Naomi Chazan is an Israeli Jew of considerable standing. A former member of Knesset and leader of the leftish Meretz party, she has also endorsed J Street in the U.S. In this important piece, she offers the shocking news that Israel has abandoned democracy. It’s in the Jerusalem Post. Is Chazan right? Are American Jews likely to abandon a racist Israel? Well, they certainly won’t so long as this news appears in Israel and not in the United States. And when that news does come here, say with Max Blumenthal’s video, everyone denies it. Below, Chazan says that Blumenthal was spot-on. But the American press is in denial. Chazan:
From the vantage point of the Netanyahu government, the bulk of American Jewry is at odds with its basic precepts. Their identification with Israel no longer extends to unequivocal support for its actions.
The growing rift between these two major Jewish communities is not indicative merely of a disagreement over policy directions. It mirrors far more profound processes taking place in both settings.
In the US, Jews have, time and again, evinced steadfast support for the liberal principles of equality and social justice, which they equate with their Jewish heritage as well as with universal values. These binding norms have helped to fuse their collective identity and continually guide their outlooks and their behavior. Concern for the downtrodden, the disempowered and the other has become central to the Jewish ethic in the US. As Darren Pinsker so skillfully demonstrated in these pages just last weekend ("Obama and the Jewish vote"), most Jews in the US consistently adhere to social-democratic precepts domestically and to dovish positions internationally. These views are an inextricable part of their makeup as Jewish citizens of the US.
Trends in Israel point in quite different directions. As more Jews outside Israel – in Europe and Latin America as well as in North America – have internalized the democratic ethos, those in Israel appear to be disengaging from its roots. Six decades of independent achievement are increasingly being clouded by the acceleration of socioeconomic inequalities, the prevalence of discrimination among Jews of different backgrounds (shamelessly brought to the fore by the effort to exclude pupils of Ethiopian origin from some religious schools in Petah Tikva), the systemically unequal treatment of Arab citizens as well as continuing rule over another people, with all that this entails.
THE ISRAEL Democracy Institute’s annual Democracy Index released barely a month ago uncovers an alarming rise in intolerance, bigotry and outright racism which flies in the face of basic democratic principles. A dangerous combination of religious formalism and unfettered patriotism, coupled with an almost inexplicable attachment to neoconservative doctrines, has narrowed Jewish horizons in Israel and threatens to erode its egalitarian foundations.
Here’s some details on just how much the Jewish melting pot in Israel has boiled over:
link to ow.ly
Phil is right on the mark, and then some, as to the trend in Israel he delineates.
On things getting worse. There’s always the combination of things going bad – and things gone bad long ago that now become clear. When mainstream media finally report on something they often feed the expression that things were fine beforehand – in part because of their objectivity rules that make it hard to talk about older events. Supporters of zionism will prefer the explanation that things were basically good but have gone bad. I believe that the semblance of “democracy for all its citizens” has always been a hoax, though there has been a sincere concern for democracy for all Jews.
The Israeli Democracy Institute already concluded some years back (2003 i believe)that Israel was a borderline case as far as democracy was concerned. Sharon once said something along the lines that democracy was of secondary importance to the state being jewish.
Perhaps the take-away is that democracy as between jews is prime, but of secondary importance otherwise. That seems to fit the present picture.
“When mainstream media finally report on something they often feed the expression that things were fine beforehand – in part because of their objectivity rules that make it hard to talk about older events. ”
That rule only applies to the US and Israel and maybe a few other allies–it’s always acceptable to talk about past bad behavior by enemies.
Donald, I found it odd too but the way things are organized results in some odd effects. For example if older events get a new meaning in hindsight this is interpretation rather than facts, therefore it belongs in an opinion piece. And then it’s out of the hands of the person doing the reporting(this person doesn’t get to do opinion), which in practice means there is little chance of it being written.
“Six decades of independent achievement are increasingly being clouded by the acceleration of socioeconomic inequalities, the prevalence of discrimination among Jews of different backgrounds (shamelessly brought to the fore by the effort to exclude pupils of Ethiopian origin from some religious schools in Petah Tikva), the systemically unequal treatment of Arab citizens as well as continuing rule over another people, with all that this entails.”
I’m sorry but this is unacceptable. The treatment of the Palestinian arabs by Zionism cannot be laundered into a list of soft-left pieties. The ‘acceleration of socioeconomic inequalities’ is the sort of thing that Labour leaders in the UK used to complain about – income tax rate cuts, privatisation of British gas etc – but that is a complaint to be made within a democratic society where there will always be disagreement about the level of tax etc. To just tack on – ‘by the way’ – that we also have the problems of a racist settler state, which is centrally infested with anti-arab chauvinism, is to belittle and normalise the latter, in many ways to excuse it.
What do you expect from the Zionists when they do not even take care of their own Holocaust survivors, what will their treatment of the Palestinians be like? As I have said before they like the “image,” and they build the monuments, but for what?
“Tucked away in the closets of Yevgeny Bistrizky’s new flat is a worn and dirty blanket — for nearly eight months it was the only bedding that the 71-year-old Holocaust survivor possessed.
Until two weeks ago Mr Bistrizky was homeless on the streets of Tel Aviv, living in a dog park, using several benches as a makeshift bed and relying on residents for food.
He slept there despite his dislike of dogs. One of his only memories of the Holocaust was watching dogs feed on the bodies near the killing fields of Babi Yar, where 33,771 Jews were shot in September 1941. Their bodies were thrown in a gorge outside Kiev in one of the largest massacres of the Holocaust.
Mr Bistrizky said: “I never thought that I would again be with nothing. I kept hoping that things would get better but I didn’t know what to do.”
How a Holocaust survivor could find himself homeless in Israel is a question that has gone unanswered since Mr Bistrizky’s story was published several weeks ago in a Hebrew daily newspaper.
More than 50,000 Holocaust survivors live below the poverty line in Israel. Mr Bistrizky’s is the only known case of a survivor who became homeless. ”
HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR ON THE STREETS OF ISRAEL
Historically – The so-called “Jewish homeland” in Arab Palestine was never meant to be a democratic state – because it was supposed to be demographic Jewish Socialist state, modeled on USSR. Most of Zionist state’s elite were Russian Jewish immigrants including its first president Dr. Chaim Weissmann, who was the president of Russian Socialist Party.
It’s a racist state – not for the native Muslims and Christians – but also for the Arab Jews. The fact was brought to light by the 2004 Israeli documentary “Radiation 100,000″ – proving that the Zionist government killed 100,000 Arab Jews by experimenting higher doses of radiation. No European Jew was used as guineapig.