Gideon Levy has written an important column thanking Superland, the amusement park whose segregation Palestinian and Jewish student groups, for exposing the broader “apartheid” policies in Israeli society.
Apartheid in the Occupied Territories, apartheid-lite within the State of Israel, and that country is shaken by something that is happening in a Ferris wheel.
Again: How many American publications are reflecting this important truth? The Nation published “Apartheid on Steroids” two years ago, written by an “ardent” lover of Israel; but of course Jimmy Carter was pilloried for using the word apartheid in a tentative manner. Isn’t it the New York Times’s responsibility to be giving this information to the Establishment? Can Obama do anything while Americans remain ignorant?
Haaretz has not provided an English translation of this original in Hebrew, according to Ofer Neiman, who directs me to Sol Salbe’s English translation. Levy:
What do they want from Superland’s management? It’s just a playground, which has suddenly turned out to be a true reflection of society. Superland has dared to be a Mini-Israel as well. If so, what’s the fuss? That its executives acted the same way as everyone else? Behaved in the same way as the state? Even a Dreams Park is situated on reality’s ground, why should it become Super-Israel?
“Levy says, correctly in my view,” Neiman says, “that Israel is a land of separation. He contends that small time acts of separation and discrimination are only pale shadow of the separation practised by the state. His conclusion should be taken up by lovers of Israel everywhere:
Occasionally we encounter a small scandal – a bank branch which doesn’t let Arabs open accounts, a rabbi who preaches refusing to let flats to Arabs, or a bus driver who refuses to let Arabs on board – and the country shakes to its seams. Those storms are designed for one thing — to blur the point , to conceal the fact that such incidents take place in a broader context. The entire ridiculous protest has a sole purpose: to lie to ourselves that we are not like that.
Leave Superland alone, its executives actually deserve our gratitude: they showed Israelis how they really look like, not in a distorted luna-parks mirror but as true reflection of reality.
“to lie to ourselves that we are not like that.”
Post Oslo politicians like Danon don’t even bother lying any more. They won the argument and they set the rules now.
Yes, friends of Israel, the “separation” worked by the Nakba — the expulsion and/or refusal-to-readmit 85% of the non-Jews of 1950-1966 “Israel” — is the true mark of Israel, its truest “brand”, and these other small reminders are either pointed to or attempted to be hidden as distractions from the GREAT SEPARATION.
The big apartheid is the refusal to allow the Palestinian Right of Return demanded by the Palestinian proponents of BDS.
972 relates:Kaniuk was a quintessential Israeli “sabra.” He was certainly a Zionist, in that he felt the Jewish nation would have no future without a home. Still, he was concerned for the wellbeing of every soul on this soil and frowned at the Israeli Right’s abduction of Zionism. His understanding of the term was miles apart from that which is common in contemporary Israel. “Our Zionism was on the coast,” he told me in another conversation. “When we dreamed of a state here, Jerusalem was not meant to be a part of it, never mind the West Bank and Gaza.”
RE: “What do they want from Superland’s management? It’s just a playground, which has suddenly turned out to be a true reflection of society. Superland has dared to be a Mini-Israel as well. If so, what’s the fuss?” ~ Gideon Levey
ANSWER: They just want Superland’s management to make their gnawing cognitive dissonance go the hell away! ! !
FROM WIKIPEDIA [Defence mechanisms]:
SOURCE – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanisms
On a related note, I’ve read Jewish writers who say that kosher eating grew out of the macro intent to divide kosher people from “the other,” the historic health aspects of it aside.
Mr. Weiss and Mr. Levy, apartheid means that there are separate Superland’s for each of the different groups. And usually one of the Superlands has better and newer equipment. If the different groups frequent the same Superland, then this is not apartheid. If there is tension between Arab and Jew, both sides must take responsibility. Whatever it is, it is not apartheid. And for those who are going to jump at me and say “it’s worse than apartheid”, do us a favor and put a sock in it.