Journalist Larry Derfner came to Tel Aviv airport to cover the arrival of international activists. Once in the reception hall, a small Israeli mob turned on him. In a matter of seconds, he found himself in a police van
by Larry Derfner
Jerusalem Post's Larry Derfner surrounded at Ben Gurion airport (photo: Joseph Dana)
Anybody who believes the platitude that the people want peace, it’s just the leaders who want war, should have been at Ben-Gurion Airport today. It’s a good thing those Free Palestine activists got arrested; otherwise, the little mob that formed spontaneously would have punched them up pretty good.
Only minutes after I got to the Arrivals hall, a few activists stood in front of the phalanx of reporters and cameramen, help up their little signs and started chanting “Israel Apartheid” and ”Free Palestine!” The cops tore the signs from their hands and started pushing them toward the exit. After the first couple of minutes of watching in shocked silence, people in the terminal started to boo. Men were cursing loudly – “sons of bitches,” “garbage,” and things in Arabic I didn’t understand.
A couple of dozen people, mainly men but also a few women, followed very close behind the tightly-bunched demonstrators, cops and reporters to the police van. “Throw them in the garbage,” shouted one woman. An old man tried to get at one of the activists, but the police stopped him.
I was there ostensibly as a journalist, and I was scribbling notes, but I felt cowardly not saying anything to these nationalist hooligans, so I started telling them in Hebrew, “What are these people doing?” The woman who wanted them thrown in the garbage said, “They’re hurting us!” I said, “They’re talking,” and the little mob turned on me, a couple of the men raised their fists. The woman told me, “Go back home, get out of here,” I said, “I live here.” The cops mistook me for a demonstrator, put me in the police van, but when I showed them my press card, they let me go.
Let me repeat – the police started off arresting the demonstrators, but very shortly their main task was to keep them from being assaulted. They had to hold back the herd = and that’s what these people were, a herd incited by the idea that these protesters, non-violent protesters trying to get to the West Bank, were a menace, an immediate threat to their security.
And I do not buy the idea that these people are helpless pawns being manipulated by the government, the media, the right-wing politicians. Most Israelis, even if they wouldn’t join a mob like the one at the airport, want to hear the belligerent rhetoric the opinion-makers are feeding them. They hate anybody who says anything bad about Israel, and take their words automatically as “blood libels.” The opinion-makers know this, and the ones who are popular and want to stay that way tell the people what they want to hear.
Who’s manipulating whom is a chicken-and-egg question.
Watching my enraged countrymen at Ben-Gurion, I imagined the daily headlines having been distilled into a kind of political methadrine and mainlined into their veins. Few Israelis would join them in physically going after people chanting slogans. But in their insistence that protesters like these be silenced because their words are acts of violence, acts of war, of terrorism, they represent the majority. They are an authentic expression of the national will. Theirs is the loudest voice in the land, it’s joined by the voice of Netanyahu, the government, the settlers and most of the media. All competing voices are drowned out.
Which is why these foreign activists on these flotillas, whatever I or anybody else thinks of the totality of their politics, are absolutely vital not only to the Palestinians, but to Israel. They’re bringing oxygen to a suffocating nation.
Larry Derfner is a journalist and an op-ed contributor for the Jerusalem Post. This post was published on his joint blog with 972′s Dimi Reider, Israel Reconsidered, and is re-posted here with the author’s permission.
July 11, 2011
1:19 am
Visiting Israel is a PRIVILEGE not a right (for non-citizens), just like visiting America is a PRIVILEGE not a right (for non-citizens). I know Israelis (who are even married to Americans) who are having trouble getting visas to visit America. My sympathies are limited.
July 11, 2011
1:36 am
@ Deir Yassin. By “pal” I meant “friend”. Boy you have a chip on your shoulder. Are you sure you’re not Jewish?
Well, your world-view saddens me. You are just as bad as Right Wing Zionist (and I can defend myself, thanks) because you’re not amenable to compromise. You’re just as bad as the Rightists who froth at the mouth as soon as they hear the name “Palestinian” and shout “They don’t exist! They have 22 other states!” “Rabble, racist slur, rabble!” and so on. If you cannot recognize my right to live here as an Israeli then we will fight forever. Do you understand that? My right to live in Israel is not based on some bull@hit notion about Moses and invisible talking Man in the sky. My right to live here is a bit like Descartes “cogito ergo sum” but like this: Israelis exist therefore they have a continued right to exist. This Israeli existence does not negate Palestinian existence. But what I am getting from you is that you believe it does. You will only feel Israel is “moral” when it ceases to reflect its Israeliness.
Also notice that I’m not talking about God, or Judaism, or Flying Spagehtti Monsters because religion is nothing but a poor excuse to murder someone. So I won’t reflect on your question about original sin.
And my point about the Jewish contribution to humanism is to show that we’re not all Henry Kissinger or Bibi Netenyahu. If you can’t see that then you’re blinded by hatred. Just like Right Wing Zionist is too blinded to admit the grate Arab contributions to mathematics and the Italian Renaissance.
So, Deir Yassin, your name emblematic of bitter memories, please tell me how you envision the future? If not two-states living in peace side by side then what? And if you do believe in one-state please tell me how you envision that working giving the unfortunate amount of hatred in the air? If anything for there to be a one-state solution a two-state solution would have to precede it in order for Palestinian Muslims and Israeli Jews to normalize their perceptions of one another.
July 11, 2011
1:48 am
And if you want me to comment about Zionism’s crimes. Sure, there were some Zionists who stole land and expelled the native Palestinian inhabitants. Sure, there were some Zionists and Palestinians who believed in cooperation but were usually murdered by the extremists on both sides (think Haim Arlozarov). Sure, it is doubtful that Israel would have achieved its demographic surge had it not been for the Nazis whom the Mufti of Jerusalem was a supporter of. In fact why would the Jews of Europe move to this crappy, mosquito ridden, Ottoman province had it not been for the fact that their civilization had been annihilated. That expelling the Arabs and not allowing them to return to their homes was, and still is, a moral crime I will concede. I will concede to most of the moral claims made by Palestinians against Israel and I think that one of Israel’s, in fact the greatest, mistake was not to integrate the Israeli-Arabs into society from the 50s and 60s. I think it’s tragic that Israel did not follow through on the Camp David Accords and trade the West Bank and Gaza for peace with the Arab world. But if you want to take a closer look at Israeli society you will see that many aspect of Zionism, or the Right-wing version of it, hurt Israeli Jews as well as Arabs. The Sabras, the original Palestinians, to this day control the economy, the bureaucracy and the military. The Ashknasim sit on top of the Mizrachim who sit on top of the Ethopians and they all together sit on the Israeli-Arabs. But this kind of ethnic hierarchy has served the Sabras well so it will take social change within Israel. If there will be space between the Sabras pushing down and haters of Israeli existence pushing against for this social change to be humanist in character is what we Leftist Israelis are fighting for.
July 11, 2011
2:32 am
@PHILOS
“You as just as bad as Mr Right Wing Zionist …”(PHILOS)
bad, PHILOS my friend? That’s the second time you repeated that charge. That’s a very subjective thing to say. Not very touchy feely of you. Tell me one bad thing that I said during my brief visit here?
I think you are just reacting to my name “Right Wing Zionist” like Pavlov’s dog. Ring a bell, Pavlov’s dog drools. Mention right wing Zionist and you look for bad. Get a grip on yourself man. I assume you ARE a man? I don’t want you to accuse me that I am gender biased, like your Pal did
July 11, 2011
4:23 am
@ Philos
I’m neither your ‘pal’ nor your ‘boy’ but I’m very conscious about patronizing and paternalizing Westerners – Israelis do consider themselves a Western country or ‘a defense against barbarism’ as your ‘Father’ Herzl stated – and someone who talks about the humanistic values of Zionism and his/her own ‘tolerant very left-wing truth’ makes me laugh my a.. off. As I said ‘an Israeli Narcissus’.
I don’t care about the Camp David, and your ‘lack of integration of the Israeli-Arabs in the 50 and 60′. By the way they call themselves Palestinians just as the rest of us, ’48 Palestinians, Israeli Palestinians but first of all Palestinians, and Israeli semantics can’t change that.
What I care about is that my family was expelled from Akka in ’48 (and that’s where I intend to return to), that the Palestinian society was totally destroyed, and that the part of my family and my people who still live on their land are considered second class citizens on their own land,and are regularly told that if they don’t like the country they are free to leave. Mostly by blond ashkenazim who often speak broken Hebrew and of course no Arabic.
I do thus not accept 22% of historical Palestine, but a One State for all people who are willing to share the land. The RoR (Haqq al Awda) should of course be implemented, the Jewish Law of Return stopped and everybody who does not want to live with the Arabs are free to leave. The South African example is a good guideline though many things differ historically.
As a ‘very left-wing, humanistic, tolerant’ person that solution should not cause you any major problems. One man, one vote in a secular democratic State. And I’m sure all those progressive Jews who you lectured me about – the inventors of the wheel, democracy, socialism, and whatever – would agree.
July 11, 2011
5:26 am
The mob is being incited by the same people that incited the murder of Yitzchak Rabin.
Ethan
July 11, 2011
5:59 am
Ethan, The only mob reaction I can recall is that of the crowd cheering the bloody hands in Ramallah.
Or does your liberalism refer only to the right (ie left) people? What about the call from the left (or is it then right?) for civil war?
July 11, 2011
6:33 am
@PHILOS
You know, my friend? I think that your Pal, Deir Yassin means what she says:
” One man, one vote in a secular democratic State. And I’m sure all those progressive Jews who you lectured me about – the inventors of the wheel, democracy, socialism, and whatever – would agree.”(Deir Yassin)
Nevertheless, I still have a problem with her vision. My problem is that when I look around, I don’t see a single Arab society that is really secular and which treats it’s minoroties as anything other than second class citizens. And I am not talking about Jewish minorities who no longer exist amongst them (except maybe a few hundred at most). Why? Because the Arabs did to the Jews, what they accuse us of having done to the Palestinian Arabs. They turned 700,000 Arab Jews into refugees. Fortunately, unlike the various Arab nations, Israel integrated those refugees and helped them rebuild their lives.
As for the question of who caused the Palestinian Arab refugee problem, Deir Yassin and her ilk are wrong. They blame everyone else but themselves for it. But the reality is that they started the war against the Jews in 1947 because they didn’t accept the two state solution then as they still don’t accept it today. Well, most of them anyway, don’t accept it. Some do but they are the minority. That’s why there is no peace and that’s why the “occupation” continues. Because they are holding out for their elusive right of return instead of building a new life like the Jewish refugees. Unfortunately, they continue with their supremacism, continue with their slogans and continue to pretend that they could build a utopia in which Jews could live under their benign rule and that they would be treated fairly. Well here is a bit of home truth to her: they would treat Jews even worse than they treated them historically. Just read up how the Arabs, under the Ottoman rule, treated the Jews of Jerusalem in the mid 1800s. And Herzl wasn’t even on the scene yet. I can give you a link that will open your eyes, Philos. You will then realise that there is no need for you to self flagellate because both sides caused suffering to one another. It’s not just the one sided affair that Deir Yassin pretends, in which the Arabs are the victims and the Jews the victimisers.
July 11, 2011
7:12 am
Historically that maxim in Arab states is one man one vote ONE TIME. It’s laughable to listen to people who never saw an authoritarian dictatorship they didn’t love talk about democracy as the road to freedom.
July 11, 2011
12:27 pm
Deir Yassin, honestly, no one cares what you want. You’re incapable of doing anything but wallowing in your misery, and that’s exactly why you and your brethren Palestinians have gotten nowhere in 60 years. At the same time, Jews who went through the most horrific tragedy in history have rebuilt themselves in a nation they are proud of, and will not agree to be second-class citizens once again.
July 11, 2011
2:19 pm
@ Deir Yassin. So, yalla, keep on fighting then because you’re insisting upon being my enemy. I will not leave because you say I must because I am unwilling to surrender my Israeliness. And whilst we’re on the subject of South Africa; tell me are the blacks better off? Because as far as I understand the deal the ANC might rule the roost but the white-man still runs the farm. So you still have rampant black poverty and discrimination against poor blacks. The difference is if you’re a middle-class black then you’re treated equally to the whites. That’s South Africa today. A load of bull@hit. A country where women are routinely raped and the government, the government of black liberation, didn’t lift a damn finger to save millions of people from AIDS! So lets not talk about South Africa because I don’t think the analogy is right.
So you think that dissolving 9 million people (6 million Jews and 4 million Arabs) into one state won’t result in a total bloodbath? And I can assure you that this state won’t be secular because the Jewish and Islamic fanatics will team up to ensure that their flocks don’t stray for fear of, God forbid, assimilation. Read about Christians in Gaza lately?
Frankly, you’re a fool if you can’t see when there are people who are willing to make peace and who are willing to admit that maybe in a generation or two there will be a single-state only after two-state solution are your allies.
As for RWZ please don’t use my ancestry to prove a point. Sure, my family was better integrated into Israeli society than Palestinian refugees were in Lebanon but my family were treated like second-class citizens for decades. If you go to the periphery you will see that they are still treated that way and if you go to Tel Aviv you will see the Ashknasi sneers of racism against my family. I turned out pretty white looking but it never fails to infuriate me when a girl I’m dating looks at a fellow Mizrachi and just blurts out “ars” or “frecha.” I know this is a new fad among Rightists to use my people’s tragedy for their hasbara but it really annoys me. You know what RWZ, if you care that much then please have the government return the land it expropriated from my family in Rishpon that was purchased from the JA in 1930s. Because apparently Iraqis aren’t entitled to live in Rishpon and we’re not the only family that suffered such travesties. Ok, leave the Mizrachim out of it!
Although I will agree to you that Deir Yassin is wrong in her black and white portrayal of history. What I don’t understand is why you can’t see the same thing about our history?
July 11, 2011
8:15 pm
@PHILOS
“Although I will agree to you that Deir Yassin is wrong in her black and white portrayal of history. What I don’t understand is why you can’t see the same thing about our history?”(PHILOS)
OK, I accept that there are idiot Ashkenazis in Israel. And there are idiot religious and there are idiot secular Jews too. But I’ll tell you what PHILOS, they have no monopoly on idiocy. Just read your own post above and tell me that you are not the racist that you are accusing Ashkenazis to be.
For your information, there are good and bad amongst any group of people. So don’t just focus on the bad. And I mean that about Arabs too but one has to say that right now, the Idiots amongst the Arabs are the ones who predominate and who set the agenda. Take that from a right wing Zionist who used to be more in the centre of the Political spectrum but who moved to the centre right because of the stupidity of the Israeli left who want to “give the farm away” without getting a secure and fair peace deal in return.
July 12, 2011
12:18 am
@ Sam Smith
“No one cares what you want”
Thank you for making my point about patronizing Westerners !
I answered a question that I was asked specifically, so maybe you should just mind you own business !
July 12, 2011
12:30 am
@ Philos
“dissolving 9 million people (6 million Jews and 4 million Arabs)”
Wow, I’m as amazed by your mathematical capacities as by the rest of your comment !
There are much more than 4 million PALESTINANS. Like most other Israelis, you forget Gaza and the Diaspora, but the Israelis don’t decide who’s Palestinian !
Maybe you should actually read the statement by the organizers of the “Welcome to Palestine” Mission, and particularly what Lubna Masarwa says about the Palestinians whereever they live being ONE people.
I’m not going to waste my time disgussing SA with you. For a ‘humanistic left-wing tolerant’ and ‘possessor of the truth’ you seem extremely biased but maybe you’re still in high school…
Amandla !
July 12, 2011
2:49 am
@Philos,
Don’t you get the feeling that you’re playing chess with yourself?
.
Does your struggle aim at eliminating Israeli injustices and human right abuses, or do you (also) consider the overall situation? If the latter, what’s your vision about it?
.
How do you feel about encouraging “the world” to impose its “democratic” solution for the conflict?
.
How do you feel about the perception communicated on this site that Israel is the only peace-rejectionist in the ME, and if only Israel will change its policy, peace will follow?
July 12, 2011
4:27 am
Max, after reading the back and forth between Philos and Deir Yassan, is it any wonder the phrase “what is left of the left” was coined in the last few years?
July 12, 2011
6:42 am
@RWZ
To the contrary, I am probably more disturbed than you by violence against Israelis. And here’s why. Like you, I know that these are human beings trying to live their lives. And I also know that the (few) Palestinians who commit these acts are hurting all Palestinians. So yes, doubly bothered.
I don’t excuse this or any violence. Perhaps some of what you are hearing is an attempt not to excuse such behavior, but to explain it. There is a difference … to the extent one acknowledges the humanity of the other party.
I do understand the Isreali attitude. If one looks at the facts – the balance of power, numbers of deaths, injuries, prisoners, etc etc etc, the level of rage and “fear” seem at best irrational.
Much the same as the US “justification” for torturing whoever happened to be scooped up into Guantanamo or picked up god knows wherever else.
Gilad Shalit was abducted five years ago. It’s wrong. The thousands of Palestinians being held in Israeli jails does not change the fact that it’s wrong, does not excuse it, does not mean it’s not stupid. The Palestinians who are holding Gilad Shalit are WRONG!
Now, RWZ, you have one person from the other viewpoint who will say that. You probably have many more, but mistook their explanation – trying to get others to see what the occupation looks like from the Palestinian point of view – for attempting to excuse it. In some cases anyway …
If Israel wants my support or sympathy, it will need to abide by international law. Before you start in, the Geneva Conventions were NOT adopted for use in ideal circumstances – the only time these agreements are even relevant is in difficult circumstances.
July 12, 2011
8:38 am
What do you think would happen if pro-Israeli protesters showed up at Gaza Airport? Answer: It would be way worse, people would die, and the authorities would be entirely complicit. For that matter see what happens if pro-ETA protesters show up in Madrid or pro-Kurdistan protesters at Atatürk airport in Istanbul. Why is everything that happens in Israel always singled out as different or worse?
The mere fact that there is political discourse in Israel, competing points of view, a pro-Palestinian lobby, the rule of law, a protective Supreme Court, and a very active left wing, whereas all of that is lacking in Israel’s enemies, should tell you something.
July 12, 2011
4:57 pm
@MISHA
First: Thanks for acknowledging that Israelis have grievances too, not just the Palestinian Arabs.
Second: I dispute your claim that only a few of the Palestinian Arabs are responsible for causing suffering to Israeli civilians. I put it to you that the vast majority, not all, of Palestinian Arabs support the tactics of those whom you wrongly describe as “a few”. Some dovso openly when they hand out lollies to their children after successful “operations”, some do it quietly and one only reads very few lonely voices very occasionally who criticise those tactics.
Third: You rightly recognise our exasperation with the crowd that we call anti Israel activists. Why? Because with the exception of your above post, your voices come across as very unbalanced. Your crowd routinely ignores context, history and the actions of our enemies. Your voice literally comes across as haranguing us, telling us to forget history, forget the intent of our enemies, forget what they are actually doing forget any difficulties and “just be good”. Our response to that is that we try to be as good as we can under very difficult circumstances and no, we are not always successful but at least we try. We then get more lectures and moralising from activists like you. Any wonder then that we have come to consider some elements of the left as our enemies too? A bit more balance (as you displayed above) would not go astray, a bit more often.
Fourth:You justify the imbalanced attitude of “activists” by the fact that Israel has the overwhelming power. I don’t accept that justification. I don’t accept it because whether you agree or not, Israel is still, after 63 years, fighting for it’s survival as a nation state for the Jewish people. The only state of the Jewish people (not as a religion but as a people).
Are we successful, at the moment, in our war of survival? Of course we are but we are still fighting huge odds. And in the latest phase of this war against us, the actions of these international activists are actually counter productive because they contribute to OUR sense of being under siege.
The excuse that the activists support the Arabs because they are the underdogs, just does not cut. Even if true (which is arguable), it is not justifiable. By the same logic, today’s anti Israel activists would have been supporting Nazi Germany towards the end of the war. Because by the end of the war, Nazi Germany were losing and they became the underdogs.
Last but not least, before you become outraged by my comparison to Nazi Germany, YES to us Hamas is Nazi Germany. They openly boast that they will destroy our people no matter how many generations it will take and they act like they mean it!