Under Arrest
Daniella Gitlin
On a Saturday morning in July I travelled to the South Hebron Hills with a group of Israeli and international activists. Around midday we arrived at a Palestinian area called Bani Naim, near an outpost of the Israeli settlement Pnei Hever. Elderly men with kefiyas and canes were climbing the unpaved road along with younger Palestinians to gather in front of the outpost. The Palestinians who owned the field below had brought a tractor to plough their land as an act of protest against the further expansion of the Israeli settlement. Two children reached up to attach a Palestinian flag to a metal pole. Within moments the Israeli army arrived.
‘Ze shetach tsva’i sagur,’ the commanding officer announced over a loudspeaker before the armoured jeep came to a halt. (‘This is a closed military zone.’) He was already shouting as he stepped out. ‘You have ten minutes to leave this area. Ten minutes.’
I was recording with my phone. An Israeli activist with a video camera asked to see the military order and the officer showed it to him, a piece of paper flapping illegibly in the wind. The officer then took the activist firmly by the arm, said he was arresting him, and pushed him off towards a group of soldiers.
‘You’re all hypocrites!’ One of the soldiers yelled at the activist with the video camera. ‘When I go every day to protect the kids in At-Tuwani – why don't you film me then?’
At-Tuwani is another Palestinian village in the South Hebron Hills near an Israeli settlement and outpost called Ma’on. Palestinian children need protection when they walk to school because the settlers throw stones and curse at them.
‘Who are you protecting them from?’ the activists asked.
‘What does it matter who I’m protecting them from?’ the soldier replied.
The officer came back to stop the soldier talking and get the activist with the video camera into the jeep. Then he stormed down the hill after the other protesters: ‘Three minutes!’ he shouted.
‘What you’re doing is excessive,’ I said in Hebrew as the activist was locked in the vehicle. ‘Not even five minutes have passed.’
When the commander came back up the hill and saw me still recording, he said: ‘You knew about the timing, so you’re coming with me.’ Ten minutes had not yet passed.
He grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me in the direction of the jeep. ‘No,’ I said. ‘What did I do? No. You’re hurting me.’
‘I don’t care,’ he said.
Two other soldiers grabbed me by the waist and shoulders to restrain me. One of them had told me under his breath a few minutes earlier that I could say anything I wanted to the officer, I just couldn’t touch anything or anyone. Now he said he didn’t understand why I had been arrested. By 12:45 p.m. there were seven of us in the back of the jeep on the way to a police station: two Israelis, two Palestinians, one Norwegian, one other American and me.
I was born in Israel but grew up in New York, and I have dual citizenship. I grew up speaking Hebrew and English at home with secular Israeli parents, but never studied Hebrew at school, so I can understand the phrase ‘shetach tsva’i sagur’ but would need a dictionary to make sense of a page-long military order. I came to Israel this summer to improve my reading knowledge of Hebrew for my doctoral research on documentary film and collective organising in Israel and Palestine in the mid-20th century. I also came to get a better sense of some of the Israeli and Palestinian groups who are working to improve conditions here.
It has taken me years to look straight on at what Israel has become, to take in the difference between the way I experience the place now and the way I experienced it as a child brought here every year to visit my grandparents, to swim in the Mediterranean beneath a hot sun, to eat cucumbers that tasted of something.
At the police station there were three chairs in the corridor. The rest of us sat on the concrete floor. As long as we were in military custody the soldiers had to stay with us, so they sat on the floor down the hall, getting up every so often to escort one of us to the bathroom. Eventually we were allowed to talk to a lawyer on the phone. One of the Palestinians, Badee, said he had been arrested at least fifteen times. If we hadn’t been there, he told me, they would have been treated differently, handcuffed and chained up.
Over the course of the afternoon, each of us was questioned separately and then fingerprinted. The police officer who interrogated me was called Eyal. They all had names. Some of them had wedding rings. Some of them had braces on their teeth.
Eyal read out to me in Hebrew the crimes I’d been arrested for. I was suspected of being in a closed military zone, of interfering with an arrest and with the commanding officer’s ability to do his job, and of resisting arrest myself. Eyal reminded me that I had the right to remain silent.
He showed me the footage that one of the soldiers had taken of my arrest and noted that I kept appearing in the frame, even after I had been told I was in a closed military zone. ‘But he’d said ten minutes,’ I said, off the record. I didn’t know the law well enough to argue. The statements Eyal read to me seemed to be written in deliberately abstruse language; I asked him to read them more slowly and to explain words I didn’t understand. He noticed that my voice was shaking and my eyes were wet.
As the interview came to a close, I asked him if he liked his work. Very much so, he said. He helped Palestinians as well as Israelis; over the course of the afternoon, a Palestinian grocer had joined us in the hallway with his brother to report on a settler who had pulled a knife on someone in his shop the previous evening.
We were at the station for six hours. The police chief gathered us together to explain the terms of our release: the Palestinians and Israelis couldn’t come to the South Hebron Hills for 15 days; the Norwegian and the American couldn’t return to the West Bank for 15 days. I had given the army my Israeli passport because the Israeli activists told me I’d get better treatment that way; with an American passport, there was the risk of being deported. Everyone, not least the soldiers, was glad to be done.
When we were waiting to leave, the soldier who’d said he didn’t understand why I was arrested told us that he was an American from California who had moved to Israel several years earlier. ‘I’m part of a system,’ he said. ‘So you’re on our side,’ one of the activists said, and the soldier didn’t demur. He made sure we knew his full name and said to look for him on Facebook.
One of the Israeli activists I spoke to afterwards said the protest had been a small victory: the Palestinians had managed to plough their entire field before they were forced to leave.
Comments
As for better or worse and setting bars, that is not really the issue. The issue is the writer's hypocrisy. No one said throwing rocks is OK.
I'm sure that you know a lot about China, the web censorship, the alarming rate of capital punishment, the persecution of human rights lawyers, the de facto annexation of Tibet. No doubt if LRB get around to a blog on this topic, and they should, someone will defend the peoples' republic by saying it's no worse than what Israel is doing on the west bank.
On a personal note, the one subject on which you are utterly ignorant is what motivates me. I am not an Israel hater, just someone who enjoys a good argument. You must have noticed by now.
There is nothing disproportionate about Diana Gitlin's dismay at them but your own indifference to them speaks volumes about blind parti pris.
Be that as it may, however, your silence as regards my last point is eloquent. Hard though it is for you to credit (so neurotically "suspicious" are you of the motives of those who disagree with you),some of us deplore the loss both of Israeli lives and Palestinian. The lives of the former alone seem to be all that matter to you. That says it all.
If so,where is the evidence - the concrete, irrefutable evidence - to prove that she is so minded and to lend substance and force to the charge that she has planned to do this from the word go in concert her colleagues?
On the face of it,it's a preposterous charge, one that calls into question (if he'll forgive me for saying so) Mr Skolnik's sanity.
Not true? Show me what she has written about terrorist attacks. Show me yourself bouncing around the Internet screaming about Arab terrorism.
Since when by the way is it necessary to "write about" a matter of concern in order to entertain strong feelings about it? Can one not feel or think about it without giving expression to it in words? If Ms Gitlin nowhere "writes about" terrorist attacks, does in itself that signal her indifference to them?
It is nuts to say so.
So Let me see (and not for the first time - do pardon my slow wits) if I've got this straight: because Daniella Gitlin or anybody like her may have published nothing about terrorist attacks online, it follows, as night follows day, and undeniably, that she must be in favour of them! Just as it follows that she's more upset about settlers throwing rocks etc.
Impeccable reasoning...
Sounds like the usual,writ large: prrmission to write about Israel/Palestine will only be granted if, at the same time or in times past, you can show to the satisfaction of invigilators like our Fred that you have written in criticism of all other conflicts and countries in which there hss been injustice.
Otherwise, permission denied.
Why should Palestinians be expected to tolerate living under occupation, their land expropriated to be used for settlements which are illegal and a direct violation of the Geneva Convention.
The Israelis should not be subject to observation in the West Bank because they simply should not be there is the first place.
The fearless Gideon Levy. who sees what the author experienced on a regular basis, seems to get to the nub of the matter regarding Israel's leitmotif.
https://mondoweiss.net/2018/03/gideon-question-crushed/
There are three core values of Israeli culture that enforce the totalitarian discourse.
The first value: we are the chosen people. ... If we are the chosen people, who are you to tell us what to do.
The second very deeply rooted value: we are the victims, not only the biggest victims, but the only victims around…. I don’t recall one occupation in which the occupier present himself as the victim. Not only the victim– the only victim….
There is a third very deep rooted value. ... if you scratch under the skin of almost any Israeli you will find it there, the Palestinians are not equal human beings like us. They don’t love their children like us. They don’t love life like us. They were born to kill, they are cruel, they are sadists, they have no values, no manners… This is very, very deep rooted in Israeli society.
And this profoundly racist enterprise is promulgated as a beacon for global Jewry?
Israelis do not consider themselves chosen (unless they are Orthodox and then in a very specific theological way and certainly not as part of secular Zionist thinking), nor victims (except insofar as this pertains to the tragic Jewish past which the State of Israel will not allow to repeat itself), and Israelis talk about Arabs in the same way that Arabs talk about Israelis and all people at war talk about each other. If you require a guru to tell you what Israelis think in the absence of personal knowledge, you would do better to choose someone a little more balanced and a little less resentful than Gideon Levi.
I am at a loss, Mr. Morrison, to understand why defending yourself against barbaric terrorism is hateful.
You're not being honest, Joe. You are trying to make it seem as if you came to the conflict without bias, surveyed the entire spectrum of opinion in Israel and chose to adopt those of the extreme left because you somehow concluded that these are the most decent, trustworthy and knowledgable people in Israel. Who are you trying to kid? You came to the conflict with an extreme anti-Israel bias and chose to "trust" these people because they told you exactly what you wanted to hear.
(As it happens, I have arrived at my current position very painfully from a position of passionate support for and belief in Israel. I still believe in her which is what makes, for me, her current behaviour so distressing.)
The gods did not reveal, from the beginning,
All things to us, but in the course of time
Through seeking we may learn and know things better.
But as for certain truth, no man has known it,
Nor shall he know it, neither of the gods
Nor yet of all the things of which I speak.
For even if by chance he were to utter
The final truth, he would himself not know it:
For all is but a woven web of guesses
In other words, we are all always deficient in our knowledge of any situation. To know all one needed to infallibly judge what's happening in your country, one would have to know every thought, and the full of histories, of every person involved from the leaders of both sides to the most insignificant players. But that doesn't stop us forming opinions.
My reluctant change of heart came over many years of watching the news and reading the reports of journalists I have to come to trust. My closest friendship with an Israeli came after I had formed my beliefs, and what drew us together was their scientific work - I had no knowledge of their political opinions until we met in London and our conversation turned to wider matters.
This is an odd experience for me, normally I am attacked on social media for defending Israel and my criticisms of the dangerously anti-Israel sentiment that is becoming predominant. I regret this shift very much, and I feel it is only strengthened by people like you who make no effort to understand where the criticisms come from, preferring instead to dismiss it all as a product of hatred for Jews. Do you really think it is anti-Semitism that led Desmond Tutu to call Israel an apartheid state, or ignorance that led him to say "I have witnessed the systemic humiliation of Palestinian men, women and children by members of the Israeli security forces. Their humiliation is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the apartheid government."?
Perusal in detail, and daily, of the Hebrew-language press in Israel suggests otherwise. If, like so many New Yorkers who have “made aliya,” your knowledge of Hebrew were anything more than functional, Mr Skolnik (this, despite so many years’ residence in the country), you would know better than categorically to deny this. The enthusiasm with which the Israeli man in the street supported the pogroms in Gaza – what else to call them? – and the numerous acts of extrajudicial killing (the Azaria case leaping to mind here) is documented in any number of readers’ comments on articles and reports in more than one newspaper. See for yourself, if your command of Hebrew suffices, that is. Reliable intramural surveys lend further support to the phenomenon of a casual, unthinking contempt for Arabs that is endemic amongst Jewish Israelis, a majority of whom, when asked, are not slow to express their horror at the thought of living side by side with them in the same block of flats and (horror of horrors) of their sons and daughters taking Arab partners. One has only to converse, in Hebrew, with Israelis for any length of time to register these views, held not by all of them of course but sadly by a great many. But then I suspect you’re, understandably, too firmly embedded within the “Anglo-Saxon” bubble of Rehavia/Katamon/Bak’ato acknowledge the depth and extent of the racism that is so commonly to be found beyond its parochial confines.
או שאתה לגמרי מתומתם או שאתה קצת שיכור
Of course most Israelis are moderate in their views. The are in the center politically and subscribe to the principles that I outlined below for a settlement to the conflict. They also believe that Israel's response to a barrage of 4,500 rockets directed against its civilian population and to 40,000 rioters aiming to overrun the border and murder Israelis was necessary. Be a hero with your own children, not mine.
As I wrote, Jews talk about Arabs the way Arabs talk about Jews and the way all people at war talk about each other.
Your hate-filled slander doesn't merit respect.
Since you permitted yourself to paint a highly unflattering portrait of me above (and you're talking about being respectful yet!), I will return the compliment, because I'm beginning to get a picture of you and it's very familiar. Made Aliya from America, couldn't make it here, ran home with your tail between your legs and developed a monumental resentment of the country. End of story. Why pretend that you're a champion of the Palestinians.
Guess again.
What exactly are you ashamed of? Tell us about yourself.
Tosh.
Whether or not encouraged by Hamas to do so, the inhabitants of Gaza had massed at the barrier fence in protest at the inhuman conditions of life to which hermetic enclosure by Israel and semi-starvation had condemned them. They have said so themselves – not that anybody in Israel was listening - and there is no reason to think that so many are lying (to “show Israel in a bad light”?) or that they have, every one of them, been put up to it by Hamas, whatever may be the tactical/strategic interest of the latter in such seeing that such demonstrations take place.
To suppose otherwise, as you do, is to fall prey to the propaganda put about by your Ministry of Hasbara. You parrot them, I see, word for word.
But we have been at this film before (as one says in Hebrew). What is really weird, and disgustingly racist, about the aforementioned conceit is the idea that poor little Israel (ever the victim of course), its mighty defence force armed to the teeth with the most sophisticated weaponry and electronics, its tanks and armoured vehicles arrayed behind several barriers of electrified fence and sand berms, could in any way or at any time be seriously menaced by groups of unarmed civilians foregathered angrily at the perimeter but never threatening to breach it en masse,or even seriously threatened by flaming kites or by youths wielding slingshots. This conceit, of envenomed Muslims wishing death to all Jews, is on a par with an earlier one on your part, the one which asks us to imagine Palestinians poised even now, at any moment and without provocation, to slit the throats of innocent Israelis and blow them to bits, when in fact such attacks, occurring as they did a good many years ago, while certainly worthy of condemnation have become a thing of the past.
The violence, like the threat of violence, is nowadays overwhelmingly, spectacularly Israeli. Why pretend otherwise?
F.y.i: (a) I am not American (b) I have never "made aliyah"- strange phrase in English,but let that pass (c) harbour no personal resentment,"monumental" or otherwise at Israel,just plain old disgust at what the country has become (a far cry from earlier days) and at what it has been doing.
If you can keep your temper and restrain yourself from indulging in personal insult and from embittered recourse to "But Hamas says/does..., do explain please. Other than that it hears no evil and sees no evil where Israel is concerned,the Skolnik viewpoint as peddled on this blog remains a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
Hate is something one feels. For example Jews felt the hate in the way the Nazis talk about them. I feel the hate in the way certain people talk about Israel.
Are you really saying that you cannot think of a single act of aggression by Israel?
What about Lydda, 1948?
It is surely more accurate and more truthful to speak in this instance of a perimeter fence surrounding a prison compound, well guarded from the outside.
As to what Israelis believe, they can believe anything they like but it is still myth or fantasy.
You are far too passionate, Mr Skolnik, in defence of your adopted country. Strong feelings are not enough. What is neededif things to be seen for what they are is a degree of detachment and a capacity for critical self-appraisal.
This seems to be wanting, in you and in your countrymen.
https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4107913,00.html
But when precisely did you change side? In which years were you reading these reports and what were the specific events that turned you against Israel?
I read the article about Tutu. There are a lot of quotes in it that are taken out of context, but as I don't know the original context I can't judge them either way - but I will say that he has always struck me as one of the most decent and forgiving men alive (and, yes, I'm sure a few days are enough to witness systematic humiliation). One shameful calumny does stand out very loud in the article, though: conflating his call for boycott of Israeli goods in order to ease the Palestinians' plight with the Nazi policy of “Kauft nicht bei Juden". By all means disagree with Tutu, say that he is mistaken, but to suggest that his call which comes from a concern for others' suffering is the same as the Nazi policy which came from a genocidal hatred is a grotesque distortion. To say that about a man of such obvious goodness can only do your cause huge damage - say he's wrong but don't dare say he's evil unless you really want the world to judge you even more harshly.
However, thank you, Fred, for on this occasion not resorting to personal insults directed at me - I deplore such behaviour whether it is directed at you or anyone else who is sincerely putting forward their views (as opposed to just trolling for the sake of it).
On Facebook: Gazan protestors ‘bring a knife, dagger, handgun,’ kidnap Israelis, murder soldiers
https://www.jns.org/bring-a-knife-dagger-or-handgun-kidnap-israeli-civilians and-murder-soldiers-and-settlers-instructions-on-facebook-to-gazans-for-march-of-return/
And of course the Hamas announcement after the big riots in the middle of May that 50 of the 63 killed were Hamas "fighters," and another 3 from the Islamic Jihad."
"Whether Jews like it or not, they are a peculiar people. They can't ever hope to be judged by the same standards which are used for other people". Yet another quote from "one of the most decent and forgiving men alive...
I understand the pressures Israel is under, I appreciate the world’s history of Jewish persecution and that you are surrounded by people who have vowed your destruction. It’s just that I think Israel’s policy, instantiated in your posts, will only make things worse. Sometimes the solution to a conflict can only come from one side making the exceptional, counter-intuitive, move - something that comes from love not logic. Without it, I think the Middle East will just sink further into chaos and bloodshed. My respect for Israel is such that I can only imagine such a move coming from her.
It seems the world might be about to enter a phase shift in global warming which will effect your part of the world as disastrously as any. Now, more than ever, we should be finding ways to work together - the very future of our species depends on it.
As for 63 fighters - even if this were true, that is 63 out of your imaginary 40,000 - negligible proportion. Were all the protesters at the perimeter fence bent on murder and mayhem?
Hard to credit, if that is your claim.
Nevertheless, we judge people, and by extension countries, by their actions, not by their intentions. Such was the violence visited upon Gaza in the recent past as to appall observers everywhere,and, understandably, to invite comparisons with the reduction of the Warsaw Ghetto by German forces in 1943. The IDF incidentally was well aware of the analogy, its commander in chief having said at the time that the example of the Ghetto might need to be borne in mind if the advance on Gaza were to succeed.
Even the most guarded comparisons are bound to be spurious, and in a historical context, abhorrent.
The problem is that any discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ends in history crashing the debate, and drowning out all reason.
For example, can the Nazi slogan 'Deutsche wehrt euch! Kauft nicht bei Juden!' (Germans defend yourselves, don't buy from Jews) be equated with a boycott of Israeli goods today in protest at Israeli state policy towards Palestinians? Of course not, and yet, how can we ignore it?
I think this is why so many want to see the concept of 'intent' added to a definition of antisemitism: is someone calling for a boycott of Israeli goods because they are antisemitic, or because they genuinely find Israeli policy abhorrent? What is their intent?
This is very difficult to ascertain, of course; yet either we talk about intent, or we issue a blanket ban of any criticism of Israel.
But yes of course, it says so on Facebook,ergo it must be gospel truth.
As for East Jerusalem, the issue is the walled Old City. I doubt if the Arab neighborhoods outside it and to the east would be an issue for any Israeli government, so some ingenious solution will have to be worked out for the Old City.
As for refugees, Israel has already offered to take in 30-40,000, which coincidentally or not is the number of the original refugees still alive. My guess is that Israel would go as high as 100,000 in a genuine peace.
As long as the terrorist organizations are not dismantled Israel would remain responsible for security in the West Bank. Under no circumstances will Hamas be allowed to set up its rocket launchers 15 feet from Jewish Jerusalem.
These are the outlines of a settlement that I believe at least 70% of Israelis would vote for in a referendum and one which Netanyahu could offer if he felt the Palestinians were ready to end the conflict.
The Nationality Law, as superfluous as it is, is strictly declarative and has absolutely no practical meaning, let alone being a preparation for anything. It doesn't diminish Arab rights in any way. You misunderstand how Arabic is used officially in Israel and how it will continue to be used in exactly the same way, and you misunderstand how members are selected in cooperative, communal and community settlements which have always applied and will continue to apply to both Jews and Arabs. Nothing in the Law changes where Arabs may live.
A.B Yehoshua says ... is not a fiat or an argument. If you don't know enough to speak in your own name, you shouln't be speaking at all. You also seem to be using the word Bantustan without really understanding what the word means and certainly without any concept of West Bank geography.
An irrelevant and dim-witted response, stettiner.We are speaking of a law with politico-legal implications and a disturbing emotional resonance, not of this or that language. That most Israeli Arabs are functionally and often impressively fluent in Hebrew, the majority tongue, is to be expected and is neither here nor there.
But why should this be thought so? Does not a moment’s reflection, not to mention the experience of any sane person, suggest that indignation at what appear to be injustice, combined with a desire to protect the weak, is at least as likely to be the motive form action here and in similar instances? Or does Mr Skolnik enjoy privileged access to Ms Gitlin’s innermost thoughts, such as may allow him to speak authoritatively about her “ real” or "secret" motives, these being - by definition? to show up Israel in a bad light?
His is very puzzling not to say bizarre train of thought, judging Ms Gitlin and co. as guilty until she, and they, can prove herself innocent and requiring those like her, and them, to prove a negative – an invidious requirement and a well-nigh impossible task.
I have characterized the Nationality Law for what it is. Your understanding of how things will progress from here and your "takes" on Israeli society from your perch in front of the telly are meaningless.
Israel is a Jewish national state in the same way that Turkey is a Turkish national state. There is nothing ethnic about it. The Arabs are a national minority whose national identity and primary loyalty is with a larger Arab nation whose declared aim from the beginning has been to destroy the State of Israel and massacre its Jewish population. That obviously creates a very problematic situation in terms of coexistence.
There is nothing secret about the motives of people like yourself. Your animus comes pouring out every time you open your mouth.
Do you really not understand that the opinion of a "respected" writer or businessmen or someone who has "been there" is not evidence of anything when there are just as many opinions to the contrary?
You don't seem capable of acknowledging the fact that from the beginning the Arabs have been determined to destroy the State of Israel and that to achieve their ends they have engaged in the most brutal acts of terrorism imaginable. That is what Israel has legitimately defended itself against.
Please don't talk about my soul. If your idea of compassion is to allow someone to take potshots at your children until he kills a few of them, good luck to you. And I can assure you that I have had more human contact with Arabs in a month than you will have in three lifetimes.
And by the way, Yigal Amir was not a settler. You never get anything right, do you.
Talk about exaggeration, and self-pity. A strange idea of "self-defence" at all events.
Gazans were killed because Hamas fired thousands of rockets at Israel’s civilian population from in and around schools, playgrounds, hospitals, clinics, mosques and residential buildings and did not even allow its own civilian population to evacuate these areas when Israel warned them of impending attacks via flyers, emails and phone calls. And I can go on too.
Shameful. But forgivable: I suppose your linguistic skills are just not up to it.
Your reply would ring truer and smack less of hollow bluster had you said that you have in fact close friends among Palestinians in Occupied Jerusalem or amongst Israeli Arabs in the Galilee for example or at least acquaintances, say among the medical staff at Hadassah or among university faculty (albeit that you are not - thank God! - a university teacher).
But then I don't suppose you have any such.
I'm on tenterhooks to hear about your wonderful "human contact" with Palestinians/Arab Israelis, its nature, extent and depth...
A sense of modesty on your part is in order.
And I have no malice, and I have never slandered Israel (silly accusations), but like many have been critical of some of its policies. I wish Israel well, but as six former heads of the internal security service, in a documentary by Dror Moreh (The Gatekeepers) more or less agreed the struggle (their struggle) against terrorism has failed to secure Israel. "Israel cannot have the luxury of not talking to its enemies" (Carmi Gillon) "You don't create peace by military means but by cultivating trusting relations" (Avi Dichter) They have been on the front line and admit to having had torture and executions among their methods. Perhaps in old age they have lost their marbles. But their comments must be invalid because I am simply quoting Israeli sources not my own thoughts, according to your strange heirarchy of 'opinion'. Just let it be for a while, Fred
Things change, they move on. That was then, this was now.
The PLO Charter? Whatever else it may say or fail to say, it has signalled the movement’s unequivocal acceptance of Israel as a state. Not as “a Jewish state,” to be sure, but this recently concocted precondition represents a cynical ploy on the part of the Likud government to thrown a spanner in the works and is any case remote, historically speaking, from pre-State Zionism’s conceit of itself (as a Hebrew state, please note: a different thing altogether as you will have learnt from your own studies). The Hamas Charter? Granted, the movement has yet (and to the disappointment of some perhaps) to apply for full membership in the World Zionist Organization, nor are its members forming up to sing HaTikvah in chorus. None the less, they have offered a hudna, a hundred year truce, foolishly rejected out of hand by Israel, which, absurdly, requires ab initio moral purity from its enemy.
All reference, to the Arab League’s peace plan of 2002/04 has, I see, been carefully omitted from the roster, perhaps because it offered to Israel the most advantageous terms possible for final resolution of the Middle East conflict. A low trick, it was said at the time, and in any case just not good enough…
Having read Xopher’s remarks umpteen times now, I cannot for the life of me understand what on earth could possibly be thought to be slanderous about it. He describes things as they are calmly and factually, without rancour and drawing, as how could he not, necessary if profoiundly pessimistic conclusions from his observations. You don’t like it because he doesn't exactly praise Israel to the skies or make show of defending it to the last ditch? Tough.
And why don't you tell us who you are. Embarrassed?
You did live in Israel, didn't you, and you did leave Israel. That happens. Some immigrants just can't make it and then have to explain to people back home why they left, so to save face they say because it's a rotten country and resent it for the rest of their lives. Not you? Born here? A yored? Thought you'd do better somewhere else? OK. Good luck. But lose the resentment.
I recognize Skolnik's language from my youth in South Africa. It demonizes the opposition, ascribes bestial intent and values to them that justify any response in the name of self-defense.
But he is surely right in pointing out that both sides are guilty of dehumanizing their opponents through words, just as both sides are capable of the most horrendous acts.
Yet when one side chants 'one settler, one bullet', it can only be understood in context. Who has taken land from whom, and who actually has all the bullets? Skolnik's discursive relativism here is disingenuous.
Of course it's hard when you are a settler living on stolen land. You either have to build devilishly convoluted constructs in your head to justify yourself, or acknowledge your own culpability. It takes a toll psychologically. This article shows this neatly in the portraits it paints; as does Skolnik's response.
Ironically, it's arguably easier when you are powerless and ghettoized, and your children are picked off by snipers with weapons paid for by taxpayers of other countries. Almost anything you do is somehow excusable then.
I met an Israeli in early 2001, months before 9/11, who'd left with his family to settle in the UK, saying 'they are all mad'.
It's haunted me ever since, because he didn't mean the Arabs.
He meant that the entire country of Israel existed in an increasingly warped reality that could get his children killed.
A collective madness encouraged by a corrupt political elite, fed by religious and racist nuts, and stoked by all kinds of often contradictory agendas from Moscow to Tehran, from Washington to Beirut.
I didn't understand this man then, but seeing the desperation churning away underneath Skolnik's words, I do now.
Not hard at all, if you happen to be well-informed and dispassionate in your approach, as distinct from passionate and parti pris. Read Hannah Arendt (a shrewder and more distinguished thinker than you or I will ever be, and a more prescient one) to see why a Jewish state may have been a less-than-brilliant idea given the circumstances of its inception and the foreseeable consequences.
Arabs started all the wars? I don’t know about all but that Israel on M. Dayan’s own say-so provoked the Syrians into hostilities in May 1967 is a commonplace by now, and it is understood that M. Begin spoke truth in 1973 in saying that the Six Day War was a war of choice on Israel’s part. Nor, despite widely experienced subjective feelings (panic in Israel and distress amongst Jews and Gentiles,is the claim that Israel was never really at dire risk of being destroyed in June 1967 disputed nowadays by serious historians (of whom an undoubted favourite of yours, one M. Oren, is,I fear, hardly one).
Read Avi Shlaim to fill the glaring lacunae in your grasp of things. Much to be preferred to fairy tales.
In any case, “they started it, “ like “the Arabs wanted it all” is a pathetically whingeing and childish argument, unfortunately the sort of thing to be expected from an American Zionist like yourself and worthy in the final analysis only of the schoolyard and its crude simplicities. Isn’t it time you faced up to the fact, acknowledged so many historians (Israelis among them, by no means all left-wing or “haters”, that Israel’s part in the conflict was real enough and must not be denied or fudged if a balanced view of war in the Middle East is ever to be attained?
Syria as you know had been the object of an intended provocation on the part of Israel, if M. Dayan is to be believed, the act having taken the form of Israeli tractors deliberately setting out to plough land on terrain in dispute between the two countries.
There are victims on all sides. For how long can you look at Palestinian victims and not see them? At what point does wilful ignorance become culpable?
The kind of violent nation-building so common in the old days is, sadly, still prevalent today, from Myanmar to Kurdistan and yes, Israel; but is it acceptable to us?
To you?
We can see quite clearly how those in power in Israel have chosen to conduct themselves; maybe the real question is what ordinary Israeli voters let them get away with, and for how long.
Importantly, in WW2 the Nazis were clearly the bad guys. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the situation isn't that clear.
There are certainly no good guys.
There are victims, though, on both sides, though it would be churlish to count the bodies to see who has suffered more.
It is an ongoing process, which did not end with the polite, voluntary removal of a million Palestinians seventy years ago, nor with the humane shooting of bloodthirsty Arab hordes earlier this year.
The question is, when will it end, and how many more people on all sides are going to die?
As a matter of fact, the indiscriminate aerial bombardment of German cities appalled not a few in the West at the time and more than one voice was raised in horrified condemnation of such acts. Who if not the Allies was directly responsible for the destruction, planned in detail, of Hamburg and Dresden?
The idea that Israel was not simply responsible for the mass murder of innocents in Gaza beggars belief and defies common sense. To say, in mitigation or self-exculpation, that Hamas fighters were hiding behind a civilian population and using them as human shields makes no sense whatever: if you know that what you are about to do poses a grave danger to others in the vicinity and will cause harm them, then by God you shouldn't do it.
Hostages are seized in a raid on a bank. In the course of an attack on the raiders, the hostages are killed or wounded by the police. Shall we then say that the raiders, not the police, are instrumentally responsible for their deaths and are the proximate cause of innocents having been wounded?
Of course not. They were shot by - who else? - the police, albeit unintentionally. By them and by nobody else. Saddened by their own acts though the police may be, and despite their pleas to the effect that it couldn't be helped and was necessary, they alone remain accountable for the outcome.
The responsible thing to do in such instances is to admit as much, not argue along the lines of "but sir, it's not my fault, he made me do it!....
"These things happen in war" is a contemptible excuse for atrocity b.t.w. and just what one would expect from an American-Israeli apologist.
Whatever you choose to call it,it remains an act of killing, for which Israel is directly and ( I repeat) instrumentally responsible.
Israel and no one else, the extenuating circumstances notwithstanding.
There is nothing "malicious" about my pointing this out to you.
Whatever you choose to call it,it remains an act of killing, for which Israel is directly and ( I repeat) instrumentally responsible.
Israel and no one else, the extenuating circumstances notwithstanding.
I could be mistaken of course in thinking so. Unlike you I don't believe I am always right sbout everything. But where and how am I being "malicious"?
Israel is besieged on all sides by barbarians?
The government needs carte blanche to keep you safe?
That is the hook they want you to swallow.
One of the most powerful armies in the world, armed to the teeth with the latest weapons, with an illegal nuclear arsenal in reserve, against ... slingshots?
"A small stone has landed nearby."
That is the reality.
If you are concerned for your children's safety, maybe you should make peace with your Palestinian brothers.
Maybe you should tell your government to stop what it's doing. It has very few friends in the world, have you ever considered why that is? Are they all wrong, misguided fools, victims of insidious antisemitism, brainwashed by a bunch of left-liberal do-gooders?
What are the chances of that?
When I was a kid in South Africa they told us our only friends were Chile, Taiwan, and Israel, with Thatcher and Reagan hamstrung by the evil anti-Apartheid movement, though they secretly liked us.
Sometimes your enemies know you better than you know yourself.
But no. Hamas is the Devil incarnate. On no account could such talks even be considered, no matter what the cost in blood.
Intentions matter far less than concrete actions.Hamas is not required to accept "the Jewish State" with open arms or declare its willingness forego its principled hostility towards it. It is required, no more and no less, to abide by the terms of a "hudna," a long-term ceasefire.
The latter it has offered more than once but Israel, obstinate and short-sighted as always, will have none of it. The enemy must be pure of heart, must first repent of its wicked ways...
Nothing is more foolish than Israel's demand for absolute security on the part of its enemies. Apparently imperfect security, all that one can reasonably expect in an imperfect world, is not good enough for her.100% or nothing! That,it seems, is the only thing acceptable to her.
Reminds me of nothing so much as a teacher standing before a class in hubbub, arms folded and lips primly pursed, demanding absolute silence, nary a peep or whisper,before the lesson can begin.
On this analogy Israel is just as arrogant, just as patronizing, and just as childish.
Why are you continously breaking into these lame analogies and gratuitous characterizations, not to mention the meaningless rhetoric? Beyond this you don't seem to have anything of substance to say.
You have plenty of Arab sites to write for. Why don't you explain your theory of intentions and urge Abu Mazen to sit down with Netanyahu? Why don't you curse Palestinians for murdering Jews the way you curse settlers for throwing rocks?
Another gem for the list.
Thank you.
This, in contrast to carefully aimed guided missiles killing and wounding thousands in tandem with an aerial bombardment laying waste to entire neighbourhoods, razing them flat.
No contest there.
I grant however that the idea (rather than the fact) of rockets falling arbitrarily on towns in the Negev was and is absolutely terrifying to inhabitants of the region. But if you don’t want rockets falling on your heads and endangering your children in their playgrounds, for Christ's sake sit down and talk to the enemy with the aim of seeking a way forward that may - just may - result in an end being put to their use. Your enemy has offered to talk more than once. But you were having none of it. No sir!
Sad. And very, very foolish.
Mass murder , Mr Skolnik, is hardly excused by saying that “we warned them by phone calls/tweets/knocking-on-the-roof etc etc, but did they take any notice? No. So don’t blame us, they've only themselves to blame”. If you “warn” somebody that you’re about to assault him – let us go further and say that you add, in sheer humanity to your intended target/victim, that you’ll to “make every effort” not to hurt him too badly, going so far as to urge him to take cover from your impending attack which is going to proceed in any event – if, as I say, you do this and then proceed with your assault, grievously wounding him, you’re still responsible for the harm you will have caused.
The person you’ve so magnanimously warned, whatever action he may or may not have taken to get out of your way, is not responsible, whatever action he may or may not have taken to get out of your way.
You are. You alone. It defies logic and common sense to say or think otherwise. And here I was thinking you to be an man of some sense, Mr Skolnik.
“We warned them etc.” is a doctrine only Israel, groundlessly fancying itself part of the enlightened Western community of nations, is capable of dreaming up to salve its collective conscience (if it has one, that is) and to assure itself of its noble intentions. Any fool can see how daft it is.
“See how moral we are: we could have killed hundred of thousands more if we’d wanted to and if we’d really meant wholesale harm!” is an especially ugly example of smug self-exculpation, one that has been flung aside with scorn by everyone in his right mind outside Israel at least.By everyone,that is except the Skolkins of this world, a category that has now comprises a majority of Israelis and (sad to say) their fellow travellers in Jewish communities overseas.
Corrupt? Depraved? Sub-human? A foul beast?
Heartless and exploitative at any rate because appalled by such deaths, I suppose...
" You're not appalled. You're just pretending to be. You're a dishonest fake. Haters always are.
If you really felt as appalled as you say you are you, would be protesting the murder of women and children blown up on Israeli buses. But we don't hear anything about that from you, do we, you foul-mouthed hypocrite. You have nothing if interest to say about Hamas and Israel and should shut your trap before you make a bigger fool of yourself than you already have."
What - nowadays? On a daily basis?
With the same violence and unpredictability as earlier this century or during the "knife intifada"?
Your children/grandchildren in West Jerusalem - going about their happy lives, are they really in the dreadful, constant danger you insist upon?
Hard to credit.
I will be happy to engage you in a perfectly civilized manner if you are prepared to address any of the above questions specifically and directly.
As to Palestine on the eve of partition, the best of cultivable terrain and arable land was awarded, as you well know, to the Jews, who were allocated 55% of the territorial mass of Palestine. Had I been an Arab alive at the time I might have been forgiven for being incensed by this, as might have you, Mr Skolnik,upon finding yourself similarly placed. Nor did the Zionist leadership under Ben-Gurion’s chairmanship make any secret of its territorial ambitions following partition. The ultimate aim, of seizing all of Eretz Israel or as much of it as could be taken, was well understood by “the Arabs” (as you insist on calling them, scanting their diversity and lumping them all together as unreasonable natives.) They were and are not fools.
You are conveniently ignoring the fact that half of this 55% consisted of the Negev desert, which I mentioned above.
It was not the aim of the Jews to seize all of the Land of Israel. The Jews did not act in any way to indicate that this was their aim. It was the aim of the Jews to defend themselves against the explicit Arab threat to destroy the state of Israel. The Arabs acted on this threat. I will be happy to quote Azzam Pasha for you again.
"The Bantu arrived in Southern Africa as a conquering nation."
"The Vandals arrived on the Iberian Peninsula as a conquering nation."
"The Afrikaners arrived on the banks of the Blood River as a conquering nation."
This depends on the definition of the word/concept of 'nation'. And it reveals much about the speaker's agenda.
Had you really had any sort of "human contact", and so frequently, with Palestinians, you would know that they think of themselves as a distinct entity and not as one of "the Arabs." You would also know (if you'd had any "human contact") that Israeli Arabs, while strongly identifying with their Palestinian brothers, see themselves and above all wish to be seen as Israeli.
Therein of course lies the whole trouble with the new nationality Law.
"Palestine is part of the larger Arab world, and the Palestinian people are part of the Arab nation. Arab unity is an objective that the Palestinian people shall work to achieve".
But dmr knows better...
But even if it came into being after 1948 in the wake of the Naqba,and even if linked indissolubly to a larger sense of affiliation with the Arab world (much as Israel is linked to the Jewish world beyond its frontiers), is the Palestinian sense of national identity, which is no less real than the Israeli, to be considered therefore as mere myth, a manufactured and artificial conceit?
They might beg to differ.
Where and when by the way did I say that the republic known as Israel is not the Jewish national state? That it most certainly is I have indeed said, in an earlier comment. (You do know how to read, don't you?) I did not however say that it belongs to the Jews ( your "am yisrael") everywhere. On the contrary: in the primary sense of the verb to belong in legal-constitutional terms, i.e., to possess citizenship of as country and right of abode, it belongs, plainly enough to the people who live in it and to no one else.
Just as Italy and Ireland will welcome first and foremost people of Italian and Irish descent as immigrants and consider themselves the nation-states of the Italian and Irish people, so does Israel consider itself the nation-state of the Jewish people.
All nation states (Britain, France, Italy) including Israel base themselves on creation myths and assorted tales of shared identities and destinies. (I grew up being told that God had shifted his allegiance from the Jews to us, that whatever we did in darkest Africa in His name was divinely sanctioned and ordained; this project is dead now.)
In the process of creating a nation, competing stories win or loose, are reworked or merged; and minorities are sidelined, absorbed, eliminated. This was true of Italy, Britain, France - and you can see the same violence that this nation-building entails at work in Israel today.
There is as much disagreement among Israelis as there is among 'outsiders' as to what Israel is or should be. Hence the attempt to legislate its definition.
But whatever definition you favor, you still have to account for the people displaced through force and terror during its creation. Real people of blood and flesh have been kicked out of their houses, driven off their land; real people are marginalized, humiliated, ghettoized, imprisoned and killed daily. Of course these people lash out in return, no matter how outgunned; and of course they align themselves with whoever offers them support, no matter how insidious that support, or how compromised it leaves them.
This can only be denied if you live in a bubble; and it can only be justified through the most convoluted and tortuous of double-think.
The definition of terrorism is notoriously subjective. I grew up being told Mandela was a terrorist like Arafat. Mrs Thatcher concurred. Today the 'terrorist' Nelson Mandela is seen as an icon of peace and statesmanship.
In 1960 at a place called Sharpeville, a police station was besieged by a 'mob' of 'howling' black people protesting the Apartheid pass laws, encouraged by their 'terrorist leaders'. After a lengthy standoff, the cops opened fire, killing 69 people, 50 of whom women and children.
Two months earlier at another protest, another black 'mob' had literally torn apart 9 policemen (5 of them black, incidentally), so the Sharpeville cops had rightly been on edge. And yet Sharpeville is now seen by history as a turning point, a moment that exposed the evil that was Apartheid, and not an instance where heroic enforcers of the legitimate status quo took actions against terrorism necessary to safeguard civilians, and maybe even civilization itself. Despite the international outcry, Apartheid lasted another 30 years after that, and it became a lot worse. Tens-of-thousands died. How many more will die in the Middle East?
In Southern Africa, I went to school with two little girls who lived on a farm. One day some 'freedom fighters' came, cut off their parents' heads and left them impaled on the front gate. The girls were left unharmed, but alone many miles from their nearest neighbours.
I had an older cousin who was part of a military unit who'd drop 'terrorists' they'd snatched from local communities out of helicopters; sometimes a few feet off the ground, sometimes from a great height above the ocean. To this day he believes he was defending his children, his people, his race, his religion, even civilization itself; though history disagrees with him now.
What will history make of Israel's behaviour? Who will go down in history as terrorists, and who as freedom fighters?
More importantly, how much of this are you prepared to tolerate being done in your name?
It's a miracle people can still be myopic with so much eye-for-an-eye going on.
Like a playground fight with real bullets.
Where are the adults?
Do you really think what Israel is doing is improving the safety of children? Yours or any other?
It is clear you don't care about the children of Arabs, but maybe in the long term what Israel is doing is not exactly creating a safe region for your children to flourish.
A fragile flame of civilization flickering in the face of the Arab storm, the last bastion of manifest destiny, an eternal victim of inferior peoples.
It wants you cowering inside a Laager so it can do whatever it wants to.
You are emblematic, Skolnik.
Recte: not "the Jewish national state" (as above, second paragraph) but "a Jewish state" tout court.
i.e., a country like any other in the world yet one in which Jews happen to inhabit as a ruling majority and bearing, therefore, the impress of their distinctive culture.
This, as distinct from a country declaring itself or wishing to be thought the representative of all Jews everywhere, all the time and in all ways.
The former appellation makes as much or as little sense as "the French national state" or "the American national state" and is no less pompous, grandiose and (even) faintly menacing.
But why are they being attacked in the street? Why is there so much resentment and hatred?
Do you really not see it?
His primary emotional allegiance, that is to say, is owed deep down (and whether he knows it or not) not to the land of which he happens to be a citizen and in which he was born but to the faraway country of his ancestors, one that he considers, and more to the point that considers itself - unarguably - to be his “nation-state” though he has never visited it, has no plan to do so still less any wish to live there. He has basically little choice in the matter, being not simply an American of Irish descent but, like it or not, a member of a collective distributed round the globe that sees itself and wishes to be known as “the Irish people” (not to be confused with the people constituting the population of the Republic of Ireland).
Ditto an Italian, a Greek, an Arab etc. And a fortiori for a Jew.
I don’t wish to split hairs but that in effect is what you are saying, Mr Skolnik? Have I got it right?
Ireland’s immigration statutes, incidentally, may indeed favour ingress by people of Irish extraction but the Republic welcomes others with open arms – Poles, Roumanians, Indians, Israelis too in fact. There is in operation there nothing remotely resembling an exclusionary Law of Return. The Chinese Nanyang is another story entirely and represents a limiting case. ( Having lived for years in China and amongst the overseas Chinese I know what I am talking about.)
Nor do these countries arrogate to themselves the right to represent them, to speak for them in the international context, and to act politically in their name.
Herein is to be found one important distinction between other nations and the Jewish “nation-state.” A distinction that makes all the difference in the world and that may serve to draw attention to its highly anomalous character.
Dozens of countries have immigration laws that favor their own expatriate nationals over other people.
This is perfectly understandable in historical and emotional terms but does not brook comparison with the feelings of,say, Italian-Americans about the Old Country.
Jewish Americans are not quasi citizens any more than Irish or Italian Americans are. The Law of Return tells them that if they choose to settle in Israel they will be received with open arms and I'm sure Italian and Irish Americans have the same feeling with or without a Law of Return.
I don't know that Israel "speaks" for Jewish Americans. What it generally speaks about internationally is the Arab-Israel conflict. It also responds to expressions of antisemitism around the world and I'm sure that most Jews are happy to hear a strong Jewish voice in the background.
Mr Netanyahu makes my point for me.
You hardly care personally about Rwanda et al but this does not stop you from taking an interest in the goings-on there, so far as can be seen. What is happening in Israel/Palestine is of vastly greater significance and longe-range importance, and of greater concern to all, than almost any other country (your native u.s.a excepted) one can think of.
This, not "hatred," accounts for the attention it receives on the internet and elsewhere, both on the parts of its friends and its enemies. If attention to its crimes verges on obsession, Israel has itself only to blame.
Still waiting to hear who or what you are. Asked you before. Embarrassed?
A few years ago I would have argued that all this revisionism is bound to be uncovered for what it is, but this is the age of fake news, so who knows.
If you don't like the comments, don't read them.
In any case, they are excellent places for harvesting information about dangerous dissidents, no doubt.
"Complete idiot"
"Fool"
"foul-mouthed piece of work"
"stupidity"
"frothing with hostility"
"simmering with resentment"
"hate-filled slander"
"ranting"
Some typical items deployed in Mr Skolnik's argumentative armoury, serving as his stock in trade in exchanges. They seemed worth listing, the better to get a sense of the sort of man we are dealing with here.
But, mea maxima culpa: I see I have had the face to call a contributor to these exchanges dim-witted. No excuse for that and I hope the honourable Mr Stettiner will pardon me.
A two-edged sword, the internet; dangerous too....
Then give us that sample of your feelings about terrorist attacks, writing 10 sentences with the same venom that you reserve for Israel.
The Palestinians are a powerless people, driven into corners, thrown into cages, living in ghettos, humiliated, starved. They are being bullied.
They retaliate, but with comparatively little effect. They fall prey to unscrupulous gangsters and fundamentalists, but how can they not? How can you expect someone who for generations has been oppressed to do otherwise?
Israelis are not powerless. They have all the advantages. They are the bullies.
This is absolutely not to say that there aren't still forces out there who would like Israel destroyed. The proverbial Palestinian boy with a slingshot might wish Israel to disappear, and can you blame him? Some schmuck in Tehran might preach against Israel, but that has more to do with his own desperation that any real power, or even intent.
The reality is that Israel has won its position in the world, it is secure. There is no realistic challenger, no all-powerful enemy lurking. There is no reason to maintain the belligerence, the bullying, the oppression.
In whose interest is it to believe otherwise, really?
If so, no wonder so many have turned their backs on Israel.
As to caring about each other: admirable so far as it goes but not when such care is at the expense of others.
I served on active reserve duty for nearly 20 years, mostly in the West Bank, and can tell you that such incidents are rare.
Reports "without number" would be - what? Have you counted them? Have you witnessed them? Have you investigated them?
Simple.
You must have enumerated precisely and have investigated personally, or else have witnessed with your own eyes, every single incident of real or alleged wrongdoing on the part of the IDF before you even so much as think to comment on them.
Better still, just take the IDF's word that it's innocent of any misdemeanour.
Short of which, you should "shut up."
But, hey, who needs her. Where's that second list of yours? I'll start you off: neurotic, embittered, of Questionable sanity ... You see what a fake you are.
B'Tselem itself, I remember, when a few of its reports were challenged a couple of years ago on Raviv Drucker's Ha-Makor show (investigative reporting), confessed that it wasn't equipped to conduct real investigations.
But you're just lapping all this up.
The precise meaning of “fake” on the other hand, Mr Skolnik’s favourite term of abuse, what it is supposed to connote and why it occupies so central a place in his vocabulary, remains obscure. Does it equate to hypocrite? To insincere dissembler? To two-faced liar? Ms Gitlin must it, seems, be “a fake” in all these senses as do all others who find fault with Israeli policy and behaviour.
But a further question arises: by contrast, what sort of person is authentic, in Mr Skolnik’s eyes? A see-no-evil Israeli patriot? A proud Zionist Jew, who in his early twenties forsook the Diaspora for a pioneering life in the new Jewish state? A scourge of anti-Semites everywhere, his sixth sense preternaturally able to sniff them out and run them to earth in every dark corner? A true believer in the “right-to-exist” and in “self-defence,” no matter how irrationally construed and pursued?
Apparently so.
Fakery vs. authenticity: the polar opposites of Mr Skolnik’s personal world-view. The view of a very insecure man.
Let this remark speak for itself, in attestation of Mr Skolnik’s ethical values as a Jew, and of his sensibility.
If a Palestinian woman starts cursing a soldier at a checkpost and he curse her back, is that an insult to women. If a parent is arrested for attacking a soldier, is that a humiliation of parents? I made an observation above that you don't know how to handle so you're going into your enpty "I rest my case" mode.
There's no trick in the book they won't resort to in order to make Israel look bad.
And those low-down, unscrupulous reporters.e.g from the Guardian, who don't give a tinker's cuss about truth or facts: miserable lying s.o.b's, every man jack of 'em!
One feels sad for those - and they are many - who are sincere in their support for Israel and who wish her well. They could do with all the help they can get nowadays. But it is abundantly clear that with friends like Fred Skolnik she has no need of enemies.
So Let me see (and not for the first time - do pardon my slow wits) if I've got this straight: because Daniella Gitlin or anybody like her may have published nothing about terrorist attacks online, it follows, as n