Gideon Levy unbound in Haaretz, following up on Akiva Eldar’s damning report:
By the time of the Oslo Accords, Israel had revoked the residency of 140,000 Palestinians from the West Bank… In other words: ethnic cleansing…
While we are still desperately concealing, denying and repressing our major ethnic cleansing of 1948 – over 600,000 refugees, some who fled for fear of the Israel Defense Forces and its predecessors, some who were expelled by force – it turns out that 1948 never ended, that its spirit is still with us…
Anyone who says “it’s not apartheid” is invited to reply: Why is an Israeli allowed to leave his country for the rest of his life, and nobody suggests that his citizenship be revoked, while a Palestinian, a native son, is not allowed to do so?…
By next Independence Day we’ll probably invent more expulsion regulations, and on the next holiday we’ll talk about “the only democracy.”
I don’t recall Levy ever before tackling the 1948 question broadside. This might be his most critical column ever. Huzzah! What courage, to speak truth to power!
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