Rattling the Cage: A bigot called Bibi (Netanyahu)

[Tom Joad]

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467656176&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter
From Jerusalem Post.

By rights, Binyamin Netanyahu, who every poll says is by far the most popular politician in Israel, should be ranked with Jean Le Pen, Jorge Haider and the rest of the Western world's racist demagogues.

But he won't be, because anti-Arab racism in Israel is either supported or strategically ignored by the mainstream of the Jewish world, and pretty much taken for granted by the gentile world.

(snip)

The once-and-possibly-future prime minister of Israel says publicly that he's sorry his welfare cuts made life harder for Jewish families who are "blessed," as he put it, with many children, but isn't it "positive" that these cuts resulted in fewer Arab children being born? Then Netanyahu went on to suggest a national remedy for the victims of his economic policies - but for Jewish victims only, not Arab victims.

"I don't think that the Jewish Agency should refrain from helping part of the Jewish public in the state," he said, "and it is possible that additional non-governmental bodies could have done so."

IMAGINE IF any gentile government official in the world cited the lowering of the Jewish birthrate in his country as an accomplishment, then recommended that his country's founding institution raise money to help poor gentile families, but not poor Jewish families. How would the Jewish world, starting with Israel, characterize such an individual? What sort of pressure would the Jewish world apply to get him or her fired, blackballed and, if possible, indicted?

______________________

Comments: I suggest reading the whole article. Can't imagine such an opinion piece being printed in the US. I supposse they see this as mostly harmless in Israel, since such criticism might have the effect of only increasing Bibi's popularity, with only the minority nodding in agreement.

The Bush administration policy has been that private agencies take over and do the work of providing welfare to our poorest citizens. Imagine, if you will, Bush saying "I don't think that the white churches should refrain from helping part of the white public in the state." Imagine if he then said that this may help decrease the non-white birthrate. I don't think this would go over well.

The fact remains Israeli society is not a fair society. Not only is there individual acts of racism, but it is instituional, it is ingrained into the way the government acts, it is part of Israeli law. Carter only got it half right. http://tinyurl.com/yz5ysv

This writer also seems to take issue that the problem of Israeli racism being confined to Avigdor Lieberman , Minister of Strategic Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister of Israel since November 2006 and his party, Yisrael Beytenu. Lieberman has said things like that Arab members of the knesset should be shot, and that Arab citizens in Israel should be removed, thus finishing what was started in 1948. Anti-Arab racism, An Israeli tradition.

U.S. support for policies of exclusion and racism (and our own). As american as apple pie.

In the case of Israel, $3 billion a year of U.S. unquestioning support. Disgusting.

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. Questions:

Where was Bibi born and raised, and how much military time did he serve?

[Tom Joad]

4. Google & wikipedia. Wonderful tools.

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. A simple, "I don't know," would have sufficed.

[Kagemusha]

2. I dryly note that today, being the most popular politician in Israel

is NOT saying much.

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. My good friend, Tom, referred me to this magnificent site.

Would you believe that Neti's education was all on US soil:

"When Binyamin Netanyahu was 14 years old, his family moved to the United States and settled in Cheltenham Township, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb, where he graduated from Cheltenham High School. He earned an S.B. degree in Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975, and an S.M. degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1976 <1>, and has studied political science at Harvard and MIT." Wikipedia.

Interesting. I think I shall go back to see if there's anything regarding a military service.

[pelsar]

7. recon commando officer.....

http://www.answers.com/topic/sayeret-matkal

one of the more elite units....

[The Backlash Cometh]

9. I wonder where exactly we went from strategically targeted manuevers

to this era of slash and burn, collective punishment. That shit just never works. You don't win hearts over by killing the relatives of your potential allies.

And it's just heinous to think that we could have an organization in this country that would ever sign off on a large scale plan to attack our own in order to blame it on a specific enemy with the intention of harvesting the "ill-will" needed to attack another country. I just wonder if that's the kind of thing that gets dreamed up in these intelligence agencies.

[belpejic]

3. Bibi

Bibi is a charmer in person. Maybe that's why he gets away with so much. But he's a far right lunatic. Cut from the same cloth as the Chimp, but, frighteningly, sober.

[Lurking Dem]

8. He IS very charming.

And he comes across great (on the surface) on TV. That is what makes him so dangerous whereas someone like Avigdor is just your basic whackjob.

[Poll_Blind]

10. Actually, I've watched a couple of speaking engagements by...

...Lieberman and also an interview with him. He comes across as, believe it or not, a wide-eyed meek innocent, likely to take a special box from his desk and offer the interviewer a sweet from it. I know that's hard to believe, but if you Google and YouTube Lieberman for footage of him, his demeanor (even when you don't understand what he's saying) is extremely understated even, again, meek.

  Hard to believe, I know, but that's my experience.

PB

[Lurking Dem]

11. I guess that's what makes horse racing.

I always get a kind of mafioso vibe from Lieberman.

[UndertheOcean]

12. Good commentary..

Thanks.

[breakaleg]

13. It disturbs me that he can say those things with no backlash.

The question is, why isn't there any outrage? Is it acceptable to say such things about Arabs in Israel? Could this explain why the occupation has gone on so long and why there seems to be indifference to the plight of the Palestinians from Israelis?

[Tom Joad]

14. Not only no outrage, but no newspaper will cover the incident.

Instead we get headlines like
"Israel to rmove checkpoints in West Bank" (meaning, of the 400+ checkpoints, Israel will remove 7 or so)

Or the ever popular--
"Israel will remove settlers from illegal outposts" (meaning that of the 400,000 illegal Jewish settlers Israel has transferred to occupied land, violating the Geneva convention, Israel will forcibly remove a several hundred, and illegally annex the rest to Israel)

[Poll_Blind]

15. The concepts of Jewish supremacy in Israeli culture are not ones...

..easily dealt with, internally or externally. But it exists. Like the Invisible Man, who is only seen by the hole he leaves through walking through a puff of cavendish smoke, concepts of Jewish supremacy are visible in aspects of Israeli culture but especially in relation to what Jewish citizens will "put up with" (giving some slack instead of using "support") in regards to racist statements made by their politicians.

  There are many Israels. Many, many different Israels inside Israel. In some of these ideological shteltlakh, conservative, especially Religious/Revisionist Zionist rabbis are free to preach Jewish supremacy as part of the syllabus of their brand of Zionism vis a vis Judaism. Jewish supremacy, as long as Israel does not have peace with her neighbors, will be allowed to flourish, poisoning Israeli culture.

  However once there is some negotiated peace, some real peace in the Middle East, Israel will have to deal with the very vocal, very religious, very open-to-violence and well-armed bigots. That's when some seriously hard times for Israeli culture are going to begin. Ever since it's founding there has been a struggle to define a new type of Jew. Not a Diasporic Jew, but an Israeli Jew. An actualized Jew in a country of Jews. The struggle goes on, with the Orthodox winning the battle because of their instantiation in the Israeli government.

  What we most frequently see are instances of this supremacy in regards to Arab-Israelis or Arabs in general. But like any type of supremacy movement, the supremacists are driven to participate in intra-segregation among Jews. Again, this will be tolerated until Israel has peace with her neighbors and be allowed to grow to the point (as it already has) where the racist behavior is tolerated by many and not even formally recognized as intolerance or racism because of a series of logical fallacies which have taken over their culture through the conflation of religion and nationalism.

  This is not unique to Israel. I think any country which so interweaves religion and nationalism is bound to produce the same sorts of cultural and religious cancers.

  And what sets them apart from most is their possession of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons and ideologies espousing ethnic or religious supremacy are, understatement, very bad combinations. It concerns me greatly also in cases like Pakistan which, also, struggles with its own extremists while in possession of nuclear weapons. I don't have links but it should be fairly easy to Google that both the United States and the UK have programs in place to actually retrieve the nuclear weapons from Pakistan should the Musharrif government fall.

  Neither the United States or the UK have a similar immunological response should a Lieberman, for instance, gain power. Our Bush, intellectually incomparable by deficit to anyone mentioned in this post is our Musharrif, our Lieberman.

  Where he will take us or how he will facilitate extremists inside ally countries is as yet, unfortunately, still fruiting.

PB

[breakaleg]

16. Great analysis.

[UndertheOcean]

17. Great analysis ... this problem of "interweaving religion/ethnicity with nationalism is severely..

present in the Arab world ... and there is no light at the end the tunnel , no indication when Secular and humanist Ideologies will start to take root in the region. In fact it seems that the secular forces are the corrupt dictatorships , kingdoms etc. , ever suppressing a huge wave of moderate to fundamental Islamist movements.

It is strange then to observe that the strongest Secular force in the Arab world is within Palestine. (Secular parties can only dream of getting around 50% of the public vote in free elections like Fatah does.)

anyway , just my 0.0002 cents