Seth Freedman, a former IDF soldier filing reports from Jerusalem for the Guardian in England, writes in "Front Line Thugs" that nutty settlers in Hebron have poured boiling water on visitors seeking to see what's going on. And he says these lawbreakers have been enabled by the Israeli government:
with rubber bullets, tear gas, and – often – live and indiscriminate
fire. But when it comes to clamping down on violence emanating from the
settler community, a different set of rules apply, and the authorities'
reeking hypocrisy is exposed as endemic to the way in which they view
the different strands of Israeli society.
I've witnessed the double standards for myself countless times, from the kid-glove treatment my platoon used when evicting the settlers of Homesh to the heavy-handed brutality meted out by the border police in the Palestinian villages of Bil'in and Nilin.
What is explained away as "necessary in the interests of security" in
one situation is turned on its head in another; softly-softly replacing
an all-out show of force, simply because the assailants in question are
religious Jews rather than Muslims. The longer the duplicity is
allowed to thrive in the military and political spheres in Israel, the
worse the violence will get on the part of the settlers' lunatic
fringe.
Perfect. Freedman's horror at the stuff before his eyes is further evidence of a trend I spotted more than a year ago: that non-Zionism is the new Zionism. It draws on the same prophetic redemptive strain in Jewish life as Zionism once drew upon in the shtetls of eastern Europe. Only the redemption now is from the occupation and all that goes along with it. I've seen this beautiful passion in Esti Tsal and Elik Elhanan, among others. When I made this point this last year, Richard Witty commented, "It is definitely possible to be simultaneously civilist and Jewish,
civilist and Zionist. Its like saying, 'I'm male and I'm human'". My response to that is Show me. Zionists are getting their rendezvous with history right now, they can save the two-state solution by showing respect for Palestinians, or they can fail in the negotiations. And then, non-Zionism will become a true fever among younger Jews.
