Hello abu hartal,
I am writing to you offlist because I have already exceeded the posting limits on lbo-talk and I don't want to upset the moderator.
I would appreciate links to the instances of discrimination against Arabs within Israel mentioned below. I don't doubt that this happens, but it would be helpful to have some documentation, since this is a point that comes up when I discuss Israel with people. The Pro-Israel sources I know claim that this does not happen or is exaggerated, so I would appreciate any references from the "other side."
As for "not seeing," there is probably much that I do not see, since I do not live in Israel or the occupied territories and therefore have no idea what goes on daily. Contra the assertions of other list members, I am neither a troll nor a Zionist, just a communist who sees a potential for populist anti-semitism in over-emphasizing the crimes of the Israeli state to the exclusion of a generalized critique of state and capital.
As I stated before on the list, Israel is not my favorite topic of discussion, and I'd much rather talk about critique of political economy, but I cannot control my impulse to post when somebody is making arguments that I think drift towards anti-semitism.
P.S. Links from human rights groups, mainstream newspapers etc I would prefer. I am not saying that left-wing sources are tainted and dishonest, just that I prefer to separate the facts from polemic as far as this goes.
--- abu hartal <abuhartal at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Sun., September 03, 2006 Elul 10, 5766 | Haaretz
>Can you really not see?
>
>By Amira Hass
>
>Let us leave aside those Israelis whose ideology
>supports the dispossession of the Palestinian people because "God chose
>us."
>Leave aside the judges who whitewash every military policy of killing and
>destruction. Leave aside the military commanders who knowingly jail an
>entire
>nation in pens surrounded by walls, fortified observation towers, machine
>guns, barbed wire and blinding projectors. Leave aside the ministers. All
>of these are not counted among the collaborators. These are the architects,
>the planners, the designers, the executioners.
>
>But there are others. Historians and mathematicians,
>senior editors, media stars, psychologists and family doctors, lawyers who
>do not support Gush Emunim and Kadima, teachers and educators, lovers of
>hiking trails and sing-alongs, high-tech wizards. Where are you? And
>what about you, researchers of Nazism, the Holocaust and Soviet
>gulags? Could you all be in favor of systematic discriminating laws? Laws
>stating that the Arabs of the Galilee will not even be compensated for the
>damages
>of the war by the same sums their Jewish neighbors are entitled to (Aryeh
>Dayan, Haaretz , August 21).
>
>Could it be that you are all in favor of a racist
>Citizenship Law that forbids an Israeli Arab from living with his family
>in his own home? That you side with further expropriation of lands and the
>demolishing of additional orchards, for another settler
>neighborhood and another exclusively Jewish road? That you all back the
>shelling and missile fire killing the old and the young in the Gaza Strip?
>
>
>Could it be that you all agree that a third of the
>West Bank (the Jordan Valley) should be off limits to Palestinians? That
>you all side with an Israeli policy that prevents tens of thousands of
>Palestinians who have obtained foreign citizenship from returning to their
>families in the occupied territories?
>
>Could your mind really be so washed with the
>security excuse, used to forbid Gaza students from studying occupational
>therapy at
>Bethlehem and medicine at Abu Dis, and preventing sick people from Rafah
>from receiving medical treatment in Ramallah? Will also you find it easy to
>hide behind the explanation "we had no idea": we had no idea that
>the discrimination practiced in the distribution of water - which is
>solely controlled by Israel - leaves thousands of Palestinian households
>without water during the hot summer months; we had no idea that when the
>IDF
>blocks the entrance to villages, it also blocks their access to springs or
>water tanks.
>
>But it cannot be that you don't see the iron gates
>along route 344 in the West Bank, blocking access to it from the
>Palestinian villages it passes by. It cannot be that you support preventing
>the access
>of thousands of farmers to their land and plantations, that you support the
>quarantine on Gaza which prevents the entry of medicine for hospitals, the
>disruption of electricity and water supply to 1.4 million human beings,
>closing their only outlet to the world for months.
>
>Could it be that you do not know what is happening
>15 minutes from your faculties and offices? Is it plausible that you
>support the system in which Hebrew soldiers, at checkpoints in the heart of
>the
>West Bank, are letting tens of thousands of people wait everyday for hours
>upon hours under the blazing sun, while selecting: residents of Nablus
>and Tul Karm are not allowed through, 35-year-olds and under - yallah,
>back to Jenin, residents of the Salem village are not even allowed to be
>here, a sick woman who skipped the line must learn a lesson and will be
>purposefully detained for hours. Machsom Watch's site is available for all;
>in
>it are countless such testimonies and worse, a day by day routine. But it
>cannot be that those who are appalled over every swastika painted on a
>Jewish
>grave in France and over every anti-Semitic headline in a Spanish local
>newspaper will not know how to reach this information, and will not be
>appalled and outraged.
>
>As Jews we all enjoy the privilege Israel gives us,
>what makes us all collaborators. The question is what does every one
>of us do in an active and direct daily manner to minimize cooperation with
>a
>dispossessing, suppressing regime that never has its fill. Signing
>a petition and tutting will not do. Israel is a democracy for its Jews. We
>are not in danger of our lives, we will not be jailed in concentration
>camps,
>our livelihood will not be damaged and recreation in the countryside or
>abroad will not be denied to us. Therefore, the burden of collaboration and
>direct responsibility is immeasurably heavy.
>
>
>______________________
>
>
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