Comments on: The threat some see in imagining a different country

By: Greg Pollock

Greg Pollock — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 01:17:08 +0000

I use my name. I wonder why others don’t.

By: Y.

Y. — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 10:40:20 +0000

I don’t entirely agree with Fromer’s piece, but it’s a marvel of writing compared to this pretentious article.
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Let’s start with the headline: “the threat some see”. That’s a cheap shot. Where does Mr. Fromer seem threatened? He criticizes the protests, and thinks they are avoiding critical issues (the latter argument has been used at +972 as well). Are the protests above criticism? Is any criticism a sign of psychological ‘threat’ feeling? I would have thought criticism is a necessary part of the ‘discussion’ the authors supposedly seek, but apparently they oppose all criticism…
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The authors then claim the mantle of “discussion” and “new ideas”. What new ideas? Most of the stuff the authors list is not by protesters themselves – and it is perfectly conventional, mostly in fact, a part of the same rigid debate the authors attack.
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Lastly, they end up with a call for ‘new politics’. Oh, sorry, not even that: “New politicians, new language of activism”. Is that really what protesters are out about? Is that even close to the headline’s “imagining Israel”? This is pathetic – even smaller than the curious idea of a non-political political movement, articulated by some protest leaders… And both practically guarantee the failure of the protests to change much of anything.

By: Greg Pollock

Greg Pollock — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 01:43:49 +0000

“Indeed, the revolutionary aspect of this protest is not in an expressed desire to change the government—in fact, we find the current political alternatives to be just as hopeless—but rather in the call to change the nature of politics in Israel, the very structure that frames the political debate.”
And:
“never before have so many Palestinians taken part in a grassroots protest that started with the Jewish elites, and large demonstrations were held in Nazareth, Bakah el-Garbeih and other Arab towns; the main rallies in Haifa and Beer Sheva were emphatically mixed Arab-Jewish.”
And:
” it might create something completely new – new alliances, a new generation of politicians, and even a new language of political activism in Israel. This, of course, is our hope.”
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What the Knesset makes it can later take away. A new party (Labor may be too tainted now) calling for a Constitutional Convention, to ratchet gains, so the next war will not perforce, remove them. I’ll keep saying it till you remove me (hope you don’t).