This month marks the 39th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatilla massacre. Ellen Siegel, now 79 and a retired nurse in Washington, D.C., talks to Steve France about what happened to her in 1982, when she was working as a volunteer nurse at the hospital in the Shatila neighborhood of Beirut: “The soldiers’ rifles were pointed at us. Some of my fellow hospital staff started crying. I wondered, was anyone going to know that I died in this refugee camp?”
Liberal Zionists are celebrating Israel’s new rightwing prime minister, Naftali Bennett. Why? Although many secular Zionist leftists may not see him as “Our guy”, they may still identify with him on his militarism and the startup ideology, and this may be enough to sanitize him for them, as a pragmatic partner whom they can emotionally accept.
Israel’s self-perception as forever-threatened is an unshakable psychological constant justifying attack on perceived enemies, Emad Moussa explains. Fear, anger, and vengeance are directed at what Israelis see as a Nazi replacement, anyone who presents a threat to the state of Israel. Iran replaced Iraq as Iraq replaced Egypt, and Palestinians – always.
At 30 years old, Joe Biden told Israeli PM Golda Meir “there is no debate in the Senate about the ME [Middle East] because the Senators are ‘afraid’ to say things that Jewish voters will dislike,” according to an Israeli document. The report shows Biden twice angrily took on Israeli prime ministers over illegal settlements, when he was young. Though his surrogates have sought to deny this.
It’s a “canard,” says Halie Soifer of the Jewish Democratic Council of America. A “false story,” says former ambassador Dan Shapiro. Biden’s surrogates in the Jewish community go to great lengths to try to debunk a story that Joe Biden took on Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin over settlements in 1982. But the encounter is documented in the New York Times.
The UAE and other Arab states making peace with Israel have backed Palestinian rights. With nothing to show for it. Ever since Oslo, Israeli leaders have fought creation of a Palestinian state. In the Labor Party, it was liberal Zionist hero Shimon Peres “who most vehemently opposed the idea,” Shlomo Ben-Ami recalled.
Joe Biden’s idea of criticizing Israel was being 90 minutes late to dinner at the Netanyahus on the day the Israelis insulted him as vice president in 2010 by announcing more settlements. And Biden embraces Trump’s move of the embassy to Jerusalem and offers only mild criticism of annexation plans.
The Trump peace plan was brought to you by the Jewish community. Over the last 20 years, vigorous opposition to the pro-Israel right inside the US Jewish community has been quashed, and liberal Zionists have enforced that line by refusing to organize as equals with the community Israel is oppressing: Palestinians.
The New York Times parrots claims by Benjamin Netanyahu and Mike Pompeo that Israel owns the Golan Heights because it was taken in a “defensive war” in 1967, ignoring the historical record. Israel launched the war, the Arab states did not want war. “We chose to attack them,” former premier Menachem Begin said.