Haaretz Tries to Save Israel's Soul

by Diane V. McLoughlin, writer, peace activist; Apr. 18, 2010
main website:  mcloughlinpost.com

One thing no one would argue:  Present-day Israel is chockfull of morality plays.

Haaretz newspaper journalist Amira Hass versus the 'infiltrator' military rules; Haaretz journalist Uri Blau and military whistle-blower Anat Kamm - these are but two recent   cases in point; cases caught between journalistic as well as state ethics on the one hand, and the higher natural law, or the laws that govern moral order, on the other.

In the strictest sense, journalist Caroline Glick may have scored points in parsing out weaknesses made in reporting by Haaretz journalist Amira Hass and others. But in my opinion, Ms. Glick fails the calling to impart the higher truth to which Hass and others aspire. To be fair, Ms. Glick is far from alone amongst her journalistic fellows in this regard.  Throw a dart at a map of the world, she will find company; plenty of it.

A central moral theme: A nationalism that rejects the common humanity we share with others can destroy the soul of a people; or, at least, that part of the soul worth mention.

To Caroline Glick, the greater crime fellow journalist Amira Hass commits is reporting about the 2009 changes to the 1969 'infiltrator' law, when to Ms. Glick these were 'minor' in character.

Ms. Glick, however, chooses not to address the occupation, the oppression or the expulsion of Palestinians that such military orders provide cover for.

However, it is the very fact of the existence of these military powers over an illegally occupied people that draws a world's jaundiced and critical eye toward Israel - not Amira Hass's discussion of it.  But apologists criticize the discussion, not the acts themselves, and therein lies the critical difference.

It is a particular wonder that Israel's apologists do not honestly seem to see it for what it all actually is.

Don't look!, they protest at those who protest - at a nationalistic state not quite yet a homogeneous nation; not quite ethnically cleansed of the other, the native Palestinian people who were always there; a people who may actually be direct descendants of Jews who never left. 

Don't listen!, they shout, to drown out the truth from reaching the ears of those whose only thought of Israel is of an ancient era when a gentle man walked the earth speaking of love, charity and forgiveness; people who fervently pray he may one day do so again, and who would not tolerate for a second what was being done to the Palestinian people - if they knew.

Don't speak!, they would order the morally brave, both within Israel and without; the truth above all else considered a threat to the state's aims.

To those like Ms. Glick, the greater crime, in the Kamm/Blau case, is the revealing of political assassinations that were committed, against Israeli law. To the apologists, treason is defined as revealing that Israel may have committed war crimes in Gaza - the truth being far more disturbing than extrajudicial execution or war crimes themselves.

It is not Haaretz, or Amira Hass, or Anat Kamm, or Uri Blau that endanger Jews.  It is the apologists and the blind supporters of Israel, who do so.  The horror of the infiltrator law  is the fact that Israel has been terrorizing a captive population for decades with it. 

The Palestinians are forced to live out their lives under military siege, occupation and terrorization from both the military and the illegal, violent 'settlers'.

Occupation and foreign colonization enforced at the point of guns:  One of the worst of crimes imaginable. 

The infiltrator law has been on the books since 1969 - yes. To Ms. Glick, the implication is that this renders it inocuous; harmless. It has, after all, to her, always been there. But the longer a people are yoked to oppression does not make the burden easier to bear or less wrong.  Naturally, the story of Moses immediately springs to mind.

The infiltrator military group of orders concerns themselves with which Palestinians are entitled to be here or there.  It is invalid, illegal law. It is simply the illegal occupier declaring that it will do what it will - throw you in jail, deport you, tear families apart - and, of course, steal your land - with impunity, whenever and to whomever it wants.

The test is this:  Those without the requisite papers are automatically deemed 'infiltrators'. But I challenge anyone to prove otherwise:  Palestinians BORN in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem cannot get these permits.  The required permits are not given.  Or they are given at whim.

This is but one of many freak-you-out forms of state terrorism under occupation.Any Jew who survived the horrors of Nazi terror could tell you all about this form of fundamental, coldly calculating, bureaucratic evil.

As for Anat Kamm, the analysis is the same. Rules of combat or war are there for very good reasons, and they are simple to understand.  What we choose to do we should expect no less from our adversaries.  In addition, extrajudicial political killing is just wrong.  It is a system of murder by which the murdered are denied the right to defend themselves in an open court of law.  In its very essence a state resorts to assassination because no ethical court of its own would condone murder; the commission of state-executed assassination verily screams that there is no evidence sufficient to prove the target guilty of any crime.

Sin is defined as causing a degree of spiritual death in the sinner.  The word is concerned with the harm done to the one who commits it. Murder makes cold-blooded killers of a country's citizens against the universal code of moral law, thus, weakening the moral fabric of all of society.  One could argue that we need look no further for evidence of this moral decay than to the efforts of Ms. Glick and others to silence those who would point out where Israel is wrong.  (A silence that may well include a prison sentence for the 23 year-old Anat Kamm of up to twenty years.)

On the outside looking in, state-sanctioned extrajudicial assassination destroys the state's reputation. And ipso facto, state-sanctioned extrajudicial assassination of one's political opponents means that your own political representatives will become targets for retaliation.
It is the mark of the weak and desperate; it is indefensible; and it is illegal under Israeli law.  It is why Ms. Kamm tried to expose what she found out - that certain actors were breaking the law, putting the country at risk.

One of the most serious concerns raised by Israeli apologists is that Uri Blau may have discovered that, in the lead up to Operation Cast Lead's assault on Gaza, operational guidelines had been drawn up on the ways in which it was deemed permissible to kill civilians (an odious squaring of the circle if there ever was one.) But their concern does not appear to extend to the question of whether or not it is right.  Mr. Blau currently is in self-imposed exile in Britain, fearing reprisals should he return home.

It is all part and parcel of the existential dilemmas the state has yet to resolve: secular or religious?  All men are equal or not? Proportionate force in battle, or kill disproportionately - even babies?  This last suggestion, from a recently published book by a dean-rabbi team employed at a yeshiva in a settlement in the West Bank:

'There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.'
(Title of book, translated: 'The King's Teaching - INT'. See: Gilad Atzmon's article: 'The Complete Guide to Killing Non-Jews'; Nov. 18, 2010)

It may be fringe, but there are rabbis in Israel that espouse this stuff, and the state permits rabbis to be embedded within the military hierarchy itself.

For all of the reasons discussed above, the individuals that Ms. Glick so blithely would dismiss as traitors, are all in fact trying very hard to save Israel's soul.

Donkey to Shrek - or - Letter To Netanyahu on mass expulsions

To:  B. Netanyahu
       bnetanyahu@knesset.gov.il

From:  Diane V. McLoughlin, writer, peace activist
           main website: mcloughlinpost.com

Re:  The new IDF so-called infiltrator military order providing the IDF with vastly expanded powers to expel Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, or to jail them for up to seven years at the military occupation's whim.

Dear Mr. Netanyahu,

I am writing to share frankly my views regarding the amendment to the 'infiltrator' military order enabling vastly expanded powers to the Israeli Offensive Forces (IOF) to harass and oppress and harm the Palestinian people.

Is the Israeli leadership oblivious to the fact that the civilized world is aware? That it is now watching, waiting to see what the Knesset chooses to do?

This new law gives the IOF the power to expel tens of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, both in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem for want of pieces of paper referred to as either 'legal permits' or 'certificates' issued by either the West Bank military commander or the Interior Ministry.

The West Bank military commander has never issued such permits.  Palestinians who were born in the West Bank have no permits.  This law is a farce; a transparent charade.

If this order is not immediately reversed, if, instead, the IOF begins to expel Palestinians from their homeland, Israel will become a full-fledged pariah state.  At this point, even if the order is reversed I would argue that the chess pieces are not returned back to the square from which they came.  Not after America's recent awakening from Vice President Joseph Biden's visit to you.

It is clear that many of your compatriots are hermetically-sealed in a bubble of self-delusion. 

I may not be the best person to try to get through to honorable members of the Knesset. In fact I know I'm not. But somebody has got to try; the situation is too important to leave it to trust that somebody else will.

Israel is faced with four options:

One bi-national state with equal rights for all its citizens;

Two states bordered by pre-1967 boundaries, a shared Jerusalem, with no attempt at swaps of good land for bad thinking that anyone will be stupid enough to call that a bargain;

Repatriation of Gaza to Egypt and the West Bank to Jordan;

Or, the continued oppression and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians - the status quo.

Should Israel continue to choose the latter, Israel's reputation will be destroyed.

And no option will bring blessed calm and everlasting peace to Israel as long as
Palestinian-Israeli citizens within Israel proper are treated badly. 

Israel is now faced with the ultimate, most monumental and moral of decisions. That is how it feels; a moment upon which history will pivot.  The world collectively waits to exhale.

Should Israel opt to continue to occupy and live amongst the Palestinians on Palestinian lands while denying the Palestinians their civil rights; should Israel choose to implement this newest military abuse - intensifying the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank - Israel risks provoking a different antisemitism to arise, an antisemitism caused by the racist mistreatment of the Palestinians.  All of the backroom dealing in the West attempting to criminalize criticism of Israel will not be able to evade, head off or squelch this: odious cause = horrified effect.

Mr. Netanyahu, I have long wanted to ask you when is the last time you were able to look anyone straight in the eye?  Wouldn't you like to be able to, again?

In the children's movie 'Shrek', Shrek calls his friend, Donkey, a stupid, annoying beast of burden.  I feel like Donkey.  A beast of burden plodding along wanting you to have peace.

And like Shrek, the heroic ogre, you must have, like an onion, many layers of complexity about your character that most people who judge you from the outside might appreciate if they only knew. 

In my own defense I would permit Donkey to have the final word:  Only a true friend would be so truly honest.

Sincerely,

Diane V. McLoughlin