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svartikotturinn · 7 years

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Tel-Aviv huh? Whats your stance on the occupation?

It’s fucked up. Aside from politicians profiting off of it, journalism here is doing a shitty fucking job of covering it properly, preferring to publish fluff pieces about the army instead of covering the daily dickery going on in the Palestinian Territories (I’m not calling it Palestine strictly because de facto, it’s not an independent country yet; whether or not it should be is a separate issue I won’t go into now). But I do put a whole lot of blame on mainstream Israeli society who is hardly keen on hearing about it.

But the thing is, outsiders don’t quite realize how complicated the situation actually is. They don’t know, for example, that a lot of the territories conquered in the Israeli War of Independence were conquered for the sake of territorial continuity that was vital for the protection of Jewish territories that were too isolated to protect (Israelis aren’t aware that those territories amounted to 6% of the land here though). Or that the Green Line is extremely close to Gush Dan, where Tel-Aviv and its satellite cities are: if the rockets from Gaza make life for towns and kibbutzim around it hellish, you can imagine what kind of damage rockets on Gush Dan could deal. They also don’t seem to get how deeply ingrained the history of animosity towards Jews is ingrained in the Jewish psyche: I’ve heard quite a few Europeans and Americans talking about how anti-Semitism was pretty much a thing of the past, and while to a great extent they’re right, you can see Jews were pretty much spot on about their fear that it could come back any time, and that’s without even bringing up the rampant anti-Semitism in Muslim communities. (This is why Jews here are very suspicious of Western mediation.)

People don’t get just how hard dismantling the Occupation actually is. Aside from ‘mainstream’ right-wing Jews who see land ownership in terms of collective ownership by peoples rather than individuals (a notion I parodied here) and bring up historic Jewish presence dating back millennia (e.g. old coins with Jewish inscriptions or the notable absence of pig bones), or nuttier Jews claiming the evil psychopath Yahweh promised them the land, there are more practical concerns. Dismantling all the Settlements and re-settling Jews within the Green Line would be an economic and logistical nightmare: Israel is already struggling with a serious shortage of real estate as it is.

Also, Jews don’t really trust Palestinians for pretty good reason: their leadership has repeatedly talked about how they want to destroy all of Israel and take it over, relying on alternative historic facts claiming e.g. that Tel-Aviv was originally ‘Tal Rabí‘’ (nonsense, aside from a few neighbourhoods it was mostly built by Jews before the war on land bought legitimately and named after a monumental piece of Zionist literature). They believe that getting full control of Judæa and Samaria (using these terms instead of ‘the West Bank’ to emphasize that it’s an area much larger than just the strip of land along the Jordan River) and the Gaza Strip is just a way to get their foot in the door before taking over everything. And, of course, there’s the humanitarian concern of what establishing an overwhelmingly Muslim independent state would mean for its women and minorities and plain old political dissidents: so far their record hasn’t been all too great (honour killing, civil war between Fatah and Hamas, brutal murder of suspected collaborators, GSM persecution, Christian persecution…).

On top of that, Israelis have a lot of misunderstanding on their part. First off, Hebrew does not distinguish between ‘conquest’ and ‘occupation’ (both are כִּבּוּשׁ kibúsh), and most Israelis don’t get the difference between ‘conquest’ and annexation, as has traditionally been the case. For many Israelis, war is a process where participants essentially wager their territory in armed conflict, and territory lost fair and square should be ceded. This is especially the case for Israelis, who believe that they’ve never instigated a war; at most, they responded to aggressive actions the only reasonable way they could.

In general, international law and the customs of war are very recent, dating back to only a few decades ago. Israelis think that Western powers preaching to them about how wrong conquering territories is is incredibly hypocritical, not realizing the rules have changed or thinking they apply selectively. This is particularly infuriating to them as they believe that unlike Western empires, Israel needs its extra territories for survival (whether or not that’s true is an issue I won’t go into).

What complicates matters further is that English terminology also has its limits: while Hebrew distinguishes between ‘Palestine’ as a geographic term (אֶרֶץ יְשׂרָאֵל Èretz Yisra’él, lit. ‘Land of Israel’, also used extensively in religious contexts) and as a (would-be) political entity (פָלַסְטִין Falastín), English has one term for both, as does Arabic (فلسطين Filasṭīn). You can imagine how aggravated Israelis get when they come across what looks like trying to establish a hostile political reality but is actually just a reference to geography, but more pressingly, they don’t get what Palestinians actually claim.

Jewish Israeli narrative centres around the idea that they owned the land fair and square and were driven out of their rightfully owned territory, including Judæa and Samaria (partial truth: the traditional narrative claims Jews were expelled by the Romans, but the truth is many left voluntarily when the Romans started persecuting them), sometimes argued that God Himself gave it to them, and define their ‘peoplehood’ based on (overwhelmingly) religious practice; the Palestinian one, on the other hand, is based on connection to the land, emphasizing a connection to all the people who’ve settled in the region and their heritage. When they say ‘Jesus was Palestinian’ they think that’s true: he was Jewish by faith but was born and raised and lived his whole life here, his roots were here, ergo he was Palestinian. As a matter of fact, Palestinians are the ethnic group most closely related genetically to Jews, but Jews here would normally claim (as is taught in high school history, or at least was when I was in high school) that they are overwhelmingly descended from relatively recent immigrants who came when Jews started prospering, to get a chunk of that working for them. (This is often based on the widely derided claims in Joan Peters’ From Time Immemorial and selective and grossly misleading quotes from Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad.)

The Palestinians, on their part, think Jews came here as some kind of extension of colonial powers: they saw all those Jews coming in from European countries and put two and two together (which has some merit but is a GROSS oversimplification). This is why they often have more respect for Mizrakhi and Sephardi Jews than Ashkenazi Jews. And, of course, as pointed out above, they’re often all too keen on buying into anti-Semitic rhetoric: Israeli right-wingers often point out that Mahmoud Abbas himself was (and, they claim, still is) a Holocaust denier.

So you can see why there is little trust between the two sides and why dismantling the Occupation safely is akin to diffusing a very sensitive bomb. There has to be a lot more earnest dialogue before that can happen.

Also, amusingly (in a dark way), while leftist Jews (moderate and otherwise) are mad about all the money spent on the Settlements, Settlers are mad about how their Settlements don’t actually expand or multiply. The actual problem is that corrupt right-wing politicians pass the money to their own rather than the Settlements…

This is a very complicated issue, but I think there are plenty of steps Israel could take and simply doesn’t for some reason:

More emphasis on Arabic in school. Nowadays students are often given the choice between Arabic and French or Russian in many schools, and many get exempted from studying a third language to avoid learning a ‘terrorists’ language’ by getting a didactic diagnosis and feigning idiocy; about a year ago there was a bill proposed by MK Oren Khazan of all people to make it mandatory from the first grade, but from what I’ve heard it was not realistic considering the massive shortage of Arabic teachers in Israel, and I’m not sure why but it kinda stopped moving forward for some reason. (Personally I think Israeli and Palestinian Sign Languages should be taught too, as well as optional linguistics, but I’m kinda biased as a ling. major with a keen interest in SL and Deaf culture.)

Reforming the way civics and history are taught. Civics is grossly underrepresented in Israeli schools, putting ethnoreligious sentiment on equal footing with democratic concerns. History is often taught through a narrow prism of Jewish persecution, and things like legitimate objections Arabs had before 1948 and what the 1948 Exodus was actually like are barely mentioned if at all. (The 6% figure? I had no idea about it until it was mentioned on a blog and I looked it up myself. And if you ask most Israeli Jews, they’ll tell you the Arabs left willingly to allow Arab forces to take over and finish Israel off, so they’ve no right to complain Israel isn’t too keen on letting them back in.) Also, Tanakh as a subject should be abolished yesterday.

Training combatant soldiers to deal with civilian populations. I recently saw (parts of) a documentary about the Kfir Brigade, where the soldiers explained that they’d never been taught to learn to deal with civilian populations or even any Arabic beyond phrases like ‘stop or I’ll shoot’ or ‘give me your ID’. You can see how counterproductive this is to de-escalating tensions there.

Changing arbitrary regulations used by Border Patrol. You can read more about it here.

Making justice against soldiers who bully Palestinians and worse more visible. The way things go now, while justice is normally served (if only for fear of foreign involvement), far too many get off the hook too easy, with the military court system delaying justice until the law says it’s been too long past their service to prosecute them, or they get comically small punishments (this normally happens when the military needs the soldier for some reason). When it is served, the IDF should e.g. spread leaflets announcing it and claiming repeatedly that they are earnest in their attempts to clean up their act.

Banning openly racist soldiers from serving. There’s a Facebook page dedicated to documenting horrifyingly racist outbursts on Facebook, including people wishing violent death on Arabs, African refugees, and children with a Jewish father and a Jewish mother in Israel, and celebrating events like the recent massacre at the mosque in Québec; the number of comments left by people serving in the IDF (some of which relish the thought of massacring Arab babies) is horrifying. I’ve even met a person in south Tel-Aviv (which is notorious for its rampant xenophobia) who boasted being a war criminal.

Abolishing conscription, or at least restricting it severely. There have been two state committees who looked into it and determined that conscription should be abolished already and replaced with a professional military. Opponents of this move include not only the IDF itself, which absolutely looooves its fat cheques and cushy jobs for its senior officers, but also run-of-the-mill Israelis who are afraid that the IDF would dwindle to the point Israel couldn’t defend itself against its enemies surrounding it (including, according to them, so-called ‘friends’ who signed peace treaties but are just waiting for an opportune moment to stab it in the back). I think it should either be abolished or, as they did in Sweden up until a few years ago, recruit only those who are most fit to serve. Aside from the obvious need for soldiers who do their job right, the current situation means that Israelis normally can’t distinguish between soldiers and civilians and think that attacking soldiers (‘our children’) is as illegitimate as attacking civilians, labelling guerrilla fighters (who, don’t get me wrong, are legitimate targets in an armed conflict) ‘terrorists’ (the media does that too and that sure as hell doesn’t help).

Better coordination within the military. As of now the IDF has a surplus of soldiers who are grossly mismanaged as a result of petty infighting from within. That’s how you can find offices with one secretary collapsing under the workload and another with three secretaries with barely any work to do. This is a pretty serious issue in and of itself, but this gets even worse when you consider that, for example, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip don’t know how far away from the Separation Wall they have to be to avoid getting shot (which is pretty serious because many of them have agricultural lands close to the fence that they can’t work on).

Taking a stronger stand against settlements the State had no hand in building. Some particularly zealous Settlers sometimes take Palestinian land by force, relying on the fact that their legal owners would have to go through a legal hell to get it back, and that the military normally follows an order saying they’re not allowed to physically touch Settlers. Those should be clamped down on HARD.

Abolishing the underhanded techniques the State uses to seize Palestinian land. Israel uses the military to declare certain areas as necessary for training and kicks the locals out, then a year later they say that since the owners left their land for over a year they no longer have a claim to it, and allow Settlers in instead. It does the same with KKL and the Israeli Antiquities Authority. This shit needs to stop.

Applying Israeli law to Settlements that already exist. What Israelis don’t get is that when outsiders talk about the ‘apartheid state’ in Israel they don’t mean ‘within the Green Line’: nominally, Arab Israeli citizens are perfectly equal before the law (aside from where the stupid fucking Millet system is in force). This refers to Judæa and Samaria, where Settlers are generally subject to Israeli law (not always: the mayor of Ariel once boasted how he claimed not to be a legitimate part of Israel when he needed to pay taxes but it was when it needed funds from the State), but Palestinians are subject to martial law. This means, among other things, that employers over there can get away with paying Palestinians below minimum wage. While Israel is in charge it should do so properly.

Reforming imprisoned terrorists. As the UK demonstrates, this is immensely helpful in gutting terrorism from within.

Actually sticking by contractual obligations. Yitzkhak Rabin famously got the Oslo Accords going (hell, he got shot to death for it), but in practice he never actually took down a single Settlements, claiming that ‘there are no sacred dates’ (i.e. ‘I’ll take ‘em down… eventually’). On the other hand, enough violent resistance and outright terrorism on the Palestinians’ part got Israel to leave the Gaza Strip unilaterally. The Palestinians naturally understood that Israelis understand nothing but brute force.

Understanding what actually comprises terrorism. Aside from attacking soldiers, as explained above, Israelis seem to be under the impression that diplomatic moves (e.g. ratifying the Geneva and Rome conventions and pushing for recognition in the UN) are terrorism too (‘state terrorism’). As one blogger put it, they might soon call Palestinians breathing ‘respiratory terrorism’.

Abolish the religious exception to anti-incitement laws. Israel obviously has laws against incitement to violence, but for some bizarre reason those laws do not apply to incitement made on a religious basis. This gives both Jewish and Muslim religious leaders the ability to incite somewhat freely, avoiding persecution, while young hotheads do their bidding and get fucked over for it. (Kinda like right-wing militia leaders, as described here, under #2.) Israel needs to crack down on all the bullshit it allows as part of ‘religious freedom’ in general, but for the purpose of this discussion, this is the #1 priority.

Back in the day I used to believe in cantonizing the country and giving the Gaza Strip and Judæa and Samaria a special status similar to Québec. I wrote about it extensively here. I asked around, and Jews mostly told me that they think it would be nice, but the Arabs would be against it; then I asked Arabs, who mostly had no objections to the idea. I asked MK Zehava Gal’on, who said she didn’t trust the Jews to not turn this country into a full-blown apartheid state all over. I eventually let go of the idea when I talked to an Arab student who was more politically aware, who said it was impractical because the State has the habit of not allowing Arab towns and villages to form or expand (this, coupled with poor law enforcement in Arab areas, creates the problem of violent criminal wars over territories), and keeps building new Jewish communities between them to detach them from one another. You can’t have Arab cantons this way.

On a final note: I want to point out that this is what I think Israel should do. Palestinians also have more than enough steps they can take, but I don’t live there, so I don’t really know what it’s like over there and I don’t get a say anyway. However, I do want to point out that the Palestinian Authority makes selling (and I think renting too, but I’m not sure) lands to Israelis punishable by death; this means that even if Settlers legitimately buy (or rent) the lands they want to settle on, it could be a huge pain to prove the legal owner of their lands allowed them to do so, because they’d be putting them at huge risk. One leftist activist, Ezra Nawi, notoriously boasted turning in would-be sellers to the PA; as a leftist myself, I was utterly infuriated: as far as I’m concerned, as the legal owners of the land, they have every right to do as they please with it.

And that pretty much concludes my views on the issue. Thanks for giving me the chance to clarify it.

#Israel #Israeli politics #Occupation #Palestine #1948 Palestinian Exodus #Zehava Gal’on #Ezra Nawi #Palestinian Authority #anti-Semitism

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