End the occupation and the militarism, which are conspicuous in the democratic world today but not in its history, and this could be a pretty cool place.
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.
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caden
I just saw a pig fly by my window. And I believe snow balls are staying intact in hell. A Larry Derfner column where Israel is not the center of evil in the universe. Who would have thought.
Edo
Um, Nakba?
pabelmont
“What Israel does” is not what “Israel is”? And can change? Well, I suppose both can change. Right now, Israel is (temporarily — for 44 years) expansionist and violently racist against Palestinian Arabs and chances to be expropriating Arab land and property throughout Greater Israel at a great rate. “Chances”? “Not what it is”? And, lest we forget, chances, again perhaps temporarily (this for 68 years) to be lawless in the context of both its own laws (IDF ignoring court orders) and international law.
Glad its only temporary, and not intrinsic, though I’d always thought otherwise.
Since it can change, what does Mr. Derfner think would make it change? Short of mass expulsion or kill-off of the “natives”?
aristeides
Something worth saving? A matter of opinion, that.
Philos
@ Larry, “We’re not a gentle nation, but neither are we a sadistic one” ; try the dating scene here
GilGamish
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/world/middleeast/scores-killed-in-egyptian-soccer-mayhem.html
caden
Come on Larry, I know your a left wing guy but you have neo-nazis posting on 972 with impunity and your deleting me. How about a little journalistic honor.
Larry Derfner
Caden, if I see any neo-Nazi comments, I’ll delete them. Meantime, I’ll delete any accusations of Nazism.
occupier1967
“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…It’s Israel’s policy toward Arabs that’s violent, and if that policy changed, I think things would be pretty cool around here.” Israel had a very violent policy towards Egypt in the past. Then Sadat stopped trying to kill us, and voila! Israel’s “violent” policy towards Egypt somehow changed and became peaceful, and we pulled out of all of “their” land. Maybe, Mr. Derfner, if the Palestinians pulled a Sadat, it might help Israel stop it’s “violent” policy? (Trying to live is Mr. Derfner’s idea of a “violent” policy)
Piotr Berman
The beach event seems simply bizarre. I understand that the problem was that participant and bystanders would have to tell if the woman was in the condition to grant “real consent” for sexual contact, somewhat subtle decision. In more prudish USA any “lewd and boisterous behavior” on any public beach is prohibited, but apparently some beaches in Israel have a different status. (In the conservative interior of USA where I live you can’t even bring a can of beer to a beach, but I guess that public sex would not be tolerated even in Florida during Spring Break.)
VP
Ah. The ol’ “our racist violence isn’t as bad as their racist violence” approach.
I see today we’re taking the nihilistic approach to justification.
Elisabeth
You insist on including the past in your comparison, which seems a bit artificial to me. It is as if you are saying that the situation in Tibet, Birma or Darfur is no worse than in Germany, because look at what the Nazi’s were like in their time.
Dhalgren
Well, I think many are misreading the nature of the analysis here. I may be mistaken myself, but I read this article as saying that the differences between Israel and more violent regimes (current or historical) should give us cause for hope and reason to believe that justice for all can be secured without the accompanying bloodshed that tends to go along with the overthrow of more violent regimes. Also, nowhere do I read that the occupation is less important in terms of global politics than other, more violent conflicts. For instance, the Syrian conflict is bloodier by far. Yet, a peaceful resolution in Syria would not have the far-reaching effect that an end to the Israeli occupation would.
Larry Derfner
What I’m saying is that leftists who write Israel off as uniquely evil or inocrrigible are utterly wrong and unjust; I can’t think of a Western democracy that hasn’t done much worse things than Israel’s doing now, and no one read them out of the civilized world.
sh
Agree with Piotr about the beach incident. Someone would have called the police in Europe too. The odd thing about it is that no-one called the police and that most seem to think the permissibility of sex in broad daylight on a public beach depends on whether the woman in question is crazy or not.
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As far as the rest is concerned, you’re probably right Larry. Our city streets are safer than those of Europe or the USA (but our roads? Hmmm). However, being as brutal and boorish as everyone else, or even slightly less so than some, isn’t good enough for us. Unlike those to whom we are being compared, we are a light unto the nations, our army is the most moral in the world (and the world, wink, nudge, is one big freier).
Dhalgren
Any leftists that would write a country, any country, off as uniquely evil and/or incorrigible should take a vow of silence and, per the advice of Voltaire, tend to their own gardens. I think we can leave it in the “capable” hands of the right to label countries evil.
sh
Thinking more deeply about it, you’re comparing unlike with like, Larry. Israel is different; uniquely incorrigible isn’t such a bad way to describe it at this moment in time. The evil can happen in the corners where no-one with power is there to witness it because of the ingenious structure of the thing. The Israel you’re talking about is West Jerusalem, the coastal plain towns, the places predominantly inhabited by Jews within the Green Line. The fact that you’re a lefty yourself helps you to exclude the places the right considers part of Israel too, in other words those in which uniquely evil things do happen and certain kinds of people have no protection at all from them, not even the right to protection.
.
The right is in government, those walls, checkpoints, civilians with military equipment and the right to use it as they see fit, undercover agents, night raids are in Israel as far as they are concerned, but Jewish Israelis are not incommoded by them. The left shoots itself in the foot when it calls what happens only in certain places colonialism. Colonies were always far from the mother country. In our case the mother-country becomes the colony. You can’t dance at two weddings (at the same time), as they say in Yiddish.
Kibbutznik
” You can’t dance at two weddings (at the same time), as they say in Yiddish. ”
.
why not sh ?
you in our expieriance have made an art of doing so .
Kibbutznik
why dont you explain to Larry your disdain for those of us from the Hashomer Hatzair movement sh ?
for those of us that vote Meretz and Hadash ?
for those of us that dont believe in your God bullshit
tell him about your revulsion with Shulamit Aloni and your roots with Gush Emunim
your forum might have gone sh but its all been recorded
” You can’t dance at two weddings (at the same time), as they say in Yiddish ”
no kiddin