Hooded men beating an elderly woman with a baseball bat

[loic]

Last year dearanxiety and I visited our friends Emily and Aviad in Israel. A big part of the trip for us was visiting the occupied West Bank, seeing the work that Emily and Aviad do to work for the rights of Palestinians and see where the money being raised by the Jewish-American peace group that Sharon is involved with was going

Comments

[egoldberg]

In no way to defend the settlers (I think that Israel's failure to reign in illegal settlements has been self-defeating and irresponsible), I do need to add for context:

This has been in the Israeli media non-stop for days, and the public response has been harshly critical of the settlers. I'll handily bet you a burrito that they will be sent to trial for their crime via the Israeli justice system followed by some serious jail time.

In contrast, the muslims who attack or even kill Jewish civilians are made into heroes for their acts of cowardly violence.

[loic]

Yeah, I'm glad this is getting seen and talked about. The hounding and oppression has been interfering with the lives of Susians for many years but I think this level of direct violence is new. I hope it will backfire on those fuckers. Unfortunately I can't imagine them dismantling the settlement that is fundamentally the cause of the problem

[dearanxiety]

do you remember how amazingly cute he was with his english in his little tiny accent? oh god he was cute.

[dearanxiety]

by other fundamentalists. just like these settlers are made heroes by other fundamentalists on their side. no one who is not a fundamentalist on either side would celebrate acts of violence or murder. not a single palestinian person that i have ever met has condoned violence against jewish civilians or celebrated it in any way. this includes palestinian american activists and palestinians in palestine. likewise i don't know a single jew, american or otherwise, who would condone these attacks by settlers if they knew about them.

i'm glad that this has been in the israeli media. i think the israeli media is far more honest about what is going on than the world media and especially than the media in the united states.

[egoldberg]

If you feel so inclined, I would welcome your response to the following New York Times article from March, especially I have not been to the West Bank. Is the majority of the population simply fundamentalists? (I think it's about 15% among the Jewish Israeli population.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/world/middleeast/19mideast.html

"RAMALLAH, West Bank - A new poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians support the attack this month on a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem that killed eight young men, most of them teenagers, an indication of the alarming level of Israeli-Palestinian tension in recent weeks."

P.S. I am only half-trolling. ;-)

[dearanxiety]

i could say a lot about that, actually, but i'm about to get into the shower and head off to an all day meeting. the most i can say quickly is that i'm not surprised that a larger number of palestinians would identify as fundamentalists right now. especially if we're talking about in ramallah and other similar cities. look at their lives under occupation! look at their government and also at the israeli government and what is happening to them from all sides! look at the fucking wall and checkpoints and how it interferes with their daily lives and equally as importantly how it interferes with their lives in times of emergencies. look at the numbers of palestinian civilians arrested and held without any charges against them and look at how many of them are under the age of 18. look at how hard it is for palestinians outside of israel/palestine to go home and see thier families. oh man, could i tell you stories about that. look at and compare the number of civilian deaths since the second intifada - especially children civilian

[dearanxiety]

i of course don't mean religiously fundamental, if that wasn't obvious. i mean politically so.

[dearanxiety]

ps let's not even talk about gaza because holy crap LOOK AT GAZA!

i'm not trying to say what's going on bad-wise is right on either side. i'm just saying that israeli is breaking international law and human rights violations are going on every single day and as a jew and an american (whose tax dollars are going to fund this nonsense) and a lover of israel, i can't stand for it happening in my name without being a dissenting voice. just like i dissent here in america when i don't agree with what is happening in my name and with my tax dollars and to my country!

[_fustian]

the public response has been harshly critical of the settlers.

If the Israeli public were as harshly critical of settlement, this kind of thing wouldn't be occurring. Of course, at the heart of the situation is the blood and soil rhetoric of nationalism, and that's hardly unique to Israel. In fact, resolution surely must involve some kind of general recognition that violence in the name of country is alien and irreconcilable; the internationalism of the Jewish people should be a beacon to the nations-so I guess perhaps that the State of Israel stands as exemplar of their fundamental wrongheadedness is almost fitting (if particularly nasty for everyone concerned).

[egoldberg]

As uncomfortable as it is to acknowledge, I think you've found a cultural "design pattern" of sorts

[_fustian]

Unfortunately, the American zeitgeist seems to regard solutions offered by government as necessarily flawed. This cultural pathology has its etiology in the radical individualism of Western frontier-and is I suspect (as we seem to be currently witnessing) a terminal condition. But a lack of respect for the institution of society itself may in fact be easier to overcome than the idea of the Nation State (although they're peculiarly intertwined). I'm sure the answer lies in being able to see the other as the self, and there's an awful lot of historical, sociological and indeed biological baggage twixt there and here