Amira Hass: BDS Promoter in Ramallah

Here are extracts from a piece by Haaretz's Amira Hass, who resides in Ramallah, that illustrate the total nonsensible nature of the columnist/reporters there and their agenda-driven "journalism".

another thing I wonder about: Why must Palestinian men show their manhood by driving fast with their blinding bright headlights on, right in the middle of a narrow road, and not move aside for an oncoming vehicle? It’s clear. They know that the oncoming driver will move to the shoulder at the last minute praying that he or she won’t end up down in the wadi. The occupation is clearly to blame. Israel plans, built and builds separate roads in the West Bank so the Palestinians will be diverted from the wide roads (that gobble up private and public land), and Gush Etzion will be a neighborhood of Jerusalem on the south and Beit-El on the north. All the drivers – especially taxi drivers – have to make up for lost time and the length of the road by speeding, and to hell with fatal accidents. But why in God’s name in the middle of the road, and why blind the oncoming traffic at night?

Why the hell are some of my neighbors...too lazy to walk a few dozen meters up or down the street and throw their garbage in the bins that the municipality empties every dawn? Instead, they befoul the still open ground between the buildings...Too many people, here in the Palestinian enclave, treat the street, the roadsides, the area around the springs that the settlers haven’t yet stolen and the open fields as their private garbage can...I’ve read and heard theories, especially about the Palestinian alienation from the public sphere because of Israel’s domination (in 1948 and 1967 areas). But, as the owner of my neighborhood grocery store put it regarding the garbage bags rolling around in the street: “Not everything is because of the occupation.”

How is it that a young woman – a member of the Military Police or a security company – is stationed at a checkpoint and her line of cars is always longer than the nearby line, where a young man is stationed? The young women do everything intentionally more slowly. The most politically incorrect thing to say is that when the young woman checking the cars is of Ethiopian origin, the line gets even longer...The soldiers and security people stationed at the checkpoints must develop skills in the realm of racial doctrine and a canine sense of smell to distinguish between a Jew and an Arab...But leave it to the young women at the checkpoints. They’ll check the accent, slowly open the trunk or send the car for a check for explosives, stare with hostility at the occupants, all the while chewing gum with their mouths open, talking on their cellphone and giggling.

And the best one:

Why in blazes do the fine stores in Ramallah (I haven’t checked other cities) sell products from the settlement of Tekoa? I brought this up with a salesman. I said: “The settlement of Tekoa is stealing water and land from the neighboring villages.” He answered: “The Palestinians steal too, and I have customers who ask for these products.”...And how is it that the BDS and local anti-normalization activists, who are so good at scaring the municipality of Ramallah such that it cancels the screening of a Lebanese film, skip over the mushrooms from Tekoa? How is it that the Palestinian Agriculture Ministry, which from time to time comes to the markets and confiscates products from the settlements, misses these prestige stores? Because their customers are from the elite classes?

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From Dissent to Degradation

I hope this won't be too deep an observation and I will not make it long (extended references and details are in the embedded links).

Far left forces, mainly but not exclusively American,  consider Israel's military government regime in the territories liberated from Jordanian occupation as immoral, illegal and un-Jewish.  They began and continually attempt to affect a tectonic change in Diaspora Jewry's mutually important relationship with Israel by declaring that military government to be an illegal occupation in the face of major evidence to the contrary 

That "occupation", I think, despite all sorts of outlandish claims, is fair and just in the conditions in comparison to that existed which before 1967, when that administration was applied to regions of the historic Land of Israel as well as today, under the despotic Palestinian Authority rule.  

These forces, in one apparition or another, in one manifestation or another, have always been with us. They fought Herzl. They struggled against the Balfour Declaration. They denied Jewish nationalism. They were either non-Zionist or anti-Zionist. They waged campaigns against President Woodrow Wilson approving the idea of a Mandate that would reconstitute the Jewish National Home. They insisted, despite all past and current evidence, that there should not be a Jewish state, or something quite less than a political entity.

They were called the Bund. The Reform Movment until 1937.  Neturei Karta. The American Council for Judaism. Jewish Fellowship in England. Palestine Communist Party (who actively supported Arab terror in the 1920s and 1930s* and see: Budeiri, Musa. The Palestine Communist Party, 1919-1948: Arab and Jews in the Struggle for Internationalism)

Brit Shalom. Ihud. Breira. Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow. Open Zion. V15's interference in Israel's democratic process. NIF's previous assistance to subversive groups.  Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler, Lord Montagu, Peter Beinart. Michael Chyabon & Ayelet Waldman, Tony Judt. The "tragic mockery" of Leon Trotsky. IJAN. Haaretz. Jews supporting Boycott. Breaking the Silence. Mondoweiss. Richard Falk. Ken Roth. George Soros. Noam Chomsky. Norman Finkelstein. Gideon Levy. Amira Hass and Haaretz's owner, Amos Schocken. They, among others, are ideological opponents, and less than pragmatic critics.

And they lost because their thinking was wrong, because their observance of events was incorrect, because their understanding of political, economic, military and cultural elements was in error and worse, they have not learned from their mistakes in the past.

Now, more than ever, the trend of their promotions is leading not to a singular criticism of a specific policy, of an approach, or lack thereof, of a party or a person.  It is directing anger, frustration and self-impotence against Israel as a whole.

Israel, it is claimed, is an "apartheid" state. It has always been a project of settler colonialism is the assertion. It is "racist". And worse. Now, Nazi memes are employed a la Rogel Alpher.

Basically, what has developed, is that the very idea of Israel is to be rejected and it is being pushed forcefully and prominently.  To be generous, it is difficult to think of these op-ed columnists and bloggers and 'intellectuals' and such as truly intelligent, for any claim that that language and contextualization they employ is not what they intend, although many quite openly do, cannot they see what they are creating?

They present an "Israel situation" that is, in the end, a la Judt** and Mick Davis, bad for the Jews.  As Daniel Gordis phrased it, "It’s not about what Israel does. It’s about what, to their minds, Israel is."  Israel is less important than Diaspora Jews and the existence of a Diaspora. Babylon is better than Jerusalem.  That was done in the 1930s by socialists, non-nationalists and ultra-Orthodox and we know that in a few years, they were all proven wrong.  Shalom Asch declared in 1938 that “what Jabotinsky is now doing in Poland [his evacuation plan] goes beyond all limits…Heaven help a people with such leaders.” Asch eventually declared at a press conference in Jerusalem in 1952: “I deeply regret that I fought against Jabotinsky’s evacuation plan”. 

In the past, these ideas led those that held them to betray Judaism, assimilate, join revolutionary movements, assist the detractors of Jews or be eliminated by anti-Semites.

For these new critics of Zion, these new dissenters, the line of their opposition to certain or any specifics has moved to that of generalities and soon, the line to a totality of rejection will be crossed. And they were learn the lessons of those who trod this path before them, while Israel and Zionism continues to triumph.

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*

For example, as described here:  "A squad led by Daniel Abramovich scattered nails on the roads for a few nights, to harass Jewish transportation, and also cut down electricity poles. Two bombs were thrown in Haifa, one of them at the building of the Labor Council. There was also a plan to attack the new dock that was then under construction in Tel Aviv, but it was too well guarded, so the activists set fire instead to a pavilion of the Orient Fair.  Dothan maintains that [Simcha] Tzabari, who was then the only Jew on the Central Committee (Meir Slonim was in prison), bore responsibility for the terrorist policy...Dothan quotes a leaflet written by Tzabari in July 1936 [but not distributed], which explained that by “destroying the economy of the Zionist occupiers through acts of sabotage and partisan attacks, the Arab liberation movement seeks to make the continuation of Zionist colonization impossible.” 

**

"Diaspora Jews cannot influence Israeli policies, but they are implicitly identified with them, not least by Israel’s own insistent claims upon their allegiance. The behavior of a self-described Jewish state affects the way everyone else looks at Jews. The increased incidence of attacks on Jews in Europe and elsewhere is primarily attributable to misdirected efforts, often by young Muslims, to get back at Israel. The depressing truth is that Israel’s current behavior is not just bad for America, though it surely is. It is not even just bad for Israel itself, as many Israelis silently acknowledge. The depressing truth is that Israel today is bad for the Jews."

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