Israel/Palestine Thread

Reality check

https://www.newarab.com/opinion/lets-stop-pretending-ben-gvir-not-true-face-israel

Ben-Gvir is deemed grotesque not because he invented Israeli violence, but because he has stripped it of its decorum. But neither Saar nor anyone else in Israel’s political establishment has the right to feign surprise.

For decades, Israel’s political and security elites sustained a careful division. On one side stood the image Israel worked tirelessly to project to the world: a liberal democracy, technologically advanced, environmentally conscious, open, modern, and governed by the rule of law. On the other stood the reality imposed on Palestinians: military rule, settlement expansion, land theft, checkpoints, home demolitions, industrial scale incarceration, and a separate legal order designed to manage an occupied and colonised people.

This separation was never merely legal, though legal duality was central to it. It extended into every sphere of life. Israel celebrated its press freedom while Palestinian journalists were routinely killed, arrested, harassed, and surveilled.

It boasted of public safety and sophisticated policing while Palestinian communities were abandoned to organised crime or exposed directly to state and settler violence.

It marketed itself as a green and environmentally responsible state while Palestinian land was turned into dumping grounds and subjected to systematic ecological destruction.

It promoted Tel Aviv liberalism as a symbol of openness while imposing control over every intimate aspect of Palestinian life.

This has been the logic of Israeli apartheid: domination and meticulous management of the domination’s image.

For a long time, this arrangement served Israel well. It allowed its allies to speak of “shared values” while supplying weapons. It allowed Western journalists to describe Israeli politics as complicated while treating Palestinian death as background noise. It allowed liberal Zionists to lament “excesses” while remaining committed to the structures that produced them. Above all, it allowed Israeli elites to imagine that the violence required to sustain a settler-colonial regime could be kept at a distance, contained beyond the apartheid wall, checkpoints, and borders designed to separate Palestinians from Israeli life.

Databases for Palestine have added a large video archived interactive map which has documented evidence of war crimes in Gaza and other regions in the area. All in one place for researchers, lawyers and the public with evidence constantly updated and verified by coordinates, sources and dates.

Might be useful for a few politicians or people with influence around the world to take a look at also.

Ori Goldberg (who lives in Tel Aviv) says people in the West can't begin to imagine how radicalised and extremist the Israeli public are - they would be much further to the right of the population in Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s i.e. they are fully aware of the accusations of war crimes, genocide and atrocities against the state and don't even care.

Let us not forget the gatherings they had at the border of Gaza where they were watching the destruction and killing live and cheering it on. But yeah, existential threat, blood libel blah blah.

I view the protestors not in that light but as “hobbyist activists” looking for self validation, adventure, martyrdom, and the communal self congratulation of the group.

These flotillas are utterly pointless. In my view. But deep down I think the protestors know that it is all about them really. And it is all about “suffering for a cause/hobby”.

Again what’s it going to achieve? All I see is very emotional women and men. Who feel like they are part of something. They seem to enjoy it. The more suffering the better, a shared experience etc.

Practically I think it is just foolishness. Nothing achieved by it.

Yeah, I suppose. If there were things done to achieve practical objectives, I understand it. But honestly my reaction to them on the news was ,they seem like right doses.

I just don’t get that kind of symbolism activism at all. If there were groups involved at. a diplomatic level, back channels etc. That to me is where real results are achieved.

I honestly think that these kind activists achieve very litttle.

The same names seem to be on the periphery of these events and what I saw of their output I wouldn’t

see them achieving anything significant .

Just tog out in the keffiyeh and play the conquering hero coming home.

Yes that’s harsh but it’s as I see it.