The IDF should be allowed to shoot extremist Jews who attack them. Yesterday, settlers attacked an army base and a group of soldiers, including a brigade commander and his deputy. The deputy was injured when his car was stoned. He would have been justified had he shot those who were putting his life in danger.
Yesterday, a mosque in Jerusalem was torched. Today, police officers trying to arrest people involved in yesterday's incidents were themselves assaulted.
It's time to stop talking and start clamping down on these bastards.
Farewell to Steve Silberman
2 days ago
”The IDF should be allowed to shoot extremist Jews who attack them. Yesterday, settlers attacked an army base and a group of soldiers, including a brigade commander and his deputy.”
ReplyDeleteNice! And ‘tres Americain!’ ;-)
As http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/12/17/settler-terror-aberration-or-national-vanguard/ Richard Silverstein wrote in an excellent article that puts the settler movement in a much larger context:
”The answer Bibi Netanyahu devised is to begin treating settler criminal suspects just as badly as Palestinian security detainees. In other words, arrest without speedy trial, denial of legal representation, etc. So techniques and tactics which have failed to quell Palestinian resistance will now be used in a failed effort to suppress settler revolt. Not to mention that Israel’s vaunted democratic values, what’s left of them anyway, will be further eroded.”
Punishing the worst and violent elements of the WB colonists is of course a legal requirement but not to intend a pun, it’s a bit like trying to defeat a tank by throwing a rock at it: lightly scratching the paint is the most the thrower can hope for.
I believe there’s currently much hand wringing and kvetching in Israel about the recent behaviour of the worst elements of the WB settlers but that’s merely scratching the surface: is there anyone left (except for a few really dumb Ziobots) who after 44 years of this occupation and continued (nay, accelerated even) colonization of Palestinian land who doesn’t understand that this colonization is nothing more than the continuation of a policy that desires to see ALL of Mandate Palestine as an integral, ‘legal’ part of Israel (Eretz Yisrael, in short) and which started pre-1948? As advocated loudly by Jabotinsky and more quietly and more privately by Ben-Gurion?
Name me one Israeli government (Labour or Likud) that hasn’t actively worked to sustain and materially support the settlement project. You won’t be able to do it. They are, as Silverstein puts it, the ‘vanguard of the State’.
One needs only BTW to read pro-Israel punditry (from Jewish or Gentile Zionists alike) right side of the aisle to see that this policy is widely endorsed.
It’s therefore not so baffling that nearly 45 years after Israel’s ‘pre-emptive’ (cough!!) war of 1967 we’re still blathering on about ‘settlement freezes’ and how ‘land for peace’ doesn’t work. There is no intention to give up any land, full stop, only a desire to keep muddling on (the ‘status quo’), perhaps in the vain belief that ‘G-d is on the side of the Jews’ and that a miracle will happen. Even I sometimes hope the Jewish Messiah would come soon and that He will show some common sense vis-à-vis Israel’s borders!
In practice, bar a miracle or successful BDS, Israel is heading for a rude awakening in the not too distant future…
Of course treating extremist settlers as terrorists is just the short-term solution, but that's the most I can hope for from the current governnment.
ReplyDeleteThese "price tag" incidents, as well as growing religious extremism among some Orthodox and Ulra-Orthodox groups, just might create the backlash that would lead to a governmnet that would actually end the occupation after the next elections. The Olmert government already seemed to try to reach an agreement, to a certain degree, but I think a Labor government with Shelly Yechimovich as prime minister would have better chances to reach a deal. The question is whether the Palestinians would be able to make certain compromises as well.
Emm:
ReplyDeleteShelly Yechimovich: I had to look that up. Current chairperson of Labor, from early this year on, apparently.
To be able to call for an end to occupation and actually carry out the necessary evacuations, Labor would need to win almost a land slide election victory, eliminating the need for coalitions with pesky dwarf parties that seem always willing to blow up the government when their demands aren’t met. Labor in 2009: 9.93 % (Wiki): that sounds like a long way off from a landslide in the next elections: settler Daniel Marks informed me (via Ha’aretz) that even at the height of the protests (which were not occupation related anyway) Bibi’s polling figures were high.
It all seems such a pipe dream to me, this ‘end the occupation’.
On a minor plus note it seems 'normal' commenting is possible again: life;s little blessings!
The last elections aren't a good predictor of the next ones in Israel. After all, Likud got 13 seats in the 2006 elections, then won in 2009. Labor got 13 seats in 2009, but recent polls have shown it having 20-something seats. The left doesn't have a majority in the polls yet, but one can hope.
ReplyDeleteI'm not holding my breath.
ReplyDelete