For more on Sabawi see here. From the video’s YouTube page:
Leading Liberal Zionists have come out in impressive numbers calling for the boycott of settlements, but I have to warn you there is something to dread; they want you to buy Israeli products instead! They say they want to save Israel from a dangerous extremist threat. Namely, the Israeli gov’t and the BDS! Yes, they have lumped us together as two extreme versions calling for one state. Both? Extreme?
In this absurd reality BDS’s call for equality is apparently as extreme as ethnic cleansing. In what world is this convincing?
In their grand hypocrisy they want us to fortify the Green line that supposedly separates a Jewish state from a future Palestine but without ever supporting Palestinian resistance. Is it then a matter of a state of mind? If we think it, the settlements will go? What tools can we use and where are these liberal Zionists when nonviolent protestors are shot in the face with gas canisters?
They want us to be as delusional as they are. They want us to be docile. They want us to exonerate Israel of all its past crime or God forbid, we would be accused of clinging to victimhood.
They want us to march along side the spin doctors and bleeding hearts ‘The settlers are to blame for the erosion of Israel’s democracy!’, ‘The settlers are to blame!’. ‘The settlers are to blame for the erosion of Israel’s democracy’. ‘The settlers are to blame!’.
For the destruction of a Zionist fantasy!
As if settlers exist in a vacuum. As if settlers have come from some far away planet. landed on a hill in the West Bank and without any help from congress, the Knesset or the senate, they began to build their colonies on our land.
‘The settlers are to blame!’ As if Israel was not built on the ruins of Palestinian villages long before the settlers came to the West Bank. Long before the checkpoints and the wall, long before it all, long before there was an occupation, there was a total devastation, a ruthless destruction of an entire nation.
‘The settlers are to blame!’ But as far back as 1948 villages were erased, Palestinians were massacred, to make way for the establishment of this state.
‘The settlers are to blame!’ But go on and ask this soil you tread whose ancestral flesh has fed this earth for centuries? Whose blood runs in the sap of the olive trees? Whose stories are written between the cracks of these old stones?
‘The settlers are to blame!’ Close your eyes and search your soul. Dig deep. Those nightmares in your sleep are the voices that once filled this Arab home you have occupied with laughter. Look beneath your bed. Did they leave their slippers when they ran barefoot down the street and into exile? Did they leave behind the tea-kettle warm on the kitchen table? Before they wore an eternal label ‘refugees’!
‘The settlers are to blame.’ But who shoots the gas canisters and live bullets at the protestors in the West Bank? Who enables these settlers to steal Palestinian land?
‘The settlers are to blame.’ Who is responsible for the death of thousands in Gaza? Was it settlers riding on their F16 fighter jets who dropped the phosphorus bombs on schools, houses and mosques? Or was it a state army, your army, wearing a uniform that supposedly represents all of Israel that killed and maimed at will?
The best part is when Liberal Zionists like Beinart suggest calling the West Bank ‘undemocratic Israel’. ‘Undemocratic’ as opposed to what? The democratic Israel on the other side of the Green line where Palestinians who survived the Nakba and hold Israeli citizenships have dozens of laws that single them out and discriminate against them?
‘The settlers are to blame!’ But how are the settlers alone responsible for the systematic racism of a state that defines all non-Jews as second-class citizens?
And pray tell, who set the Eritrean migrants’ house on fire in Jerusalem and demanded the deportation of Africans seeking asylum?
If we boycott settlements and buy Israeli goods will the Jews in Israel become more accepting of non-Jews in their neighborhoods?
Let’s put an end to this grand deviation. Settlers wouldn’t exist if not for the support of an ethnocentric nation, dedicated by any means necessary to driving out the indigenous population.
Yes, Boycott the settlements. But don’t stop at the green line because they did not. Boycott the settlements but also boycott ethnic superiority. Boycott discrimination against Palestinians who are second-class citizens in their own country. Boycott Israel’s academic institutions for their complicity. Boycott Israel’s culture for its duplicity. Boycott Israeli industries. Boycott Israeli institutions for supporting war crimes. Boycott Israel’s apartheid policies on both sides of the green line until all of this changes and we are all free, living together Palestinians and Jews in equality.
Boycott Israel and I promise you, this day will come.
Now that’s the real stuff!
“‘The settlers are to blame!’ But as far back as 1948 villages were erased, Palestinians were massacred, to make way for the establishment of this state.”
Or: The settlers are to blame, but only after 1967, not after 1947 and definitely not after 1917.
Btw: Someone deleted the word “Jewish” in this recognition letter:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/images/recog.jpg
Must have been an antisemite called Truman.
Suppose a mine had extended under a town and there was a great danger the mine would collapse and take the town with it.
You lived in a nearby mining community and all you ever heard was talk of the mine – how much ore it was bringing out, what should be done to make it safer, how many miners it employed and how to enlarge it to get greater output, whether there was good management, etc. The one thing you would never hear about is the danger to that town that is over the mine because the mine is the unquestioned good.
So it is with Israel, a colony that has brought nothing but grief to all around it and certainly to the people who live or lived where it now holds sway. Like those in the mining town, the world and the United States in particular have been listening to the talk of the miners. Only now and with such clear statements as Sabawi makes, and on a site such as Mondoweiss, is the reality coming out about the town that has always been sitting on top of the mine.
It’s a choice the liberal Zionists will have to make. If they love Israel, they should have no problem with the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. In fact to be consistent they should increase the rate of ethnic cleansing and put more energy into the settlement project. But if they are offended by the occupations, then to be consistent with what offends them, they will have to withdraw their consent from the entire state that occupies Palestine and work for its transformation.