'Ethnic cleansing 101' for Israeli high-schoolers
The ever-dogged Max Blumenthal has a deeply disturbing post on his blog about the fact that, when the Israeli security forces destroyed an entire village of (ethnic Palestinian) Israeli civilians in al-Arakib, in the Negev, last week, they bussed in a bunch of Jewish Israeli high-school students to help them perform (and cheer on) that gross act of ethnic cleansing.
As Max writes:
- It is not hard to imagine what lessons the high school students who participated in the leveling of al-Arakib took from their experience, nor is it especially difficult to predict what sort of citizens they will become once they reach adulthood. Not only are they being indoctrinated to swear blind allegiance to the military, they are learning to treat the Arab outclass as less than human...
[T]he scenes from al-Arakib, from the demolished homes to the uprooted gardens to the grinning teens who joined the mayhem, can be viewed as much more than the destruction of a village. They are snapshots of the phenomenon that is laying Israeli society as a whole to waste.
child abuse. what's next? busing the 6th graders out to pull up tomato plants?
Why is this disturbing? How the hell do you think Israelis turn into such fascist sadists? Do you really think human beings are born that way? Of course not. They have to be educated to it.
Epppie: They didn't used to go so far. There was more hypocrisy, the tribute that vice pays to virtue. This is going from the Germany of the early 30s to that of the late 30s. This is open, celebrated, peace-time theft and violence against citizens of the high-schoolers' own state. At one point in their education they were taught that these people had rights. That the state can twist them and it sticks so well is a bad sign.
This sort of behaviour exemplifies the crisis in Palestine: the two state solution is dead and the one state solution is turned, as Jabotinsky wanted, into a zero sum game.
The chances for a settlement, a coming together of the colons and the colonised/expelled, and a merging of the settlers into a new society-chances which were very much alive for many years-have now been dashed.
Israel has committed itself to eternal war against an enemy which cannot go away. The result of this policy is not in doubt.
In the meantime the long list of triumphant tricks, the propaganda coups, the provocations, the assassinations, the refinements of the torturer's art, the Congressional resolutions, the alliances with embattled tyrants-all the moral degradation that a people can heap upon its own shoulders- will no doubt continue but, though Israel may continue to dance, its death is assured.
It has embraced the plague of deliberate injustice and self congratulatory criminality.
When vice ceases to make its payments to virtue, and rejoices in its viciousness as a measure of its strength (and God's favour) it has lost its mind and is not long for the world.
In fact Israel thrives thanks, largely, to the venality of the Saud family, the corruption of the Egyptian government and the greed of the Hashemite monarch. All of which are deep seated and legendary but none of which would survive a moderate wind of popular provenance.
Yes, except for the part about Jabotinsky. If Jabotinsky were alive today, he would be in Gush Shalom. The part of the Iron Wall relevant today is making peace once the other side accepted you. That happened a long time ago. But like the morons and maniacs who run the USA, the Israeli sub-fascist morons know nothing but violence and venality, and will reap nothing but destruction.
Jabotinsky knew when to make a deal; people, his followers, the right remember his amazingly dishonest propaganda about how Israel lost Transjordan due to the perfidious British, the two state deal of the day. But they forget or never learnt that it was he persuaded Weizman to agree to this deal, not vice versa.
"At one point in their education they were taught that these people had rights."
Were they, really? My impression has been that the subject of "these people", let alone of their rights, is not addressed at all.