Some of the young Israeli journalists who started the vital web-based magazine 972mag.com are in the United States to promote their new venture, and I was lucky enough to meet them here in New York City, at the premises of The Nation. I was already familiar with some of their work from cross-posts here at this site, with exemplary reports from Joseph Dana, Noam Sheizaf, and others.
+972, which is entirely in English, is just over a year old, but they already have 20 members, all unpaid volunteers. (They take their name from the telephone dialing code for Israel and Occupied Palestine.) They may be young, but some of them have years of professional experience as reporters. They are energetic, committed and tough.
Ours was a background meeting, so I will not quote any of them directly. They warn that the new law that makes it illegal for Israelis to advocate for BDS or any form of boycott is only one sign that the range of permitted opinion in Israel is narrowing.
I explained that many us who are outsiders had started to learn truths about Israel through the English-language version of Haaretz. They cautioned that although Haaretz still uses work from brave journalists like Amira Hass and Gideon Levy, it has not escaped the growing pressure to tone down. They also point out that the average Israeli does not read Haaretz.
Their web site is professional and compelling. It also includes “a plethora of videos,” some of which document the brutality of the occupation on the West Bank. They are in America partly to look for funding, and there is a donate button on their site.
Terrific journalists but they can’t stop the march of folly. They can’t beat the combined power of the state, the education system, the settlers and the corporate sector.
I agree with seafoid’s assessment above.
Israel has chosen it’s path long ago. All the major parties are for increased settlements, and as it has been pointed out many times, it’s the “left” in Israel which has been most active.
Some Likud governments pull out of settlements in symbolic ways(Gaza is an exception, but Sharon understood that you can’t protect 10,000 radical religious Jews vs 2 million provoked civilian Arabs with the force of the IDF forever, it was doomed from the start), only to provide some tactical PR victories(but in essence pushing for the same end result).
As Israel’s position crumbles more and more, and it’s society is increasingly ethnocentric and intolerant of different opinions, these people are not only brave in the metaphorical sense of speaking their mind despite the high costs to their careers and social standings; no, they will increasingly pay even a physical price.
There’s an open hunt on the genuine, non-complicit left in Israel. Human rights NGOs are deemed an ‘inner enemy’ and a ‘fifth column’. Jews turning on Jews, in a reversed – and perverse – Kapo-style.
Settlers are already attacking leftists openly with physical assaults, and the Settlers are the North Stars in a Settler State.
They show the way.
These people are therefore not merely brave, but they hold that special moral conviction few people do. To do what is right not only when it is hard; but even when it’s extremely dangerous.
Israel has already gone so far down this path, that it will take powers that cannot now be summoned from within to save the society from within. Only broken, brought to the precipice, can it re-awaken. But I fear that once staring into the Abyss the words ‘Never Again’ will create a permanent nuclear winter in the warmest place that meets the sunlight here on Earth.
Don’t forget the terrific old journalists. See the link below about Tikva Honig-Parnass’s new book. She is a 48er, was in Mapam in the early 1950s, joined Matzpen in the 1960s.
False Prophets of Peace
Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine
http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/False-Prophets-of-Peace
james, the 972 link is not opening for me. probably just a glitch becasue i cannot get their homepage to open for me on another page now either. anyway..where’s the tour scheduling? i am going to write joseph dana and ask him. i really want to meet them.
site works for me.
i recognize Derfner. so that’s the same Derfner who backpedaled his infamous article recently? guess he’s found a new home.