The English National Opera is staging The Death of Klinghoffer, John Adams’s opera about the Achille Lauro hostage crisis. Ever since its premiere in 1991, the opera has been accused of “glorifying” and “romanticising” terrorism, and, almost inevitably, anti-Semitism. Ahead of the London premiere, The Frontline Club is hosting a panel on arts, politics and how they interact. The panelists will be authors Will Self and Ghada Karmi, conductor Baldur Bronniman and yours truly, and you can see us live via the streaming video below beginning at 7pm London time (2pm EST, 9pm in Israel-Palestine). Would love to hear your thoughts as we go along.
Video streaming by Ustream
Richard Silverstein reports on his blog that the aircraft that crashed in central Israel today was a “booby-trapped” foreign drone flown into the country, and that it crashed not in a field, but in a top-secret missile base (which I am not naming it here because I’m not entirely sure about my position vis-a-vis Israel’s military censors on this bit). Richard goes on to speculate the only enemy of Israel’s that can conceivably produce an aircraft such as this one is Iran, but that it’s unlikely Iran could control a drone from so far away, so it must’ve been Hezbollah, flying the drone 1,000 miles 160km* into Israeli airspace and right at one of Israel’s most sensitive military bases.
Richard attributes the information on the location and nature of the crash to a “ confidential highly-placed Israeli source.” He places considerable weight on the fact no drones are known to be operating from said missile base, and implies this strengthens the suspicion the drone must be a foreign one.
There are several problems to this story. According to current news reports, what crashed was Israel’s largest drone, known as “Eitan”. The drone took off from the Tel Nof airbase and crashed between kibbutz Hafetz Haim and the town of Gedera, some ten miles away from the missile base in question, but only two miles from Tel Nof. Two miles and a malfunctioning Israeli drone seem more plausible than 1,000 miles and an ultra-sophisticated enemy aircraft to me, especially as Richard’s source provides no proof whatsoever the aircraft crashed in some location other than the one reported in the media. Ever since the Night of the Gliders, Israel has been supremely paranoid about its airspace, with jets scrambling every time an unidentified aircraft comes within a few dozen miles of our borders (you can find several incidents from the past year alone). A few days ago they nearly scrambled to attack a particularly large flock of birds. The idea a foreign aircraft can go in and fly 1,000 miles 160km in broad daylight without detection and crash into one of Israel’s most sensitive military bases is bizarre – to say the least.
Richard also notes in his post that “the “beauty” (if such a phrase is appropriate) of a drone attack is that, like the Mossad assassination of nuclear scientists, it’s hard to figure out precisely who is to blame. In that sense, it raises the temperature, but does so in a carefully calibrated way.” Wrong. Drones are such complex and still reasonably rare machines it would actually be extremely easy to identify where one comes from. It doesn’t seem likely Iran built a perfect imitation Israeli drone, gave it to Hezbollah to fly it into Israel, only to have it crashed without causing any real damage.
Finally, eyewitnesses described seeing a typically dual-tailed drone clearly in distress with one wing bursting into flame shortly before impact – not exactly the behaviour of a kamikaze aircraft, manned or unmanned.
But the real question is: who would have us believe this highly improbable hypothesis is true? Iran is mostly trying to avoid escalation. Why it would to give Israel a perfect casus belli by launching such a blatant military attack, which causes no significant damage, is beyond me; but I can well imagine plenty of people within the IDF who would dearly like a casus belli to bolster their case for an attack on Iran. If I were Richard, I would be extremely suspicious of any information – especially uncorroborated information – that helps the pro-war camp in Israel. Not to mention that the source might be acting in good faith, but is being hoodwinked by his own sources within the system.
Richard has provided some of the more important exposes about top-secret development in Israel over the past two years, relying to quite a strong degree on his own faith in the integrity of his sources. Sometimes it’s all you have to go by. But if his source is who he says he is, it doesn’t seem far-fetched that someone in the Israeli establishment appears to have been tempted to use Richard’s blog as the perfect channel for a bit of psy-ops.
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*Correction 31/01 – I misread this particular detail in Richard’s post; and I should’ve realised as i typed the distance from our northern border to the crash site is 160kms at most. Silly me. But it’s little more than a typo that doesn’t in the least affect the implausibility of Richard’s source’s story. Hezbollah would still need to fly an aircraft through most of populated Israel undetected, which doesn’t make any sense, and then crash it, which makes even less sense.
An asylum seeker froze to death in a Tel Aviv park tonight.
Blogger Inter Spem et Metum collated some of the comments left on the YNET report describing other asylum seekers freezing across the city.
What was wrong with Egypt? Why did you come here?
Here’s an idea for Abdul and Yusuf – seek asylum in Gaza
I heard Africa is pretty warm right now
Go back to Sudan, it’s much warmer
Adam Yusuf and Abdul Salam. Muslim names. This is what we import. We should stop the tsunami of these wretched coreligionists of our enemies and kick them back to their own country. There’s nothing for them to find here. Only insane and delusional Israelis think they do.
There’s only one thing we should give them. A ticket to ride. No asylum, no water, no food, no jobs, no life. They should go back to their own country.
You tell me: Do we need Yusufs and Abdul Salams here?
Egypt is warm! Go back there and from there to Africa.
Let them seek help from the UN – they’re taking care of the Palestinians and they’ll take care of them.
What’s the big problem, let the Left take care of 200 people. Is it that complicated?
NGO director – why don’t you take some infiltrators to your own place? Take care of them at your expense and don’t give advice to the state on what to do. You’re such a bleeding heart it’s disgusting.
There’s no room. They are Muslims let them go to the Arab states, there’s a Spring of Nations happening there now and it’s nice and warm. Sent from my mobile.
Go back to Sudan. Cheers.
Asylum seekers? Infiltrators. Let the reporter take in six or seven of them.
If they didn’t come here, they wouldn’t be in this condition.
Let them go to the New Israel Fund, they are loaded.
Deport all those who assists border trespassers
Tel Aviv too cold for them? Africa’s much warmer.
Why are they releasing them into Tel Aviv? Why not into Gaza?
I heard there are a few houses recently vacated in Darfur and they have blankets too you’re welcome to move.
Help the Sudanese only after they sign a document recognising a Jewish and Democratic Israel.
Interspem notes:
“Writing right now would be unbearable. So I’m merely quoting. When your grandkids ask you, you’ll have something to recall.”
*Update: The report on the asylum seekers’ death came from several respected and highly reliable asylum rights activists. The man’s identity now appears to be unclear. However, the comments that are the subject of the post refer specifically to a story describing freezing asylum seekers across the the city, and their venality remains standing.
Activists and journalists are up at arms about a Knesset attempt to outlaw comparisons to Nazism. The law is an atrocious attack on freedom of speech, but Nazi comparisons in any political debate are both counterproductive and morally flawed. Maybe with one exception.
The Knesset, in a preposterously self-conscious move (one hopes), is planning to ban all comparisons of contemporary individuals and policies to Nazism. Beyond the fact even Hipster Hitler could not have planned it better, our lawmakers charitably provide us with an opportunity to reflect on how useful the comparison in the first place. Make no mistake – I don’t support outlawing it by any means; but as GK Chesterton once put it, to have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it. Nazis – what are they good for, anyway?
In my limited experience, the temptation to tar someone with the Nazi slur in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is usually motivated by at least one of the following three: A desire to insult, offend and incense the object of the comparison; if the comparison’s target happens to be Jewish, to confront them with the fact a policy or an opinion they support bears suspicious resemblance to Nazi practices; or, if the object of the comparison is Arab and/or progressive, to insult them, to confront them with said resemblance, and to warn the audience – hear ye, hear ye, a relic from the camps and the ghettos is loose upon our streets, planning our destruction.
However much the motives may vary, the effect of the comparison is identical in nine cases out of ten: Instantly relegating the entire debate to the realm of the absurd. The accused party will start fretting about, trying to prove they’re actually much better than the Nazis – a preposterous position to put yourself in in the first place; the accusing party will try to prove the accused is a Nazi born-and-bred – a ludicrous claim, not least because in popular imagination Nazis equal gas chambers with no intermediary stages whatsoever. The original topic of discussion, meanwhile, will sulk over to a corner and promptly shoot itself, recognising it won’t be required again for the remainder of the evening.
By way of an example, here’s a short script familiar to many of us. A left-winger calls a right-winger a Nazi. The right-winger get riled up, brings up the fact half his parents’ families died in the Holocaust, embarks upon a detailed explanation of all the perfectly factual points of difference between Israeli and Nazi policies, usually emphasising Israel does not use gas chambers (“Israel: Nicer than the Nazis. No gas chambers!” – here’s a hasbara campaign for Yuli Edelstein to consider). The offended rightist is also likely to point out the Jews, unlike the Palestinians, didn’t shoot rockets at the Germans (meaning, one gathers, that if there had been armed Jewish resistance the Holocaust would be justified); and call the offending lefty an anti-Semite because he accused a Jew of Nazism (how this particular slur, offensive though it is, falls under the category of anti-Semitism is quite beyond me).
Apart from instant and often irrevocable derailing of the discussion, the comparison to Nazism is also morally flawed. Not because Jews, Palestinians or left-wingers are immune to developing the many unsavoury qualities of the Nazi movement – the brutality, the radical militarism, the belief in the idea of inherent ethnic and/or class superiority, demonisation of some Other and the other’s scapegoating to the point where his death is perceived as inconsequential. Rather, the comparison is morally flawed because its use immediately deveins the argument of any moral standards and invites us to judge the morality of a phenomenon using a scale of resemblance to anything occurring in Europe in the 1930s and early 40s; and if no complete identity is proved, why, then, the phenomenon in question must be moral, or at least tolerable.
It seems to me we would be better off utterly rejecting the flaws in the phenomena we discuss without checking their moral value against historic precedent. The Occupation is wrong not because it resembles the Nazi occupation in Europe and not because it inevitably leads to the gas chambers (which I don’t believe it does); it’s wrong in and of itself, and would be wrong if Nazism never happened. Calls for (yet another) transfer of Palestinians or fantasies about a Palestinian struggle winning along the lines of FLN in Algeria is inherently wrong (can someone please do a sequel to the Battle of Algiers showing the ethnic cleansing, military dictatorship and decades of civil wars that ensued after that cult film’s happy ending?), and not simply because both scenarios bring to mind something uniformed speaking English with a heavy German accent in a Spielberg movie.
Here’s a suggestion: So long as you’re trying to persuade someone, it’s never, ever, ever useful to compare anything and anyone to Nazism. Not even a positive comparison – next time you’re at your in-laws, try telling them their taste in visual art is a vast improvement on Hitler’s. We can and should discuss the Nazis’ toxic contribution to our present state. It’s perfectly reasonable to say one of the main reasons many Israeli Jews are adamantly against sharing sovereignty with anyone is the trauma of the Holocaust, and it’s perfectly fair to point out the Palestinians didn’t cause the Holocaust (the Mufti hopping Hitler’s leg notwithstanding) and shouldn’t be paying the price for the Nazis’ crimes. But we – progressive or conservative – would do best to overcome the urge to compare ideological opponents to the Nazis. It won’t help our cause (whatever it may be), it won’t open their eyes and it would damage any much better-grounded argument we are making.
And what if someone else uses the comparison? In my opinion, it’s best to let it slide and not to get drawn into it. Earlier this month I took part in a debate in which one of the participants thundered from the podium that Gaza was the new Warsaw ghetto. None of the other panelists, myself included, thought it was worthy of the discussion’s valuable time to get into an argument on points of difference between the IDF and the Wehrmacht, precisely because any position we’ll take on the matter – moralist or factual – will sound inevitably stupid and the entire debate will be completely inconsequential and absurd. The audience, which seemed to represent quite a nice spectrum of opinion, apparently agreed, also preferring not to challenge the speaker on his comparison but to focus on the much more essential questions of the day.
We, should, however, set aside one exception to the rule I just described. The only context in which we not only can, but must compare each and every little thing to Nazism is that of the aforementioned Knesset bill. If the bill passes into law, it will become our sacred duty to compare each and every little thing, beginning with the bill’s Rt. Hon. sponsor, to the jolly 1930s. The bill is Nazi, the MKs slowly raising their right hand to vote for it are Nazis, the neighbours upstairs are Nazis, the public transport – well, goes without saying; the exams are a bloody Holocaust, the weather is as Nazi as it gets, and the alarm clock is a fucking Obersturmführer with three Iron Crosses and Tourette’s. We should be making these comparisons not because they are valid, true or do justice to the horrors of the Holocaust, but because a law that is so irredeemably stupid and cuts so deeply into freedom of speech deserves to be broken repeatedly, persistently and creatively, until it becomes completely unenforceable. Nazis.
Foreign Policy journalist Mark Perry talks to +972 about his revelation of Mossad agents pretending to be CIA men while trying to recruit Iranian terrorists, explains why Israel and the U.S. are unlikely to fall out over the affair, and offers Israel a free tip.
A “senior Israeli official” called your report “complete nonsense,” and claimed that “had it been true, Meir Dagan would not be able to set foot in Washington.” Haaretz writer Amir Oren also described you as a “declared supporter of the Arab cause.” Your response?
I would not expect the Israeli government to confirm my report — it’s certainly not in their interest to do so. I would have been surprised if they had said “yes, this is absolutely true.” The story is as accurate as I could make it, and as well sourced as I could make it. It’s as true as the rising sun. Then too, people should realize that this is not the first false flag operation that Israel has conducted, as a published report by a colleague made clear in 2010.
My understanding is that a journalist in Israel has supposed that I wrote and published the story because I am “a known supporter of the Arab cause.” That’s an insulting slur — and one that I would not make against reporters here in Washington who regularly report on Israel. I am a supporter of the American cause. And what exactly is the Arab “cause?” To be friends with the US? To build stable and democratic societies? To educate their children and be at peace with their neighbors. If that is the “cause” then yes, I am for it.
Quite a few readers have questioned the coincidence of the story running just days after yet another assassination of an Iranian scientist. Is it a coincidence? How long have you been working on the story?
I know there is a great deal of skepticism about the timing of the story. And I know too that people will simply not believe it is a coincidence. In fact, it is. I thought two weeks ago that, after eighteen months of work, the story was in jeopardy of being released by another publication. And in truth, I did not decide to actually publish the story until the Friday before its appearance. And even then, at the last minute, I put the story on hold — to give a number of contacts of mine a chance to weigh in, and to give the U.S. and Israeli governments a chance to respond officially — or off the record. And I made it clear to officials here that I was willing to withdraw the story if there was reason to doubt its accuracy for any reason, or if in their estimation, it would harm my country. I received no response. The story appeared yesterday because that is when I, and Foreign Policy, felt comfortable with every one of its details.
The same Haaretz report speculated the revelation could endanger Israel-US ties in the same way the Pollard affair did, and that this is why the Mossad is as a policy opposed to “adventurous endangerment of its relationship to the American community.” Is this likely?
I am an historian — that is really my first career. I have studied and written extensively about the politics of the American and British high command in World War Two (Partners In Command is my book on George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower). During that alliance, key senior officers of both the U.S. and Great Britain held high level conferences to determine military strategy. During those conferences there was shouting, deep disagreement — in one case, nearly a fistfight. Allies disagree. Why wouldn’t the same be true now, between Israel and the U.S? No alliance is perfect, no country walks in lock step with another, and it would be naive to suppose it. There are problems between the U.S. and Israel, but that isn’t new. Nor should believe that the strategic relationship and deep friendship we have with Israel will change. My sense is that, despite the problems, there is a commitment on the part of the administration to make certain that, as with all alliances, a common purpose outweighs all disagreements. Frankly, if the Pollard incident didn’t end the U.S.-Israel relationship, then this won’t. My personal view is, and my advice to Israel, is — if you want to be welcome in America, don’t try to pull this kind of crap.
You say there is no evidence linking Jundallah to the assassination campaign. Is there any indication Israel is similarly using some other group, like the MEK? Was there any indication of what purpose the Jundallah recruits were used for?
My article was focused on a single story — that Mossad officers attempted to recruit Jundallah operatives under the guise of the American intelligence services. I stayed strictly focused on that. I have no idea who is responsible for the murder of Iranian scientists, I have no idea whether, at present, Israel is using Jundallah or MEK operatives to conduct these operations. Iran has plenty of enemies, and it could be any number of organizations — or perhaps the killings are simply an internal matter. In one way, I suppose, I don’t care, so long as my country is not responsible. Because if we are, then we are a state sponsor of terrorism, and the “war on terrorism” is a lie. I don’t think it is. I think the U.S. government, my country, has lots of problems. But joining with terrorist groups is not one of them.
Im Tirtzu – the movement behind the ongoing intimidation of progressive lecturers in Israel provided us this week with a textbook example of political bullying, after taking offence at disparaging comments made in their address by Tel Aviv University’s Yehouda Shenhav. It should be noted the comments were made in the classroom and the video clip referred to in the letter is password-protected; someone in the class must’ve snitched to the bully squad.
The letter is a document of its time – Israel, 2012. But the self-righteous violence, indolence and pig-headed dogmatism make it sound like a memento from the American 50′s, German 30′s, or any old time in the USSR. I preserved the pompous style of the original and, to sweeten the pill, propose readers to imagine the contents read out by Field-marshal Herring from The Great Dictator.
10 January 2012
Dear Professor Shenhav,
Re: Your contemptible statements against “Im Tirtzu”
A few days ago, the Student Union network posted a video clip a lecture you gave as part of the Introduction to Sociology course, an obligatory course in the Sociology and Anthropology department. In the course of the lecture, the footage shows, you relieved yourself of the following drivel:
“When this whole story with this stupid organisation called Im Tirtzu was taking place, which attacked the fact, the stupid fascist, which attacked the fact, by the way sponsored with American evangelist Christian radical money, which is ready to support this as part of its war against the Arabs in Israel, a complicated story, they claimed, that in the political science departments, they did a report in the political science departments, and claimed that most of the faculty there is left-wing. This connects to your question. Most of the faculty isn’t left-wing, it’s liberal in its way of thinking. Because social sciences are inherently liberal. So to say that most of the staff is left-wing, liberal, is nonsense, because the repertoire on which you draw is liberal. Otherwise you’ll shut these departments down. Because the term “left-wing” is very problematic in that context, because what exactly is left wing? I think, and this is to confuse you a little more, that someone supporting two state for two peoples is a right-winger. Left winger? I’m opposed to two states for two peoples. So I’m left-wing?”
We preserved the garbled style of the original.
Comments of such nature, made before an audience of students on an obligatory course, betray shameful ignorance on your part. As a “great liberal” you clearly violated instruction 1109/11 (21.12.2010) of the Higher Education Council, which clearly state that “any attempt at politicisation of the academia should be rejected.” In this decision, the Higher Education Council ruled that the lectures should strive to expose the students “to as varied a survey as possible of the areas which they teach.” Which, of course, failed to take place. In this last lecture you unilaterally abused your standing, expressing one-sided political opinions while barefacedly ignoring the Higher Education Council’s decision.
You claimed that Im Tirtzu attacked the face that faculty members in political science are left-wing, or, according to your interpretation, liberals. This is blatant misrepresentation of our reports, and, graver still, the concept of liberalism. The report we released on the developments in the political science didn’t assault the “left-wing” political opinions of faculty members, but displayed the lack of variety in the content materials, along with the exclusion, elimination and silencing of researchers and research approaches that are not anti-Zionist or anti-national. You can read it on your own in the following hyperlink.
Another report commented specifically on the make-up of the faculty of the Politics and Government department at Ben Gurion university, noting that 8 out of the 11 lecturers at the time, and today 8 out of 9, are signatories of anti-Israeli petitions or have expressed radical left-wing position, such as supporting conscientious objection, accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing, or supporting Tali Fahima and Azmi Bishara. You can read this in the following hyperlink. In other words, your interpretation of the term “liberal” is a person supporting conscientious objection to service in the IDF or accusing Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing. To your mind, someone who doesn’t support conscientious objection or the dissemination of anti-Semitic blood libel, is not a liberal. This is probably the most pathetic and miserable definition of liberalism. It is regrettable to see a lecturer of your standing, chosen by a distinguished university to teach as course as important as “Introduction to Sociology”, displaying such profound ignorance on the issues he comments on.
It would appear you have forgotten there are important academic and ideological movements that see no contradiction whatsoever between nationalism and liberalism. There are approaches and social sciences that have complete faith in individual rights and liberalism and simultaneously oppose the pseudo-liberal model, the automatic support of which for dark regimes and the assault on the values of the Western world has in fact turned it into completely anti-liberal.
It seems the fact that the Higher Education Council unanimously endorsed the conclusions of the international committee that looked into the academic level and the claims about political bias in the political science department, and which completely vindicated the reports we publish, fails to impress you.
In the future we recommend you think, if even a little, before commenting in a manner that shames you yourself first and foremost. Silence befits the wise men, and even more so it befits the fools. A complaint regarding your despicable behaviour has been filed with the Higher Education Council.
Kind regards,
Ronen Shoval, Chairman, “Im Tirtzu”
Erez Tadmor, head of the hasbara and policy department. CC:
Members of the Higher Education Council
Prof. Aharon Shai, Rector, Tel Aviv University
Prof. Yoav Ariel, Student Dean, Tel Aviv University
Mr. Amit Barak, Spokesman, Im Tirtzu
Mr. Matan Peleg, Head of Human Resources, Im Tirtzu
Mr. Uri Reshtick, Chair, Tel Aviv University Student Union
Yesterday, Ami posted here a video of a young American woman having an intense overreaction to reading the words “Israel” and “apartheid” in the same sentence, in a book by Ron Paul. It seems her brother slipped her the book by way of a joke and recorded her reaction; the reaction is throwing something like a tantrum and soggily refusing to open any more presents.
It now appears (thanks to a tip from a reader), that the weeping woman is none other than Emily K. Schrader, an assistant development director at Stand With Us. SWU is a rather tiresome organisation mostly concerned with aggressive pro-Israel propaganda and with smearing Israel’s critics. According to her Linked In profile, (since removed, but available on Google Cache), she’s also the California State Chair at Students for Rick Perry. And, as Ami pretty much guessed, Emily has previously held a position with Christians United for Israel – the organisation of murky philo/anti-Semitic pastor John Hagee. Hagee and CUFI served as one of the inaugural sponsors of the ultra-right movement Im Tirtzu, which is providing the astro-turf for much of the anti-democratic legislation happening in Israel.
How do I feel, as an Israeli, seeing this person act out like that? I feel embarrassed, frankly. Israel is a real state that sits in a real country; both have merits and faults, with the state recently particularly exceeding in the latter. It’s downright bewildering to see an adult person of sufficient intelligence to attend higher education and pursue an ambitious (if profoundly misguided) political career behave like a My Little Pony fan who got slipped a horsemeat sandwich.
Israelis and Palestinians are supremely lucky to have so much international attention focused upon our conflict. But you can’t help yourself wishing some of our weirder overseas groupies would get a grip. Emily’s brother, who had put the video online, removed it, but it went viral nevertheless. I suppose it’s a useful testimony to the level of maturity of some of those self-proclaimed “friends of Israel.”
Update: A Ron Paul supporter has done a damn thorough job of digging up everything there could be dug up about Schrader, significantly increasing the likelihood she and the woman in the video are the same person. Meanwhile, Ron Kampeas at JTA provides us with the offending paragraph:
…within Israeli politics, there is a great deal of debate and diversity of opinion. The Liberal party in Israel [sic] often raises questions about the apartheid conditions that Palestinians are subjected to. Even newspapers in Israel are willing to discuss this issue openly, but it is essentially never permitted in the United States. Former President Jimmy Carter is now persona non grata for raising the question in his most recent book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.
There’s a Liberal party in Israel?
We are now marking three years since the day the centrist Kadima party, with the cheerleading of the left-wing Labor party, embarked on a murderous and completely unnecessary war in Gaza, which saw nearly 1,500 people killed. Some 18 months earlier the same liberal parties went to a similarly unnecessary war in Lebanon, which saw nearly 1,300 people killed.
In-between the two wars, the two parties engaged in every kind of political debauchery, including smaller incursions into Palestinian Territories, extrajudicial executions, artillery and aerial bombings, spectacular corruption and rampant settlement construction, all the while enjoying the international aura of a “progressive” government
Kadima ever-so-deservingly fell from grace, Labor even-more-deservingly disintegrated and the conservative Likud took office. While prospects for civil liberties within Israel look bleak and nationalism is skyrocketing, Israel has also come under more grassroots and establishment international scrutiny than at any time in the last 20 years. Despite the cabinet’s warmongering rhetoric and several acts of senseless bloodshed (like that on the Mavi Marmara), overall under Netanyahu the death toll in the conflict went from over 3,000 to something like 300. Kadima, meanwhile, continues to screech from the opposition benches for a second Cast Lead, in those very words.
You wouldn’t believe it, but some Israeli and Western progressives still want to see Kadima and Labor back in power instead of the Likud. The mind boggles.
The simple answer is that we don’t have one. The website is a collective of authors, each of whom have their own opinions about BDS. Some oppose it, some support it; some, like yours truly, support the D but are not particularly fond of the BS. But unfortunately, our ability to freely discuss this key aspect of the fight against the occupation has been severely and deliberately crippled by recent legislation. We may still carry opinions on BDS; but outright calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions hold far too great a risk for our site – a risk we are not in the financial position to take. Since we are legally responsible for all content appearing on the website, this obligates us to erase outright calls, and only outright calls for BDS from the comment thread as well.
Here is how it works: In May 2011, the Knesset passed the notorious “Boycott Law”. The Boycott Law does not make it a criminal offence or even misdemeanour to call for boycott. Neither any of us, nor any of readers will go to jail for making such a call. But the law does allow anyone who feels they have been materially impaired by that hypothetical call to sue us for damages – without actually proving any damages were suffered. In other words, if a reader was to publish a comment explicitly calling for BDS, tomorrow the website could be slammed with a massive lawsuit by some other reader or a right-wing “lawfare” organisaton. Even if we won the case in the long run, the legal fees would have sunk us very quickly – our budget is minimal, not to say minute, and we have no assets we can liquify and throw into the fight.
Considerable consternation and agitation were provoked yesterday, when Lisa wrote:
None of the contributors to this site is permitted to express a position either against or in favour of the global BDS (Boycott, Divest and Sanctions) movement. Since +972 is also responsible for the comments, we delete any mention of BDS in the comment threads.
Thankfully, this is little more than an innocent misinterpretation of our editorial policy. We are not banned from expressing “any position”, and we certainly do not delete “any mention” of BDS. Only outright and explicit calls for boycott, and we do so with a heavy heart. As our managing editor, Shir Harel, wrote on Think Progress a few months ago:
We are proud to be a collective of bloggers whose opinions span the political spectrum, supplemented with a diverse roster of guest contributions. Yet this law has made it impossible for us to maintain an equal platform for everyone to make their argument heard. What’s more, as our website is legally responsible for comments our readers leave, we are now compelled to monitor and edit any comments that voice support for boycotts. We can’t even allow our readers the chance to freely argue back with us.
It may well be argued that by not censoring the anti-boycott voices as well, we are co-opted by the state into lending unfair advantage to BDS opponents. Good point; but I, at least, personally feel that while we are forced to enforce some of the state censorship, there’s no need to be overzealous and amplify this obscene little law by shutting down BDS discussions as a whole.
We allow any and all conversation on BDS, except clear and outright calls for boycott. We do this not because we are keen to enforce any purported interest or policy of this or any government – there is nothing that is more anathema to this website; and not because there is a collective stance on this issue. We do it simply because we don’t want to lend reactionaries an even greater victory by allowing them to sink the entire site.
Avigdor Lieberman’s party, Yisrael Beitenu, owes much of its clout to flying the secularist banner and opposing the growing religious influence over Israeli public life. So why aren’t they standing up against gender segregation? Put simply, they now have much bigger fish to fry.
Israeli Foreign Minister and chairman of Israel Beitenu, Avigdor Lieberman (photo: Israel IMFA / flickr)
The subject of segregation between men and women in Israeli public spaces continues to dominate the news. Tanya Rosenblit, the student already dubbed the Israeli Rosa Parks for refusing to move to the back of a “kosher” bus, has met yesterday with Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz and became the target of a smear campaign. Utra-Orthodox journalist and commentators accuse her of staging a provocation (well duh: any challenge to a despicable status quo is a provocation, in the best sense of the word), of threatening to strip her clothes and/or to sing (!), and, somehow, of perpetuating negative imagery of ultra-Orthodox in the media and thus being to blame for the brother of one of the commentators not being able to find a job. Meanwhile, scarcely a day passes without a news item about yet another public space or event going gender-segregated – be it a university gym or a municipality-sponsored lecture. But one voice is conspicuously meek and quiet in that debate: that of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s party, Yisrael Beitenu.
At first glance, it is surprising, because Yisrael Beitenu fought all of its election campaigns on a hardcore secularist-nationalist platform, championing the cause of civil marriage – a vital issue for Lieberman’s power-base of over 1 million Russian-speaking Israelis, about 300,000 of whom are barred from wedding in Israel’s ultra-Orthodox controlled rabbinate. Wouldn’t the gross violation of the already skewed “status quo” between church and state form an ideal opportunity for Lieberman to boost his secularist credentials? Well, no: Lieberman only spoke out on the culture war as late as this morning, on the occasion of the pulling of Energy Minister Uzi Landau’s bizarre bill providing for omnipotent Kashrut inspectors at power stations, complete the authority to cut off Israel’s electricity if they deemed it not kosher enough. But Landau is Lieberman’s man and a senior party member; it’s hardly conceivable he’d have launched such an ambitious legislative project without the knowledge of his boss. So what gives?
The simple answer is that Lieberman has long since transcended his original electorate. He is no longer “that Russian politician,” he’s as Israeli as they get. He doesn’t think about the preferences of a minority group – Israel’s second largest cultural minority though it may be. This is partly because he is quite sure most of them will vote for him for lack of alternatives, but it’s mostly Lieberman is aiming for the top and is thinking big. This is why, on the international stage, he could afford to profoundly offend his own electorate by endorsing the results of the parliamentary elections in Russia – an endorsement ultra-right Russian-Israeli Channel 9 describes as “an infuriating, indolent lie”. And this is why, on the home front, he avoids raising a ruckus around women’s rights: Lieberman wants to be prime minister – he has a very good chance if, say, Likud and Kadima sink into the already simmering infighting ahead of the next elections – and it’s quite obvious that the ultra-Orthodox parties will form the backbone of any coalition he is likely to construct. No reason to alienate them so early on. Moreover, it is extremely unlikely voters will punish Yisrael Beitenu on failing to stand up for women – they’ll vote for it as a proponent of stability and/or determined nationalism, where few Israeli politicians can compete with the foreign minister.
Lieberman is paying the advance for his future cabinet. As is often the case in many a party, when the stakes are so high, women’s rights can go hang.
Dmitry (Dimi) Reider is an Israeli journalist. His work has appeared in the New York Times,The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Haaretz, Jerusalem Post, and Index on Censorship. "Dimi's notes" has been quoted and referenced by the following publications:
