Hunting for missing justice

This is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.

Here we go again. Israel has launched – yet another – full-scale invasion of the West Bank. This in response to the kidnapping of three Israelis. Or is this a cover for – yet another – collective punishment because the Palestinians declared – yet again – a Palestinian state?

Allison Deger is on the scene covering this amazing story. It seems that Palestine is that unique type of state that keeps declaring itself, is continually invaded with impunity and where the state’s government is expected to and even volunteers to cooperate with the invaders.

Still, folks like Larry Derfner, in an interesting appeal to liberal Zionists,  and after detailing why everything else has failed, thinks that BDS has a chance of succeeding. It’s a last ditch effort to be sure and Defner thinks that at most there is 10 years left to try it. But what the heck, the Jewish state is worth saving. Just do it!

Here’s Derfner:

Not even Ben-Gurion would be able to rally the political support necessary to displace masses of settlers as long as there is no price to be paid for the occupation. So how much longer can liberal Zionists sit and watch the status quo remain static? If instead of trying to persuade Israel to change, two-state supporters started holding it responsible for refusing to change, it could have a jarring psychological impact on the country and its leaders.

The question answered is simply put: Not even up-in-arms BDS-active liberal Zionists can save the day for a – real – two-state solution.

The truth of the matter is that as the divestment debate is upon us, what’s left of Palestine is doubly occupied – by the Palestinian Authority and Israeli soldiers.

I am beginning to wonder whether the Palestinian Authority wants the responsibility of governing an intact, contiguous, real, Palestinian state. If that was in the cards, the political skill needed would be unparalleled. Do the Palestinian Authority and Hamas prefer the Israeli occupation with American brokering some kind of autonomy as their solution to the mirage of difficulties that would accompany Palestinian freedom?

Here’s Abbas yesterday on the subject of cooperation with Israel:

It’s in our interest that there is security coordination between us and Israel in order to protect ourselves, to protect our people,” he said. “We do not want to go back to the anarchy or destruction that happened in the second intifada

Abbas’s statement seems to confirm what Abdullah Al-Majali points out about the culpability of the Palestinian Authority:

When it comes to Zionists, all forms of logic are disregarded and the world is turned upside down: right becomes wrong and wrong becomes right; justice becomes injustice and injustice becomes justice; the victim is seen as the oppressor and the oppressor is seen as the victim; the kidnapped becomes the kidnapper while the kidnapper becomes the kidnapped.

In every stage of history, there is a force that determines moral standards and adjusts them according to its own moral compass. Today, though, we see Palestinian officials sharing our blood assuming a moral code closer to the Zionists’ standards rather than the truth and justice believed in by their own people.

Everything is upside down and we have to put it right side up again. The situation as it is makes turning things right side almost impossible.

The young Jewish – settlers – with an imperialist take on Judaism and Jewishness – have been kidnapped. They’re missing in the Zionist/Israeli/Jewish universe. But when the search assaults an entire nation, we have to turn our attention elsewhere.

To justice.