Comments on: Cyber-defamation of fatal Palestinian crash should be delegitimized

By: Shai

Shai — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:12:20 +0000

@Piotr
These comments were not being made under the guise of anonymity, they’re on Facebook.

By: sh

sh — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 07:38:09 +0000

It’s a dilemma. Constantly outing what’s wrong feels terrible. But from past experience, suppressing it seems to make what’s wrong feel normal to many. We’ve minimized all sorts of behaviors and opinions over the years as being those of a tiny minority and they’ve come back to haunt us with a vengeance. I noticed Kahanists for the first time 25 years ago, only when I got pushed around by a bunch of them at a demonstration welcoming a renowned Soviet dissident and couldn’t believe their thuggishness, “yobbos” in tzitzit. No-one was ringing alarm bells about them at the time and for years I remained persuaded by those around me at the time that they were just a small minority. Look where they are now. So even if it feels terrible, what’s wrong must be shouted about.
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AT, the “kill all Palestinians” level of hate is not most prevalent in Orthodox settlers. One hears such sentiments from people who are neither religious nor settlers and there are religious settlers who would opt to live in a Palestinian state if there was peace, ideally preferring one state for both peoples. (BTW a notice expressing sorrow and identification with the bereaved families was put up by the settlers of Adam near where the accident that provoked those racist comments took place.) If you say they are only a tiny minority, I will point you to what happened with others we said that about, see above.

By: AT

AT — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 03:23:05 +0000

Israel is a country where people have immigrated from nearly every other country in the world. So they have brought with them every form of xenophobia that exists elsewhere. For the most part this is relatively low level and harmless inter-tribal rivalries.

Anti-Arab xenophobia is shared by almost all Israelis, to varying degrees. The Arab is the enemy and so the other. The depth of this feeling varies, but it is nowhere near the level expressed in those talkbacks, even post the suicide bombings of the second intifada.

The “kill all Palestinians” level of hate is most prevalent and common in one group – the Orthodox settlers. They equate the Palestinians with Amalek and thereby give Biblical and religious justification to their genocidal hate. I have no doubt most of those talkbacks come from that community especially the public ones, as such views are perfectly acceptable there. These views by the way did not exist even among the Orthodox in the seventies, and they are a direct result of the settlement project.

By: Rabbi Arie Chark

Rabbi Arie Chark — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:55:22 +0000

Since when is racism on the margin of Israeli society? I lived in Israel when Ofra Haza died. “Yesh harbé haflaga be’aretz” — there’s a lot of prejudice in the Land — a friend told me. He should know, he was originally from South Africa. Does anyone in Israel read or know their own history?! The Temanim were despised as primitives and seen as an embarrassment by the progressive, white Litvaks and Polish so proud of their Hebrew pronunciation with no trace of a Yiddish accent. Well, there’s a Mizrachi/Sefaradi majority now, and the new objects of Ashkenazi bigotry still speak Arabic but are no longer Jews. Yes, I know… the Degel Ha’Torah crowd aren’t precisely without prejudice — but they’re also not the typical resident of Yesha (the Occupied Territories).

By: Piotr Berman

Piotr Berman — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:41:48 +0000

Some people react a bit strangely to the anonymity of the online medium. In pre-internet days there were new groups, and I do not recall “trolls” but there were “flame wars” when people could be astonishingly rude whatever the topic.

I would not pay too much attention to the outliers. I am more disturbed by the “normal” comments.

By: Philos

Philos — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 20:05:47 +0000

The problem Ayla was that too many Israelis who found it shocking at the same reprimanded me for reposting the screen shots on the comments on my own FB. Some said, “I’m taking it out of context”, others “that it only generates hate”, and yet others “this is a hoax; these aren’t real”
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That’s the f**king problem here…. That there are mindless bigots we all know. What about the mainstream Israelis who look away because “chas ve shalom” the goyim might see what we’re really like….

By: AYLA

AYLA — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:53:40 +0000

Anne–that’s interesting. Honestly, I live in Israel, and I’m familiar with people of all different politics. In the south/desert, where I live, there is a lot of commonplace racism, shockingly so (like, just at the supermarket. wherever). And yet. I found these comments (in response to a schoolbus accident…) to be shocking, and every Israeli I know found them to be shocking. I don’t think we have any basis for thinking these responses are anywhere near mainstream. That they even exist, not to mention that people feel free to express them publicly, is absolutely an important wake-up call for Israeli society. what are the conditions that make these kinds of comments possible? Absolutely.

By: Anne O'Nimmus

Anne O'Nimmus — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:41:55 +0000

The fact that many of those sympathetic to the victims of the accident were anonymous (per Ynet), while many of those expressing vitriolic hatred were proud to associate their names with their comments seems to me to display which sentiment is most mainstream in Israel.

By: AYLA

AYLA — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:15:04 +0000

@Ido, thank you. As someone who has been publicly concerned (and remains so) about the effect of spreading these comments, I absolutely agree that they must serve as a wake-up call to Israelis, and that Israelis should, therefore, see them. Thanks for the smart analysis.