“After the people was exiled from its land by force of arms, it kept faith with it in all the lands of its diaspora, and never ceased from praying and hoping to return to its land and renewing in it its political sovereignty.”  Among the many falsehoods contained in Israel’s Declaration of Independence, this must be the most baseless, yet you can hardly describe the core of Zionism without it. After dedicating his earlier book, “The Invention of the Jewish People,” to debunking the notion that there is a Jewish nation, and the lie that it was “exiled from its land by force,” Sand now turns attention in his new book, “The Invention of the Land of Israel” – to the second part of that sentence.

[whine] I’ll begin with a technical remark. Israeli publishers are sadly behind the times when it comes to digital books. Reading a book on the Kindle is a completely different experience than reading the dead tree edition: you can mark the text and keep it for future reference without damaging the book itself; you can easily copy relevant parts and quote them; and you can write remarks as you read, and read them later. I’ve been using a Kindle for two years now, and every time I have to crack open a codex I feel like I’ve been kicked back to the 19^th century. Yet there is no proper Hebrew e-reader. [/whine]

Whines aside, this is a much better book than the first one; that book was published by the highbrow (read: poseur) Resling publishing house, and was accordingly tongue-tied and heavy on jargon. This one was published by a popular publisher – Kineret, Zmora Bitan – and now we see Sans at his prime, his writing much better and clearer than in “The Invention of the Jewish People.” Sand knows how to tell a tale and leaves the reader gripping for more.

The heart of Sand’s thesis is the intentional confusion in Zionism between the Halachic – Jewish law – concept of Eretz Israel (“The Land of Israel”, EI) and the concept of a place which is under Jewish sovereignty, and yearning for such a place. “Eretz Israel” is, originally, a Talmudic concept – not a biblical one – which delineates it as a territory that imposes extra religious obligations on Jews living in it, which Jews living outside of it are unburdened of. Talmudic legend grants EI various mystical qualities (wisdom, beauty and other nonsense which could only be written by people who haven’t lived here), but does not refer to EI as the “homeland ” of the Jews, and neither does it require them to live in it.

Judaism is of no homeland. It is a religious movement which can exist anywhere, whose last territorial anchors were cut down with the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 AD. Were contemporary Judaism what Zionism later made it out to be – a people living in their homeland – it would have suffered a terrible shock. And while many were horrified by the destruction, and while a few haunting mourning poems were written in Greek or Aramaic, Judaism survived the destruction of the Temple amazingly well.

Most of the Jews in the world at the time – Sand quotes Philo of Alexandria on the issue – did not consider either Jerusalem or Judea their homeland, which is quite natural as they were not born there; and they didn’t think of EI at all. They made pilgrimage – or, rather, sent envoys on pilgrimages on their behalf, and sent their contributions with them – but they never saw it as a political center. When Judea erupted into insurrection in 66 and again in 132, it received no support worth mentioning from the rest of the Jews. The Sadducee priesthood class lost all its power, but the Pharisees prepared the ground well: every Jewish community already had its “minor temple,” the synagogue.

Under threat. Shlomo Sand. (Photo: Yossi Gurvitz)

Pharisee Judaism, which would in time morph into rabbinical Judaism, made a shady deal with their Roman overlords after the destruction of the Temple: they would lead the people with Roman support, and a descendent of Hillel the Old would serve as patriarch (Nasi, in Hebrew) until 415. The rabbis kept their part of the deal: they did their best to tame Jewish nationalism. They turned the messiah, formerly just a successful warrior king – king because of being a successful warrior – into a being of marvel, super-human and inhuman, so as to avoid the misfortune of ever seeing one. The messiah, after all, is supposed to return the world back to what it was before the rise of the rabbis: a temple, sacrifices, and gleefully smirking priests back in their station. Can’t have that.

As part of this process of taming, the rabbis came up with the Three Vows, which forbade Jews from massively emigrating to EI, forbade them from rebelling against the nations of the world (it’s worth noting the rabbis, servitors of the emperors, gave divine sanction to their rule), and the third vow is directed at the nations: “That they should not enslave Israel too much.” Rabbinical Judaism left EI behind. Sand quotes some later rabbis who opposed emigrating to EI since the Halachic demands on those living in it are very high, and failure to meet them would make the land impure.

Thus, while hordes of Christian pilgrims flooded the country, the number of Jewish pilgrims coming to see the land which they supposedly ” never ceased from praying and hoping to return to” was miniscule. The noted Hebrew writer Boaz Evron’s book “Ha’Heshbon Ha’Leumi” seems to breathe life into every page of Sand’s book. Evron used to quote A. B. Yehoshua, who wrote in despair that, judging by medieval and early modern travel books, Jews seem to have made every effort to avoid EI; they often travelled around it.

Until nationalism came around, and Eastern European nationalism was possibly the worst. Intolerant and often murderous, its arrival sent a large number of Jews – always a convenient scapegoat – away. Millions of the Jews of Eastern Europe fled to the Americas, mostly to the US. A significant number of the remaining either joined or formed socialist or communist movements, and many became ultra-Orthodox, rejecting modernism in all its forms. A small minority formed the Zionist movement.

The rabbis have, as a rule, rejected it and persecuted it with fury, both Orthodox and Reform. The first because they saw how Zionism twists Judaism into a nationalist heresy which greatly resembled the nationalist movements of Eastern Europe. This was no accident: Zionism and anti-Semitism were, and to a large extent still are, mirror images of each other, both accepting the axiom that Jews have no place in Europe and that they must be “returned to their homeland.”

This baseless concept – most Jews living today have nothing to do with the Jews living in Palestine in the Roman era as those have long ago converted – is what made Reform Judaism an enemy of Zionism. Taking a page from Philo, the Reform rabbis stated Jews were loyal to their actual homeland. And by returning to Philo’s formulation, Reform is much more authentic than Zionism, which as Sand describes, turned EI into an ancient Hungary or Poland, as envisioned by the respective nationalist movements.

I recommend the book – presumably there will be an English edition – particularly for people whose understanding of Jewish history derives from Zionist sources. The nationalist brainwash did not begin with Gideon Sa’ar: as Sand notes, the very word “hellenizer”, or Mityaven, is Zionist in origin. Our main sources for the Hasmonean period, the Makabim books, do not mention the term: they speak only of “sinners” and “breakers of the covenant.” In order to turn the religious sinner into a national sinner, Zionism had to come up with terms which the people of the time would have found meaningless.

Sand further notes an inconvenient fact: once “Eretz Israel” became a Zionist weapon, it cannot contain itself with Israel’s current borders. Our religious nationalists would commit a sin if they would agree to give up God’s promise, which would force them to reach from the Nile to the Euphrates.  This is the historical logic of taking EI out of the narrow borders of Jewish law and into the wild, borderless plain of religious nationalism.

Sand’s last chapter deals with a forbidden subject, the Nakba, on whose memorial the original version of this post was written. He examines it through the history of the village of Sheikh Munis (where Tel Aviv University is now located), and shows how its inhabitants were forced into exile through no fault of their own. It is important, then, to read the book today, at a time when the goons in Herzl shirts and MK Michael Ben Ari sing “He’venu Nakba Aleichem” (“We have brought a Nakba upon you)”, showing again how thin the border between the denial of an atrocity and its justification is; when the police prevent the activists of Zochrot from leaving their own building; and when Sand himself receives a death threat, in the form of white powder in the mail.

Let’s begin with the positive sides of the Netanyahu-Mofaz deal. The weak joke named Yair Lapid won’t last 18 more months, so the danger the Israeli public will once more waste precious votes on a seasonal feel-good party is lessened. Lapid whined about the deal this morning (Hebrew), though one can hardly understand why. Lapid said before that he would join any  future government, and denounced former Kadima leader Tzipi Livni for not joining Netanyahu’s. So why the bee in his bonnet? Then again, this is Lapid. If you’re looking for consistency or logic, you’re looking at the wrong place.

Kadima, a party whose motto may well have been, “We took corruption out of Likud (and brought it to a new home),” also seems to be finished. Why would anyone vote for it again? During the 2009 elections, Livni managed to con the voters into believing she would prevent a Netanyahu government. Livni is out of office, but the party is now in Netanyahu’s lap. If Kadima was looking at 10 seats before Mofaz’s latest schtick, it has now sunk near the level of Ehud Barak’s Atzmaut party (which polls at zero seats). The party was created in order to provide a docile platform for Ariel Sharon on his last days. One of its founders (Meir Sheetrit) has proudly stated that it has no ideology, and it has provided a safe haven for some of the most opportunistic and repulsive of Israeli politicians (hello again, Shimon Peres and Dahlia Itzik). Given all this, the fact that it still exists is impressive. Its seats are expected to be scattered among other parties, and assuming Lapid won’t survive for long, the new Israeli political map is likely to look very interesting.

Mofaz barely survived his earlier resounding flip-flop, an episode when a letter he sent his Likud faithful in late 2005, promising them he will always stay in the party and terming it “our home,” reached them a day after his defection to Kadima. No politician can survive two such moves. Mofaz is shameless enough that yesterday he had the temerity to attack Labor’s Shelly Yachimovich and blame her of “conspiring with Netanyahu” (Hebrew).

Like many other citizens, I gawked at my screen today, and muttered my WTFs. Yesterday, we were facing elections; Netanyahu was swaggering, declaring he wasn’t afraid. Turns out he is, after all. The fact that he lied to us about elections went almost unmentioned; we have grown used to the fact our prime minister deceives us on a daily basis. Even the fact that the Machiavelli behind the Mofaz deal was Natan Eshel, who left the Prime Minister’s Office after semi-confessing to the sexual harassment of a fellow worker, didn’t garner too much attention.

My first thought upon seeing the news was that Mofaz is a spineless worm, lacking any credibility; the second was that he was probably the worst politician in the history of Israel. Ehud Barak, with five nameless MKs, shook Netanyahu down for four ministries, among them the all-important Ministry of Security (aka Ministry of Defense). Mofaz, with almost six times that number of MKs (and more MKs than Likud has), managed to grab just a puny ministry without portfolio and the meaningless title of senior vice premier.

The idea that Kadima may merge again with Likud may have worked five years ago, but Likud is much too right wing these days for that, and Likud MKs would derail any such plan out of their own interests. So either Mofaz was exceedingly stupid, or he was exceedingly terrified, and knew his political career was over: that he won the Kadima primaries only to lose 20 seats and be remembered as the loser who killed the party – a part traditionally reserved in Israeli politics for Shimon Peres.

Except that in Israeli history, there is a precedent for the head of a large party who joins a national unity government and takes only a ministry without portfolio: Menachem Begin, who entered Levi Eshkol’s national unity government in the weeks before the Israeli offensive of the Six Day War. Begin argued he should join the government out of responsibility to the nation. This period in the government helped transform Begin, who was at the time described by the establishment-controlled media as a flesh eating demon – Ben Gurion made a habit of comparing him to Hitler, and would not refer to him by name, only as the “MK sitting next to MK Bader” – and grant him the legitimacy which, a decade later, would be essential to his electoral victory.

Mofaz, who has already served as Minister of Security and Minister of Transportation, is not in need of such legitimacy. He is a part of the establishment, not an outsider looking for a way in. So why is he joining the Netanyahu government on terms so similar to Begin’s in 1967?

Perhaps because he is indeed Israel’s most inept politician. But we should consider the possibility that, like Begin, he knows (as head of the opposition) that Israel is about to launch a fateful attack, and knows that what looked this morning like the worst act of political opportunism since Shimon Peres lost one time too many and left Labor for Kadima, may appear two weeks from now in a totally different light: as providing the government with aid at its hour of greatest need.

Let’s just hope he turns out to be a doofus after all.

Read more:
Netanyahu strongest prime minister since David Ben-Gurion
Elections called off; Kadima joins huge Netanyahu coalition
Coalition deal’s bright side: Days numbered for rotten government
The irreparable damage of Netanyahu-Mofaz fiasco
Through deal, Bibi buys ‘industrial peace’ for Iran war

Noam Gur, a conscientious objector, was imprisoned twice so far since refusing to serve in the IDF. She is likely to be tried and jailed again soon. She was forced to wear a uniform, and she faced difficulties receiving the vegan food she requires while in jail.

This rare example of a young person’s courage in the face of an oppressive system is tainted with irony, when you recall that women who do not want to serve in the army can avoid conscription rather easily: all they have to do is state they are observant Orthodox Jews and that military service does not fit their way of life. And that’s it: a small lie and it’s over. The religious parties make certain the Green Beast’s ability to corroborate this statement would be minimal.

So, if your conscience forbids you from serving in the IDF, the system will put its whole weight against you and try to break you. If, on the other hand, you say your imaginary friend forbids you to – even though your relationship has long been in the “it’s complicated” region, and you’re contemplating a restraining order against him – you just slip away. That’s life for you in the Jewish State pretending to be democratic: there is no conscience, there are only religious edicts.

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J’accuse: Israeli youth headed to prison for refusing the draft

Michael Oren, the American Jew turned Israeli ambassador to the US, is apparently not content with embarrassing himself about Israel’s record regarding its Christian citizens. In an interview with the Philadelphia newspaper Metro, Oren said that “Israel was fighting for gay rights before the 1967 war. Even when terrorists were blowing up our buses and cafes, there was equality for gays.”

Leaving aside the second and particularly ignorant part of this statement – what the hell is the connection between terror attacks and gay rights? Does Oren consider the gay community responsible for those attacks, such that Israel ought to consider withholding some of their rights? – the real problem is with the first part, which is simply false.

Israeli law, much of which is based on Mandatory British law which was endorsed pretty much en bloc, considered homosexuality to be a felony since the country’s inception in 1948. The Knesset re-asserted the law in 1977, but after a long battle simply abolished it in 1988. Until the early 1990s, homosexuality was considered by the IDF to be grounds for denying security clearances and the IDF considered homosexuality to be a mental illness until the late 1980s (Hebrew). By contrast, England and Wales – on which Israeli law is based – abolished their anti-gay laws in 1967, i.e 20 years and more before Israel did.

Admittedly, while homosexuality was considered a felony, one of the first Government’s Counsels, the most humane jurist Haim Cohen (later a Supreme Court judge) ordered the prosecution in the early 1950s to cease prosecution for homosexuality. So criminal prosecution was not a problem – but harassment by the police certainly was, and for several years after the law was abolished in 1988, gays were often arrested for acts such as kissing in public.

Israel is so much on the frontier of gay rights, they cannot marry in it – but, then again, neither can a Jew and a non-Jew. Its police is so vigilant in protecting their rights, it frequently tries to cancel (sometimes successfully) the Jerusalem gay pride marches. The public sector shows its support for them by employing at public expense rabbis who call, directly or indirectly, for either classifying homosexuality as a mental illness or for simply killing them.

Is Oren so blind to all this? Maybe he is. After all, he is an immigrant who doesn’t know the country well. Then again, he may simply be pulling the wool over the eyes of Americans. This, after all, is what “hasbara” is all about.

Related posts:
Ambassador Oren speaks at gay rights forum featuring Israel
Israel’s ‘pinkwash’ makes cynical use of gays and gay rights
Omissions, half truths and lies: Review of Ambassador Oren’s foreign policy piece

Bilal Diab, an administrative detainee on the 66th day of his hunger strike, collapsed today (Thursday) during a hearing in his case in the High Court of Justice. Despite his failing health, the High Court has yet to rule on his case, and while it may still rule today, it is likely the ruling will be postponed to Sunday.

As Diab was removed from the courtroom, Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein said “there is a doctor in the room – MK Ahmad Tibi,” and asked Tibi to check on Diab. However, as Tibi noted in a phone interview, as he went to see Diab, followed by an officer of the Court Guard, Prison Service guards refused him access to the patient. When the Court Guard officer told them Tibi was following a judicial order, the Prison Service officer informed Tibi that he “does not take orders from judges.”

Tibi returned to the courtroom, Rubinstein reiterated his decision, and still the Prison Service officer refused to comply. Finally, Tibi returned to the courtroom a third time, and all three justices signed an order demanding he see the prisoner. The Prison Service guards reluctantly obeyed.

Tibi described Diab’s condition as “very bad.” Physicians for Human Rights – Israel (PHR-I) told me in a phone interview that while Diab is being treated in a hospital, three of his limbs are chained to his bed. Another prisoner on a hunger strike, Thaer Halahleh, is being held in the Prison Service’s own medical facility, which lacks the necessary equipment to deal with hunger strikers. They reported that according to Diab, when he was moved to the hospital, a doctor – which the prisoner could not identify – removed him from his wheelchair, put him on the floor, and told him, “You stay here.”

MK Ahmad Tibi had to ask the court three times to treat a prisoner (Photo: Yossi Gurvitz)

Both PHR-I and MK Tibi note a clear hardening in the attitude of the Prison Service following the hunger strike by Khader Adnan, whose strike ended in a deal that saw him recently released. Both note that while they had relatively free access to Adnan, they have very limited access to the prisoners currently on hunger strikes.

Tibi, again, is an MK; technically, his parliamentary status grants him access to all but the most secure military facilities. Yet this privilege is being disregarded. Tibi thinks this is a deliberate policy of the Prison Service, which is afraid that Adnan’s successful strike may encourage others, and is meant to show that the Service will not back down. He believes this may lead to death of some of the prisoners – which, in turn, will cause an explosion in the West Bank.

Yet despite the behavior of the Prison Service, one cannot escape the feeling that the real cruelty is in the inaction of the judges. Diab is on the 66th day of a hunger strike, everyone agrees he is in very bad condition and may die at any moment – and, according to PHR-I, will definitely die if he passes the 70 day-threshold. Even so, the court takes its time making its decision. The lives of Palestinians are, apparently, less important.

Lo and behold: at the same time Oren was biting his nails, an American Hasbara organization, The Jewish Federations of North America, sent an APB to its activists, calling upon them to prepare for a blitz against CBS. It sent that message before the show was aired. May we now openly voice the suspicion that the Israeli embassy is activating Jewish organizations in the United States in order to manipulate the press there? That would be perfectly legitimate, as far as the embassy is concerned – that’s what it’s there for. But it’s much more problematic, when it comes to organizations composed of American citizens.

The Federations were trying to argue that Christians abandoning the West Bank due to the Israeli occupation do not do so because of their being Christians, but because of the occupation (which they refer to under the euphemism of “Israeli security policy”). They are correct. If someone wants to see truly anti-Christian Israeli policy, he’d better look at Israel proper.

The 2010 State Department report on religious freedom in Israel and the occupied territories found that the Israeli Ministry of the Interior (MOI) is harassing Christian priests by demanding they renew their visas time and time again. It limits the number of visas Christian religious workers receive, and makes onerous demands on them. The visa application process, when successful, takes months. During 2010, the MOI refused to renew the Jerusalem Anglican bishop’s residency permit, claiming that he was involved in forgery. The bishop denies the claim, and it is noteworthy that he was not indicted.

The MOI further refuses to grant recognized legal status to several old churches in Israel, all of them Protestant. Four Christian churches are waiting years for recognition of their legal status: the Ethiopian-Orthodox Church, the Coptic-Orthodox Church, the Evangelic Lutheran Church, and the United Christian Council.

The MOI, left for many years to the Orthodox parties, is collaborating with a hate organization, “Yad Le’Achim,” which has a clear anti-Christian agenda (Hebrew). The MOI sends “queries” about Israeli citizens and tourists to Yad Le’Achim, for it to decide whether they are suspected of “missionary activity.” Now, Israeli law does not forbid religious preaching: it merely prohibits a conversion made in exchange for goods, and the conversion of minors without the permission of their parents. Yet, when your country is officially termed Jewish and your Minister of the Interior is an Orthodox Jew, the law matters little. In 2009, according to the State Department report cited above, 30 percent of the tourists who were stopped for questioning in Ben Gurion Airport were questioned about their religious beliefs, at the instructions of the MOI. This was probably an attempt to intimidate them from proselytizing.

Possibly the most fantastic event in the relations of the Jewish state with a Christian church is the controversy surrounding the appointment of the Greek Orthodox patriarch. During the Sharon and Olmert governments, in a scene seemingly taken from a medieval chronicle, the government delayed its recognition (Hebrew) of Theophilius as Patriarch until the latter would give his consent to some shady land deals of the radical ultra-Orthodox Jewish right. Minister Tzachi Hanegbi admitted he demanded Theophilius refrain from torpedoing a deal with the extremist yeshiva Ateret Cohanim as a condition to his appointment. Hanegbi’s successor in dealing with the church, minister Raffi Eitan, was suspected of coercing the patriarch into agreeing the church would suspend a lawsuit against Himnuta, the JNF’s dirty-tricks department, which buys lands for settlements. Himnuta would later demand Theophilius fulfill his part of the deal – which he quickly denied making. Bear that in mind the next time they tell you Israelis enjoy freedom of religion.

The situation of the Messianic Jews, a sect of Jews who accept a version of Christianity – ironically, re-creating the most ancient Christian community – is even worse. They suffer from endless molestations, both by the MOI (aided, again, by Yad Le’Achim) and by the general Jewish Orthodox population. In 2008, one such family suffered a terrorist attack  – a real one, Ambassador Oren, bomb and all (Hebrew) – and Jewish terrorist suspect Jack Teitel is suspected of carrying it out. Unlike other Jewish families which fall victim to terrorist attacks, this family did not become the focus of media or official attention.

During the same year, Yad Le’Achim managed to prevent a Messianic Jewish girl, Bat El Levi, 17, from participating in the International Bible Quiz, even though she won her way fair and square through the quizzes in the secular school system (Hebrew). The words of Martin Luther King – ” when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people”  – come to mind. Reportedly, the Minister of Education – Labor’s Yuli Tamir – publicly boasted that all of the participants in the quiz were checked and found to be Jews.

The spitting by yeshiva boys on priests has become a Jerusalem phenomenon, recognized by the courts (Hebrew), who deplored the police’s inaction. The police hotly denied this claim: it proudly replied it deported from Israel priests who refused to turn the other cheek and slapped those who spat at them. Should you happen to speak with priests in Jerusalem, you’re likely to hear of another lovely habit of our ultra-Orthodox brethren: urinating and defecating on churches. From time to time, a church is set on fire: the last noted case was some 18 months ago (and cited in the State Department report above). The police reacts to this with even more than usual indolence.

Christian clergy in Jerusalem are often spat at by yeshiva boys (Photo: Yossi Gurvitz)

Usually, when Jewish violence  and discrimination against non-Jews is reported, the defenders of Israel often argue this is the result of the conflict. But Israel is not in conflict with the Christian world: it couldn’t survive without it. This hatred, this violence, is the result of thousands of years of anti-Christian hatred by a radical stream within Orthodox Judaism that wishes to create a theocratic state based on Jewish law (which crept into its daily liturgy – the infamous “informers’ blessing”).  It blows up not because of some cause, but because it can, and the weak response of the authorities is the result of their understanding that a large segment of the population supports such acts. The evangelists who signed a devil’s pact with radical ultra-Orthodox Jews fail to understand that those extremists are their preferred target; that they don’t hate the Palestinians merely because the latter happen to live here, but their hatred of Christianity is the real thing, which sometimes bursts to surface.

And then everyone pretends it never happened.

Read also:
CBS Report on Christians and Israel propels Ambassador Oren into damage control mode

Ynet sure knows how to bury the lede: They report that a Duvdevan Unit soldier was dismissed from his unit after kicking the face of a handcuffed Palestinian two weeks ago. Such a dismissal, were it attended by several months in prison, would indeed be a proper punishment; but this is not the important story.

How did the Palestinian find himself in handcuffs in the first place? Well, a team of armed Duvdevan soldiers (who wander around dressed as Palestinians, not in uniform and without obvious weaponry) decided to hold an infiltration practice drill in a Palestinian village. Their infiltration skills were not up to snuff, as it turned out, and the villagers – who suffered recently from a wave of burglaries – took them for burglars, and attacked them with cold weapons, wounding one. The gunmen opened fire, wounding two of the people who were trying to defend their home and property. One of them later died of his wounds. The other was kicked in the face while handcuffed.

So, the IDF punished a soldier who acted in an unprofessional yet excusable way – such actions by soldiers after their comrades are hit is unbecoming yet unavoidable; this is the price of unleashing the beast in man, by turning him into a soldier – but refrained from punishing the people who decided Palestinians are so lacking in basic human properties, that they may be used as extras in a military exercise which may, as it turned out, include live fire. The IDF has been practicing on Palestinians for months now, perhaps years, and this time the practice went bad – and, worst of all from the IDF’s point of view, made it to the press. The soldier who lost control was dismissed; the officers who planned the exercise on live human beings and the soldiers armed with live weapons – that is the people responsible for the death of the villager, will remain in their posts.

A few years back, the Knesset passed a bill called the Daromi Law, which made it permissible for a person to defend himself from burglars even with deadly force. When you think about the Palestinians’ lack of rights, you ought to remember that the basic right to defend yourself from armed IDF soldiers is lacking – even when you mistake them for common criminals, not legalized ones. This is not the only case when a drill using live Palestinians ended in death: a drill in Ketziot Prison, intended to build morale, ended with the guards shooting prisoners in their cells, killing one and wounding others.

But the IDF still tells itself, and anyone who will listen to it, that it maintained its “purity of arms” by relieving the soldier who kicked the prisoner.

I’ve recently finished reading Peter Beinart’s controversial book, The Crisis of Zionism; admittedly I read it mostly to understand what the noise was all about. The book took heavy criticism, if by “criticism” you mean “ad hominem attacks,” even before it was published. It was basically attacked by the entire Jewish establishment in the United States.

Why? Because Beinart insists, as he did two years ago, on stopping to treat Israel as a special-needs child whose tantrums must be endured and soothed. He dares speak of the fact that a large part – I dare say a majority – of the Israeli public is racist beyond anything the Jewish American establishment would accept in the United States; that its tolerance towards democracy is very limited; and that soon Israel will have to choose between being a Jewish or a democratic country. It is no longer viable to speak of the two together, particularly not when Israel insists on continuing occupying the Palestinians. He also points out that the two-state solution – excoriated as treason two decades ago, and now seen as the saving mantra of Israel – is on life support.

Beinart blows up the lies American Jews love telling themselves, particularly the most shining of them, that of Ehud “We-offered-them-everything-and-they-chose-war” Barak. He refers to the fact that the occupation generates racism by its very existence:

As painful as it is for Jews to admit that race hatred can take root among a people that has suffered so profoundly from it, the ground truth is this: occupying another people requires racism, and breeds it. It is very difficult to work day after day at a checkpoint, making miserable people bake in the sun, or to blow up a family’s house as they watch, or to cut off water to a village in the Jordan Valley because Palestinians are barred from living in most of that section of the West Bank, and still see the people you are dominating as fully human. (p. 24)

Beinart further rams the hoary argument of American Jewry, according to which an American Jew must not criticize the government of Israel, since he won’t have to live with the consequences:

But for all its emotional currency, the argument that American Jews should not publicly criticize Israeli policy because they don’t live there is incoherent. For one thing, the reticence only applies to one side. If American Jews don’t live in Tel Aviv or Sderot, neither do they live in Ramallah or Gaza City. Yet American Jewish groups constantly demand that Palestinian leaders change their policies, even though American Jews would not endure the consequences of those policy shifts either. In fact, American Jewish leaders have spent recent decades criticizing government policy in a bevy of countries where American Jews do not live, from the former Soviet Union to Syria to Iran. If taken seriously, the claim that American Jews must live in a country in order to publicly criticize its government would eliminate all public moral judgment of policies outside the United States. (p. 50)

One of the most fascinating and scary chapters of the book is the one dealing with Binyamin Netanyahu’s worldview. Beinart terms Netanyahu a monist, i.e. someone who follows the Jabotinskian concept that Zionism is all that matters, and it must not be tempered with morality. Netanyahu wants to crush the Palestinians until they emigrate. He knows he can’t carry out a population transfer, so he concentrates on what was once called “the quiet transfer”: make the lives of Palestinians a living hell until their middle class cracks and runs, which will break the back of the national Palestinian movement; the rest can be then safely kept in Bantustans.

If this is indeed Netanyahu’s true goal – and Beinart presents a persuasive case – then much of what happened in the last three years makes a new sort of sense. Netanyahu speaks of the two-state solution, because it is an effective camouflage for his true plans, which are the permanent occupation of as much of the West Bank as he can hold on to. He is convinced he can break the Palestinians, and he is convinced – and who can blame him? – that by making effective use of Jewish power in the United States, he can stymie any administration’s attempt to force an Israeli retreat.

His book makes for a fascinating reading, but comes too late. Peter Beinart IPhoto: Yossi Gurvitz)

And yet, when you finish reading the book, and come to his recommendations (American Jews should boycott the settlements, the West Bank ought to be called “undemocratic Israel” – which is bound to piss off Palestinian activists), you find yourself wondering: is that it?

Beinart’s book is an alarm call, but one that should have been voiced 15 years ago, when Netanyahu first became prime minister. Then it was still relevant. The way it sounds now, as the two-state solution breathes its last breath, and is followed by the recommendation that American Jewry adopt a tactic the Israeli left first used 20 years ago – a settlement boycott – it sounds slightly ridiculous. This game is very much over. If Beinart wants the two-state solution, he needs to call on much more drastic measures: sanctions against Israel and the end of American military support of the country. I sincerely doubt he wants to go there, and I doubt even more there are any listeners for such demands in the United States.

Beinart’s other recommendation – that liberal American Jews, who keep themselves at a distance from anything Israeli with something of disgust, take their part in the debate and not leave it to Orthodox Jews – is also problematic. People choose the issues which interest them. Liberal Jews whose goal is social justice have already given up on Israel, and with good reason. The demand that they should care about Israel is a Zionist demand, and most of them are not Zionists. Furthermore, Beinart himself notes that when such liberals try to publicly sound non-Zionist positions, they become targets for the Jewish establishment. Most of them lack the stamina to withstand such attacks. As the attacks on Beinart himself show, they can hardly be blamed for this.

Read also:
The political is personal: The allure of Peter Beinart 

During Seder night last week, a group of Jewish soldiers refused to share the same table with Druze soldiers in training base Camp 80. An officer ordered the soldiers to eat at the same table, and one of the Jewish soldiers said he has no intention of dining with Arabs. Instead handcuffing the fanatic and throwing him into the brig until his court-martial, the other officers gave in to the Jewish fanatic, ordering the Druze soldiers to move to a dirty side-table (Hebrew).

I spent most of my own conscripted military service in the heart of the Gaza Strip, in the Civil Administration Unit in Dir El Balah. Don’t let the name mislead you – we were all in uniform. Since our job demanded daily contact with the Palestinian population, the unit contained a high percentage of Druze soldiers and officers, whose mother tongue was Arabic. Relations between the Jewish and Druze soldiers were good: I remember than one Saturday night, since the secular Jews couldn’t (and I wouldn’t) Samir, the Special Duties Officer, recited the Kiddush by popular demand.

I remember a long conversations with one of the Druze soldiers. He insisted on supporting Meir Martin Kahane, and I tried explaining to him that Kahane is an equal-opportunity Jewish supremacist who hates all non-Jews equally, and that he will deprive them of their rights – particularly of the right to command Jewish troops. The conversation turned to Druze service, and I asked him why so many Druze take up a military career. He said bitterly that as long as they are in uniform, it’s “grab some food soldier, here, have a discount,” but that as soon as they are discharged, it’s “You want a job? But you’re an Arab!”

He divided Israeli society into four classes: on top were the ultra-Orthodox, who did not serve in the IDF but enjoyed all the benefits of government largesse; below them were regular Jews, who did serve and enjoyed said benefits; below them, Palestinian Israelis, who did not serve and did not get any benefits; and at the bottom were the Druze, who served long and hard and got no benefit at all. And yet, he said, the Druze get something out of wearing the uniform – from the public if not from the government.

In other words, under the IDF green they can’t see you’re an Arab.

That was a long time ago, and much has changed. The Druze citizens started understanding, already then, that the State of Israel wants them as soldiers, but would not grant them real equality. The 1990s were the years of yearly demonstrations by Druze leaders in front of the Knesset, which yielded them little.

The Druze are not stupid. We keep hearing, in the last few years, of a decline in the number of Druze who wish to serve, and a poll conducted a few years back by Haifa University found (Hebrew) that only 36 percent of them wanted the forced draft to go on, with 47 percent saying the service should become voluntary and 17 percent thinking it should be fully abolished. That is, a majority of the Druze understood that the only thing they are likely to get out of the glorified “Blood Alliance” between Jews and Druze is blood, and they would like to bow out.

When I had that conversation in early 1990, this was just a hypothetical debate. Kahane himself would be surgically removed a few months later. But four years later, following the Goldstein massacre in Hebron, we found out that Goldstein refused, as a military doctor, to treat Druze soldiers – because, as non-Jews, he was forbidden to treat them even for payment. This was hushed. A few years later, Druze soldiers began complaining of being singled out by settlers for special abuse, particularly because of their non-Jewishness.

Kahane used to say that inside every Jew lives a small Kahane. That little Kahane emerged during that Seder night. The problem is not the racist soldiers, at least not the heart of it; the problem are the officers who folded before strident racism. That’s how it goes: when the State is defined as Jewish, and its army is becoming more and more “Jewish,” this is what happens to non-Jews. After all, as far as most of the Jews living in Israel are concerned, their Jewishness is their only claim to pride, and they consider it to be racial, hereditary, that this is what it means to be part of the Jewish people. The official ideology of the state says it is Jewish first and democratic later. So, how come they have to share a meal with non-Jews? What do you take them for, Israelis?

That’s what happens when the government is making a long-time effort to erode the civil conscience of its residents and replace it with ethnic pride. There is no space devoid of this lingering disease. If someone thought it would not reach the army, he was deluding himself.

The IDF now has just one way out of this mine field: Avoiding the error it made when he caved in to the voices demanding the sidelining of women. He has to find the officers responsible, and screw them up so thoroughly no one will ever even think about doing it again. This requires a public ceremony of demotion for harming the IDF’s value of comradeship, and serving a few months in jail for allowing racial discrimination against their soldiers.

But, of course, if this happens, the senior brass will be blamed for preferring non-Jewish soldiers over Jews, who were merely trying to maintain their racial purity. The idea of an army with republican values is ludicrous when the country turned its back on it a long time ago.

If the brass do their duty, they will take fire from the Hesder rabbis. But if they don’t, then the army can – should – say goodbye to its Druze soldiers. I doubt there is any better reason, as far as the Druze are concerned, to dismantle the one-sided alliance forced on them by the State of Israel, than a semi-official acknowledgement by the IDF they are second class soldiers.

And when that happens, Israel will find itself facing a bitter minority, which knows that despite having given the state everything it could, it is discriminated against in all spheres of life; and that it has pledged its loyalty to an ethnocracy too racist even to accept the possibility of granting equality to former soldiers. Unlike the Palestinians, this minority knows how to fight – it has been trained by the IDF for decades and in fact the Druze were conscripted much because of their martial reputation. And when the spark comes which will ignite this keg of powder, Jewish Israel will hold its hands together and say in a broken voice: “And after everything that we did for them!”

Gunter Grass, the famed German author, got himself into hot water recently. He wrote a controversial poem (unfortunately, I failed to find an adequate English translation, though I did see an adequate Hebrew one), which accused Israel of possessing nuclear weapons, plotting an attack against Iran, possibly using nukes against it and possibly using German-supplied nuclear submarines to deliver those weapons. For his trouble, the Israeli Embassy in Berlin denounced him, saying, “What must be said is that it belongs to European tradition to accuse the Jews of ritual murder before the Passover celebration… It used to be Christian children whose blood the Jews used to make matza (unleavened bread), today it is the Iranian people that the Jewish state purportedly wants to wipe out.”

Impressive use of the anti-Semitism charge, which is diplomatic Israel’s first line of defense these days. But is it true? Let’s pick it apart, beginning with Grass’s claims.

Does Israel have nukes?  According to just about every source in the world, the answer is yes. Shimon Peres is widely credited as the father of the Israeli nuke plan and has never denied it. John Crossman (formerly Mordechai Va’anunu) served 18 years, many of them in solitary confinement, in an Israeli prison for exposing this truth.

Are those weapons supervised? Of course not. Israel is above such petty laws.

Is Israel plotting an attack against Iran? Yes. Netanyahu and his ministers have said so time and time again. Recently, Netanyahu said that an attack on Iran is not an “if” question but rather a “when” question. His Minister of Security, Ehud Barak, said openly that in case of such an attack, Israel expects 500 casualties (Hebrew). This week, the government ministers were informed that this number has been notched down to 300 (Hebrew).

Is Israel considering using nukes against Iran? Yes, or at least it gives good reason to believe it does. Netanyahu has said time and time again that “all options are on the table,” and that means the nuclear option is on the table as well. Reuters has reported that Israel considers using tactical nukes, as did a Fox News commentator, quoting an Israeli source claimed to be knowledgeable and accurate (here, around the 2:15-2:25 mark). One could plausibly make the claim that this is just psychological warfare on Israel’s part, and that not even Ehud Barak is that insane; but can one blame Grass for falling victim to Israel’s psychological offensive? When you’re playing the regional madman, don’t blame people if they think you’re actually barking mad.

Will German-provided submarines be used to deliver those tactical nuclear weapons? Quite possibly. Israel’s Dolphin-class submarines, provided by Germany, are widely assumed to be armed with nuclear weapons.

Is Netanyahu considering wiping out the Iranian people? Considering some of his statements, it’s not out of the realm of possibility. One of Netanyahu’s aides claimed Netanyahu thinks of the Iranians as Amalek, the mystical people who are the enemies of God and who are to be wiped out to the last. Netanyahu never formally retracted this genocidal comment, and he never paid a public price for it. He also keeps referring to the Iranians as Nazis – and to Nazis and Iranians as Amalekites.

So, basically everything said by Grass is plausible, at least within the frame of the psychological warfare waged by Israel. The truth is never anti-Semitic. There was no blood libel here, no anti-Semitism, no claim of children’s blood used for ritual purposes. Furthermore, criticism of Israel’s intended policy has nothing whatsoever to do with Judaism or Jews. The claim (often made by Israeli officials) that Israel represents world Jewry, and that hence any attack on it is an attack on them, is a claim that Jews everywhere owe allegiance to a country of which they are not citizens and to which they never made any formal vow of loyalty, and thus can credibly be considered to be itself anti-Semitic.

Had the Israeli Foreign Ministry any shame left, it would not use the phrases it did against Grass. But, unsurprisingly, it did. The good thing which may come out of this affair is that people may learn to discount screeches of anti-Semitism from Israel with a sigh of “there they go again.”

More on this issue:
Günter Grass, persona non grata in Israel
More power to Gunter Grass for ‘What must be said’