Adam Horowitz writes:
Today in the New York Times Benny Morris gets his semi-annual opportunity to try to justify Israeli militarism and expansionism: "Why Israel Feels Threatened". Presented as an outline of all the threats Israel faces he begins, "Many Israelis feel that the walls — and history — are closing in on their 60-year-old state".
Morris goes on to list Israel's adversaries, or the walls that are
closing in on Israel: the Arab and Islamic world, public opinion in
the West, Hezbollah
to the north, Hamas to the south, and Israel's own Palestinian citizens
(20% of the state) right in the middle. Morris then warns that the current
destruction of a Gaza might just be the model to handle all of these
threats:
week led to
one violent reaction. Given the new realities, it would not be
surprising if more powerful explosions were to follow."
Let's not get sidetracked by the fact that Morris might be calling for the ethnic cleansing of a fifth of the Israeli state (wouldn't be the first time). It is more useful to focus on the challenges Morris ignores, the
walls he doesn't see. Reading Morris's article, it is clear he can only see
the reactions, but not the cause. He lists the responses to Israel and to Israel's ongoing Jewish colonization of historic Palestine, without
mentioning the elephant in the room, that the walls closing in on
Israel are all self made.
For Morris the hallmarks of
Zionism, expansionism and militarism, are such a given that they go unmentioned. And what his
article demonstrates is that "the walls closing in" is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
