SERIOUS TALK URGENTLY NEEDED ON ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS
It's not clear how much of tonight's debate will end up being about foreign policy and how much will be about the domestic economic crisis (that is of course creating a global crisis too), but if the Middle East does come up, it would be good if finally there would be reality over rhetoric regarding the urgency with which Israel needs to make peace with the Palestinians by ceding most of the West Bank settlements and the occupation. None too soon. Most Americans probably don't know that Zeev Sternhell, a leading Jewish and Zionist academic-a 73 year old Holocaust survivor--was nearly seriously harmed yesterday when a pipe bomb exploded in front of his Jerusalem apartment, set there by extremist Jewish settlers from the West Bank.
It's said in Israel that the bullets fly from the right to the left; and in fact, Jewish extremists have killed peace activists with their bullets and grenades, including of course former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin as he walked off stage from a peace rally and Emil Grunzweig, a Peace Now activist who was bombed down in the streets in February 1983 during a rally and march in Tel Aviv. Now, Israeli police have guards also in front of the apartment of Yariv Oppenheimer, Peace Now's secretary-general and Labor Party activist and others are gravely concerned.
Two summers ago I was in a four wheel drive with a Peace Now leader knowledgeable about the settlers' illegal activities and as we were driving up and down paved and unpaved roads among the settlers' caravans in the West Bank, he got a phone call from a police officer in Jerusalem who told him that there was 'chatter' moving on the wires from extremist Jewish settlers putting a number on his head and this policeman warned this Peace Now activist to race out of the territories before the settlers saw his well-known vehicle.
The younger generation of right wing extremists among the settlers are quite dangerous and they need to be called in immediately by the Israeli politicians and the public, but also by politicians in the U.S. who refuse to give Israel the tough love it needs to maintain its fraying democracy. It's just a short step from seeing Palestinians or other Arabs as inhuman to seeing Jews as such. The settlement policy has so severely damaged Israeli democracy and more violence within the Jewish population in Israel itself can also be not simply tragic but destabilizing to the region. Rhetoric will not help Israel; reality will.
Sorry, Jo-Ann.
We -- here in the United States -- have more urgent matters to consider, right now.
September 26, 2008 4:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree the attack on Sternhell is beyond the pale; is this considered a terrorist act in Israel? I agree with you, Jo-Ann, that this issue is pressing, unfortunately, AIPAC has greased both sides, so that any statements issued will resemble Sarah Palin's informed comments on Israel (not to be confused with Juan Cole's).
September 26, 2008 5:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I must agree with Ellen. We're too busy bailing our own lunatics out to bail anyone else out.
September 26, 2008 6:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Or as Jesus would say: For ye have the Jews with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but an old fashioned, rip-snorting financial meltdown ye have not always.
September 26, 2008 8:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Unfortunately there is nothing that can be done in American politics to help the Israelis out of their dilemma. That issue is radioactive. No one can touch it.
Actually, many of used are getting down right tired of hearing your complaints, especially after a Zionists in Israel and in this country manipulated us into the Iraq war.
September 26, 2008 6:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for your post.
Some of the responses
to this serious problem, in the comments here,
sound so hawkish, its surprising.
We can think and chew gum at the same time,
we can give this post respect and pay attention
to the financial meltdown-cook-dinner-watch
TV or whatever else at the same time.
WE are not in Washington
signing checks, we are on the computer.
Assassinations are tragic...and this Isreal
Palestine problem is 60 YEARS OLD. It does
need attention.
September 26, 2008 7:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ms. Mort-- Care to tell TPM members how you were thrown out of an important job with a major trade union for being virulently anti-Israel, or should they write to UNITE-HERE themselves to find out?
If you aren't on John McCain's payroll, you should be because when you urge Barack Obama to show Israelis "tough love" you are handing Florida and Pennsylvania to McCain. I rest easy in the secure knowledge that nobody in Washington in any position of influence who want to see Israel survive, and nobody in the Obama campaign who wants to win, will ever pay any attention to idiots like you.
September 26, 2008 11:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jo-Ann, you don't have the slightest idea about what you are talking about. There is a LOT of Leftist violence in Israel, far more than Right-wing violence, its just the "Right-wing" violence, such as it is, gets far more play in the government-controlled media in Israel. Every week there are violent attacks by Leftist demonstrators on police and workers building the separation wall. There is a long history of police violence, sent by "Left-wing" governments to beat up non-violent demonstrators opposing Leftist governmental actions, such as opposition to the Oslo Agreements (you do agree, Jo-Ann, that non-violent demonstrations are an accepted form of protest, don't you?). Then there was the infamous SHABAK provocateur, Avishai Raviv, who befriended and egged on Rabin's assassin Yigal Amir, who also physically assaulted Leftist politicians in attacks similar to this one against Sternhell.
Regarding the settlements in Judea/Samaria...the only chance for there to be peace between Israel and the Arabs is for Israel to INCREASE building, this will show the Arabs that Israel is here to stay, and then arrangements can be worked out to give the Palestinians REAL rights, not just the "priviledge of living under the corrupt, violent FATAH and HAMAS regimes.
September 27, 2008 12:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Right wing violence? Left wing violence?
Sounds like Israel is a "failed state."
September 27, 2008 3:08 PM | Reply | Permalink