No one can nor should ignore the importance of a recent book by Peter Beinart,
a Jewish American born in Cambridge, Massachusetts to Jewish immigrants, called "Crisis of Zionism".
The book is a brutally honest critique of Zionism from inside Zionism.Beinart believes that the threat of Israel's existence comes from within.Policies of self implosion by hawkish leaders of Israel such as the far right wing tyrant Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister,Ehud Barak.Policies that are devastating for Israelis, Americans, and of course Palestinians.
Peter is saying things that are blindingly obvious to anyone who has spent even a week in the Palestinian territories.A sadly typical scene of a tiny young boy crying out for his father, who was being dragged away by Israeli soldiers for the "crime" of trying to take back some of the water that settlers had stolen from his village.Settlements steal vast quantities of Palestinian water in order to turn their illegal settlements into lush outposts with watered lawns and swimming pools and turn the surrounding Palestinian villages into deserts with terrible health problems. Children are regularly hospitalized after drinking contaminated water because they can't afford to buy back their own clean water from Israel's water company, Mekorot, and Israel won't give them permits to build new wells.
a Jewish American born in Cambridge, Massachusetts to Jewish immigrants, called "Crisis of Zionism".
The book is a brutally honest critique of Zionism from inside Zionism.Beinart believes that the threat of Israel's existence comes from within.Policies of self implosion by hawkish leaders of Israel such as the far right wing tyrant Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister,Ehud Barak.Policies that are devastating for Israelis, Americans, and of course Palestinians.
Peter is saying things that are blindingly obvious to anyone who has spent even a week in the Palestinian territories.A sadly typical scene of a tiny young boy crying out for his father, who was being dragged away by Israeli soldiers for the "crime" of trying to take back some of the water that settlers had stolen from his village.Settlements steal vast quantities of Palestinian water in order to turn their illegal settlements into lush outposts with watered lawns and swimming pools and turn the surrounding Palestinian villages into deserts with terrible health problems. Children are regularly hospitalized after drinking contaminated water because they can't afford to buy back their own clean water from Israel's water company, Mekorot, and Israel won't give them permits to build new wells.
Palestinian parents are regularly ripped from their children on the flimsiest pretenses, often beaten in front of their children and taken away for months or even years with no charge or trial.
For many Palestinian children their childhood is lived under a cloak of fear, and the threat of violence and abuse at the hands of an armed force that stalks the streets of their homeland. In the eleven years since 2000, Israeli forces have killed “1,471” children in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the bulk of which are aged between 13 and 17 years old. The children of Gaza have been and continue to be at greater risk, with almost a thousand murdered in the last twelve years, on the streets of their city, on their way to and from school, whilst playing with friends, shopping for their family or simply relaxing in their homes. Most are shot randomly, indiscriminately, or killed as a result of Israeli air and ground attacks. Around 50 were taken prematurely from their families by unexploded ordnance.
Palestinian children living in the West Bank and the Gaza strip under the illegal Israeli occupation are subjected to brutal treatment, illegal imprisonment, torture and intimidation by the Israeli security forces. Defence for Children International states “a pattern of systematic ill-treatment of Palestinian children emerges, from their report ‘Bound, Blindfolded and Convicted’ much of which amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, as defined in the UN Convention against Torture, and in some cases, torture – both of which are absolutely prohibited.” Since 1967 Palestinian children as well as adults have been subjected to Israeli Military Law, a legal system based on prejudice and short on justice. In the time since this emergence system was instigated 726,000 Palestinians have been arrested and detained. The numbers of children arrested and taken from their homes is shocking. “In the past 11 years alone, around 7,500 children, some as young as 12 years, are estimated to have been detained, interrogated, and imprisoned within this ‘system. This averages out at between 500-700 children per year, or nearly two children, each and every day.”
In 2009, Benjamin Netanyahu's father,Benzion Netanyahu , put his position this way to Maariv News:
"The Jews and the Arabs are like two goats facing each other on a narrow bridge. One must jump into the river." "What does the Arab's jump mean?" asked the interviewer, trying to decipher the metaphor. Netanyahu explained: "That they won't be able to face the war with us, which will include withholding food from Arab cities, preventing education, terminating electrical power and more. They won't be able to exist and they will run away from here."
For those that have been in the dark ,ignorant or naive,the situation in Gaza and the West Bank makes more sense, doesn't it? It's a conscious relentless assault on the lives of Palestinians to shamelessly immiserate them to such an extent that they flee.
Beinart's message is saying this is not the mindset he wants to pass on to his children and the children of Israel. And he's in a unique position to say it because he comes from deep within establishment Zionism. Despite his sincerity , the usual suspects are slandering him and trying to shut him down with all their usual might. But the success of his book and the firestorm of coverage only underscores the groundbreaking nature of this important work, and the undeniable resonance of his obvious message.It's long past time Israel's leaders learned the real lesson of the Holocaust.The lesson is not: "It's all good as long as I got mine."We are all human whom deserve freedom and peace.Injustice anywhere threatens and diminishes us all.
While the organized, conservative Jewish associations in the United States, AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, along with Orthodox Jews and evangelical Christian groups, declare that "Judea and Samaria" must be part of Israel, they ignore the fact that permanently occupying the West Bank and the Palestinians there, without citizenship or the right to vote, will be comparable to the former apartheid regime of South Africa, and the dream of a democratic Jewish state will be impossible to achieve. Its pledge when it was created in 1948 promised "complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex."The present Israeli leadership and the conservative Jewish organizations in America vehemently oppose the implications of that pledge.
Like a majority of Israelis and Americans,including myself, Beinart believes that it is depleting, degrading and dangerous for Israel to oversee the lives of millions of stateless Palestinians, and also like a majority of Israelis, he thinks the solution is the creation of a Palestinian state.There can never be a democratic Jewish state as long as the Israeli government and conservative American organizations refuse the two-state solution.Israel has no future as a Jewish democracy if it perpetually resists the creation of a Palestine state in the West Bank.
http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=19190
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/books/review/the-crisis-of-zionism-by-peter-beinart.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/21/peter-beinart-israel_n_1616738.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Beinart
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