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Jonathan Ofir

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Im Tirtzu protesting a Nakba commemoration at Tel Aviv University, May 2013. (Photo: Lazar Simeonov)

The Jewish fascist group Im Tirtzu has a history of disrupting Nakba commemoration ceremonies at the Tel Aviv campus. This year they blasted the Eurovision-winning song ‘Toy’ over loudspeakers during a minute of silence for Nakba victims.

The ethos of Zionism from its inception was to create a new kind of Jew, disconnected from the Jew’s former alleged diasporic weakness. Jonathan Ofir contends that this basic notion represents the weakness of Zionism, which Zionists need to relinquish in order to move Israeli society toward any kind of peaceful coexistence with Arabs.

Jonathan Ofir at a family seder in Israel, hearing the old stories of genocide: “You don’t want to throw away everything because some of it is rotten, you don’t want to make a family gathering political, but it’s hard to be part of it and reduce it to mere ‘tradition’. You’re wondering what you are enabling, indirectly, by not speaking out, or by saying too little, or by not opposing things more clearly.”

Danny Danon speaks at the Israel Day Concert in Central Park in New York CIty on May 23, 2010.

Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon is now claiming the bible as proof to Israel’s fundamental right to all of Palestine. During his speech at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, Danon held up a bible at for all the ambassadors present to see and said, “This is our deed to our land.” Jonathan Ofir says this is just an indication of Israel’s desperation for legitimacy.

Jonathan Ofir continues his journey in Israel-Palestine. He visits the western wall in Jerusalem and reflects on the erasure of the Magharibah quarter, sees a sign commemorating the theft of Yemenite babies, and reflects on the utter invisibility of the Palestinian presence in Israeli life.