A smart friend writes:
Ethan Bronner of the Times writes a front-page piece on Avigdor Lieberman ("A Hard-Liner Gains Ground in Israel") without mentioning racism or
discrimination. No mention of the Haaretz report that he was a member
of outlawed, terrorist Kach party. No quotes from Arabs. Bronner even prints one Israeli's risible claim that Lieberman's loyalty oath is no different from the American pledge of allegiance.
"Taken
together, Mr. Lieberman's proposals aim toward an ethnically purer
Jewish state, in many ways a classically conservative goal. "
Classic? Compare Bronner to TNR's alarum (Lieberman is an "extremist" who "has focused much of his campaign inciting public anger against Israel's Arab minority), or the LATimes frank report on a "far-right" politician:
Alarmed by Lieberman's rise, many rivals denounce his rhetoric as racist and inflammatory.
"This is a person who brings out the darkest urges of part of the Israeli public," said Shelly Yacimovich, a lawmaker from the left-leaning Labor Party. "His slogan endangers democracy. He is the moral red line we must not cross."...
According to the newspaper Haaretz, the new immigrant also took a membership card from the far-right Kach party, which had been outlawed for its racist platform...
"No one can demand that I join the army and fight against my Palestinian brothers," said Abbas Zakour, an Arab lawmaker. "No one can dictate to nearly a million and a half Arabs to sing the anthem. Certainly no one who came from Russia 20 years ago can tell me what to do in my ancestors' land."
Ahmed Tibi, another Arab in parliament, has called on the international community to boycott Israel if Lieberman rises to power, as it did Austria when far-right leader Jorg Haider joined that country's government....
Tzipi Livni [has lamented] "the trend for a party whose entire slate is based on hate..."
"This is a person who brings out the darkest urges of part of the Israeli public," said Shelly Yacimovich, a lawmaker from the left-leaning Labor Party. "His slogan endangers democracy. He is the moral red line we must not cross."...
According to the newspaper Haaretz, the new immigrant also took a membership card from the far-right Kach party, which had been outlawed for its racist platform...
"No one can demand that I join the army and fight against my Palestinian brothers," said Abbas Zakour, an Arab lawmaker. "No one can dictate to nearly a million and a half Arabs to sing the anthem. Certainly no one who came from Russia 20 years ago can tell me what to do in my ancestors' land."
Ahmed Tibi, another Arab in parliament, has called on the international community to boycott Israel if Lieberman rises to power, as it did Austria when far-right leader Jorg Haider joined that country's government....
Tzipi Livni [has lamented] "the trend for a party whose entire slate is based on hate..."
Clearly Bronner needs to explain classical conservatism to Livni.
why? because NYT was also very cautious in telling the truth about Hitler back in the thirties.
Lieberman's rabid ethnocetrism. Far more troubling is Israel Prize laureate in philosophy, Prof. Asa Kasher of Tel Aviv University. According to the February 6 issue of Haaretz, the good professor is "the philosopher who gave the IDF the moral justification in Gaza"?
What more do we need to read to realize, no less to admit the seriousness of Israel's mental malaise?
I think that his racism was made clear by that article. "Mr. Lieberman says that there is no room for such a move and that those who fail to grasp the centrality of Jewish identity to Israel have no real place in it." -NYT
Lieberman's Fascism (there can be no other word for someone who advocates a "loyalty test" from a specific part of the population, all the same advocating the transfer of said part of the population) really needs to be exposed in the US. Imagine US negotiators having to shake hands and politely converse with a cabinet minister (minister of defence, it's rumoured) who is the equivalent of a pre-ethnic cleansing Milosevic?
Zionuttery seems to be entering into a phase of end game, one where discussing the possibility of transfer of Israeli Arabs has now become mainstream, when less than twenty years ago Rabbi Meir Kahane was politically outlawed.
In SA, Eugene Terre Blanche is politically dead, in Israel they have Avigdor Lieberman, soon to be cabinet minister. The mind boggles…
"And WTF does this line mean?"
"Taken together, Mr. Lieberman's proposals aim toward an ethnically purer Jewish state, in many ways a classically conservative goal. " >>>>>>>>
It means they are Nazis..master race Germany-jewish purity Israel…exact same thing.
I always said the zionist and the Ayran neo nazis were just alike.
I hope Netanyahu gets elected, that will stop the phony peace talks and pit Israel head to head with the US and the rest of the world once and for all.
I can see Netanyahu approaching us with a "transfer plan" for Palestines that the US would have to pay for as a "solution" to I-P.
Lieberman is a more authentic Zionist than the rest.
One interesting thing about the TNR peace is that it's pretty explicit in saying that the façade of democracy is necessary to protect Israel from international disdain.
I don't happen to admire democracy, but the admission that it's useful window-dressing in the Israeli case is quite revealing.
""Bronner even prints one Israeli's risible claim that Lieberman's loyalty oath is no different from the American pledge of allegiance. ""
Silly…most of the jewish neo's like Feith and almost all of the visible US zionist's fathers and mothers came to the US during and right after WWII and took the pledge of allegiance…they didn't live up to it ..so why would repeating the words work for Arab Israelis?
Here's an idea….let's trade Israel their Arab citizens for US jews….they send us their 1 million or whatever Arabs we send them a million US jews.
Since anti semitism is so rampant we shouldn't have any trouble rounding up a million or so jews who would be happy to go live in Israel to get away from anti semites. Wasn't that why Israel was established to begin with? Shouldn't jews be leaving in droves for Israel since they think anti semites are gonna get them?
A different take on Lieberman and the Yisrael Beiteinu party, from Israel Shamir:
"Israeli and Palestinian politics are often misinterpreted by zealous supporters of various parties overseas. So many well-meaning American Jews and Arabs write about events and developments in our country basing their views on their Sunday school lessons or on their prejudices. But even for a man used to misunderstanding, the piece by Professor Saree Makdisi called The Rise of Israel's Avigdor Lieberman with an additional title The Ethnic Cleansing Party Outpaces Likud takes the proverbial cherry. I am sure Professor Makdisi is very knowledgeable regarding William Blake, his main field of study, but he should learn more of the area he presumes to write about. An Arab (or a Jewish) name and origin is just not a substitute of actual knowledge of Israeli politics. As a Russian Israeli writer living in Jaffa with its mixed population, and nor a supporter neither a voter of Yisrael Beiteinu (YB), I feel it is my duty to correct his most obvious errors.
…Even less substantiated is Makdisi’s weird claim that YB is a “racist party” and for them, “non-Jews are not welcome”. As a matter of fact, the YB is the least Jewish nationalist party in the Knesset outside the Arab block, as it is the party of the Russian, heavily non-Jewish community in Israel. At least half of the Russians in Israel, and thus many of YB voters, are just not Jews, and do not regret it. The voters of YB stand for equality of Jews and non-Jews, for civil marriages as opposed to the religious ones, for termination of Rabbinic dictat, for non-kosher restaurants, and they intermarry with the Israeli Palestinians at least as often as with the Israeli Jews. YB does not support the mad idea of “transfer” or mass expulsion of Native Palestinians, as Makdisi claims.
Makdisi makes much of Lieberman’s plan to correct the borders of Israel and calls it “ethnic cleansing”. He writes: “Lieberman proposes that the state's borders be drawn in such a way that Jews are placed on one side of it, and as many Arabs as possible on the other. Lieberman's solution may seem a little less inhumane [than expulsion], but it is just as racist.” He is apparently unaware that this was the idea of the partition of Palestine approved by the UN on November 29, 1947. In 1948, the Jewish state seized some parts of the proposed Palestinian state, including Jerusalem Corridor, Jaffa, Western Galilee and the Wadi Ara area. Lieberman called to return the Wadi Ara area to the future Palestinian state. Mind you: he did not call to expel the Arab dwellers of the area, but to surrender the whole area with its population to the neighbouring state. This is hardly “an ethnic cleansing” idea.
Suppose an American politician will propose to return Texas or San Diego to Mexico. Would a Mexican professor call him “a racist who wants to get rid of Hispanics” or just bless this initiative? If a French politician would propose to return Alsace to Germany, should the German papers curse “a racist who wants to rid France of German-speaking Alsatians”? The answer is obvious: while ethnic cleansing, i.e. separation of people from their land (like the one perpetrated by Israel in 1948, as correctly stated by Makdisi) is unacceptable, transfer of a territory with its dwellers from one sovereignty to another one is quite a normal and standard procedure in the law of the nations.
Makdisi complains that Lieberman was born in Moldova and still has all the rights in Israel, as opposed to the native population. This does not sound convincing when said by a Lebanese who lives in the US and enjoys all the rights including professorship in an American university, while the Native Americans languish in their reservations.
However, the Lebanese experience of Makdisi could help him to understand the secret of Lieberman. His party is an ethnic party of the Russians, like the Socialist Party of Lebanon is a party of the Druze, or our Communist party is (predominantly) an Arab party, or our Meretz is a party of wealthy Ashkenazis. All other features of these parties are provisory and can change with circumstances. The Russians are probably the most sympathetic to the Native Palestinians group in Israel, and there are many organisations (notably in Nazareth and Jaffa) that work to strengthen these ties.
If this is the case, why YB is described as “racist” and why, despite its electoral success, the party is kept well outside of the pinnacle of power? I can venture an explanation. The Jewish state is ruled, from its murky beginnings in 1920s until today, by a single group of Polish Jews whose recent ancestors were born between Pinsk and Minsk. This is our Mayflower. They fight off attempts of other groups to share power. They fought the German Jews and kept their Liberal Party well outside. They fought the Sephardi Jews when they formed their Shas party, and many Israelis remember 1999 elections call “Anybody but Shas”. Now they fight the Russians. In Israel, they say that the Russians are not Jews, in their propaganda abroad they say the Russians are racist (rather a racist saying, too). Demonisation of these rising groups is just a tool of the ruling elite. The solution of our problems lays in union of the oppressed groups, including Russians, Moroccans and Native Palestinians, for full equality and better power-sharing. This is regrettable that Prof Makdisi did not understand the plot behind the accusations, and supported the “divide and rule” device of the Israeli elites.
Oops! A response to Saree Makdisi’s The Rise of Avigdor Lieberman
Here is an interesting primer on israeli elections and parties from gabriel (Jews Sans Frontieres):
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2009/02/primer-on-israeli-elections.html
This rather good (and relatively accurate) goes partly to the comments made by Dan Kelly vis-a-vis the declining influence of the ruling elites in israel (the secular "Ashkenazi" descended primarily from Germany and eastern Europe), as reflected by the rise of other parties.
The relative percentages attributed to the various blocks in israel may be of special interest to some (and though some may dispute them, they generally conform to what I know from other sources as well, whether reflected in the "official" census and poll numbers or not). Can we draw some conclusions from the increase of the observant/religious sector? sure, they are divided mostly along ethnic lines at least for the moment, but the trends are clear, even if one were to account for some bias in this primer:
Israel's secular segment (leaving aside the Russians for a moment) is clearly in decline, and has been for some time, taking labor down with it. OTOH, another divide has emerged between the religious and ultra-orthodox segments and the secular, hawkish former Soviet union emigres, many of whom flocked to Lieberman's party. There is, as of today, a pitched battle mounted between israel Beiteinu and Shas. Kind of like the old (Sephardi) vs the new (Soviet) immigrants. What is increasingly missing in the israeli elections is a CENTER (much less, a center-left). The consensus as to what the zionist enterprise, with its strong socilaist underpinnings, that once reigned supreme (a-la "the pre-'67 Good old days") has all but evaporated. Instead there's a fractured secular society divided along class lines (the "haves" and the "have nots"), the members of whom seem to agree on very little.
Looking at the convoluted divisions within Israeli society can make anyone's head spin. But the scary part (to me, at least) is that while there's much talk of the danger of nuclear weapons developed by an islamist country (Iran?), there's hardly any comment made about the potentially greater and far more immediate danger of nuclear weapons already in the hands of a country that's increasingly veering towards a potent – and poisonous – alliance between fundamentalist and ultra-nationalist parties. A country with a track record of ignoring (and disdaining) world opinion. One that seems in the grip of a sort of mass hysteria. One where every conflict – large or small – is viewed through an existentialist lens. A country whose citizens seem in the process of shedding the classic liberal regard for human rights of "others", ie, the very principles on which it was founded. A country that seems to be in the grip of a siege mentality and an "us" vs "them" world view.
There's unfortunately cause for worry here. I think we all know that. Maybe that's where the sense of urgency permeating this blog and others like it come from. Why so many people seem so desperate to put some 'two state' solution into play, sort of a "last chance".
Thank you for the link, Dana.
Shamir is a Russian agent of influence, he always has been. We even have a case of him trying to sell WW2-era documents to David Irving, on behalf of the GRU it would seem. Irving wisely declined the offer, and published the correspondence on his wesbite.
The NYT description of Lieberman's desire for an "ethnically purer" state is pretty darned sinister. Bronner is either utterly tone deaf, or unsubtly ironic. Any discussion of ethnic purity echoes of Herr A.H. much more so than accusations of mere garden variety racism.