When left-leaning Haaretz explains in a news story that the Nakba Day events are “commemorating the ‘disaster’ of Israel’s formation,” this country has got a problem. If Haaretz doesn’t understand that Israeli Arabs are mourning what they and the other Palestinians lost in the 1948 war, not the state the Jews gained by winning it, then the attitude here toward the Nakba is worse than I thought.

It’s not just that right-wingers are deliberately distorting the Nakba’s meaning into something malevolent and traitorous, it’s that even well-meaning liberals have come by the same view innocently, from being bombarded by Israeli propaganda. (I don’t want to be too harsh on Haaretz; its editorial, “Commemorating the Nakba,” was a model of accuracy and fairness.) Yedioth Aharonoth’s news story said the day’s events “mark the ‘catastrophe’ of Israel’s inception.” This is the consensus view among Israeli Jews of what the Nakba is: a tale of grief over Israel’s birth, and an implicit wish for it to die, for the catastrophe to be reversed.

I’m sure this is what many Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza mean by it, and what many Arabs in foreign countries do, too. But for the most part, this is not what Israel’s Arab citizens mean. In 2008, Israel’s 60th year, I interviewed numerous Israeli Arabs about the Nakba - from supporters of Zionist parties to supporters of Arab parties to the then-mayor of Umm el-Fahm, a member of the Islamic Movement’s faction that supports no national party, and every single one of them told me that Israeli Jews have got it wrong. Arab citizens, they said, are not mourning Israel’s creation, they’re mourning what it cost them – the loss of their country, their fight for independence, over 400 villages that were destroyed and some 700,000 people who were exiled.

Mahmoud Abu Rajab, editor of Nazareth’s Al Akbar newspaper and a traditional Labor Party supporter, told me this: ”Yom Ha’atzmaut, when Israel was founded, was a time of nakba for Arab citizens. That’s something no one, not Jew or Arab, can deny.”

Ibrahim Shawahna, a physiotherapist and Hadash supporter from Sahknin, told me that on Nakba Day, he and his family visit the site of the former Galilee village where his wife’s parents lived. But he also said: “This is our country, and I won’t be part of any attempt to destroy it. What I want is equality.”

Where’s the contradiction? What does Israel expect from its Arab citizens – that they forget their history of only 64 years ago, that they banish all trace of sadness over it? And if they don’t, that means they’re spitting on this country, cursing its existence?

Yes, this is what Israel expects of its Arab citizens, and this is what Israel concludes about them if they don’t meet that expectation. The right-wing power in this country pounds away at this idea out of anti-Arab belligerence, while the mainstream and even many liberals simply absorb it from the atmosphere.

And it’s a lie. The Arab citizens of this country don’t burn Israeli flags, not on Nakba Day or any other day. They don’t call for the state’s destruction. With very rare exceptions, they don’t do anything subversive.  In effect, they have accepted the loss of 1948. What they won’t accept, though, is the justice of that loss.

For Israeli nationalists, the proud winners, this is intolerable. If Israeli Arabs don’t agree that they and their fellow Arabs brought their suffering upon themselves, that they are to blame for the war, the destroyed villages, the refugees and everything else, then they’re saying Israel doesn’t have a right to exist. Then on Nakba Day, they’re “marking the ‘catastrophe’ of Israel’s inception.”

A lie, but one that most Israelis believe. The truth, rather, is that by demonizing Nakba Day, the winners of the War of Independence are telling the losers that they’re not even allowed to cry, not in public, anyway.

It’s cruel. It’s the way of the conqueror.  I’m glad the Jews won the War of Independence, but in some ways it was a catastrophe for us, too.

Read also:
This Nakba Day, peace is more urgent then ever
IMAGES: Protesters, IDF clash on Nakba Day at Ofer prison
Rightists disrupt Nakba ceremony at Tel Aviv University
Why the inconvenient truths of the Nakba must be recognized

Of the five op-eds on Yedioth Ahronoth’s op-ed pages today, two are about Israeli police brutality - an all-time record, without question, for highest proportion of police brutality op-eds in an Israeli newspaper edition. The thing is, both are about police brutality against Jews – at the protest last week in Rabin Square against the Bibi-Mofaz deal.  The one by liberal Yael Gvirtz is titled “The smell of intimidation,” while center-rightist Bambi Sheleg’s is called “Democracy is drowning.” Both op-eds argue that police violence against nonviolent protesters reflects a government mentality that is potentially lethal to this country’s democracy.

I’m sorry, but when virtually nobody but the country’s “anarchists” have anything to say about the incomparably worse IDF and police violence used against Palestinian protesters – the peaceful as well as the rock-throwers - then I think people should shut up about police brutality against Jews. Their outcry is kind of hollow. Even the widespread denunciation of rifle-swinging Lt. Col. Shalom Eisner was aimed strictly at him; nobody but the anarchists and a few fellow travelers made the point that the problem wasn’t one officer but something a little larger.

Israeli cops – like American cops, as Gvirtz noted - are in general a violent bunch, especially when ordered to break up demonstrations.  In this country they prefer, of course, to beat up Arabs, but if there aren’t any in the crowd, they’ll beat up Jews - haredim, peaceniks, settlers, anti-disengagement protesters, university students, anybody. I used to think that once Israeli Jews found themselves the targets of police brutality, they’d stop doubting the accounts by Palestinians and “internationals” of their experiences at the hands of soldiers, police, Border Police, Shin Bet agents, etc. But no – when Palestinians or foreigners get bashed up or shot by Israeli security, the centrists here automatically accept the official version that the Arabs or goyim started it and have only themselves to blame, while the rightists couldn’t care less who started it - the Arabs and anti-Semites, including the Jewish ones, got what they deserved.

When you’re callous about what your “protectors” do to other people, then I’m afraid it’s poetic justice when they do it to you.

Related:
Arrested protesters tasered, beaten, threatened with rape
WATCH: Journalists among those arrested in protest against new government 

Why does a national leader decide to scrap new elections that he and everyone else knows he’s going to win by a landslide, which is what Bibi did last night? Because he’s got important work to do and he wants what’s called “industrial peace” – or, as Netanyahu himself put it, “stability.” Our national leader wants to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities and he’s waiting for the right opportunity to do so - when the Obama administration is hard put to stop him, meaning sometime between now and the November 2 U.S. presidential elections. Starting such a war is going to require every gram of attention and effort Bibi can call forth, and he doesn’t want the pressure of elections and forming a new government as (huge) distractions, which he would have had from now into October if he’d gone ahead with elections in September. Now, without those elections and with an absolutely unshakable coalition, he can give his full concentration to saving Israel from annihilation, as he sees it.

The argument that he made the deal with Kadima for domestic political reasons doesn’t wash. Domestic political reasons – mainly the growing public pressure to draft the haredim (ultra-Orthodox), who were vital to his coalition government  - made perfect sense for why he would go to early elections, as he seemed certain to do until very late last night. With elections ahead and thus no need to worry about preserving his coalition, he could campaign all summer on drafting the haredim, then, after the elections, water the plan down to nothing, thereby keeping his haredi allies content.

So if Bibi had just wanted to solve his domestic political problems, he would have gone ahead and called early elections. But then he would have been preoccupied with them for the next six months. By deciding against early elections, he’s keeping his calendar free. This is going to be a very, very busy time for him. He’s got a big project to finish, one he’s been talking about over and over and over for more than a decade. He doesn’t want anything to get in the way.

And if Netanyahu had done the expected thing and called new elections, that, too, would have been because he thought it would give him a freer hand to bomb Iran. He’s not worried about political survival – one way or another, with elections or without, he’s king of the hill and nobody can knock him off. No, he has a mission of national survival to accomplish sometime in the coming months, before it’s too late, and all his calculations are guided by his sacred duty to fulfill that mission. Everything else is commentary.

Last night, after the Israeli election was set for September 4, I saw a guy wearing a T-shirt that I thought summed up the public mood, which the main ”opposition” candidates have been and will be catering to. The T-shirt showed a comically wide-eyed, frightened John Cleese and his classic line from Fawlty Towers: ”Don’t mention the war!”

Perfect. The prime minister has the whole world scared to death that he’s going to bomb Iran, every poll shows that a great majority of Israelis don’t want him to do it – but it’s not an issue in Israeli politics and it almost certainly won’t be in the campaign. People don’t want to talk about it or hear about it. They sit silently as Netanyahu drips the fear of another Holocaust into their brains, softening them up for the war he’s waiting for the opportunity to start, then they go on about their business, a little more tenderized than before.  Except for the marginal left and a couple of rogue ex-Mossad and ex-Shin Bet chiefs, nobody challenges this “duty” of every Jew and every non-anti-Semitic gentile to choose war over a nuclear Iran.

Look at how the opposition and the public have reacted since ex-Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin accused Netanyahu and Barak last Friday of being “messianics” who can’t be trusted to deal reasonably with Iran. None of the three candidates purporting to offer a centrist alternative to Bibi - neither Kadima’s Shaul Mofaz, Labor’s Shelly Yacimovich nor Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid (There Is A Future) – grabbed the flag Diskin raised. His words, like those of Meir Dagan before him, caused a huge storm in the media, even overseas - but didn’t have the tiniest effect on the Likud and right wing’s control of the political arena. A Haaretz-Dialog poll published yesterday showed Netanyahu being more popular than Mofaz, Yacimovich and Lapid combined. It also showed him enjoying 2-1 public support against Diskin and his accusations.

In their hearts, Israelis would prefer that their government not start a war with Iran, but if somebody, such as the prime minister, tells them he’s going to do it anyway, they’ll go along. When push comes to shove, they’ll support it. The Israeli public is so weak, so intimidated by anybody who might stand up and accuse them of cowardice and treason if they don’t nod their heads to the proposal of the day for screwing the Arabs. They’re putty in the hands of a guy like Netanyahu.

The ”opposition” leaders know this, so they run from any issue in which they would have to position themselves to the left of Bibi (since right-of-Bibi is, of course, already overcrowded). They don’t challenge him on Iran, they don’t challenge him on the occupation, they don’t have anything to say about what most everyone else in the world thinks of when they hear the word “Israel” – war-mongering, trampling on Palestinians, militant Jewish fanaticism. These are the things that define Israel, the whole world knows it, and you won’t hear about any of this in this election campaign.

What will you hear about? Drafting the Haredim (ultra-Orthodox) and high prices. These are the hot-button issues in the country today, this is what people want to hear about, this is what it’s safe for both voters and politicians to scream and yell about – because it’s not right wing and it’s not left wing, it’s consensus, nobody will call you a coward or a traitor, everybody agrees, the goddamn haredim should serve the country like everybody else and these prices are too goddamn high.

Again, perfect. This is what Israelis really want, this is what Netanyahu, Mofaz, Yacimovich and Lapid are going to promise to deliver - and everybody knows everyone’s jerking each other off because nobody’s going to draft the Haredim – they won’t go and nobody’s going to make them go – and nobody’s going to lower prices, either, because this country’s economy is a piggish capitalist one and Netanyahu, who everybody knows will win the election, is the last guy on earth who wants to change that.

So the issues shaping up as the central ones of the campaign are not just trivial, they’re not  issues at all because in Israel 2012, nothing can or will be done about them.

As for the real issues, it’s not that there’s an elephant in the room that everyone’s pretending not to see, it’s that there are several elephants - war with Iran, the occupation, war with Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and/or Turkey, the rise of McCarthyism, the dread that Israel doesn’t have a future – which will continue to go unmentioned in polite, mainstream company during this supposed season of decision.

Boy, what a vibrant democracy we live in.

Below are excerpts from a lengthy April 3, 2009 interview in the Israeli daily Maariv conducted by Sari Makover Belikov with Benzion Netanyahu, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s father, who died Monday morning at age 102. They were translated into English and published the same day by Noam Sheizaf on his personal blog, Promised Land. Benzion Netanyahu, who had a deep, formative influence on the prime minister’s thinking, and who will be widely remembered as a great Zionist visionary, held views on Arabs and war that were simply horrific.

According to the interview, Professor Netanyahu, then 99, a world-renowned historian of the Spanish Inquisition, spoke with perfect lucidity; in fact, he was about to leave for a working visit to the United States. The professor gave the interview without first telling the Prime Minister’s Office.  As walla.co.il reported, the prime minister tried to prevent its publication and even called Maariv’s publisher, Ofer Nimrodi, on the matter. Finally it was agreed that because of Prof. Netanyahu’s age, his son Iddo would be able to go over the father’s answers prior to publication. Noam felt this gave even further confirmation that Prof. Netanyahu was in full control of his faculties during the interview, since his son Iddo surely would not have let Maariv publish a text which did not reflect his father’s personality and views.

Excerpts:

On the “essence” of Arabs

Prof. Netanyahu: The Jews and the Arabs are like two goats facing each other on a narrow bridge. One must jump to the river – but that involves a danger of death. The strong goat will make the weaker one jump …  and I believe the Jewish power will prevail.

Q: What does the Arabs’ “jump” entail?

A: That they won’t be able to face [anymore] war with us, which will include withholding food from Arab cities, preventing education, terminating electrical power and more. They won’t be able to exist, and they will run away from here. But it all depends on the war, and whether we will win the battles with them.

Q: I suppose you don’t believe in the peace process.

A: I don’t see any signs that the Arabs want peace. …  We will face fierce attacks from the Arabs, and we must react firmly. If we don’t, they will go on and Jews will start leaving the country. …  We just handed them a strong beating in Gaza, and they still bargain with us over one hostage. …  If we gave them a beating that would really hurt them, they would have given us Gilad Shalit back.

Q: Operation Cast Lead was one of the worst beatings we ever handed on a civilian population.

A: That’s not enough. It’s possible that we should have hit harder.

Q: You don’t like the Arabs, to say the least.

A: The Bible finds no worse image than that of the man from the desert. And why? Because he has no respect for any law. Because in the desert he can do as he pleases. The tendency toward conflict is in the essence of the Arab. He is an enemy by essence. His personality won’t allow him any compromise or agreement. It doesn’t matter what kind of resistance he will meet, what price he will pay. His existence is one of perpetual war.

Q: Is there any hope of peace?

A: Out of an agreement? No. The other side might keep the peace if it understands that doing anything [else] will cause it enormous pain. The two-state solution doesn’t exist. There are no two peoples here. There is a Jewish people and an Arab population. …  There is no Palestinian people, so you don’t create a state for an imaginary nation. …  They only call themselves a people in order to fight the Jews.

Q: So what’s the solution?

A: No solution but force …  strong military rule. Any outbreak will bring upon the Arabs enormous suffering. We shouldn’t wait for a big uprising to start, but rather act immediately with great force to prevent them from carrying on. … If it’s possible, we should conquer any disputed territory in the Land of Israel. Conquer and hold it, even if it brings us years of war. We should conquer Gaza, and parts of the Galilee, and the Golan. This will bring upon us a bloody war, since war is difficult for us – we don’t have a lot of territory, while the Arabs have lots of space to retreat to. But that’s the only way to survive here.

There is valuable experience [on this matter] we don’t pay notice to. I mean the Ottoman rule over the Arabs. The Turks ruled over the Arabs for 400 years, and there was peace and quiet everywhere. The Arabs hated the Ottomans, but every little thing they did brought mass killings and hanging in towns squares. They were hanging people in Damascus, and Izmir …  every town had hanging posts in its center. … The Arabs were so badly beaten, they didn’t dare revolt. Naturally, I don’t recommend the use of hangings as a show of force like the Turks did, I just want to show that the only thing that might move the Arabs from the rejectionist position is force.

On the peace process

Prof. Netanyahu: The problem with the Left is that it thinks the war with the Arabs is like all the wars that nations around the world are conducting. These wars end with a compromise after one side wins or after both sides get tired from war and understand that victory is not possible. But in the Arabs’ case, their nature and character won’t allow any compromise. When they talk of compromise, it’s a way of deceiving. They want to make the other side stop giving its best efforts and fall into the trap of compromising. The Left helps them with that goal.

Q: If compromise replaces war, what is the damage?

A: Compromise is not realistic. It weakens our positions and brings us to a state of limpness, of false believes, of illusions. Every illusion is weakening.

On Arab citizens of Israel

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

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

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

On his son, Israel’s prime minister 

Prof. Netanyahu: Benjamin, or Bibi, is, in several aspects, a great man. He can influence and motivate people to do what’s necessary. …  He is loyal to his people, and has a sense of responsibility. …  He is not one who prefers the comfort of compromise just to rid himself of pressure.

Q. Is he influenced by your opinions?

A: Sometimes I feel Bibi is influenced by them from a very early age, and sometimes I don’t. We don’t always have the same opinions…

Q: And still, how much do you think you’ve influenced his opinions today?

A: I have a general idea. Bibi might aim for the same goals as mine, but he keeps to himself  the ways to achieve them, because if he gave expression to them, he would expose his goals.

Q: Is that your wish?

A: No, I just believe that this could be the case. Because he is smart. Because he is very careful. Because he has his ways of handling himself. I am talking about tactics regarding the revealing of theories that people with a different ideology might not accept. That’s why he doesn’t expose them - because of the reaction from his enemies as well as from the people whose support he seeks. It’s an assumption, but it might be correct.

 

This is just about unprecedented in Israeli history, these public attacks on the reliability of the prime minister and defense minister by the security chiefs who served under them. On Friday, Yuval Diskin, who headed the Shin Bet from 2005 until last May, joined the club by describing Netanyahu and Barak as two super-rich ”messianics” who are not to be trusted with such a fateful challenge as that of Iran.

Last year, Diskin and ex-IDF chief Gabi Ashkenazi were named by ex-Mossad director Meir Dagan as having been his partners in ”stop[ping] Bibi and Barak” from setting out on “any dangerous adventure.”  Later, Uzi Arad, who was Netanyahu’s closest ally for 15 years before being forced out of his post as National Security Council head in one of the endless intrigues in the Prime Minister’s Office, said that because Bibi was “easy to scare,” aides constantly whispered in his ear to turn him against their rivals. The origin of his break with Netanyahu, said Arad, was when he began raising doubts about an attack on Iran. Such doubts were also what brought on Ashkenazi’s ferocious power struggle with Barak, and his at-best correct relations with Netanyahu.

So here we have the leadership duo of Israel described as being basically unfit for office by the former Mossad, Shin Bet and National Security Council heads who worked for them for years, with the former IDF chief’s similar views remaining off-the-record yet known to everyone.

Did Ehud Olmert’s military/intelligence heads slag him off while he was prime minister? No. Did Sharon’s? No. Did Barak’s when he was prime minister? No. Did Peres’, did Rabin’s, did Shamir’s, did Begin’s – did any previous prime minister’s security chiefs go public about his fundamental untrustworthiness and unsuitability for the job?

Actually there is one precedent - Netanyahu, during his first term as PM, from 1996-99. Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, after retiring as IDF chief, annouced his run for the premiership by saying, “Netanyahu is dangerous for Israel.” Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai, who quit the cabinet and also ran for premier, was completely open about Netanyahu’s lack of honesty, challenging him in their election debate to ”look me in the eye, Bibi.” Dan Meridor, another senior minister who quit Netanyahu (though he’s come back to him now), announced his run for prime minister by saying Bibi had brought a “culture of lies” to government.

No Israeli prime minister but Netanyahu has ever faced such attacks on his character by witnesses like these. No Israeli defense minister but Barak has faced them, either. Bibi and Barak, in a league of their own. What is it about them that draws out such contempt from such unlikely sources?

I think it’s their own contemptuousness, above all toward those who disagree with them. Each one, as Diskin said, thinks he’s the “messiah,” a superior man of superior intelligence, strength and vision come to save the rabble, not to listen to them, not to respect them, either. Netanyahu shows this in his self-adoration, together with his transparent lying, manipulation of people’s fears and flattery, the last of which he reserves mainly for Americans. He thinks he’s God and other people are far, far lesser beings - useful, maybe, but nothing more.

Barak, for his part, wasn’t always like this. While he was already known in his first term as “Napoleon,” as an extremely headstrong fellow, he wasn’t despised like he is today. It was after his brief stint as prime minister blew up with the second intifada that he seemed to become deeply resentful; he divorced his wife, went off to America to get rich and returned as this imperious, intimidating junta type. If he couldn’t be prime minister again, he’d be defense minister for life. He turned into a cold and scary guy, once storming a Labor Party stage and ripping the microphone out of a party elder’s hand, turning every media interview into a lecture by raising his voice menacingly whenever the interviewer tried to get a word in. Olmert said Barak used to humiliate IDF generals, cutting them off and putting them down, at cabinet meetings. If Bibi tries to cover his contemptuousness with an earnest facade, Barak doesn’t bother; he’s not interested in people’s votes anymore, just their obedience.

When you’ve got two people with serious superiority complexes not only running the country, but planning to start a war that every other head of state and security chief in the world - along with most of those in Israel – thinks is a global threat, then we’re in Dr. Strangelove territory. Strange-thinking people -  ”messianics” – are playing with bombs, so somebody has to do something. And so you get the extraordinary alarm of a recently retired Shin Bet director and Mossad head, along with the “deafening silence” of a recently retired IDF chief. The extremity of their reactions tells you how extreme the situation is. (Arad, though, spoke out to clear his name after being accused of compromising national security, not to protect Israel from its leaders.)

It’s natural to wonder how two men who think they’re God can work together, and seemingly so well. My guess is that it’s simple mutual convenience – Bibi wants the best military technocrat he can find who wants to bomb Iran, and that’s Barak, while Barak wants to be defense minister for whoever’s prime minister, and that’s Bibi. But the power lies with Netanyahu – he doesn’t need Barak while Barak needs him desperately, which means, I think, that even if Barak has or will have doubts about the need to hit Iran, he won’t press them with Bibi because his political career will be over.

“I’ve seen them up close,” Diskin told some 50 people in Kfar Saba at a weekly public affairs meeting. “They’re neither of them messiahs and they’re not people that I, at least on a personal level, trust to have the ability to lead the State of Israel into an event of that scale [war with Iran] and also out of it. These are not the people I would like to see holding the wheel when starting something like that.”

It really is like watching a movie, only this isn’t a movie.

In his 2004 book The Case for Democracy, Natan Sharansky (with co-author Ron Dermer, head of Bibi Netanyahu’s brain trust) popularized his “town square test,” which he called the threshold test of whether a society is free or not. It went like this:

If a person cannot walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm, then that person is living in a fear society, not a free society. We cannot rest until every person living in a “fear society” has finally won their freedom.

The town square test was adopted by George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice and the rest of the war-on-terror crowd; it flattered their self-delusion that they invaded Iraq for altruistic purposes. What always got me, though, was that Sharansky, a true-blue Jewish nationalist, didn’t notice that his test was an embarrassment to Israel because it proved that Israel was not a free society, but a fear society. Can an Arab or Jewish citizen enter a public square in this country, especially in Jerusalem, the capital, and denounce the occupation or one of our wars without being physically harmed by people in the crowd? Of course not. If Mohammed Bakri or Uri Avnery, let’s say, were crazy enough to take the town square test, they would be set upon by the rednecks present, mainly young ones, and if they didn’t shut up and get out of there ASAP, they’d be physically attacked. At best, the cops would come break it up and likewise tell Bakri or Avnery to get moving fast, and if they didn’t, they’d be arrested, and if they insisted on going back and taking the town square test again, they’d be imprisoned.

By the renowned standard of the chairman of the Jewish Agency and one of the great heroes of modern Jewish history,  Israel is not a free society, but a fear society.

It was clear enough in 2004 when Sharansky was taking bows at the White House. But today this truth is so in-your-face, it makes itself so plain so often that I doubt Sharansky, not to mention Dermer, want to bring up the town square test anymore except to the safest, most brainwashed pro-Israel audiences.

And the thing is it’s not just the police, the army, the settlers or the McCarthyite right that make this a fear society – it’s in the street, the “faces in the crowd,” the redneck element in virtually every part of this country that’s attracted to right-wing mobs, and which is enabled by the silent majority that’s too scared or indifferent  - or quietly sympathetic – to stand up to them.

If we talk about the Israel Police, it’s true they deny protesters their freedom, often brutally, when they enforce the deepening national ideology that any but the most impotent, Peace Now-style protest is a threat to Israel’s security. But it’s also true that by preventing emphatically pro-Palestinian, non- or anti-Zionist protesters from having their (completely non-violent) say in public, the cops are saving these people from certain mob attack.

Look at this six-and-a-half minute video by The Real News’ Lia Tarachansky from the detention and arrest of Zochrot (Remembering) activists who wanted to go into Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square on Wednesday night, into the crowd of Independence Day revelers, and remind them of the Nakba by placing cards with the names of pre-1948 Palestinian villages on the ground. Two minutes into the video, people are coming up to the activists and cursing them in the most vile way. At 3:40 a couple of big, burly men start threatening the Zochrot people and the police steer them away. A soldier says he’s there with some of the guys in his unit, and that “if we had the chance, we’d shoot you one by one.” A man smiles and says, “You’re lucky the police are here. You should thank them.”

SOB that he is, he’s right. The cops roughed up a couple of Zochrot folks, but if the police had let them do what they were planning to do in Rabin Square that night, they could have been in serious danger.

This was also the story at the two fly-ins at Ben-Gurion Airport: The cops denied foreign activists and the Israelis waiting for them the right to protest, but if they hadn’t, the protesters would have been at the mercy of the Israeli street. At the first fly-in last July, I saw a few Israelis in the arrivals hall suddenly hold up signs and start chanting “Israel apartheid!” and the cops immediately hustled them outside – while a spontaneous mini-mob of Israelis followed them, cursing and yelling and waving their fists. If the police hadn’t gotten between the protesters and the insta-mob, things would have gotten a lot uglier.

The fear society runs both top-down and bottom up; it’s very deep, it’s in the bloodstream of the nation of Israel, and it’s caused by this Us vs. Them thing we’ve got going with the Muslim world and anybody who doesn’t take our side against it. If you want to party in the town square with everyone else, it’s a free country. But if you want to say something people really don’t want to hear, you’ll find out how free it is.

Related news:
Police besiege, arrest activists planning to commemorate Nakba

I try not to go out of my way to write good things about Israel, but I also try not to go out of my way not to write good things about Israel, because, among other reasons, it’s important to remember that for all the justified criticism and condemnation, there’s something worth saving here. In that spirit, I want to take issue with a growing view that Israel is a violent society and becoming more so, and that this is proved by a recent series of scandalously violent incidents. My view is that Israel is not a violent society, certainly not in comparison with the only other country I ever lived in, the United States, and not in comparison with most other countries in the world, I don’t think, if you go by their entire history, not just the modern, post-conquest/genocide/slavery/racist/colonialist stage.

Friday saw yet another Israeli soccer brawl, causing the unprecedented cancellation of all weekend games. Right before that was IDF Lt. Col. Shalom Eisner’s bash-up of a West Bank bicycle protest, along with the ongoing hero/martyr treatment he’s getting from the mainstream right, not just the already violent extreme. Right before Eisner was the midday public orgy at Tel Aviv’s Bograshov Beach, with a woman said to be visibly mentally disturbed. A few weeks before that, there was the pogrom by a few hundred Beitar Jerusalem soccer fans screaming “death to the Arabs” and slamming Arab workers and customers around in the capital’s largest shopping mall.

Brutal and vile, all of it. Nevertheless, if we take these scandals one by one, none of them points to a uniquely malevolent streak in Israeli society. We’re not a gentle nation, but neither are we a sadistic one.

To start with soccer violence, while being fueled by what is, indeed, the definitive Israeli disease – anti-Arab racism – it is by no means unique to this country. In Europe, soccer violence has been far worse and it’s been fueled not only by anti-Arab racism but by anti-black and anti-Jewish racism and probably other varieties as well. (True, there’s also horrible anti-black racism in the stands at Israeli soccer games, but it’s not connected to violence like anti-Arab racism is because blacks, while generally looked down on by Israelis,  are not seen here as the enemy.) The most obvious context for Israeli soccer violence is not Israel but soccer, which has set off incomparably worse violence over the years in Europe and Latin America than in this country. By international standards, Israeli soccer violence is, at worst, normal.

The beach orgy in Tel Aviv – in which the mentally disturbed woman reportedly invited several young guys to have sex with her – shows a kind of sniggering machismo that is Israeli, but not just Israeli. As sickening as that show was, it could have happened anywhere. It can’t be blamed on the occupation or Likud or the Israeli mentality.

The other two incidents, the Eisner assaults and Betar Jerusalem pogrom, can be. They were peculiarly Israeli scandals, they both grew out of a long national tradition of Jewish domination of Arabs. Yet if I compare Israeli domination of Arabs to that of the Western powers over Muslims, blacks, Latinos and Asians over centuries of colonialism, not to mention their domination of weaker nations during the eras of conquest, genocide and slavery, or the domination of minorities and women in many Third World countries today, then neither Eisner, nor the IDF nor Israeli society as a whole are particularly brutal at all.

If we compare the IDF to other armies during war and occupation, then it just might be “the most moral army in the world.” As armies go, the IDF isn’t brutal – it’s war and occupation that are, and the IDF’s problem is that it spends too much time at war and occupation. And if Israel were to end the occupation and its militaristic approach to the Middle East – which is unlikely, but still possible – the IDF would become a peacetime army and the Eisners in it would be neutralized. Personally, Israelis are not violent (though they can be loud and at times surly). It’s Israel’s policy toward Arabs that’s violent, and if that policy changed, I think things would be pretty cool around here.

As for the Kach contingent among the fans of Beitar Jerusalem (and other soccer teams), even they, too, would be pacified to a great extent by an end to our war with the Arabs. And whatever violence remained in them would be owed at least as much to their being soccer fans as to their being Israelis.

The only peculiarly violent thing about this country is its policy toward the “natives,” and the best, most democratic, most peaceful countries in the world had the same kind of problem in the past, only worse. The difference between the “good” countries and Israel is that they either got rid of or vanquished their natives and, in the last half of the 20th century, decided to stop subjugating them abroad. So Israel is not particularly brutal or violent or bad; the only thing that keeps it from being a good country, which I think it was before the occupation, is that it still subjugates the natives at home while attacking them abroad. The problem is not what Israel is, but what it does, and that, as history has proven all over the world, can change.

It’s been a mystery for many years why Jonathan Pollard is still in prison, why U.S. president after president refuses to pardon him. The reason in the minds of his hardcore right-wing supporters, those who see him as a Jewish hero, is anti-Israeli/anti-Semitic feeling high up in Washington, which is too stupid and rotten a claim to bother refuting. No, it has to be an American belief that freeing Pollard could do further damage to U.S. security, because Pollard - and Israel – have clearly been taught a harsh enough lesson for the crimes he committed. It’s absolutely true what his supporters say – spies who worked for America’s enemies have gotten off far easier than he did for spying for an American ally. He’s in the 27th year of a life sentence with no pardon in sight, the White House reportedly having turned down Peres’ request this week. (Pollard was hospitalized over the weekend with ”severe pain,” hence the renewed push for a pardon, which is getting a lot of publicity here.)

But now, finally, an explanation for Pollard’s exhorbitant punishment is coming to light:  The Americans have believed all along that he wasn’t the only spy working for Israel, and until Israel comes clean, he stays behind bars.

The first mention of this came on Monday in Nahum Barnea’s Yedioth Ahronoth column, where he wrote that after Pollard’s 1985 arrest, the Americans asked the Israelis: Who gave the order to spy on the United States, who else besides Pollard was spying, and who in the political leadership (led at the time by PM Peres, FM Shamir and DM Rabin) knew what was going on?

“They chose to lie,” wrote Barnea. “Thus, the heads of the U.S. intelligence agencies are convinced to this day that Pollard was merely one screw in an Israeli spying machine.”

Then today Yedioth reported Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon saying, “Former CIA Director George Tenet once admitted to me that the U.S. is convinced that Pollard had a partner. Tenet said that until they know who that partner is, Pollard will stay in prison.”  Ayalon, Israel’s ambassador in Washington in 2002-2006, added: ”I explained to Tenet that it’s not correct, and that Israel is not gathering intelligence in the United States, but I understood from him and from other senior American officials that they see Pollard as a bargaining chip that can land them this partner who they believe is still active.”

Fascinating, isn’t it? The Americans have believed all along that Israel is covering up another spy or spies, and if Israel had given up the name(s), Pollard presumably would have been freed years ago. Israel’s number one journalist, Nahum Barnea, says Israeli officials lied to the Americans about the affair. And notice that while Ayalon says he told Tenet that Israel wasn’t running any spies in the United States now, he didn’t say Pollard had acted alone back then. (Not that Ayalon would necessarily know, nor that he would necessarily tell the truth if he did).

Well, there is at least one living, mentally competent Israeli who knows for sure whether Pollard acted alone or not, and who either knows or can find out whether Israel has been running any spies in America since then, and that man is President Shimon Peres. He’s going to Washington soon to receive the U.S. Presidential Medal of Honor, so here’s my suggestion: He takes the most reliable lie detector test available in Washington, where he is asked three questions: Were there any other spies working for Israel with Pollard? Have there been any since his exposure? Are there any working now?

If Peres answers “no” to all three questions and is determined to be telling the truth, Pollard goes free. If Peres answers “no” and is determined to be lying, Pollard stays in prison until Peres gives up the names, after which Pollard goes free while the other spies are arrested and Israel lives with the consequences.

Barnea wrote that after Israeli officials lied to the Americans, ”The price was paid by Israeli intelligence agencies, by American Jews who acted in good faith on Israel’s behalf, and by Pollard. Peres, Shamir and Rabin escaped unharmed.”

Everyone knows Israel destroyed Pollard’s life 30 years ago. The question now is whether Israel had the power to give him his life back but refused, and is refusing  even now. Peres, who asked Obama to free Pollard on “humanitarian” grounds,  knows the truth – and it will no doubt die with him.

If Gunter Grass had ever said or done anything that showed hatred of Jews or of Israel, then I, too, might take a very uncharitable view of his warning in the poem “What must be said” that this country, or even this government, is liable to nuke Iran and ”annihilate the Iranian people.” Like I wrote before, that’s a misleading suggestion; for all the past reports about “bunker-busting” bombs and future scenarios about a regional WMD war, Israel is not planning to attack Iran with nuclear weapons.

But Gunter Grass not only has never said an anti-Semitic or Israel-hating thing in his life that anyone’s aware of, he’s spent his career confronting Germany over its Nazi past, he’s visited Israel at least a few times, he’s a classic European liberal whose criticism of this country is that of a pained, disappointed friend, and he even speaks in the poem of “the State of Israel, to which I am bound and wish to stay bound,” concluding it with a wish for peace that includes Israelis.

No, Grass is not an anti-Semite or hater of Israel – he’s a liberal friend of the Jews and of Israel who wants this country to turn away from all the things liberals naturally dread - extreme nationalism, militarism, ethnocentrism, paranoia - the very things, unfortunately, that Israel has come to stand for.

So if I don’t think Grass is anti-Israel or anti-Semitic, how do I explain his writing such a thing as that Israel is liable to nuke Iran? Given his record on Jews and Israel, and given the context of the poem, I think he just got carried away - not by his hatred of Israel, which doesn’t exist, but by his hatred of war. Hatred of war is the theme of Grass’s career as a political activist and, by the way, of the poem “What must be said.”

But most people weighing in on Grass don’t agree – Jeffrey Goldberg, The New Republic, a host of German writers and, of course, the Israeli and American Jewish establishment, are accusing him basically of neo-Nazism.  And what’s their evidence (besides the poem’s critical tone, exagerrated claim and so-called “moral equivalence,” all sure indicators of Israel-hatred)? Grass’ time in the Waffen SS.

He was 17. He was drafted. He was in for a few months at the end of the war, and he says he never fired a gun. I agree that it was wrong and cowardly of him to hide that history for so long - but I also think he atoned for it when he admitted it publicly at age 78. That was an act of bravery. From  his 2007 New Yorker essay, “How I spent the war – A recruit in the Waffen S.S.”:

What I accepted with the stupid pride of youth I wanted to conceal after the war out of a recurrent sense of shame. But the burden remained, and no one could alleviate it.