Last week I interviewed the writer and activist Yossi Gurvitz in a Tel Aviv cafe about rightwing extremism in Israeli society, and he said he hears many Israelis saying that if their country comes under pressure from the outside world, it should “go North Korea” but with the power of real nukes, not fake nukes. He also said that if there were a serious move by Israel to evacuate settlers from the West Bank, it would result in a coup by rightwing pro-settler officers.
It’s all in the interview above. That interview begins with Gurvitz’s description of a terrifying human-rights case in the West Bank and culminates with his analysis of the rightwing militarist power over Israeli leadership.
Here are the highlights:
Gurvitz works for the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din. A week before we met, he published this highly-disturbing account of a Palestinian girl who was circled and attacked by Jewish settlers inside a vine-covered hut on her family’s land near Bethlehem. Israeli police did not do anything about the attack because it was on the Sabbath.
Think what it is to be a child… a teenager in a place where you are afraid to leave your house… You learn either to be very afraid and close yourself in, very bitter and become violent, or flee.
Gurvitz related the Palestinian girl’s experience to Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, and King’s comments about the amusement park his daughter could not visit:
[King said that his] tongue was twisted as he tried to explain to his five year old daughter why she could not go to Funtown. A cloud of despair enters her mind before his eyes…
You live in a world where you are not equal. You are not expected to be equal…. It’s not a glass ceiling. The ceiling is right over their heads.
I responded by asking, As an American Jew, what can I conclude from this story except that this system needs to be destroyed? Gurvitz responded that American Jews should feel the responsibility of tikkun olam: to report on these conditions, and act on them.
I asked whether the situation recalls Algeria or South Africa or Jim Crow. Gurvitz says that he thinks of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, but that historical analogies can be misleading. No situation is quite similar to another. “We have a small nation supported by an empire, who is busily encroaching on the lands of its neighbors with the support of that empire.”
But the difference is that Israel also has nuclear weapons. He says at 6:15:
I think this is where historical analogies stop. Because I hear time and time again, mostly on the right, but not just on the right, people are saying, ‘Well if the world turns on us, we will go North Korea on them, and we do have the nukes. They’re not fake.’ So we speak about Iran as an irrational country …. an irrational leadership about to get its own nukes. Israel’s third largest party is the Bayit Yehudi, which is composed of some serious nuts… people who spoke about blowing up the Temple Mount…. spoke about transferring the Palestinians….The official position of the party is the unofficial policy of the Israeli government, the annexation of Area C with the expulsion of as many Palestinians as possible… A part of Likud is led by Avigdor Lieberman who has suggested nuking the Aswan Dam in Egypt and Teheran.
Obama knows this? I ask.
Everyone knows this. It’s not much of a secret. These are public policies, public speeches. They are available.
I then venture that if international pressure turned on Israel, including from the U.S., it might result in rightwing violence, as in Algeria and France in the early 60s. Gurvitz:
If we use the Algerian example, then we have a serious problem here… Recall, the French military in Algeria mutinied, and the mutiny was put down by soldiers loyal to the republic. We don’t have a concept of loyalty to the republic. We have a concept of loyalty to the country, loyalty to the homeland, loyalty to the Jewish religion, but we don’t have a sense of loyalty to the republic. So the settlers are moving their men quite explicitly to more and more higher positions in the army precisely to prevent any settler evacuation.
Gurvitz says that if Israeli politicians ordered a disengagement from the West Bank, it would result in a mutiny in the military. He believes this likely because there is an “out of control military rabbinate.” One leading rabbi in the military rabbinate wrote a statement justifying rape during war time. Other military rabbis published a book of rulings saying that gentile officers should not lead Jews.
These are the ingredients of a coup, not a civil war, Gurvitz concludes.
Reading the exposition of the religious teachings during war by the rabbi and listening to the urging s for help by the being raped girl ,one can only wonder at the depth of the cesspool the Israeli morality is in for a while. Once one is inside and listens or reads the religious explanation in the service of the moser base instinct of human beings,it is easy to fall prey to these ornamental pseudo legal undertones of the most vicious approval of the worst human nature that is unfortunately repeatedly unleashed by the war that is not necessary ,that is waged to sustain a particular environment and that is never meant to end. Religion is established by sword – we been told agains Israeli enemies. – we see the sword is being protected by the religion.
972 mag article shows that the sophist is still free poisoning the society ,they are busy reinventing a culture that did not survive when there was no Christianity or Islam or enlightenment or renaissance or Darwin or Collins or Freud or Einestein. It failed to flourish as. simple folks and learned alike could see the beastly nature of these
teachings. The contradictions that Israel want preserve with the might of the sword will face same fate as that of Nazism and Fasism and the religion that allows itself to be hijacked by these perverts and by these sort of perverted explanation will face the same fate as that of Heaven Gate and of the Lords Army
These are the ingredients of a coup, not a civil war, Gurvitz concludes.
a coup, and then a civil war, are not mutually exclusive possibilities. see . . . um . . . history. a right-wing coup would lead to chaos, including an attempted mass exodus of secular elements. would the right wing religious militarists permit the exodus of some of the best and brightest employed and/or managing in the technical fields? is this another extension of the N. Korea analogy, religious and military authorities imprisoning, more or less, nuclear technicians, software engineers, etc.? sounds more like the paranoid periods of the CCCP than N. Korea though.
An outstanding interview Phil. Your stories are becoming more and more insightful and cutting edge and this is a perfect example of the insanity that pervades the Israeli elite.
Peter Beinart seriously needs to see this.
So we hear from that so called atheist like Harris and like Maher and their ilk that the religions are the source of all evil conveniently forgetting to include recent examples of Judiaism and the secular west joined at the hip with Israel whose every bone of strength s buit on the religion or to be more precise on the evil interpretation of the scripture . Sometimes one wonder whether there wil be any idea ,any law,any morality,any philosophy that won’t be misused and exploitated by
Israel and its secular supporters alike .there is a valid ground to nurture and mobilize secularism,atheism,and openness to discuss even the most darkest part of the huan history but their adherents should never be allowed to come within the thousand mile perimeter of the precinct debating and trying to understand those complexities They have ulterior motive that serves the purpose of the doctrine based society by a different mask
Important interview. “Obama knows this?” you ask. I tend to doubt it. He might have known it once, but it is possible to suppress knowledge when it becomes inconvenient. Now everyone “knows” that there are all these crazy Muslims who want to destroy the peaceful children of Israel, any other knowledge is dangerous to hold. You can only keep so many perceptions in your head at once, and the when they clash, some get stored in an inaccessible place.