RINF
For the longest time I have believed that what’s going on in Palestine
is the work of Israelis and Zionists, Jewish and non. Now I have to
reconsider my thinking and declare that it is the work of a select group
of Jewish people who are Israeli. One would never think of Jewish
people world-wide, and especially in the US, being so overtly racist and
jingoistic as we see in Israel.
Jews, especially in the US, have often been in the forefront of
progressive, and even socialist, change. Whether it be with labor, education, feminism, etc., one could easily find Jewish leaders, past and present.
Blumenthal also paints an historical account, with deeply personal stories of the development of an all-Jewish state, the Judaization of Palestine, much like Hitler’s “lebensraum”. Every aspect of Israeli law goes to favor its Jewish population, as in denying building permits to Palestinians who have owned their homes for generations yet freely provide new settlements to new Jewish arrivals, often on confiscated Palestinian land. We see how, even in today’s newspapers, the extra-judicial killings of Palestinians, especially by settlers, go unpunished while nightly raids into villages result in the snatching of children to spend fearful days in Israeli prisons.
I have just finished Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel by
Max Blumenthal. It’s written well enough to read in just a short week
of a few sittings but this took me several weeks. For those unfamiliar
with it, Blumenthal wrote about the day-to-day humiliations faced by
Palestinians in Occupied Palestine and Jewish activists in Greater Israel.
What makes this so difficult to read is that it paints Israel
as a Jewish state doing horrible things, not just in the name of
Judaism, but by an entire population who does it just because they are
Jewish. The insane fanaticism of the religious elite that rules every
aspect of Israeli life (including towards those who are simply Jewish)
provides an argument for anti-Semitism, as awful as that is.
Blumenthal also paints an historical account, with deeply personal stories of the development of an all-Jewish state, the Judaization of Palestine, much like Hitler’s “lebensraum”. Every aspect of Israeli law goes to favor its Jewish population, as in denying building permits to Palestinians who have owned their homes for generations yet freely provide new settlements to new Jewish arrivals, often on confiscated Palestinian land. We see how, even in today’s newspapers, the extra-judicial killings of Palestinians, especially by settlers, go unpunished while nightly raids into villages result in the snatching of children to spend fearful days in Israeli prisons.
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