The end of hasbara

 

The indefatigable Phil Weiss has written an excellent summary of Israeli propaganda and how (under the Hebrew name hasbara its has run its course.

 

Israel always knew the theft of Palestinian land and the ethnic cleansing of 750,00 indigenous people in over 500 villages was indefensible so it had to embark on a massive hasbara campaign with propagandists in the only country that mattered, the USA.

 

 

In the post 1948 world this was easy. The “Christian West” suffering under holocaust guilt gladly sacrificed Palestine. Granted the largely rural population had nothing to do with the Jewish tragedy but as Edward Said wrote presciently in Orientalism, Arabic people were deemed expendable in this regard, “This was made by a European power … about a non-European territory … in a flat disregard of both the presence and wishes of the native majority resident in that territory”. The Balfour Declaration of 1917

And how about Lord Balfour’s shocking arrogance:

The Four Great Powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land’.

 

President Wilson”s right of self-determination was ignored.

 

The Palestinians who comprised 96% of the country in 1900 had been devastated in their first intifada of 1936-1939. Their revolt was against Great Britain complicit in its imperial arrogance of handing over this area to the Zionists (largely Russian Jews) as part of the Empire’s military adventures.That this called for the annihilation of the Palestinian people was irrelevant.The promise of Balfour that nothing would be done that would prejudice the existing civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities in Palestine, was totally ignored, Also ignored were the protestations of Palestinian leadership
In the Third Palestinian Congress in Haifa in 1920. It rejected the British government’s plans to support the Zionist project as a violation of international law and of the rights of the indigenous population. But who listened to Arabs at this time?

 

Then came the Nakba the catastrophe of 1948, the silence of the West. then 1967, the 6 Day War, more Palestinian land taken and now 500,000 illegal settlers living there. They can vote in Israeli elections but indigenous Palestinians, no vote.

 

Then the shock to Israel, the computer, the launch of omnipresent multimedia, the cell phone, You tube, all laying bare the lies of Israeli democracy, the brutal day to day life of Palestinians, the revolt of young Jews of conscience more attuned to to the universal values of Torah Judaism than their elders. A blogger below in response to Weiss frames this well:

After a while it gets harder for the hasbara to keep trying to defend the indefensible. How long can apologists in the US media, keep pretending what the world sees in live pictures, unarmed civilians being killed by precision bombs and snipers, is all the fault of the victims. The justifications for massacre after massacre, is sounding lamer, weaker, and it makes those carrying the water for Israel, look like they are full of BS.

Now if the Congress can find the courage to stop the aid, weapons, and unwavering support, going to the zionists, and stop enabling them, the end game will be swifter.

 

Tomorrow, Phil Weiss on hasbara is finished.

AIPAC and the BS ARTIST

In a talk in Washington in 2016 Gideon Levy the Israeli journalist described the Israel lobby group AIPAC in these terms:

 

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee may be the organization that has caused the greatest damage to Israel. It corrupted Israel, taught it that everything is permissible to it. It made sure America would cover up and restrain itself over everything. That it would never demand anything in exchange. That Uncle Sam would pay – and keep mum. That the supply of intoxicating drugs would continue. America is the dealer, and AIPAC the pusher.

 

We don’t have a bigger enemy for for justice, for peace, for equality than trhose who who think that if you supply the drug addict with more drugs,you are his friend…No, my friends, those not friends,they are enemies.

 

 

The same APAC gave Israel PM Bibi Netanyahu several standing ovations as he dished out this lie to his adoring idolaters:

 

 

In my office i have a signet ring in my office i have a signet ring-of a Jewish official from the time of the Bible. The seal was found right next to the Western Wall, and it dates back 2,700 years, to the time of King Hezekiah. Now, there’s a name of the Jewish official inscribed on the ring in Hebrew. His name was Netanyahu. Ben Yoash That’s my last name.My first name Benjamin, dates back, 1000 years earlier to Benjamin the son of Jacob.

 
A very rich story, a typical Israeli (read non observant Jew) trick of using the Bible to justify Israel’s claim to all of Palestine.There’s only one thing wrong with this whopper: Netanyahu’s original name was Mileikowsky.

 

His father, born in the Russian empire in 1910, like many Zionists adopted the pseudonym “Netanyahu”, gift of God as a pen name.This was done by all israeli PMs who were born in the Russian Empire. The idea of course was to Hebraicize their name and make it appear tat they were the indigenous Semites and not the Palestinians.

PERES  SHARON  MEIR  RABIN  SHAMIR  BEGIN  BEN GURION  All from the USSR,not indigenous to Palestine.
As well they did the same to Palestinian villages and towns, gave them Old Testament names. The trick worked for decades but now the curtain has been pulled back and the Wizard of Oz has been found naked.

 

And Netanyahu convicted of being an arch BS artist

American Jew banned from Israel

On June 30 Jewish American peace activist Ariel Gold was deported from “the only democracy in the Middle East” by the immigration authorities at Ben Gurion airport even though she had a visa for studies at the Hebrew University, issued by the Israeli Consulate in New York.

 

it seems Ms.Gold is guilty of the heinous crime of supporting BDS, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, the very nonviolent tactic which helped bring down another apartheid regime, South Africa

 

 

Interior Minister Minister of Interior Aryeh Deri revoked her visa, saying: “I am again using my authority to prevent the entry into Israel of a woman who came to act against Israel and call for its boycott.

Here’s a digression worth reading.

 

Ironies abound here. Deri is a Moroccan Jew who emigrated to Israel and quickly discovered the way to power was to ditch his Arabic background and prove his bona fides to his Ashkenazi masters.This is well known in Israel. Deri one might say is a”self-hating Arab.” He made it!

 

Yehouda Shenhav, an Israeli of Iraqi origin, in other words a Mizrachi states it well

I re-invented myself as Israeli rather than Arab. The more you distance yourself from Arabness, the more chance you have of integrating into Israeli society.

 

The most famous Moroccan in Israel a few years ago was the cowardly 20 year old soldier Elor Azaria who murdered a disabled Palestinian in cold blood in Hebron. His only problem—he was caught on camera. Otherwise he’d go scott free. Azaria is part of the “army of the periphery” non Ashkenazi Jews who do the dirty work of the occupation—the check points, night raids and patrols in hell holes like Hebron.

 

 

Aryeh Deri now does the dirty state work with a pen.Shame on him.

 

Back to the Palestinian city in the West Bank, 220,000 Palestinians and about 800 crazed settlers who run amok protected by brainwashed kids like Azaria.

 

When American jews visit this den of racist oppression, they suddenly see the nature of Israel.

 

A year ago Ms Gold was violently accosted by a settler woman,Anat Cohen. As usual the soldiers watched with amusement.Where was she from. Gold spells out her Jewish background and answers that she’s from New York and this simpleton soldier “Why are you going against the Jews?” The kid is out of his league as Ariel answers: “I am going with the Jews, I’m going with human rights and Jewish values, these are my Jewish values”.

 

“To protect killers??” another soldier asks. “To protect our souls, to be on the right side of history”, Gold answers.

 

No, you gotta “stand with the Jews.”

 

They kicked Gold out of the Jewish section of Hebron and put her on the Palestinian bus into Jerusalem where she met with Rabbis for Human Rights

Now Ariel Gold would have none of this. After rebutting the soldiers she took the mad settler woman to court and got a restraining order. Israel is always sensitive to American Jews who need to be treated with kid gloves.  After all the United states of Amnesia is funding the occupation.The mad settler and the dopey soldiers made Israel look bad. The soldiers were even prevented from visiting Cohen’s coffee shop!

 

Gold says,” And they were told to not repeat such a thing [refuse to protect an American Jew.”

 

And so Ariel Gold after being abused at the airport was sent packing.

Her final comment *as quoted on Mondoweiss;

I cant do course work at Hebrew University or visit any of my friends in Palestine, or support work on the ground taking place in Palestine for freedom and equality. I feel the sense of isolation, and a sense of strangling upon activists in Palestine.

Thhat’s the real purpose of banning me in. Having the ban of the 20 organizations, it’s to isolate a movement and separate and divide, just like Israel does, separating  Palestinians in the West Bank from Palestinians inside of 1948 [Israel ‘proper’],

Welcome to Israel!

Tavares signs! Oh, joy!

Unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities. Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
Phillip K Dick

 

Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups—and the electronic hardware exists by which to deliver these pseudo-worlds right into the heads of the reader, the viewer, the listener…. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind.

Kurt Andersen:Fantasyland

 

Tavares signs with Leafs!

 

Two talking heads on the Sportsnet channel tell us it’s a day we’ll all remember.

I’ve forgotten it already!

More spectacle and on the front page of the Globe! Israel is busy destroying Bedouin villages. The NYT wrote about it on the weekend but Tavares signs!
And the usual cliché ridden comments. NHL players are all schooled in media relations so we get the predictable  booswa from Tavares who like most Canadians is a nice politicized guy. He will never say anything critical about leaving NYC or anything about world politics.

Wouldn’t it be grand to hear him say.
“I am finally leaving this nuthose who elected a bozo and am coming home to good old TO…oh yeah, they elected Ford. sorry.”

 

And then a two for one! how lucky can we get?

 

Lebron leaves Clevland and goes west.I can hardly sleep.But Argentine fans weep.Why?

 

 

What a Canada Day!

 

 

 

 

This man is a cabinet minister!

Can you imagine such a man as a cabinet minister in Canada? Read on and see how far Israel has fallen.

 

Evet Lieberman was a nightclub bouncer from Moldova who came to Israel when he was 20 as part of the Russian exodus to Israel, most with a tenuous connection to Judaism .Like most Russians who arrived with little experience of democracy,Lieberman joined the Likud party and sensing the lay of the land, adopted the more Hebraic sounding name Avigdor. This was the standard practice of Russian leaders all of whom changed their names so they would appear indigenous to the Middle East.Peres,(Perski) Shamir,(Yezernitzky) Netanyahu,(Milikovsky) Rabin(Rubitzov)—all Russians or Eastern European.

 

In 1999 Israel in his view was not sufficiently anti-Arab so he founded Yisrael Beitenu (Our Home is Israel). Using his extreme rightwing Russian base,Lieberman shockingly
served as Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2009 to 2012, and again from 2013 to 2015. Presently he is the Defense Minister

 

 

This appointment should have stunned real democrats but today most of the Knesset 75 0f 110 seats were far right ideologues, driving Israel into an anti-democratic abyss, veering on fascism.

 

Tel Aviv University‘s world renowned psychologist’ Akiva Eldar’s description of Jewish Israeli attitudes perfectly fit the racist Lieberman

 

Their consciounsess is characterized by by a sense of victimization a siege mentality, blind patriotism, belligerence, self-righteousness, dehumanization of the Palestinians and insensitivity to their suffering.

 

David Grossman Israel’s premier novelist called him “a political pyromaniac” and as Max Blumenthal wrote most of the Ashkenazi elite saw him as a proto-fascist thug.

Welcome to Israel today..

When Lieberman was named Defense Minister, Gideon Levy wrote:

The offer has no legitimacy because Lieberman has no legitimacy, even if he was elected democratically. For the first time in Israeli history, fascism is a clear and possibly present danger…

Do we need reminders about who this is? His proposal to blow up the Aswan Dam. His saying that Egypt’s then-President Hosni Mubarak could “go to hell.” His inflammatory theory that Palestinian terror is part of global jihad. The man who called members of Breaking the Silence “mercenaries who sold their soul to Satan.” Who called activists in Yesh Gvul “kapos” and said Arab MKs should be tried as in Nuremberg. Need we mention his incitement? Then there is his recent declaration that Elor Azaria, who shot dead an incapicated Palestinian assailant, is a hero. Need we mention that his party is corrupt to the core,

 

If Lieberman will be Lieberman, we will miss Benjamin Netanyahu. If Lieberman will be Lieberman, the territories will burn like they’ve never burned before.

 

Jewish state, Jewish values, Jewish shame

At Passover Seder celebrating Jewish liberation, I felt shame – shame to be a Jew – at the latest massacre of Palestinians by Israeli troops. This unspeakable, unlawful outrage – young Jewish snipers deliberately shooting down unarmed Gazans gathered in protest at the border fence that helps keep them confined in the largest open-air prison in the world, killing 18 and wounding more than 1,400 — was committed pursuant to shoot-to-kill orders from senior Israeli military and political leaders, who put them there precisely to intimidate Palestinians who dared engage in non-violent protest, and to collectively punish, again, the civilian Palestinian population.

 

 

Shooting unarmed Palestinian demonstrators pursuant to an open-fire policy is not new, either in Gaza or the West Bank. In December 2017 alone, Israeli soldiers shot and killed eight demonstrators. In the same month, live fire wounded an additional 291 Palestinians in Gaza and 117 in the West Bank. But the Passover killings at the Gaza fence reached a new high, or low, in Israel’s and the Jewish people’s descent into madness.

 

I do not know which is worse, the shamelessness of those perpetrating these atrocities, or the indifference and silence of both Israeli and American Jews – rabbinate and laity – at the routine Jewish large-scale killing and maiming of Palestinian protesters. Israeli military, political and judicial leaders make sure virtually no killers of Palestinians are held accountable, and none suffer serious punishment.  About Friday’s massacre, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman assured Israelis that there would be no investigation, saying, “all our soldiers deserve a medal.”

 
Oh yes, the Jewish kids who killed the young man rolling a tire away from the border, the man praying with others, and the young man watching the protests and puffing a cigarette, they all deserve medals? Watch the videos, but be warned, if they don’t make you physically sick, they will make you heartsick at what passes for Jewish values these days.

 

 

Before we had a Jewish state, we had Jewish books. Five books. A Mishnah. A Talmud. We discussed, debated, argued about and perfected Jewish moral, ethical and religious values. We knew what they were, and when they were violated. And we knew what it was like to be victimized by others who did not share those values. When we felt the lash of oppression, it stung so bad it really had meaning. We were against it. It was something that the goyim did to us, and to others. It was not for us. So we were for equality, dignity, fraternity, rule of law. We were against racism. We were for taking in the stranger, the immigrant, treating him or her like our own. We were proud to serve in the war against the fascists. We celebrated resisters and their resistance to oppression in Europe, and criticized collective punishment of European civilian populations after such acts of resistance. Even after Israel was born, we marched, here in America, against war and militarism, against white supremacy, against Apartheid in South Africa, and for civil rights of people of color.

 

 

But now we have a Jewish state. Now, instead of a book and values, we have power. And it turns out that we are every bit as good at abusing that power, as the goyim. In fact, we may be better at it. A 2008 delegation of ANC leaders visiting the West Bank said our apartheid is worse than the South African variety they experienced and helped overcome.

 

 

And our propaganda, our hasbara, is certainly more potent and effective than that of most oppressors around the world, past and present. After all, who else could propagate and maintain for decades the myth of Israeli democracy for American Jews while running a white Jewish supremacist regime for five million Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza as comprehensive and relentless as this one – plain as day when one is there — that accords Palestinians no civil rights, steals their land and water, demolishes their homes, and has no reservations about killing and wounding them in large numbers?

 

But now, the Palestinians are ramping up non-violent protest as the resistance modality of choice, and the Israelis are ratcheting up the violence to meet it. The truth is coming out — that Israeli leaders never feared violence or “terrorism” as much as non-violent resistance. The mask of benign democracy is starting to fall away, and the true face of our Jewish oppression is showing, for all American Jews (and Christians) to see — we Americans who support and facilitate this oppression, and without whose support it would shortly cease to exist.

 

I am ashamed. I am a Jew ashamed of this Jewish state that perpetrates all this, purportedly in my name and in the name of the entire Jewish people. I am ashamed that I did not speak out publicly until my 67th year in 2014, after the massacre that was the Israeli “Operation Protective Edge” in Gaza in 2014. I am ashamed that, at Passover Seder, many of my friends and family are still silent.

 

I am ashamed that, in temples and synagogues and Jewish institutions across this land, one hears expressions of support for right-wing Israeli leaders and their crimes while Trumpers are piously excoriated for similar crimes, policies, and pronouncements here at home. I am ashamed that, on Friday, when I first heard about the killings at the Gaza fence, I could not find one TV station reporting on it. Nor can I find, with very limited exceptions, American newspapers who will tell it like it is. That includes you, Sulzbergers, running a paper I’ve been reading since the sixth grade, which proclaims that it publishes “All the News That’s Fit to Print.”

 

I am ashamed at the American Jewish rabbinate, our supposed religious leaders, who have been to Israel and know how brutal, systemic and relentless the oppression of Palestinians is there, but who remain silent for fear of losing their jobs or dividing their congregations, when what is really at risk is their Jewish souls, our Jewish values, and the essence of what Judaism has to offer the world. And it is not this.

 

There is no reason that a country with hundreds of nuclear weapons, the most sophisticated conventional military hardware, and the most powerful security and intelligence capability in the world, has to kill, maim, intimidate and collectively punish its Palestinian inhabitants. The Israeli leaders who perpetrate these crimes against humanity – and their citizens who are indifferent to it — may be Jews, but they are not Jewish.

 

It is time to acknowledge all this to ourselves, and to be silent no more.

Robert Herbst is a civil rights lawyer. He was chapter coordinator for Westchester Jewish Voice for Peace from 2014-2017,

University academics sign open letter urging Trudeau to condemn Israeli violence against Gazans

 

About 300 university academics from around the country have signed an open letter calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to keep his word and ensure there is an independent investigation into the Israeli army’s use of force against Palestinians in Gaza.

Two Liberal MPs – Robert-Falcon Ouellette and Marwan Tabbara – hand-delivered the letter to Trudeau on Wednesday. It bears a multitude of signatures from Canadian university professors and denounces the violence at the border between Israel and Gaza.
The letter says that since protests began at the border on March 30, Israeli snipers have killed 119 people and wounded thousands more.

 

“How many Palestinians need to die or be maimed for life before we wake up and take action against what is now being condemned by a number of international aid and human rights organizations as blatant violations of international law constituting war crimes?” the letter asks.

 

The signatories urge the prime minister to stand by statements he made in May, when he called for an independent investigation to examine what happened at the border, including any incitement, violence and excessive use of force.

 

On May 14, a Canadian doctor tending to wounded Palestinians at the border was shot by an Israeli sniper – an incident Trudeau called appalling.

 
“We are appalled that Dr. Tarek Loubani, a Canadian citizen, is among the wounded – along with so many unarmed people, including civilians, members of the media, first responders, and children,” read Trudeau’s statement on May 16.
“We are doing everything we can to assist Dr. Loubani and his family,” Trudeau’s statement continued, “and to determine how a Canadian citizen came to be injured. We are engaging with Israeli officials to get to the bottom of these events.”
The open letter to Trudeau was written by Hani Faris, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia, as well as Atif Kubursi, an economics professor at McMaster University in Hamilton.

 
“In your statement of May 16,” the letter concludes, “Mr. Prime Minister, you described the ‘use of excessive force and live ammunition as inexcusable’ and called for ‘an immediate independent investigation.’ We urge you, Mr. Prime Minister, to stand by your statement.”
THE CANADIAN PRESS
PUBLISHED JUNE 21, 2018

Fleeing US generated terror in Central America

First in 1823 we had the Monroe Doctrine, the arrogant policy of President James Monroe which told Europe to get the get away from of American lake—Central and South America bounded by 2 oceans. Then we had FDR’s 1935 response to the the dictadura Somoza 1 in Nicaragua.The State Dept told him he was a son of a bitch, “Yes, but he’s ours” said the liberal FDR.

 

Then the Truman Doctrine, of 1948 telling the commies to stay away from the western hemisphere or you will pay a price.The price then was paid in 1954 in Guatemala when the CIA deposed the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz and installed the military dictatorship of Carlos Castillo Armas. The USA was just getting started imposing authoritarian rulers in Central America. It is a sordid history.

 

Then the gloves were off under the simpleton Reagan in 1980s. He funded the Contras convinced that they were “freedom fighters” who would bring down “communist” insurrections in Central America. His point man running this destabilization from Honduras was the US ambassador John Negroponte who later became the US rep at the UN, a pliant servant of the empire.

 

The salient fact was Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua were tired of the US supporting thugs who would keep the populace down, break unions and allow cheap goods to flow north to the USA.They had a legitimate reason to revolt.

 
Finally 2 scribes who read history brought this home last wekend in the Star,the first being Rick Salutin
What’s particularly poignant is that the kids and their parents aren’t just fleeing to the U.S., they’re fleeing from the results of U.S. policies in violence-drenched countries like Guatemala (where U.S. complicity extends to a CIA-backed coup in 1954); El Salvador, where the U.S. was behind a gory civil war in the 1980s; and Honduras currently, where the U.S. supported a 2009 military coup against a democratic election, and has meddled forever. At the same time neo-liberal U.S. policies at home have created a constituency ready to blame Latino immigrants for the lives and jobs they’ve lost.

On Saturday Tony Burman made the same point:

 

Trump would emphasize that there certainly is a crisis of violence within Central America — fostered by dishonest governments and police forces. But much of that culture of corruption, he would concede, has received the tacit approval of the U.S. government and military, and flows from the legacy of America’s sordid history in the region.

 

Of course, most Americans are amnesiac about their history and easily fall prey to the BS emanating from the liar in the White House.

 

 

Young Jews confront myths about Israel

Young Jews raised in the synagogue with universal Torah values have broken with the silence of their elders  and the timidity of their rabbis to confront the decades of lies
they endured.

 

With rapid post war advance of capitalism, serious deformations occurred in the dominant North American Abrahamic faiths, Christianity and Judaism. Catholics ended up voting twice for Reagan and now for Trump. Rabbi Dr. David Goldberg, the much published rabbi emeritus of the London Liberal Synagogue, wrote this about contemporary Judaism

 

“With the erosion of belief, God has been replaced by Israel as the credo of the Jewish people to the benefit of neither. Excessive reference to the Holocaust and dark allegations about resurgent anti- Semitism are two of the diversionary tactics used in the diaspora by the Israel lobby to deflect growing criticism of Israel.

Computer technology, cell phones and other modes of instant communications shattered Israel’s control of the dishonest narrative they had been peddling for decades. Smart idealistic young Jews have seen through it and discovered another perspective.IfNOT Now is but one such group https://ifnotnowmovement.org. This is their clarion call on their website:

THE TIME HAS COME TO END OUR COMMUNITY’S SUPPORT FOR THE OCCUPATION.
WE WILL BE THE GENERATION TO DO IT.
THE OCCUPATION IS A DAILY NIGHTMARE FOR THOSE WHO LIVE UNDER IT AND A MORAL DISASTER FOR THOSE WHO SUPPORT AND ADMINISTER IT.
IFNOTNOW IS WORKING TO TRANSFORM THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMUNITY’S SUPPORT FOR OCCUPATION INTO A CALL FOR FREEDOM AND DIGNITY FOR ALL.

‘You never told me’: Confronting American Jewish myths about Israel

A group of young American Jews are challenging the the institutionalized myths they were taught about the Jewish state in classrooms, youth group trips, and summer camps.  Emma Goldberg of IFNot Now

 

 

U.S. anti-occupation movement IfNotNow released its “Liberation Syllabus” last week. Crowd-sourced from teachers, students, journalists, and rabbis, the syllabus offers a collection of resources — from picture books to nonfiction, cookbooks to podcasts — that Jewish institutions can integrate into their curricula to offer more balanced and just lessons about the occupation.

 

The syllabus is part of IfNotNow’s “You Never Told Me” campaign, in which alumni of Jewish summer camps, day schools, and youth groups are calling on their institutions to change their Israel education to include honest understandings of the occupation and Palestinian narratives. Some of the resources in IfNotNow’s syllabus, for example, include Rashid Khalidi’s Palestinian Identity and Edward Said’s The Question of Palestine.

 

IfNotNow’s campaign is a critical call to action. For American Jews distressed by the intransigence and violence of the Netanyahu government — enabled and encouraged by the Trump administration — distance does not permit inaction. Meaningful responses to current conditions on the ground in Israel-Palestine can start in the U.S., with critical examination of the way American Jewish institutions teach and talk about the occupation. Most importantly, this examination must begin early in the pipeline, engaging the narratives that Jewish youth consume about Israel and the history of the conflict.

 

For a compelling example of the lasting effects of poor Israel education, we need look no further than Jared Kushner. Just last month, Kushner and Ivanka Trump celebrated at the opening of the American embassy in Jerusalem, smiling blithely for selfies and paparazzi, while just miles away more than 60 Palestinian protesters were being killed by Israeli forces on the Gaza border. Kushner, a strong supporter of the decision to relocate the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, praised Israel’s human rights record during the embassy opening. He also briefly addressed the violence at the border by saying the protestors were “part of the problem and not part of the solution,” a comment that was absent from advance excerpts of his remarks delivered to the press.

 

Considering the narratives with which Kushner was raised, his tone-deaf engagement with Israel-Palestine shouldn’t be at all surprising. From a New York Times profile last year, we know that Kushner was taught in classrooms where eight year olds were asked to draw the map of Israel from memory and were taught to refer to the West Bank by its biblical names, Judea and Samaria: “In his classes, Palestinians were regarded at a distance, in part as security threats who committed acts of terrorism.”

 

 

Kushner received precisely the sort of education that IfNotNow’s campaign is targeting: an education that whitewashes, pinkwashes, and greenwashes Israel’s human rights abuses, that stubbornly insists on conflating an appreciation for Israel’s culture and history with support for its current government. Kushner’s callousness shows the long-term costs the Jewish community pays for institutions that fail to intervene and teach the inconvenient truths. For Palestinians on the receiving end of Israel’s abuses, the price is far higher.

By +972 Blog |Published June 19, 2018

Jake returns to Israel

Jake Javenshir left Israel for Canada 48 years ago (1970), after serving in the army and working for a few years. Israel according to him had not yet developed the brutality it evidences today. Most thought that the Occupied Territories would be returned. Nobody saw the advent of radical settlers.

 

While living in Canada and reading in depth he realized he had been fed massive doses of Kool aid which Israelis still swallow.

 

He writes:
Instead of rational discussion, a few slogans are always thrown at any one who is not a supporter. Holocaust, anti- semitism, Jew haters,  self hating Jews etc. The most ironic one that often thrown at me and others is: You idiot, learn something before you open your mouth, you know nothing.

As an example of my family, almost all are Zionists with the exception of one brother. It’s due to propaganda, cover ups, not knowing much about the truth, being selfish as life is good for them, the ideology that it’s us against the world and it’s generally much easier to go along than against.

 

Jake references Ilan Pappé s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine as a key book in his understanding of what happened in Palestine in 1947 and 1948. Sadly Pappé left Israel due to threats to him and his family. He now teaches in Exeter University in UK.

In June of this year Jake returned to Israel for 10 days,
and this is his report:

My sister and two brothers kept asking for me. They with their children and grand children live in the central area of Israel, in a few thriving towns and cities, where 50 to a 100 years ago either were not there or were simple villages.

 

As one lands in the huge and modern airport and drives out, one can feel and see the riches overall—from roads, boulevards,  villas, high rise buildings, shops and malls, (including country clubs).Many villas and condos are priced over a million dollars.
An extreme example, units in a new high rise building in Tel-Aviv are priced for the equivalent of between seven to twenty million Canadian dollars. Of course this is not the same in all areas of the country, but it is reflective of the overall situation and how prosperous the country is.

 

Needless to say that this is not the same in the Israeli Palestinian towns, I visited Acre and the Palestinian part of Nazareth, where neglect is visible.

 

The general atmosphere among the Jewish Israelis, is one of living the high life. The dominant “occupation” is: which country next to travel to, which new foods and restaurants to eat and visit. These are talked and discussed among the people, in newspapers and T.V. more than any where else that I know. As far as I know, Israelis are the highest travelers per capita in the world.

 

 

All the above is the result of hundreds of billions of dollars given in time by the world, including  all the support of the economy in hundreds of ways. These in time resulted in building and development and establishing a robust economy, especially in High tech, agriculture and weapons manufacturing.

 

Not to forget that the occupation also adds billions to the general economy. This is done by exploiting the resources and agricultural products of the Golan Heights and the West Bank by supplying the Palestinians in West Bank most of their daily needs at inflated prices. also by developing new weapons and experimenting their effectiveness on the Palestinians and than selling to countries all over the world. (Something else to keep in mind that if Israel stopped the occupation and did peace with the Palestinians, most likely there will be a decrease in the billions which pour in, since “national security and imminent danger”, won’t be one the top fund raisers. A few reasons why Israel has no incentive to do peace).

 

 

In regard to West Bank and Gaza, (as the veteran Israeli journalist Gideon Levy says), Israelis do not know what’s going on and really don’t care. The atmosphere is one of living the high life, while by propaganda and brain washing, they feel being victimized. Basically what most Israelis know about the past and what’s happening, is very limited. The new generations know next to nothing about the past.

 

I noticed that much of what’s happening in the occupied territories is just not reported to the public and what is reported, in most cases is distorted or outright lies. One night on T.V. a reporter near Gaza was reporting on the situation. He repeatedly mentioned Hamas and said that thousands were damaging the fence and throwing bombs on Israel all the while the picture on the background showed Gazans in a field just standing around.

 

In discussion with my sister and brother I mentioned a few recent laws or atrocities or house demolitions, which they knew very little about. Another comment: Which army in the world is acting so humanly as the Israeli army.? This was in regard to Ahed Tamimi).

I noticed that coverage and explanations of the situation are totally distorted. Very noticeable is “Nationalism”, it is everywhere. Flags everywhere. Talks re pride is everywhere.

 

Groups of young Jews from around the world are everywhere. (coming for 2 weeks, all paid for. Part of brain washing).

 

Also religion is on the rise steadily, more seculars are being born again. Entitlement is rampant. Extremism is rampant. Nationalism is rampant.

 

 

Jake can often be seen in front of Chapters reminding passers by that the owners Schwartz and Reisman fund the Heseg program in israel. any foreigner who signs up with the Israeli Defense Force will be supported by the powrr couple.