There’s a strange dynamic going on within Israel. Every weekend for the past thirteen weeks, there have been massive protests by Israeli Jews against the democracy “steal” by the governing coalition. Even this past weekend’s protest–occurring amidst security threats ranging from brutal Israeli assaults on Al Aqsa mosque to multiple terror attacks inside Israel and Israel-colonized West Bank—brought out 150,000 (a quarter of the previous week’s total).
The repeated (over three days) state-sponsored terror attacks on Al Aqsa during the holy month of Ramadan, incited a rocket barrage both from Gaza, Syria and Lebanon. It threatened to turn into a repeat of May 2021, when Hamas mounted massive attacks against southern Israel in response to similar violent incitement at the holy shrine. There have also been multiple acts of Palestinian resistance: two girls who lived in the settler colony of Efrat were killed in one attack. Efrat is built on land stolen from neighboring Palestinian villages. Those two phenomena are directly connected. Land and life are precious. If you lose one you will lose the other.
In another incident, a Palestinian driver killed one foreign tourist and injured several others in what was first labeled as a terror attack. His family denies the claim. An Israeli security source told me that while his agency believes it may have been a deliberate attack, evidence is not definitive. In other words, it’s possible the driver lost control of the vehicle and did not intend to drive into the crowd on the Tel Aviv boardwalk. Haaretz reporting confirms this as a possibility.
What Israeli media erase: that while 18 Israelis have been killed since 2023 began, 90 Palestinians were murdered during the same interval. That is SEVEN times the number of Israelis killed. https://t.co/bxFTYAs8Dn
— Tikun Olam (@richards1052) April 10, 2023
On social media, pro-Israel apologists posted pictures of the victims: two young teenage girls. It was a manipulative phenomenon designed to elicit sympathy, while eliding the underlying cause of such killings. Even more important, those Jewish victims cannot obscure the 90 Palestinian victims murdered by Israeli forces since the beginning of 2023. 18 Israelis have died in the same period in acts of Palestinian resistance. In other words, five Palestinians have died for every Israeli. Pictures of Israeli dead no longer elicit in me the sympathy they once did. Because I know that five Palestinian mothers endure five times the amount of grief. And I know that very few Israelis will care about that discrepancy. That, I’m afraid leaves me cold.
The divided Israeli psyche
Israelis thus live a divided existence: they treat their own domestic politics as life or death, with deeply personal implications. That’s what draws such large crowds to the weekly demonstrations. When the people believe their leaders want to steal their freedoms, they rally to protect them. Thus, pro-democracy activism has led to a grassroots national movement which may, if it succeeds, topple the fascist government.
While this to many Israelis would be a cause for massive celebration, that’s not how Israeli Palestinians or occupied Palestinians see it. For them, nothing will change. Their lives will not improve. The government will not, all of a sudden become less racist, more generous with government funding, or more serious about suppressing crime in their communities (which have been abandoned by Israeli Jewish police).
Israeli Jews, I’m sorry to say, want it that way. While they might wish that the Palestinian “problem” would just go away, they are willing to live with a permanent disjunction in which they enjoy supremacy, while non-Jews suffer as the permanent underclass.
As I watched the videos of tens of thousands of Israeli Jews holding aloft a massive banner featuring Bibi Netanyahu as Pharaoh, with the caption, “Let my people go,” I couldn’t help thinking that in the back of their minds had to be fear or anxiety about the security threat. How do you balance those polar opposites within one nation?
Not to mention that if the people you want to liberate are Jews, when will the other people, Palestinians, be liberated from their bondage? Though Israelis have lived such an existence for decades (perhaps even since 1948), it is difficult to see how they can perpetuate it forever. Eventually, such systems based on injustice and mass violence must collapse under the weight of their own contradictions, as have many societies before, going back to the Romans and Greeks, if not earlier. The arc of the universe may not bend toward justice, but given enough pressure, it will break.
“18 Israelis have been killed since 2023 began, 90 Palestinians were murdered during the same interval. That is SEVEN times the number of Israelis killed.”
https://twitter.com/richards1052/status/1645254450720956418?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1645254450720956418%7Ctwgr%5E4380dde839581339e8c3e5d4f6ebeb05a030bf0f%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.richardsilverstein.com%2F
Errr…FIVE times the number killed.
Also, the 18 Israels killed were unarmed civilians. Please tell us how many unarmed Palestinians were killed by the IDF in this period.
“There have also been multiple acts of Palestinian resistance:”
Shooting random, unarmed civilians, or running over little boys waiting at a bus stop is not resistance. It is terrorism. Please cite where, under International Law, or the Laws of War, where murdering innocent, unarmed civilians is a legitimate act of resistance. I will save you the time, there are none, but there are many laws, codified by international agreement, against terrorism.
Pamela:
Apparently, you can’t read. Or don’t read the blog post on which you are commenting. If you did do that, you’d read the following:
A good rule of thumb is before you publish a comment to read the ENTIRE post on which you are commenting. If you post a comment clearly indicating you have not done that, not only will I consider that lazy and an act of bad faith, but it will count as a mark against you in terms of retaining comment privileges.
Besides, are you really trying to argue that killing five times the number of Israelis killed is somehow “better” or less morally offensive than killing seven times??
Israel is engaged in state sponsored terrorism. In other words, every Israeli Jew is responsible in some way for this horrible crime against humanity. The settler are the most culpable. But ALL are. So there no innocent civilians. Not to mention that the vast majority of murderered Palestinians were unarmed. Not that this matters as far as I’m concerned. Every Palestinian has the right to resist Israeli terrorism by any & all means necessary.
I will not mention this again here. If you attempt to offer claims based on Palestinians being armed or engaged in armed resistance I will not publish such a comment. It is settled law here in legal parlance that resistance is absolutely permissible. Not to mention that international law specifically permits armed resistance against illegal occupation.
Israeli forces “shooting random, unarmed civilians” is totally illegitimate. If Israel does it, then who are you to deny this form of resistance to Palestinians? You suggest there is one permissive law for Israeli forces and a restrictive law for Palestinians. In fact, you’ve invented a perverted ‘legal’ system. Nor are you the judge of what Palestinians do in defense of their homes and villages. You don’t define what is resistance for them. You may recall that Yishuv Jewis militias killed civilians as part of their campaign for a “Jewish state.” What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
That’s not evidence to support your claim. The Geneva Convention specifying resistance is permissible doesn’t go into detail about what targets are permissible and which ones are not. Your claim otherwise is false. Regardless, internation law says that occupation is illegal. You seem to implicitly acknowledge this. I will not deny to Palestinians the right to resist it. They are the ones who determine how to do so. Not you. Not me. Not Israel. If Israel wishes to define what is permissible to Palestinians, it will have to obey international law itself, which it explicitly refuses to do.
“So there no innocent civilians”
You are evil, and everything you touch becomes tainted.
@ Pamela: Right back at ya. Couldn’t give a good goddamn what you think of me. Plus you are banned. Be sure to pass on the baton to your replacement from Hasbara Central.
Richard how do you explain the clustering of age and gender among the Palestinian victims? Clearly if Israel were engaging in similar terrorism against Palestinians, the victims should be more represented across all ages and genders more or less randomly. Yet even though the number of Palestinians killed is higher, there is also statistically significant clustering. Why would israel be engaging in terrorism against a specific gender and age rage? How do you explain this discrepancy without the obvious (and correct) explanation: when Palestinians are killed, it’s almost always in the context of battles against militants, while the Israeli victims are true victims of spontaneous terror.
@ Soly: Lord, spare us the hasbara terror “experts” who attempt to “analyze” phenomena based on purported statistics.
Nonsene, Israel is killing whoever is handy. Whoever is in the wrong place at the wrong time. If what you claim is true, then Israel would not have murdered 700 women and 300 children in Operation Protective Edge.
Nonsense as well. Palestinians are killed in the context of Israeli invasions of occupied Palestine. Such occupation is illegal and defense of what is recognized as sovereign territory under international law gives the occupied every right to resist. Read the comment thread for posts in which you comment before commenting. I already answered this in this thread. I don’t give a crap what the Palestinians were doing. They have a right to armed resistance. They have that right under international law and UN resolutions.
Victims, yes. Legitimate targets of Palestinian resistance, yes too. Especially settlers. But any Israeli.
You get one comment per thread. No further ones in this thread.
[comment deleted: I have already made my views clear on these issues. I’ve also said in 2 separate comments I will no longer debate them and that I would delete any comment that ignored me. Don’t try this again. Before publishing a comment read prior ones that relate to the subject on which you intend to comment.]
Most importantly, Jews are not “Israelis”. Israel is a colonial terrorist cell that caries out antisemitism – whether it’s silencing Jews who don’t support Israel’s fascist policies, or the Jews of colour, or denying the very existence of many Jewish diasporas, such as the Ashkenazi Jews for instance. Zionism is antisemitic in many ways, whether it’s denial of various Jewish groups, or censorship of Jewish experience, or by equating “Israel” to panjudaistic experience, effectively claiming that “all Jews are occupant terrorists who are for ethnic cleansing of the Indigenous population”.
Israel, and consequentially the entirety of modern day’s zionism, is not only xenophobic and islamophobic, but also antisemitic.
….but two young brothers and two sisters age of 16 and 20 were not murdered. but as in the Talmud let us remember מדה מודה בה מודדים לו
@ caleb:
I’ll (roughly) translate the Talmud quotation: “you will be rewarded or punished according to your deeds.”
[comment deleted: as I’ve written twice in this thread. My views of the legitimacy of Palestinian armed resistance were made clear multiple times in this thread. I will not discuss or debate them further. That includes arguments like yours which seek to discredit Palestinian rights of resistance. I also said I would delete comments that ignored this, like this one.]
Hi Richard,
How can you compare the kills of armed Palestinians against unarmed Israelis?
As part of a war/battle under international law, if you are holding a weapon and be recognized as part of an armed group you are not innocent. As part of the battle you can lose your life – both sides Palastineins and Israelies,
If you will take the percent of non-armed persons you will see that more than 50% of the Israelis were Inarmed while the opposite is as the Palestinian side, and yes, holding a Molotov cocktail with your hands is to be armed, (about rocks we can argue)
@ Daniel:
Just to be clear: you’re saying, at least by implication, that you believe that attacking armed Israelis is legitimate? Becuase if you don’t then the argument is virtually ended and you are a hypocrite. If not, then at least you’re showing a minimal level of moral consistency.
Next, you’ve distorted my views and imposed your own mistaken interpretation of them. Most Palestinians murdered by Israel are NOT armed. So there goes your argument. If they are so-called “armed” it’s often with stones. Virtually no countries in the world murder people for throwing stones. Except Israel of course.
Further, if you want to legitimize murdered armed Palestinians then you must legitimize killing armed Israelis (which would include many settlers who are armed).
That is a misstatement of provisions of international law. If there is a war between two countries then yes one side may attack &/or kill the other. But this is not such a war. It is “resistance” against illegal occupation. This is legitimate & legal under international law and UN resolutions.
Molotov cocktails (which Palestinians almost never use btw) inflict no damage on Israeli personnel or vehicles. Offer me a single example in which an Israeli soldier was injured by one. Since we’re talking about such devices as weapons, I suppose you would approve of killing settlers who throw such devices into Palestinian homes and murder the inhabitants? Or do you have one set of values for Israelis and another for Palestinians.
That is an invented statistic. Do not invent things here. Do not offer hunches or opinions about issues like this. Only credible sources are permitted in these circumstances.
Finally, I’ve said twice in this thread I will no longer debate with commenters on what is legitimate use of force. Since Israel finds that all palestiians, armed or unarmed, civilian or militant are legitimate targets, then all Israelis are. And do not bulls* by claiming the IDF does not target civilians. It has murdered tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians over the past century. That Israeli argument isn’t credible. And btw, human rights groups have agreed with this view as well.
You may only publish one comment per thread. Which means you’ve published the only one permitted in this thread. The rule holds true for all threads in which you participate.