In the third paragraph of a story today on Israeli efforts to remove eight Palestinian communities from the West Bank to make way for the army, Jodi Rudoren in the New York Times comes close to describing ethnic cleansing– a “broader government effort to reduce the number of Palestinians living in parts of the West Bank.”
Advocates for the Palestinians contend that it is part of a broader government effort to reduce the number of Palestinians living in parts of the West Bank known as Area C, which is under Israeli control, and prevent them from building new homes or businesses there.“It was never a declared Israeli policy to take over Area C, it was a policy that was taking hold on the ground,” said Shlomo Lecker, a lawyer who, along with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, represents about 200 families in the area. “It’s in many ways retreating from any agreements with the Palestinians, with the U.S., any kind of arrangement of two states. Where will be the two states if Israel will take over?”
Ilene Cohen pointed the phrase out to me and says that the term ethnic cleansing, which many Palestinian advocates use, is simply taboo in the mainstream discourse with regard to Israel; but through such descriptions as this one, it’s edging its way in, right after “apartheid.” I would add that Sasha Polakow-Suransky of the New York Times regularly described Israel as a “pariah state” in his book published before he took up work at the old gray lady– The Unspoken Alliance. My search of the Times archives demonstrates that they don’t call Israel a “pariah state.” So Polakow-Suransky will presumably keep these insights to himself. In this case, Rudoren has telegraphed the deeper meaning to the reader. And lest you think this is not an important battle, note the vehement rejection given her by Israeli spokesman Mark Regev– “I deny totally that there’s any effort to get Palestinians out of Area C.”
I’ll bet NY Times editors would phrase this as part of a “broader government effort to reduce the number of Palestinians’” reproductive organs.
For those of us who don’t speak Hebrew or Russian can you please tell us the gist of it?
Let’s just say it’s about a type of “Biblical Justice”. Lynching of blacks in the South was also seen in that light by quite a few folks at one time. A black man is accused of attempted rape of a white woman and instead of being strung up, has a “procedure” done on him at the orders of the head of the white citizens council. That headman was not some reactionary Southern Sheriff, but “a spartan intellectual civilian who practiced yoga” by the name of David Ben-Gurion and it was a Palestinian not a black man who was castrated by these former Palmach fighters.
The preferred term is “transfer” — but Dershowitz has already declared that ethnic cleansing has been given a bad rap, and that the Palestinians should agree to their own ethnic cleansing due to their “widespread” support of the Holocaust and the Nazis, and furthermore, because the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians should be seen as a form of “affirmative action” for Jews. And I’m not kidding — read his book “The case for Israel”
>> … Dershowitz has already declared that … the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians should be seen as a form of “affirmative action” for Jews.
He’s not the only one. A former “liberal Zionist” member of this site has said the following about the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes and lands:
>> RW: I feel that the nakba [sic] was a necessary wrong …
>> RW: The nakba [sic] that occurred in 1948 was accompanied by the independence, the liberation, of the Jewish community. So, I primarily celebrate …
In my view, the closest term that describes what is happening is attempted sociocide.
i wonder how influenced we are by this discourse. think about it. how many times have we referenced ethnic cleansing in our main posts when discussing area c? vs how many times it’s been edited out of stories?
“I deny totally that there’s any effort to get Palestinians out of Area C.”
that joins
“We guarantee the safety of the women and children in the camps in Beirut”- Ariel Sharon, 1982
and “we want to live in peace with the Palestinians”, as solemly promised by Rabin, Bibi, Netanyahu, Olmert, Sharon
Mendacity is second nature to the bots. But Moshiach knows that too.
” Israeli spokesman Mark Regev– “I deny totally that there’s any effort to get Palestinians out of Area C.” “
Lol. If only these guys were doing something relatively innocuous — like trying to sell time-shares that were a really bad value. They could be pretty funny.
I’m reminded of some salesman who became aware that I’d expressed an interest in some oil futures scheme that upon examination, turned out to be a really lousy investment.
He just wouldn’t go away. That was pretty funny. Why can’t Mark Regev et al find something similarly harmless to push? If only they would take up defrauding oldsters with too much money in the first place or whatever.
Regev meant, “I am in total denial about our efforts to disappear Palestinians from the land of their forefathers. I am of course Australian, which entitles me to the land that Palestinians have inhabited for centuries. I will keep repeating this until somebody believes me.”
“I am of course Australian”
He used to be Australian. I don’t know whether he still is.
But aside from Palestine, what other lands am I (still Australian) entitled to? Paraguay, maybe? I’d like to know for future reference.
“‘NYT’ describes ethnic cleansing by another name.”
Holocaust = ethnic cleansing by another name…
Nakba = ethnic cleansing by another name…
All bad names…
One so horrible, that the victims had to find a new name for their ethnic cleansing …
How about calling the Nakba a Slow motion Holocaust?
Or would that insult the victims of the Nakba?
Publicly, the Nazis called what was going on in the Holocaust “Umsiedlungen [resettlements]“.
I think the title’s the best part: “Israel Seeks Army Use of West Bank Area.” There’s something definitively Zionist in its omission of any – shall we say? – complicating factors. Hell, when they put that way, it hardly even seems like a story!
Imagine New york Jews being kicked out of social housing to make way for Christian supremacists and then square it.
And think of all the empty space in the Negev desert that they can’t use for a firing range.
Zionists actually believe that Palestinians prefer to live in close physical contact with each other like rabbits and the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto.
It’s a systematic policy of pushing Palestinians off what remaining land they have.
It’s a good piece of writing. I had to search it out, as it is kind of buried at nytimes.com.
RE: “I deny totally that there’s any effort to get Palestinians out of Area C.” ~ Israeli spokesman Mark Regev
MY COMMENT: Yes, but is he 1000% certain?
The ridiculous bit is that ‘ethnic cleansing’ is itself a euphemism — and not a particularly flattering one. After all, it implies that the ethnicity being removed is essentially dirt, a form of contamination, something that shouldn’t be there. What’s more, it is being removed by ‘cleansing’ — a hygenic, presumably quite irreproachable process.
I’m not sure there is a straightforward term. After all, this process is definitely one of the innovations of our time — well, maybe not, but we’ll get to that.
I suppose ‘expulsion’ would be accurate — but that implies the Palestinians have somewhere to go to — which of course they don’t. All they can do is cram themselves ever more tightly into the area they are still permitted to live in.
‘Ghettoization?’ That’s a bit clumsy. What is the word for the process of forcibly herding a people into ghettos? Is there one?
I know there’s a word for the people that do it.
If I’m not mistaken ethnic cleansing was originally coined by the Serbs as a euphemism. However, now that it’s made it’s way into common use, I think it is a useful term because it describes things like house demolitions that stop short of genocide.
>> “I deny totally that there’s any effort to get Palestinians out of Area C.”
“I promise you,” he continued, “it’ll be effortless.”
” Israeli spokesman Mark Regev– “I deny totally that there’s any effort to get Palestinians out of Area C.”
Obviously, the process of “getting Palestinians out of Area C” is so slow that one can seriously doubt if the goal is to remove them. After all, mistreating the Palestinians in Area C is immensely enjoyable to many Israelis. To me, it is like an Austrian gentleman who kept woman in his basement to rape her any time he felt like it.
>> To me, it is like an Austrian gentleman who kept woman in his basement to rape her any time he felt like it.
To which the Zio-supremacist would reply: “Ah, yes, but every time he went to self-(self-)determine himself in her, she’d punch and slap him, so she’s ALSO an aggressor, you see? And, you know, he can’t very well just set her free, because he’s a victim here!”
“I deny totally that there’s any effort to get Palestinians out of Area C. We’re just saying it’s ours, and we can do what we want with it. If that happens to incidentally include getting Palestinians out of Area C, that’s our right.”
“I deny totally that there’s any effort to get Palestinians out of Area C [because there's no such thing as a Palestinian]”