Bradley Burston : Racism-as-Zionism. Don't Call It 'pro-Israel.' Call It What It Is: Disgusting
It's time to stop pretending that racism can ever be good for the Jews.
www.haaretz.com
No more.
It's time to stop pretending that racism can ever be good for the Jews. Not in practice, and not in propaganda.
It's
time to stop fooling ourselves that there's any reasonable benefit for
Israel in practicing racism against Palestinians, whether in flagrantly
discriminatory policies in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, or in less
obvious but still keenly felt official inequality toward Palestinian
citizens of Israel.
It's
time, as well, to call out "Pro-Israel" voices who "defend" Israel by
demonizing and dehumanizing Palestinians as a people, as a society, as a
whole and as individuals. It's time we called racism-as-Zionism what it
is: Disgusting.
It's
time to stand up and answer the know-it-all social media zealots who,
from the comfort and insulation of their armchairs in North American
suburbs, post incessantly about how all Palestinians — people whom
they've never ever met nor spoken with — are fanatic, base, primitive,
bloodthirsty Jew-hating animals, for whom Jew-murder is the be-all and
end-all of their lives, and — incidentally — are also not a real people,
so deserve no rights beyond the right to be expelled.
It's time to ask, if this is what "pro-Israel" means, what does this Israel stand for?
Read this:
"There
is irrefutable evidence of the barbaric and genocidal nature of
Palestinian society. Indeed, the reality is that, despite maintaining a
'moderate' stance to the outside world, internally the Palestinians
and the Islamic State group are birds of a feather — although the
Palestinians are probably more corrupt."
The
author is Isi Leibler, former leader of the Australian Jewish community
and ex-chairman of the governing board of the World Jewish Congress,
who moved to Israel in the late 1990s and is now a columnist for Israel
Hayom and the Jerusalem Post.
His column, published
by both media outlets last week, held out little room for the
possibility that Palestinian society is fragmented and diverse, split
over a broad range of issues, among them, one state versus two, the role
of religion in politics, and the question of an eventual accommodation
with Israel.
Two days before the column appeared, a respected poll of Palestinian public opinion showed that 51 percent of Palestinians support a two-state solution.
But for Isi Leibler, the only thing which Palestinians truly support, is slaughtering Jews.
"While
Arab hostility to Jews prevailed even during the Mandatory period, it
was not comparable to the culture of death and evil that today saturates
every aspect of Palestinian life," he writes.
"The
Palestinian Authority has become a criminal society and can be compared
to prewar Germany when the Nazis transformed their population into
genocidal barbarians by depicting Jews as subhuman."
You
have to hand it to Isi. A great sense of timing. His statements on
Palestinians come just as the school year begins, and students, many for
the first time, will be learning about the Israel-Palestine conflict.
According
to Leibler, the direction of the debate over Israel is all wrong. In
his view, "exposing the barbarity of our neighbors should be made the
top priority in our foreign relations efforts, rather than the endless
disputes over whether the minuscule 2% of territory comprising
settlements (which are not being expanded) is justified."
Let's
forget, for the moment, that neither the two percent figure nor the
observation regarding non-expansion are, in fact, even remotely
representative of the reality of occupation.
The
problem is reducing millions of Palestinians, people of all ages and
aspirations and backgrounds and temperaments and dreams, to a darkly
uniform mass of murderers.
The
problem is racism. The problem is using racism against Palestinians as a
defense of Israel. Using racism against Palestinians as a substitute
for information, for honesty, for any vision at all of a way forward, a
way out.
In
a reality like ours, a morass of rage, frustration, colossal unfairness
and despair, racism has a definite allure. It's the easy way out, the
tempting default, the feel-good heat sink.
The problem is, it's wrong. It's disgusting. It appeals to the worst in us, and makes nothing better.
The
problem is not Isi Leibler. For every Isi Leibler, there are countless
others, much worse, pumping out hatred against Palestinians on social
media as if the hatred itself were somehow helpful, useful, as if it
somehow made Israel stronger. Some people even hate Palestinians for a
living. Some of them are in the Knesset. One of them now has the biggest
office in the Defense Ministry.
There
is a prime minister who exhorts Israeli Jews to drop everything and run
out and vote for him because Arabs in droves are coming over the hill.
A prime minister who exploits a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv in order to accuse Arab Israelis as a whole of disloyalty to the state.
Is this really the best that Israel's got going for it?
Are
there no better arguments from the right supporting Israel — and doing
everything possible to fend off any eventuality of a Palestinian state
alongside it — than branding Palestinians genocidal, barbaric criminals?
When
the right uses racism as a public relations tool, all it's really doing
is preaching to its choir. But what does that say about the preacher,
and what does that say about the choir?
In the end, in marshaling racist arguments in order to "defend" Israel, what they've shown the rest of us, is only this:
Racism is not a defense. Racism is a confession.
Commenti
Posta un commento