Apart from the small point that all Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories are illegal according to international law and every single settler living there is ipso facto a law breaker--something the author conveniently omits to mention--this piece by Hagai Segal at Ynet is actually a round-about argument for a one-state solution:
the major harm to Jewish freedom of movement beyond the Green Line is only a tiny part of the overall harm to their basic rights. In fact, the Jews in Judea and Samaria are the only population group in the area still wholly subordinated to a military administration.
Since Oslo, most Palestinians enjoy civilian self-rule, yet 300,000 settlers cannot build a balcony without getting an IDF permit.
I somehow doubt, however, that Segal really wants to see equal treatment for all human beings, even Muslim and Christian human beings, in the West Bank. What we have here is an increasingly common, cynical ploy by settler advocates to mobilize and deploy the language of universal human rights and egalitarianism in order to advance a Jewish nationalist agenda. It is an inversion of the rhetoric used to speak out on behalf of Palestinian rights and humanity. Playing with the language of equal rights is a dangerous thing. If Hagai Segal doesn't watch out, his kind of talk might erase the Green Line and advance the struggle for equal rights throughout historic Palestine.
Remember, those settlers are struggling for “the Jewish collective”!
wonder if Emily Henochowitz has a sketch of the Blue Dot people in the Green Sea.
wonder if Blue Dot people bleed red blood.
Do Blue Dot people all have blue eyes? Do Blue Dot people ostracize green-eyed Blue Dot people? Do green-eyed Blue Dot people have to live in separate, “Green-eyed Blue-Dot people only” settlements? Do they have their own roads? Can anyone travel on roads for Greed-eyed Blue-dot people or only GEBDs? What happens to a Blue Dot people if he/she drives on a GEBD road? Does he/she go to jail? Are Blue Dot people confined in the same jails as GEBDs?
deary me, this is tiresome, this business of keeping different breeds in separate kennels.
>> Since Oslo, most Palestinians enjoy civilian self-rule …
… except when “subordinated to a military administration”.
‘except’ when subordinated to a military administration? what civilian rule is there in the west bank NOT subordinated to a military administration? the PA is authority in name only.
Boulos, the YNet article almost had me crying for the misery and injustice the settlers are having to put with on the WB. It must be tortuous to have to travel 90 minutes from one point to another instead of simply cutting through an Arab village as before or for having to ask for a permit to extend one’s balcony. Reading about the prospect of Jews being “lynched” by Arabs if caught in their areas is very scary. The article could be the basis for a TV movie that American Jews could enjoy and would great for the fund drives. It’s spooky stuff like that that keep the cheques coming and coming and coming.
Annie, the PA is an authority but its prime purpose is to protect Israel’s borders and to keep the peons civil; it almost acts as an Israeli militia.
Please read this article, why is it only Jews that cannot drive on Arab only roads in Judea and Samaria?
Why do Jews have to undergo stringent security check even when going to pray?
Why is it illegal for Jews to pray at their most holy site the Temple Mount?
Why can Jews not traverse their entire holy city of Hebron?
Apartheid is committed against Jews when a Jew can’t build even a balcony without a permit yet Arab construction, illegal and otherwise goes unabated.
Hey Max, aren’t you supposed to call it “Hevron”? You lose 2 demerit points for that one.
You’re so right, mN. Israel is just AWFUL for the Jews.
Awful. Especially for the logically challenged, as in:
“why is it only Jews that cannot drive on Arab only roads”
Obviously, the Israeli MFA’s new talking points. maximalistNarrative has been repeating this narrative for days.
You’ll notice that every time Israel gets in some kind of pickle, it dreams up a new victimhood for its persecution complex, then pounds it to death into the minds of idiots who pass for man. The latest? Jews are experiencing apartheid in their own country and OT! It’s own checkpoints are persecuting them! It can’t drive on the bad thoroughfares it sealed off for Arabs only!
Oh, the horror! The indecency! The persecution!
Look what we’ve done to ourselves and you’re to blame!
The Jews are trying to ethnically cleanse the Jews of their aboriginal homeland!!!! Oh, the humanity!
Does this mean that Israel is now a blue dot within a blue dot within a sea of green? This is getting maximally complicated…
And within the blue dot in a blue dot lies a green dot that’s rapidly spreading outward and trying to delegitimise the Jewish state! Does Arab trickery know no bounds?
it’s ’cause nobody likes jews ’cause they killed Jesus, maxNar.
that’s why.
we thought you knew that.
Jews? I heard it was the CIA
It was al-Qaeda and you know it!
don’t let that get around, Frances. A lot of American leftists have so much disdain for Christians that they think Jesus IS al-Qaeda.
In public, I say it was Ralph Nader. But you and I both know the truth.
Jeez, you guys are cracking me up.
Hey, dear Mondoweiss, we’ve had posts on Thomas Friedman, and then BHL – let’s have maximalistNarrative do one just to round out the comedy interlude.
These are all policies impose by Israel you dimwit.
Maximalist is Unix or I’d cut my…hmm.. hair..
Boulos makes an excellent point. This whine of Segal’s is just another variation of the Israeli Jews’ highly selective endorsement of equality. For example, “Palestinians live in Israel, so why can’t Jews live in the West Bank?” It must be among the most obtuse, hypocritical, cynical arguments made in this conflict, and considering the competition, that says a lot. The answer to such pleas for equality, as Boulos points out, is to respond, “You want equality? So do I. Join me in seeking equality for all residents living between the Med Sea and the Jordan River.”
What’s going on here today? First Sagiv and now Segal (convicted terrorist and founder of Arutz 7)? And what is more, with the hackneyed, patently false and disingenuous claim that Palestinians in the OT enjoy greater freedom than settlers and that the settlers are discriminated against.
There are dozens of blogs I could go to, if I wanted to read these guys. I come here for fresh air.
Hasbara 201
What Is Pilpul?
First I thought that this article was an unsuccussful try of a parody. But apart from the green line joke “harm to Jewish freedom of movement beyond the Green Line” (like in Modiin Illit) , the parody is not very funny. The same stye Nazi-propaganda complained discrimination and harrassment of Nazis committed by jews in German fascist time.
Looking to the comments of the ynet article it becomes clear, that more than half of the readers take this article not as a bad joke. And they are right: the Baruch-Marzel-like people and the Israeli government have turned every racist joke one can think of into realty.
Perhaps the Israeli government will end “discrimination of jews” in Westbank by declaring that non-jews are not alowed to use non-jewish roads any more neither, so that jews are not descriminated anymore. There is nothing not to expect. Just have a look how Baruch Marzel is living all the times harrassing muslems and being protected by the IDF.
And if you google the authors name Hagai Segal, ou find this:
“Hagai Segal was part of the Jewish underground. He had planted a bomb in the car of the Arab mayor of Ramallah, who lost his leg in the explosion. Segal was sentenced to three years in jail.”
link to pbs.org
So looks like, ynet is just printing openly fascist propaganda.
link to csmonitor.com
Let’s hope future flotillas take care not to coordinate what they’re doing with Hamas, since today’s Supreme Court decision makes it clear that independent action not coordinated with the terrorist group in question is not prohibited by the statute.
On the other hand, the PKK Kurdish rebels are one of the two allegedly terrorist organizations directly involved in today’s case (the other being the Tamil Tigers.) I wonder what implications that will have for current Israeli (and U.S. military/intel?) coordination of activities with the PKK.