of the bag, they should.
@Richard: You are documenting Israeli (and only Israeli, of course) racists and claiming it to be the norm. You are simply viewing the reality through your glasses and you are very wrong.
The burning of the family in Duma (yet to be proven to be done by Israelis, btw, but whoever did it, they are sick criminals that should be jailed for the rest of their lives) was totally condemned across the board, left-to-right, and was received with a deep shock among the vast majority of Israelis (myself included). So now you go as far as claiming that Israelis plan a holocaust for the Palestinians… I’ll just roll my eyes.
“yet to be proven to be done by Israelis, btw”
Sigh… Another ‘honour killing’ ?
Something fishy about the calligraphy etc?
Ya’alon said in an interview that the three Jews placed in administrative detention were linked to the firebombing. An Israeli senior military officer told reporters that security agencies had “no doubt” that the Duma attack was perpetrated by Jews. “All the conjecture and speculations being spread on this issue lack any basis in reality.”
@ Hed Shaket: Anyone who write that the burning alive of the Dawabsheh family is “yet to be proven done by Israelis” is absolutely vile. I don’t mind Israelis who acknowledge bad acts and still support Israel. But people like you who refuse to even concede the bad act was done by one of your own–you make me ill.
I don’t care what Israelis felt about the murders. The fact is that the State has done nothing to stop them. These types of murders continue unabated. It’s not a single murder, no matter how heinous that is at issue. It’s Israel itself as currently constituted is a settler state. Almost everything that happens supports settlerism. And when settlers act to murder Palestinians they are slapped on the wrist if that. The entire state apparatus is at fault & rotten to the core.
[comment deleted: you’re either a provocateur, an anti-Semite, or an idiot. At any rate, you’re blocked.]
The amerikan media is also a cheerleader for the regiem. Remember the run 🏃 up for the iraki war?
“it’s important because it represents the views of so many more Israelis”
As an actual Israeli, I respectfully disagree.
@ Just my two cents: So you’re trying to claim there aren’t Israelis who wish to eradicate the Palestinians? If so, you haven’t spent time in the right places. Get out of the Tel Aviv bars and cafes and spend time in Tapuach, Yizhar & the like. I assure you there are many.
Er… no. That’s very explicitly NOT what I claimed.
You highlighted what you described as ” one of the most extreme statements I’ve read in some time” and then claimed that “it represents the views of so many more Israelis, including many who would never be so bold as to express themselves like this publicly”. I called bullshit on that.
Your counter response is to bring the lunatics from Yizhar to bolster your claim that these kinds of opinions are in the mainstream. Firstly, I’m pretty sure that the residents of Yizhar would have no difficulty being “so bold as to express themselves like this publicly”. They’re God-bothering headcases for the most part. I’m pretty sure they were not who you were referring to.
My sense is, and forgive me if I misunderstood, that you believe there is a silent majority of Israelis who wish to eradicate the Palestinians. I believe you are wrong.
I believe that the number of Israelis who wish to eradicate the Palestinians is probably exactly in proportion with the number of Palestinians who wish to eradicate the Israelis. Just my two cents.
Cheers.
@ Just my 2 cents: YOu don’t even realize that Yizhar runs your friggin’ country. Yizhar is in Knesset, cabinet, even PMO. Yizhar runs army, Shabak, Mossad. Yizhar is Israel. It’s like the pod people. ON the outside they look normal. But on the inside they’re a churning morass of settler inspired views, hate, intolerance, violence, etc. Trying to create a distinction between the two as you do is a total fraud.
As for what the “silent majority” of Israelis do or don’t do, it hardly matters. They vote these assholes into office & let them run the asylum. They’re accomplices to insanity.
@just my 2 cents –
There isn’t a silent majority of Jewish Israelis who wish to eradicate the Palestinians. There is a very vocal majority of Israelis who are Jews. They can be heard with regularity in the streets of occupied Jerusalem. They’re everywhere and “Death to Arabs” is their war cry. With the self-proclaimed sanhedrin’s incitement to murder President Barack Obama, Pope Francis, Christians and Muslims, one would presume, if one believed that the majority of Jewish Israelis don’t want to eradicate Palestinians, there would have been a cry of disgust and demands that these criminals calling themselves the sanhedrin be arrested and charged with incitement to commit murder. All I hear are the crickets………….
I have a couple of times in Jerusalem Post’s comment section answered to the worst nationalistic/religious comments how Jews will rule the whole region with: “If you do not want to give Palestinians a own state you have in the end no other option than to take Palestinians as citizens, which means that Israel will be renamed by its Palestinian majority to Palestine”. I also added that Israeli Jews can not deport or kill those millions already living there.
This kind of rational truth, that in modern age the killing and/or deporting of four, five million people is not possible for a country/religious sect which claims to be democratic and is completely dependent of outside support, gets a hard to believe aggressive response by Israeli Jewish religious/nationalistic commentators and their international “brothers and sisters”. The most common response was to begin to call with names the “truth teller” without any answers to the problem. Then come those who say that we can and will clear our lebensraum (given us by the God or what we did win “honestly” in the war) using such racist/religious rhetoric which would be impossible to in any western newspaper’s comment section, but seems to be normal discussion style in JP’s comment section. The most intelligent few say, that we will continue like we have done for last decades, stealing the rest of the lands and making the life of Palestinians so miserable that they vanish, voluntarily. One guy (an American Jew) even suggested, that a democratic solution is possible – which is only Jews will have the right to vote for the members of Knesset. 🙂
Anyway even Jerusalem Post’s comments do not represent the Israeli Jewish public in the best statistically reliable way, it is clear, that Israeli Jews want a Jewish State from the river to the sea. But they have no real clue how it is done or what will be the real price of creating a Palestinian-rein greater Israel. Playing this present game where Palestinians have that Warsaw Ghetto style “autonomy” provided by Palestinian Authority (and USA) has lead to the situation, that the second state is not anymore possible, which means Israeli Jews have soon to make their final decisions. A genocide and massive ethnic cleansing or giving the Palestinians under Israeli control the citizenship. Shooting one girl on a road block is easy, but how to handle the killing of hundreds of thousands civilians? It is easy to speak about a Jewish (democratic) state, but only few among Israeli Jews dare to say loudly the only way that can be achieved with the occupied areas.
A “normal” Israeli Jewish opinion repeated in JP’s comments hundreds of times daily.
PS.
I have even seen on Jerusalem Post’s comments a direct “demand” to blow up the Al Aqsa. More or less clear comments which basically said the same without directly using the term blow up were common during the last riots. Even I and probably others flagged such absurd demands encouraging to religious violence the comments seemed to stay. What if some western country’s main newspaper would allow on their internet comments have equal “demands” of destroying local Synagogues and Mosques? Or demanding all local Jews to “disappear”. Israel obviously does not have hate speech laws or if it has those laws seem to be reserved only for non-Jews.
Israel has been perpetrating a quiet genocide of the Palestinians ever since it came into being. Right from the start, the terrorists (“Freedom Fighters”) who created Israel knew and spoke openly about the threat to a Jewish nation, if Arabs were allowed to stay in the land. Ever since inception millions of Palestinians have been terrorized out of the land, have been killed or have left their country because conditions were made impossible for them by the Israeli regimes.
Jews of Israel understand that it is not good P-R to start an extermination campaign against the Palestinians but they desperately seek “The Final Solution” for the Palestinians. The Blind Jewish Supporters of Israel also understand this. thus, the plan of action that has been in progress, is to continue with the terrorization, the occassional mini-genocide/pogrom (Invasions of Gaza and Lebanon).
In history, the only way an occupier has been able to live in the land they invaded, is to either kill off almost all the indigenous people or assimilate with them. Since Jews are not willing to go on the path of assimilation, genocide is the only option they see.
ALL the Jews in Israel are participants in this genocide because they sit quietly while they allow some of their ranks to continue with the “Final Solution”.
This post is a violation of comment rules and i want to see it modified.
@ guy: Excuse me buster. But you don’t edit this blog. I do. Jafar has been reading and publishing comments here for years. He is a respected member of this community. You just landed on your hasbara flight from Ben Gurion. You haven’t earned the right to complain about anything.
I replied to his comment with my own perspective.
Double standards at their best. I’m all done posting here.
Either rephrase your comnent rules or accept that you have a double standard.
@guy: This may ge the shortest Ben Gurion hasbara “fly-in” in the history of this blog. Guy didn’t even make it 24 hrs.! Don’t forget to transfer yr plane ticket to your replacement.
@ Jafar: I think a bit more nuance is required here. I don’t think there’s (yet) a concerted, organized effort at genocide against the Palestinians. The combination of ethnic cleansing and cold blooded murders could legitimately be called “incremental genocide” as Tony Greenstein notes in his comment. Outright genocide also remains a distinct possibility as this FB posting makes clear.
The point is that it is Israel, not the Palestinians, who hold the power in Palestine. They not the Palestinians are armed. It is they who seek to perpetuate a Jewish state not Palestinians who desire an Islamic/Christian/Religious ethnic state.
It is therefore irrelevant if 200 Palestinians could be found who would support the extermination of Israeli Jews. But even if that were the case it would be an idle fantasy. In the case of Israel, there has been what Ilan Pappe calls an incremental genocide. It continues. The wiping out of 3 of the 4 Dawabshe family, whilst the Israeli state refuses to charge those believed responsible, something it would never do if the roles were reversed, speaks volumes.
The confiscation and theft of Palestnian land, the destruction of homes, the burning of olive groves, the ongoing army and settler violence. This is but an accompaniment to what could eventually be mass genocide as part of a transfer.
I respectfully disagree with one of your assertions Tony. If an Israeli family had suffered the same fate at the hands of Palestinians (actually even if the perpetrators weren’t Palestinians) as the Dawabshe family did, there would be no charges. It would result in blanket collective punishment of Palestinians.