The Fanatics

A curious feature of the Israel-Palestine conflict is that many of the most intractable views exist outside the geographical area. If you look at the Palestinian side, the first 2 state solution supporters emerged inside the Occupied Territories while many of those outside it where still struggling to ‘liberate all of Palestine’.

Likewise, you can fin some of the most strident views against any sort of compromise, not in Israel, but amongst Israels supporters in the US. Just look here.

The prisoner swap involving Samir Qantar has demonstrated this curious situation.

“I will literally walk out on Israel and no longer support nor fundraise for the country any longer if they release Kuntar under any circumstances. I will no longer spend time working with various international organizations who benefit Israel through appeals and public relations……………If anything, Israel should have executed members of Kuntar's family in Lebanon in response to his unimaginable crimes, …………………….Releasing him would be a slap in the face of myself and everyone who has labored extensively for decades on behalf of the state of Israel, and I will no longer support the country financially or through any other means moving forward should he be released.” – second_coming

“Frankly, I get the impression that the current Israeli administration has changed the country into something that's very difficult for me to support.
For me, it started with the Gaza expulsion and talk of doing the same in the West Bank. The scenes of Jewish families being ethnically cleansed by the IDF shook my faith in Israelis. I no longer felt as connected as before.
Likewise, the years of IDF failure to secure the country from Hamas and Hezbullah raised serious questions about what Israelis are doing with our money, military assistance and political cover.” – NewsGuy

But that’s not going quite far enough for our now disillusioned Israel firster. Israels failure to resist any kind of compromise is seen as a moral failure,

“This is yet another wake-up call to show that so much of Israeli society is weak and stupid, led by a corrupt, immoral government -- due to its own fault. I am constantly reminded that while I support Israel as the Jewish homeland, I feel contempt for much of Israeli society. Sorry to say it, but it's true.” – NewsGuy

His lament continues,

“We all know that the big concern for the lives of Israeli citizens and this big show of moral superiority are really a cynical joke to cover up Israel's military weakness and political corruption.” - NewsGuy

Any compromise or negotiation is “weakness”.

I guess it’s easy to demand more blood when it’s others blood, and you’re sitting in your favourite armchair far, far away in New York or LA.

“Stories That Put Israel in Good Light”

While IF has its out and out crazies, as in the previous post, there are a few rarer sorts, who at least understand the importance of image when even discussing the issue of image. It’s important to at least appear rational and reasonable, rather than foaming at the mouth crazy. But for all that, our next contributor is little different on the substance,

“Given the history of this conflict, Israel seems to be always on the back foot and that's just incomprehensible to me. Any other nation in a similar situation would have been able to capture the higher ground and make the other side be on the defensive…….We don't seem to be able to feed the media with stories that would put the other side on the back foot or conversely, some stories that put Israel in good light even though I'm sure that there are plenty of stories like that to tell too (eg medical treatment etc)...” – reffo

Yes it's simply incomprehensible that substance outweighs spin. Have they never heard the phrase – you can’t make a silk purse out of a sows ear?

Take our poor deluded friend above and his plaintive plea for good stories on “medical treatment”.

Like this one ?? - The PA was paying Israel to provide cancer treatment to Palestinian children, where the Palestinian services and specialists are lacking (which is mostly everywhere courtesy of Israeli policy). A 12 yr old girl died from cancer after the Israeli hospital the PA was paying for her care, provided grossly negligent treatment including the use of outdated equipment that isn’t used in the treatment of Israeli children.

Perhaps we could add to that, stories about Palestinian women dying in labour (45) when refused passage through IDF checkpoints and the restriction on goods entering Gaza resulting in the complete unavailability of 23 essentials drugs as of the end of April .

Plenty of stories. Not sure about that “good light” though.

“Death Camps” in Gaza: A PR problem.

Our fine examples of humanity apply their collective wisdom to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,

“What should be done about Gaza? I think it should be completely cut off, and there should be a law prohibiting any contact whatsoever with any residents of that territory. They should be given a deadline by which their electricity and water will be cut off. Obviously, there should be no supplies or anything at all delivered to them through Israel. They can do it through Egypt, or they can all starve to death for all I care.” - Kettlewhistle

Harsh? Oh no…

“The terrorists and their supporters in Gaza definitely deserve to starve to death, but the problem is that Israel cannot sustain images of Palestinians looking like the Jews liberated from the Nazi death camps.” – NewsGuy

Just an image problem then? But a little lateral thinking can get around such pressing public relations concerns,

"In terms of a plan, Israel should assassinate a high profile Hamas operative, then at his funeral, as thousands of Hamas terrorists gather, drop a dozen or so 1 ton bombs on the crowd of terrorists.. " – NewsGuy

Gaza, The Final Solution: “Kill Everyone”

Yes, it’s been a while.

The recent events in Gaza seem like a good opportunity to return to IsraelForum to see if the nature of the commentary has undergone any….moderation?

A senior member starts off a thread,

Hamas has floated the idea of using similar tactics to what it did on the Rafah crossing to flood into Israel.

Israel needs to be prepared for such a mostly non-violent attempt to destroy Israel's sovereignty and/or create a huge PR disaster against Israel…….use rubber bullets and tear gas, and arrest the Pal Arabs by the THOUSANDS. Literally. The goal would be to take any Pal Arab who crosses the board, handcuff them, and get them into the prison camp - arrested for illegal entry into Israel.

That’s far too touchy-feely for some,

Why arrest anyone? Any horde stupid enough to cross into a sovereign land of another people, during a state of war especially, should be met with violent instant death. Thats what we call an invasion. Shoot them dead. All of them, their sheep and goats. Cover the cadavers, one and all with dog manure and anthrax.

And he’s not the only one,

the only prudent thing would be to do anything that is necessary to stop such an action. If you have to fire on the crowds to get them back over the border, then so be it.

But as usual, the smell of blood brings out the sharks,

we can take preliminary measures and kill everyone in Gaza.
problem solved.
WB next.

All of which passes without comment, let alone censure, from the forum ‘moderators’.

And why wouldn’t it, advocating mass murder on the scale of the Holocaust is just par for the course for the racist extremists at IsraelForum.

40 Years of Occupation: 1967-2007.

Forty years of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip is an obvious time to revisit the past and speculate on future directions. There will be plenty of attention from others on Israels illegal occupation itself, as well as the details such as land confiscations, house demolitions, expulsions, political prisoners, checkpoints, and of course, the settlement enterprise.

But I want to look at something a little different. Something that has been working away quietly in the background, significantly enabling Israel’s control of the Palestinian population and it’s attacks on Palestinian attempts at national liberation. An insidious and destructive phenomenon that rarely gets the attention it deserves – Israels network of informants, more commonly (interestingly) discussed in terms of the Palestinian side of the equation - ‘collaboration’. This is the work of the Shabak (AKA ISA). It’s an extension of the work that the Zionist movement adopted in the pre-state period, taking advantage of petty criminals, petty disputes and general Palestinian heterogeneity to collect crucial information, identify targets, exacerbate differences and recruit allies.

There has been some recent attention to the issue, and several books. One of the most recent is by Israeli historian Hillel Cohen, ‘Good Arabs’ (only in Hebrew currently), which examines collaboration by Palestinian Israelis under military rule in Israel.. An earlier book, ‘Army of Shadows’ looked at the pre-state period. The first account by a Palestinian that touched on this subject was Fouzi el-Asmar’s ‘To be an Arab in Israel'.

Also coming soon is Shira Robinsons book based on her PhD thesis, 'Occupied Citizens in a Liberal State: Palestinians Under Military Rule and the Colonial Formation of Israeli Society, 1948-1966'.

Most deal with the situation of the Palestinians inside Israel. A similar story waits to be told about the extensive spy networks set up in the OT’s post June 1967. Israel applied the lessons it learned in the first 20 years in Israel, to the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. When the full details eventually emerge, it will undoubtedly look something like, possibly even worse than, the Stasi of the former East Germany. Focussing on the occupation ignores this other salient feature of the OTs – that they are also a secret police state, a veritable ‘ShabakLand’, where Palestinians have to consider whom amongst their family and friends may be Shabak informers.

The techniques for recruiting informers has changed little except that in the Israeli controlled OTs, Shabak agents found even more fertile ground for coercion. Access to jobs, permits for travel and medical treatment were productive tools, not to mention torture and blackmail. A study in 2004 by New Profile titled ‘Child Recruitment in Israel’ (PDF) stands out for its’ identification of the Shabaks' practice of recruiting Palestinian child informants by torture and threats against the childs’ family.

Killings at the hands of the Israeli military obviously garner more attention, but the recruitment of informants by the occupation forces are also breaches of the Geneva Conventions. They also represent a very dark and little known side of the 40 year subjugation of the Palestinian people.

1967: "Wasted Victory"?

As we approach the 40 years of Israeli occupation, our forum fanatics turn their attention to how it all went so wrong, stimulated by this story in The Economist. In their own special way, of course.

“Israel's victory was wasted. Let's look at an alternative scenario here:
1967 victory, Arabs are incouraged to run away from the evil Joos ........... they run away, Judea and Samaria are annexed, Gaza is annexed, the Temple Mount is turned into a historical/archeological site atracting millions of tourists every year, there are no Arabs to start intifadas or terrorism insde the country, ………... Sounds good? Yes it does.
So why is this not the case then? Because the whole situation was mishandled to the core by the retards and traitors on the left, who put our enemies interests before ours.” – Kettlewhistle

OK, so a failure of total ethnic cleansing – that's the chance that was "wasted"!!

A regular who likes to present him/herself as the ‘moderate’ face of Zionist fanaticism, finds the logic attractive,

“Sometimes, during weak moments, especially lately, I actually think you are right. I mean, no matter what Israel does, the Arabs and their allies, the so called humanists vilify and demonize it. So Israel may as well live up to the expectations of the polemicist accusers.....
However, I don't think that Israel would have been allowed to get away with what you suggest.” – Reffo

Yep, the moral constraint on ethnic cleansing from the moderate Zionist perspective is that you may not “get away with that”.

But that’s a bit too much rectitude for the hard-core fanatics,

“Your type of attitude is what I call the Jewish version of the Stockholm syndrome……..In 1967 we won a battle. Instead of building on it, and bringing peace to this country, the Leftists lost us the war, and put us on the path of Arabization.” – KW.

Hmmm, nasty that “Arabization”. Miscegenation anyone?

However, it hits the mark with our ‘moderate’, quickly defending himself against the charge of being one of those who may have supported some kind if evil co-existence involving an abandonment of the settlement enterprise,

“C'mon Kettle, this post was uncalled for. You know very well that the attitude that you attribute to me is way off the mark. Just read my ad nauseum interchanges with the likes of Takeo, Sumud, Michael and many others. I am certainly not one who advocates turning the other cheek but I also know what is practical and I also know that anyone who goes completely overboard in ignoring morality ends up with more than they bargained for” - Reffo

Then to top it off, a typically bizarre rant from on of the ‘Senior’ forum fanatics,

“They hate you and want you dead and they always will, no matter what. No point in arguing the point. You could be teaching algebra to dogs for all the good it would do. They want you dead. The Palestinians officially want you dead, their friends in the west want you dead.” – Mediocre

Fanatical and paranoid. Don’t be surprised when the 50th year of Israeli occupation rolls by.

No Arabs Please, We’re Zionists.

“A French immigrant living in Israel made the news today when he was arrested for the murder of an Arab cab driver from East Jerusalem. The Israeli admitted that he murdered the Arab simply because he was an Arab. It was a premeditated act of hatred, and one which is very rare, but no less despicable.
To put this act in perspective, nearly every day, including today, Palestinians are murdered in factional violence at the hands of their own brothers. For example, today in particular, four Arabs were murdered by their fellow Arabs in the Gaza Strip. Likewise, Islamist terrorists attempt to mass-murder Jewish citizens and commit unspeakable acts of terrorism against Jews each and every day.
Despite the ongoing threat from Arab terrorists, it is extraordinarily rare that Jewish citizens retaliate against the Arabs. In fact, Muslims stroll freely through the streets of Jewish cities throughout Israel, and comprise a whopping 20% of Israel’s population.
Nonetheless, today’s murder is inexcusable as it represents a grave danger to society and to the cause of finding a just solution to the global Muslim terrorism problem. No legitimate political movement in Israel, or elsewhere, can condone this criminal act.” - NewsGuy

Well that’s a commendable effort. Pardon my cynicism, but was it sincere? Others quickly get to the real issue (the eternal issue),

"Part of expelling Arabs from Israel so it can survive will involve the use of terror by israelis. We all know there is no civil solution, which is why no attempt has ever borne fruit.If Israelis want Israel to be a Jewish state they will have to break some laws and take some lives. They can also opt to do nothing, and it may well be that Israelis will give up Israel rather than fight a dirty war. That is the free choice of Israelis, but they shouldn't fail to ADMIT that to keep Israel a Jewish state will require ethnic cleansing. Idefy anyone to submit another way for israel to avoid being demographically overturned from within."

Such conversation seems to dis-inhibit our initial poster,

"Right. I also believe that to stop the bloodshed on both sides, there must be separation between Arabs and Jews. I would like the Arabs to live in peace and dignity in their own Muslim countries, not in Israel, and I support creating a political, economic, and social climate that would encourage the Arabs to leave. "– NewsGuy

And murdering them in the streets certainly does help in creating the social climate to “encourage the Arabs to leave”.

More Zionist Dreams: "to invent some sort of deadly germ that'll only attack Arabs"

One of the craziest from a crazy bunch is a regular (KettleWhistle) who became a senior member on the strength of his boasts about his support for Yitzhak Rabins assassination and how he desecrated Rabins grave.

KettleWhistle is in heaven after 2 Israeli’s are beaten up. It’s OK, as they are just “left-wing activists” and they were assaulted by settlers in Hebron. He calls this “defending the homeland”.

These people are not benign hippies. They are aiding the enemy. …….. It's a matter of defending our land and people from enemies and traitors.

And in response to someone referring to an incident where a settler attacked a Swedish peace activist with a bottle,

Yes, I heard about it. That should teach her a lesson.

Others join in to lament the terrible idea of Jewish Israelis having any human feeling towards their neighbours,

..they are traitors, and for an israeli to be a pacifist is to directly give aid and comfort to the enemy, ................... There is no reason to allow "democracy" to be the way bad Israelis sell the place out to the Arabs.

KettleWhistle returns to defend the idea that ethnic cleansing and democracy are compatible,

and it is not undemocratic to kick the Arabs out

And then shares his tolerant views on Israeli peace types,

These people are not any sort of "hippies". They are vile supporters of terrorism.

And then on Palestinians,

As for taking their kids to school, and what have you, if the Arabs want their kids going to school, want to grow olives, and do other such things, they need to put diapers on their heads, get on their camels and donkeys, and head out East. This is Israel, not Ishmael.

Yes, if you’re an Israeli-Palestinian, you have no business sending your kids to school, or growing olives, in Israel.

But wait, it gets 'better'. Another forum fanatic has a brilliant idea,

Look, my wildest dream is probably to invent some sort of deadly germ that'll only attack Arabs but we both know this isn't going to happen and there are international laws everyone must obey, and don't forget they too believe it's their homeland. I suppose there's no "right" and "wrong" here.

Our main fanatic suggests a more nuanced plan,

Quite frankly, if I had something like this in my possession, I'd give them an ultimatum, not actually release it out.

Don’t laugh, he’s serious, as shown in a subsequent post,

We are well past the point where property purchases mean much, or anything for that matter. It's time for action. For example, I'm trying to organize the Jewish youth in the area [Hebron] to set up some action groups to block MDA from reaching the Arabs. If Arabs want medical services they can build their own. So, the initial plan is to basically stand in front of the ambulances and not move, not matter how much they yell, or honk. By the time the police/IDF arrive, the activists will start to avidly, but peacefully, argue with them to stall some more. Meanwhile, the next action group will be ready just down the road. I'm really hoping that we'll be able to implement this within a year or so.

Maybe I should reconsider calling them ‘fanatics’, it might be a bit tough on fanatics.

This is the side of the fanatical Zionists that the world really needs to see to understand why peace is so elusive in this conflict.