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2 int’l volunteers are arrested; are they anti- or post-Zionist?

I was trained as a newsperson, and I woke up today realizing that the greatest story in the world is happening right now in Israel and Palestine. It is an amazing story, and if you are invested in Zionism, you’re bound to miss the news because yes, Zionism is being openly undermined by its actions as Communism was in the 70s-80s. When will the American press begin to cover this astonishing story? Hasn’t the Netanyahu contretemps opened the floodgates on the New Israeli reality?

Remember that in the Washington Post, Dana Milbank and Richard Cohen have both lately stated angrily that Israel is not practicing apartheid. Now read what an Israeli, Noam Sheizaf, says below, and you must ask yourself: Are Americans being well served by journalists for the most important Washington newspaper who have an investment in protecting Zionism?

Here is Sheizaf’s important report on two International Solidarity Movement activists being arrested in the West Bank and threatened with deportation for being "anti-Zionist." Sheizaf:

There are two precedents here, and I can’t overstate their importance:

A. The main charge against the activists had nothing to do with national security, but with the ideas they expressed (the state even presented before the court quotes taken from an internet site!). The “crime” involved words, not actions.

It is, to the best of my knowledge, the first (but certainly not last) attempt to present critic of Zionism or support for the Palestinian cause as illegal, and what’s even worse is that the actual arrest was carried out not by police and under orders from the state attorney, but by the army.

It takes a very flexible definition of democracy to describe a regime which makes questioning the dominant ideology a criminal offense.

B. The arrest of the two activists took place in the Palestinian Autonomy’s territory (area A according to the Oslo agreement). Israel often claims that the situation in the West Bank cannot be labeled as Apartheid, since the Palestinians have their own state-like entity. But as we saw in this case (as well as in others), Israel does not respect this autonomy, and its security forces are acting freely within the Palestinian towns and villages, even in cases which have nothing to do with Israeli national security.

It is interesting that Didi Remez, who picked up this report, calls it an arrest for post-Zionism. I think this is a wise instruction. I have called myself an anti-Zionist but I must concede that this is not an effective label. It excludes Zionists who are coming to a new understanding, and it would negate a lot of the Jewish experience in Israel, yes militant, colonialist, and yes, blindered by the Holocaust. But on my recent trip to the Holy Land, I met some of these people, and some of them are struggling and many of them have big souls. To win those folks to a new understanding of minority freedom, and the importance of self-determination, I think I have to demonstrate more openness; we all change.

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