Here’s anoth­er remind of the ongo­ing threat of far-right vio­lence from Israel’s Jew­ish extrem­ists. Use­ful idio­cy at work:

Israeli extrem­ists spread vio­lent may­hem

Joel Brink­ley, © 2011 Joel Brink­ley

Fri­day, Decem­ber 23, 2011

If Chris­t­ian pil­grims trav­el­ing to Beth­le­hem for Christ­mas this week hap­pen to wit­ness vio­lence, for the first time mil­i­tant Jews, not Pales­tini­ans, are most like­ly to be the per­pe­tra­tors.

Now that a far right-wing gov­ern­ment has gov­erned Israel for almost three years, set­tlers feel embold­ened so that Jew­ish extrem­ists are wreak­ing hav­oc and may­hem. West Bank Pales­tini­ans, mean­while, are stand­ing by qui­et­ly, large­ly mind­ing their own busi­ness — even as these set­tler-maraud­ers repeat­ed­ly attack them. This has nev­er hap­pened before.

In the West Bank, the Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty now employs a wide­ly respect­ed police force that has effec­tive­ly kept the peace. And so it cer­tain­ly will in Beth­le­hem. Secret coop­er­a­tion between Pales­tin­ian police and Israeli secu­ri­ty forces is “one of the rea­sons Israeli cit­i­zens enjoy such a calm secu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion of late,” Reuven Pedatzur, a colum­nist for the Israeli news­pa­per Haaretz, wrote last sum­mer, before the set­tler-extrem­ist vio­lence had reached its zenith.

But in just the last few weeks, these set­tlers have burned two mosques, torched Pales­tin­ian homes and cars, threat­ened Israelis they per­ceive to be left­ist and attacked an Israeli army base, wound­ing one of its offi­cers. That final act, attack­ing the army, final­ly roused the gov­ern­ment from its lack­adaisi­cal approach to the vio­lence.

These mil­i­tants, intent on chal­leng­ing any­one who ques­tions their per­ceived right to live in the occu­pied West Bank, have been caus­ing trou­ble since at least the fall of 2008. Occa­sion­al­ly, Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu and oth­er offi­cials have offered con­dem­na­to­ry state­ments. But they’ve done lit­tle else.

Now, sud­den­ly, Netanyahu is giv­ing the army new pow­ers to arrest these male­fac­tors and send them to admin­is­tra­tive deten­tion — impris­on­ment with­out charge, usu­al­ly reserved for Pales­tini­ans. Why sud­den­ly now? “Who­ev­er lays a hand on (Israel Defense Forces) sol­diers or Israeli police­men will be severe­ly pun­ished,” Netanyahu vowed. So much for all those Pales­tin­ian and lib­er­al Israeli vic­tims the set­tlers have threat­ened and attacked over the last three years.

...

The Jew­ish extrem­ists first announced their pres­ence in Sep­tem­ber 2008, when they explod­ed a pipe bomb on the front porch of Hebrew Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sor Zeev Stern­hel­l’s home. He was an out­spo­ken crit­ic of set­tle­ments. On the side of his house, the extrem­ists spray-paint­ed their slo­gan “price tag.”

Since then, the mil­i­tants’ avowed pol­i­cy has been to attack Pales­tini­ans or lib­er­al Israelis as pay­back every time the army removes an ille­gal set­tle­ment out­post, or some­one in Israel acts against the set­tlers’ inter­ests. About 350,000 Israelis live in set­tle­ments that occu­py about 10 per­cent of the West Bank, and on Sun­day the gov­ern­ment autho­rized 1,028 more set­tle­ment homes.

After hun­dreds of attacks over sev­er­al years, ear­li­er this month Defense Min­is­ter Ehud Barak called the lat­est inci­dents “home­grown ter­ror.” He and oth­er secu­ri­ty offi­cials asked the prime min­is­ter to des­ig­nate the set­tler-extrem­ists “ter­ror­ists.” That would give the army more lever­age. Netanyahu refused, say­ing the vio­lence was mere­ly “some­thing small that could grow to be a big plague.”

...

@Pterrafractyl: I view these pathet­ic POS­es in the exact same light: use­ful idiots for the Establishment.....just like our Tea-Freak­ers.
The Israeli pub­lic needs to wake up, and very soon, I hope.

@ Ter­rafractyl and @ Steven: I am sor­ry guys but I don’t buy it. First, let me say that Haaretz is not a cred­i­ble local source of infor­ma­tion. The Jerusalem Post is much bet­ter. I rec­om­mend it. Haaretz presents the expect­ed rhetor­i­cal line of the “New Left” that took form after the col­lapse of the U.S.S.R. What can you do, Left­ists had lost their ide­o­log­i­cal basis, they had to invent some­thing else. With them, it is always the same song: the West is always wrong, Jews should­n’t be in Pales­tine to begin with, Islam is a reli­gion of peace, cap­i­tal­ism is bad, war is bad, etc, etc, and every­body else out­side the west, is always nice, great, gen­tile, open, soft, peace­ful and for­giv­ing. It is not an adult way of see­ing real­i­ty. It does­n’t work like that.

Open your eyes my friends: Pales­tine is not “occu­pied” for the very rea­son that it is not a coun­try to begin with. Israel IS a coun­try. The “set­tle­ments” which you are refer­ing to are sim­ply hous­es, vil­lages in parts of lands that are DISPUTED. That’s the prop­er term. You can think of Kashemir as anoth­er part of the world that is under sim­i­lar con­di­tions. Noth­ing demon­ic there, only clash­es between nations who com­pete for the same lands. But to under­stand the legit­i­ma­cy of Israel and the ridicule of the “Pales­tin­ian” posi­tion, one has to know the facts on WWI, WWII, and all the legal res­o­lu­tions that were adopt­ed run­ning to the cre­ation of Israel in 1948. Here is a PDF doc­u­ment that resumes that. Please, take the time to review the infor­ma­tion:

http://lys-dor.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/FoundationsOfTheInternationalLegalRightsOfTheJewishPeople.pdf

As Newt Gin­grich said, and French author Guy Mil­lières, the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple has been invent­ed. Why? For a cou­ple of rea­sons, among them to con­tin­ue “The Secret War Against The Jews” that John Lof­tus has ref­ered to in this fab­u­lous book; to dele­git­imize Israel as an out­post of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion (doing then the agen­da of Rus­sia, Iran, Chi­na, etc)in the Mid­dle East; to cre­ate and con­trol a fifth col­umn inside Israel to fur­ther the anti­se­mit­ic agen­da of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and affil­i­ates, the Catholic Church and Europe’s polit­i­cal elite; to con­trol the oil in the region, etc, etc.

Please try to get a broad­er view of the sit­u­a­tion. If reports are gen­uine that Israelis com­mit vio­lence against the Arab/Muslim res­i­dents of these areas, it is cer­tain­ly sad. But for those who are out­raged or con­cerned about that, where were they when the “Pales­tini­ans” shot thou­sands of rock­ets to Israel and per­pe­trat­ed hun­dreds of dead­ly ter­ror­ist acts in the last years? I don’t remem­ber see­ing, read­ing or hear­ing any par­tic­u­lar out­cries from them, not from the Haaretz or from any oth­er sources. Reg­u­lar­ly, the air mis­sile alarm go off, and peo­ple leave every­thing for the shel­ters...

On Christ­mas, I wish all to remem­ber that Jesus tried to lib­er­ate peo­ple from pro­pa­gan­da, not enslave them with it.

Mer­ry Christ­mas.

@Claude: Don’t wor­ry, I have been get­ting more aware of the true sit­u­a­tion in recent years.
Hamas is def­i­nite­ly respon­si­ble for the mur­ders of many hun­dreds of inno­cent Israelis, par­tic­u­lar­ly thanks to rock­et attacks, and is, of course, VERY hell-bent on destroy­ing the Jew­ish peo­ple in Israel.
As for Haaretz? While they do have flaws in their pre­sen­ta­tion of things, that is true, J‑Post, unfor­tu­nate­ly, is not exempt from their own bias­es. Per­son­al­ly, I read both.
Also, your com­ment about the fifth col­umn is very true....but you are for­get­ting the oth­er key group; the Israeli extreme right, whom Dave has exposed a num­ber of times. They are about as bad as Hamas ide­o­log­i­cal­ly, at least. Per­haps some­day soon, in actions as well.

@Claude: I have to echo Steven L’s gen­er­al sen­ti­ments. Much like their Islamist coun­ter­parts, the far-right Israeli set­tler move­ment appears to be dom­i­nat­ed by the­o­log­i­cal zealots hell­bent on the real­iza­tion of Greater Israel through self-ful­fill­ment of Hebra­ic prophe­cy and/or the cre­ation of an eth­ni­cal­ly pure state. At least that seems to describe the dis­po­si­tion of the vio­lent set­tlers, and I just can’t see how Israel can have any future under these visions.

In gen­er­al, when­ev­er I hear about any group of zealots fir­ing rock­ets at civil­ians or torch­ing homes or what­ev­er, my ini­tial response is “idiots”. And idio­cy, espe­cial­ly vio­lent idio­cy, is often use­ful to some­one. I could be mis­read­ing the sit­u­a­tion, but the described behav­ior by the set­tlers does­n’t strike me as being use­ful to Israel. Then again, if this is an instance of shod­dy, exag­ger­at­ed report­ing by Haaretz, well, then yeah, this looks like exam­ple of biased jour­nal­ism with an agen­da. The his­to­ry laid out in books like Lof­tus’s “The Secret War Against the Jews” of attempts to dele­git­imize Israel’s exis­tence are part of what leaves me scratch­ing me head when I read sto­ries about the Netanyahu gov­ern­ment basi­cal­ly acqui­esc­ing ignor­ing the vio­lent tac­tics of the set­tlers over the past three years. It’s just such awful PR for Israel so I have to won­der if con­don­ing vio­lence might be bad for Israel but real­ly good for some of the politi­cians.

@ Ter­rafractyl and @ Steven: Most of the time, I hit that wall when speak­ing to oth­ers on that issue. Frankly, I don’t know what to say any­more. To com­plete­ly cov­er the sub­ject would neces­si­tate hours of dis­cus­sion. Briefly, con­cern­ing Dav­e’s research, I am aware that there are “Bor­mann Jews” at work in Israel but the fact is, they are every­where on Earth, includ­ing here in Cana­da. There is noth­ing we can do about it in the short term. We have first to assure the sur­vival of democ­ra­cy in the west­ern world and of Israel, one of our only out­posts in for­eign lands.

Con­cern­ing the exer­ci­ce of dele­git­imiza­tion of Israel, you have to know that it is not only the Under­ground Reich or Islamist groups that are against the Jew­ish state, but Iran­ian and Russ­ian inter­ests as well. Here is an arti­cle relat­ing to the cre­ation of post-WWII Pales­tin­ian pro­pa­gan­da rhetoric, appar­ent­ly in 1964 in Rus­sia. For the Rus­sians too, Israel appeared to be in the way. And for Iran, it is pret­ty obvi­ous. I hope you read French.

http://www.israel7.com/2011/11/pourquoi-et-comment-le-peuple-palestinien-fut-invente/

For the “zealots” whom that you are refer­ing to, you have to know that the great major­i­ty of Israelis are peace­ful, qui­et, demo­c­ra­t­ic, liv­ing a life of plea­sure and con­fort. Israel is sim­i­lar to Cana­da or the U.S. for its atmos­phere, way of life. The peo­ple is not respon­si­ble or behind, for exam­ple, acts com­mit­ted by Hasidic Jews or oth­ers of that type, and these ones are mar­gin­al, at least for the moment. Among the Hasidic com­mu­ni­ty, you find peo­ple who are strong­ly for the state of Israel, and peo­ple who are strong­ly against it.

For the ques­tion of vio­lence, I am always amazed to see how lit­tle we allow the Jews to do, com­pared to what we accept from the Islamists. An Israeli kills a fly in a restau­rant and it makes the first page every­where around the world...while you have Pales­tini­ans com­mit­ting mur­ders on a dai­ly basis and we don’t hear about it in the main­stream press.

I could talk about the UN, the UNESCO, that have a clear bias in favor of Pales­tini­ans, but as I said, this con­ver­sa­tion would last for­ev­er. A last point: When you are refer­ing to a Greater Israel, you are bit­ing in to the apple of pro­pa­gan­da, an exer­ci­ce moti­vat­ed by the con­science of guilt (not yours but nazi, fas­cist and Islamist guilt). If you have checked the doc­u­ment that I have attached in my last com­men­tary, you have seen that the ter­ri­to­ry of Pales­tine was giv­en to the Jews to be able to recon­sti­tute their nation­al home­land, at the con­fer­ence of San Remo in 1920. It was nego­ci­at­ed in good faith between mem­bers of the Zion­ist move­ment and mem­bers of the ex-Ottoman Empire, fol­low­ing the Bal­four Dec­la­ra­tion of 1917. The 1922 Man­date expand­ed the def­i­n­i­tions of the San Remo Dec­la­ra­tion. Every­thing is there. Arab/Muslim lead­ers have signed doc­u­ments and agreed to rec­og­nize the rights of the Jew­ish peo­ple in Pales­tine, but they nev­er real­ly want­ed to respect their sig­na­ture or speech and they do every­thing to destroy the peace process. And in all mat­ters, they have lost WWI and it is not the fault of the Jews.

Any­way, we are not going to extin­guish that sub­ject today.

@Claude: You’re right, there’s no way to extin­guish this set of sub­jects any time soon. So I’ll just post two arti­cle excerpts that both high­lights the kind of zealotry that I find extreme­ly unhelp­ful for Israel’s via­bil­i­ty and under­lines sort of under­lines your point about par­al­lels between the con­flicts with­in Israel and the US and Cana­da.

First:

Sex seg­re­ga­tion on the bus­es divides Israelis
Ultra-Ortho­dox Jews plan pri­vate fleet after woman refus­es to sit at the back
Cat­ri­na Stew­art

Jerusalem

Wednes­day 21 Decem­ber 2011

A group of ultra-Ortho­dox Jew­ish mil­lion­aires is con­sid­er­ing fund­ing a pri­vate bus line in Israel that would enforce strict seg­re­ga­tion between male and female pas­sen­gers, an Israeli news­pa­per has report­ed.

The ini­tia­tive fol­lows pub­lic out­rage at an inci­dent where a sec­u­lar Israeli woman refused to take a seat at the back of a pub­lic bus trav­el­ling to an ultra-Ortho­dox neigh­bour­hood in Jerusalem at the request of a reli­gious male pas­sen­ger.

The back­ers of the pro­posed project are look­ing at pro­vid­ing bus trans­porta­tion in Hare­di (ultra-Ortho­dox) neigh­bour­hoods in Jerusalem, Ash­dod and Beit Shemesh as an alter­na­tive to Israel’s Egged bus ser­vice, which insists that any gen­der seg­re­ga­tion on its bus­es must be vol­un­tary, Israel’s dai­ly Yediot Aharonot report­ed yes­ter­day.

“The Hare­di pub­lic does­n’t own the entire state,” Israel’s Chief Rab­bi Yona Met­zger was quot­ed as say­ing. “I sup­port seg­re­ga­tion, but only when it is done will­ing­ly. On pri­vate lines in which all the pas­sen­gers are eager for sep­a­ra­tion, and the dig­ni­ty of women is main­tained, then that is a wel­come ini­tia­tive.”

Israel’s Trans­port Min­istry has yet to respond to the request, and it remains unclear if the ini­tia­tive will be approved, as Israel’s laws against dis­crim­i­na­tion demand that any provider of a pub­lic ser­vice must treat every­body equal­ly, irre­spec­tive of gen­der, reli­gion or eth­nic­i­ty.

Tanya Rosen­blit, a Jew­ish woman, was furi­ous when she board­ed a bus in Ash­dod last week only to be told by a black-clad Hare­di male pas­sen­ger to sit at the back of the vehi­cle.

The man refused to allow the dri­ver to close the doors while Ms Rosen­blit stood her ground and the police were called. A police­man asked her to acqui­esce with the man’s request, but she refused and the man got off the bus.

Writ­ing on the Israeli news site Ynet, she said: “Until yes­ter­day, I was sure that I lived in a free coun­try. I was cer­tain that a per­son­’s dig­ni­ty and free­dom are supreme val­ues in our diverse soci­ety. It’s still hard for me to believe that in 2011, there are men who believe they must not sit behind a woman.”

Israeli news­pa­per edi­tors quick­ly drew com­par­isons with Rosa Parks, the black Amer­i­can woman who refused to sit at the back of a bus in Alaba­ma in 1955, an act of defi­ance that was a defin­ing moment in the civ­il rights move­ment.

...

And sec­ond:

Op-Ed: A let­ter of con­cern for Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy

By Jason Edel­stein · Decem­ber 27, 2011

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Ear­li­er this month, U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton expressed some con­cerns about Israeli democ­ra­cy in a closed-door ses­sion at the Saban Forum, report­ed­ly crit­i­ciz­ing pro­posed Knes­set leg­is­la­tion aimed at curb­ing for­eign fund­ing of Israeli NGOs and gen­der-seg­re­gat­ed bus lines serv­ing hare­di Ortho­dox areas.

A cou­ple of weeks lat­er, New York Times colum­nist Thomas Fried­man penned an Op-Ed say­ing that he is “deeply wor­ried about where Israel is going today.”

Maybe Clin­ton and Fried­man first should take a hard look at the state of democ­ra­cy at home.

In the spir­it of Friedman’s let­ter-style columns, I offer my own only half-face­tious let­ter on Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy:

Dear Tom Fried­man and Hillary Clin­ton,

As I write from Jerusalem and look at what is hap­pen­ing in Amer­i­ca, I am very wor­ried. Let me be clear: As some­one who used to live in Amer­i­ca, I love the Unit­ed States. I also love lib­er­al val­ues. It is with both of these loves in mind that, as 2011 con­cludes, I must express my con­cern that the very core of America’s demo­c­ra­t­ic under­pin­nings is dis­ap­pear­ing.

Numer­ous events this year sug­gest a dan­ger­ous trend — not mere­ly iso­lat­ed inci­dents — that strikes at the heart of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy and ulti­mate­ly could lead to the country’s down­fall.

In Novem­ber, I watched with hor­ror as pro­tes­tors at the Occu­py demon­stra­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Davis were vicious­ly mis­treat­ed by police. Sim­ply for sit­ting and show­ing oppo­si­tion to America’s unfair eco­nom­ic struc­ture, these stu­dents were vio­lent­ly and repeat­ed­ly pep­per-sprayed. This form of police bru­tal­i­ty can cause blind­ness and even death in some occur­rences. The police reac­tion stands in stark con­trast to the prin­ci­ple of free­dom of assem­bly on which Amer­i­ca was found­ed.

Frankly, the Occu­py move­ments through­out the coun­try were met with the type of vio­lence that we nor­mal­ly see in total­i­tar­i­an regimes here in the Mid­dle East.

My deep love for Amer­i­ca also drew my atten­tion to New York, where local papers report­ed on gen­der-seg­re­gat­ed bus lines in Brook­lyn. Gen­der seg­re­ga­tion is deplorable and — par­tic­u­lar­ly when it occurs on bus­es — a stark reminder of a time when Amer­i­can bus com­pa­nies enforced racial seg­re­ga­tion. A demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try that fails to stop gen­der seg­re­ga­tion will soon cease to be demo­c­ra­t­ic.

I have been hor­ri­fied as well as I learn of the views of Michele Bach­mann, a main­stream Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date who has such a pop­u­lar fol­low­ing that she was atop the polls at one point. Yet, her views on homo­sex­u­al­i­ty have no place in a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety that claims to treat all cit­i­zens equal­ly. In a 2004 con­fer­ence, Bach­mann said that “gays are part of Satan.” And her husband’s coun­sel­ing cen­ter espous­es the view that Chris­tian­i­ty can “cure” homo­sex­u­al­i­ty.

These views are destruc­tive and hate­ful and have no place among the lead­ers of a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety.

...

And here’s a final arti­cle that’s a grim reminder that, no mat­ter how unciv­i­lized seg­re­gat­ed bus­ing or polit­i­cal luna­cy might be (or even the torch­ing of mosques), these soci­etal con­flicts could be resolved in much worse ways:

After Nige­ri­a’s Church Bomb­ings: The Advent of Chris­t­ian-Mus­lim Con­flict?
By Mon­i­ca Mark / Lagos Tues­day, Dec. 27, 2011

On the blood-splat­tered front walls of the blast­ed church, using wood burned into char­coal from the flames of the explo­sion, some­body scrawled two mes­sages: “Rev­o­lu­tion now” and “No more peace in the coun­try.” In the after­math of the attack by Islamist mil­i­tants against a Chris­t­ian sanc­tu­ary in Abu­ja and four oth­er church­es in Nige­ria, those are the symp­toms of a sec­tar­i­an back­lash that Niger­ian author­i­ties are most alarmed about.

At least 32 peo­ple were killed as they poured out of the packed Christ­mas-morn­ing Mass in St. There­sa Catholic Church near Abu­ja, the cap­i­tal, Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Abba Moro told TIME. Four oth­er bombs else­where in the coun­try took at least three lives. Boko Haram, a group whose aim is to impose a strict inter­pre­ta­tion of Islam­ic Shar­i’a on Africa’s most pop­u­lous coun­try, took cred­it for the attacks. One-third of Niger­ian states already live under Shar­i’a.

Author­i­ties are now bat­tling to keep a lid on the bub­bling threat of a sec­tar­i­an civ­il con­flict that would pitch one half of Nige­ri­a’s pop­u­la­tion of 155 mil­lion against the oth­er. “The fact that Chris­t­ian facil­i­ties were bombed was intend­ed pri­mar­i­ly to pro­voke Chris­tians into attack­ing Mus­lims,” Moro told TIME. “We have appealed to our Chris­t­ian broth­ers for them not to do so.” But two days after the bomb­ing, the area around St. There­sa remained tense as angry young men loi­tered just beyond mil­i­tary cars patrolling the area. “If the gov­ern­ment can­not pro­tect us, we will take revenge by our­selves,” said Josi­ah Agbo, 18, whose moth­er was killed in the blast. He left only after a priest from St. There­sa took to the streets urg­ing Chris­tians not to attack Mus­lims. In a coun­try where reli­gious lead­ers wield enor­mous pow­er, Mus­lim coun­ter­parts in the pow­er­ful Soko­to and Kano caliphates — the coun­try’s his­toric Islam­ic com­mu­ni­ties — denounced the bomb­ings.

“The peo­ple lying in hos­pi­tals after the Christ­mas bombs were ... Mus­lim and Chris­t­ian,” Moro said. “Boko Haram aren’t aliens from anoth­er plan­et. Peo­ple know who they are. We want to draw mem­bers of the pub­lic into shar­ing that infor­ma­tion to pre­vent future attacks.” He said two arrests in con­nec­tion with the Christ­mas bomb­ings were made because of just such col­lab­o­ra­tion.

But there have been almost 500 deaths in near dai­ly bomb blasts and shoot-outs in the pre­dom­i­nant­ly Mus­lim north­east in 2011 alone. And Boko Haram (a name that means “non-Islam­ic edu­ca­tion is sac­ri­lege” in the north­ern Hausa lan­guage) at times seems per­ilous­ly close to plung­ing the coun­try into chaos. “The Islam­ic mil­i­tants want Nige­ria to be an Islam­ic repub­lic like Iran, but we may end up becom­ing a Sudan or Soma­lia if the vio­lence con­tin­ues at this pace and scale,” says activist She­hu Sani, who heads the Civ­il Rights Con­gress of Nige­ria and led attempts to medi­ate a cease-fire with the group. “It all depends on the abil­i­ty of the lead­er­ship to han­dle the cri­sis.”

...

@Claude: Well, again, there are some good and valid points here, name­ly that many Israelis real­ly are decent peo­ple and that there are many anti-Semi­tes and mis­guid­ed dupes who claim, or feel, that Israel itself is ille­git­i­mate.
How­ev­er, again, to ignore the Israeli extreme right, is just as per­ilous as ignor­ing the fas­cists on the Pales­tin­ian side of things. Both must be dealt with, if peace is to tru­ly begin.

Wow, just found this heat­ed “debate” ... I have to say it’is incred­i­ble, if only in the breadth of its inani­ty.

Those poor Pales­tini­ans, mis­tak­en­ly think­ing (along with any­one else on earth who can actu­al­ly think and observe) that they live under a 45 year occu­pa­tion. Trite to point out, but many govts have also denied rights to per­sons unfor­tu­nate enough to dwell in “unrec­og­nized” (by the oper­at­ing def­i­n­i­tion of the British, French, Bel­gian, Dutch, Russ­ian, Japan­ese impe­r­i­al machin­ery, the US Bureau of Indi­an Affairs, the Third Reich, etc., etc., ... and now Lys d’Or) ter­ri­to­ries. “You’re not a per­son, hence my knife in your heart is not a crime!” Man, can it get any more bla­tant that!

Speak­ing of trite vs not trite, here’s an inter­est­ing quote:

“But in my opin­ion, they [Zion­ists] have erred griev­ous­ly in seek­ing to impose them­selves on Pales­tine with the aid of Amer­i­ca and Britain and now with the aid of naked ter­ror­ism… Why should they depend on Amer­i­can mon­ey or British arms for forc­ing them­selves on an unwel­come land? Why should they resort to ter­ror­ism to make good their forcible land­ing in Pales­tine?”

I guess then it was some­thing before Israel, before the Pales­tin­ian non-ter­ri­to­ries were non-occu­pied, before the non-ille­gal non-set­tle­ments were made. Tough luck for all those so-called Pales­tini­ans but actu­al­ly non-peo­ple.

By the way, that was a quote from Ghan­di, a luck­less nobody since he was born in not-his-own-coun­try, or rather his own non-coun­try. Pre­sum­ably the state­ment was made before he was mur­dered, but after the non-occu­pa­tion of his non-coun­try had — by some mys­te­ri­ous, mag­i­cal, inex­plic­a­ble means — ceased.

@Rob: Well, again, it IS true that Israel is far & away from being the only coun­try that has denied rights to per­sons in ‘unrec­og­nized’ ter­ri­to­ries as you point­ed out, but I still would like to see some decent work­able solu­tion to the whole prob­lem, if one can be found. At the very least, the boot­ing out of any extrem­ists and/or trou­ble­mak­ers amongst the Jew­ish set­tlers in the West Bank would be a very decent start(while ensur­ing that the rights of the oth­er 85–90%, that is, the pro­duc­tive and law-abid­ing major­i­ty, are not vio­lat­ed. As in, they stay if they wish.), although the same thing may need to be done to those on the Pales­tin­ian side as well, at least to insure fair­ness towards, if not also the safe­ty of, the Jew­ish denizens.

[...] souligné avec per­ti­nence le chercheur et ani­ma­teur radio Dave Emory dans plusieurs arti­cles dont celui-ci et dans cette émis­sion de radio, cer­tains mem­bres de la classe poli­tique israéli­enne con­tin­u­ent [...]