Gideon Levy, Haaretz, July 30:
In war as in war: Israel is sinking into a strident, nationalistic atmosphere and darkness is beginning to cover everything. The brakes we still had are eroding, the insensitivity and blindness that characterized Israeli society in recent years is intensifying. The home front is cut in half: the north suffers and the centre is serene. But both have been taken over by tones of jingoism, ruthlessness and vengeance, and the voices of extremism that previously characterized the camp’s margins are now expressing its heart. The left has once again lost its way, wrapped in silence or “admitting mistakes.” Israel is exposing a unified, nationalistic face.
The devastation we are sowing in Lebanon doesn’t touch anyone here and most of it is not even shown to Israelis. Those who want to know what Tyre looks like now have to turn to foreign channels - the BBC reporter brings chilling images from there, the likes of which won’t be seen here. How can one not be shocked by the suffering of the other, at our hands, even when our north suffers? The death we are sowing at the same time, right now in Gaza, with close to 120 dead since the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit, 27 last Wednesday alone, touches us even less. The hospitals in Gaza are full of burned children, but who cares? The darkness of the war in the north covers them, too.
Lebanon, which has never fought Israel and has 40 daily newspapers, 42 colleges and universities and hundreds of different banks, is being destroyed by our planes and cannon and nobody is taking into account the amount of hatred we are sowing. In international public opinion, Israel has been turned into a monster, and that still hasn’t been calculated into the debit column of this war. Israel is badly stained, a moral stain that can’t be easily and quickly removed. And only we don’t want to see it.
Read the whole piece. Levy’s essay is one of the finest I’ve read in weeks.
As the carnage continues in Lebanon - and Israel kills more civilian “terrorists” - it is unsurprising to read this:
While Israel fights Hezbollah with tanks and aircraft, its supporters are campaigning on the internet.
Israel’s Government has thrown its weight behind efforts by supporters to counter what it believes to be negative bias and a tide of pro-Arab propaganda. The Foreign Ministry has ordered trainee diplomats to track websites and chatrooms so that networks of US and European groups with hundreds of thousands of Jewish activists can place supportive messages.
In the past week nearly 5,000 members of the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) have downloaded special “megaphone” software that alerts them to anti-Israeli chatrooms or internet polls to enable them to post contrary viewpoints. A student team in Jerusalem combs the web in a host of different languages to flag the sites so that those who have signed up can influence an opinion survey or the course of a debate.
Israel and its supporters need more than better PR. They need to support a nation that doesn’t celebrate the death of innocents. A country that understands how military strength alone never brings security and safety. And a homeland, formed after the Holocaust, that cannot continue to act like it’s 1949. The days of Jewish absolutism and blind US-support are coming to a close.
And for those of us who see a vicious, egotistical and criminal Zionism, that day is never close enough.
Israel appears to be experiencing a state of derangement on a national level.
Haim Ramon “doesn’t understand” why there is still electricity in Baalbek; Eli Yishai proposes turning south Lebanon into a “sandbox”; Yoav Limor, a Channel 1 military correspondent, proposes an exhibition of Hezbollah corpses and the next day to conduct a parade of prisoners in their underwear, “to strengthen the home front’s morale.”
It’s not difficult to guess what we would think about an Arab TV station whose commentators would say something like that, but another few casualties or failures by the IDF, and Limor’s proposal will be implemented. Is there any better sign of how Israel has lost it’s senses and humanity?
I almost wonder if the bombing in Qana was not in some macabre sense, a way to enable to agree to a cease fire without losing face. This “aerial ceasefire” could be a coded offer to Hezbollah for a comprehensive cease fire in place. Also, it will be a test of Nasrallah’s resolve to not return fire to avenge Qana.
If Hezbollah stops its rocket attacks, then the Israelis won’t have any excuse. They really will have to observe an aerial cease fire. Of course, this will allow Hezbollah to get on with its resupply. And a resupplied Hezbollah would be an even more formidable Hezbollah.
Israelis could always start bombing again, but then Olmert would have to accept responsibility for the resumption of the rocket attacks, and for making the IDF launch an offensive against a Hezbollah ground defense that had been given two glorious days by the Israeli Air Force to get ready. Political suicide, in other words.
This Megaphone software campaign underlines again the role of propaganda in this war. The system greatly simplifies the task of rigging supposedly objective on-line opinion surveys, the results of which are then broadcast on free-to-air or pay television. Today, for example, WUJS is apparently attempting to influence CNN opinion polls on the war.
As Antony says, it’s all part of their moral decay. At least they have been unable to prevent the newspapers carrying front page pictures and stories concerning war crimes in Qana. Nor have they been able to silence Robert Fisk.
I just came across a harsh but thought provoking article about the decline of Israel’s collective consciousness.
Some very potent observations:
The Pathology Of Israeli Power
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14280.htm
Kinda explains Captain and Co though dont it
Does it ever!!
The article is erally well worth reading. I think Israel’s actions are going to open it up to scruitiny it has long been able to deflect and stifle.
Quite an insight.