What happens when tens of thousands of Israeli citizen decide that they won’t help Israel occupy and terrorize Palestine anymore? What happens when the right wing warmongers in charge of the government lose public support? Moriel Rothman-Zecher took to the New York Time’s Op-Ed page to answer that very question.
Rothman-Zecher is a “refuser,” someone who refuses to join the Israeli military which is compulsory for Jewish Israeli citizens (as opposed to Arabic citizens). His reason is simple:
“I didn’t want to be part of a system whose main task is the violent occupation of millions of people.”
As you might suspect, this attitude enrages the kind of Israeli that sits on a hill overlooking the Gaza Strip, literally cheering as explosions kill thousands of Palestinians, knowing that many of them are children. But:
There is a growing chasm between Israeli rhetoric and reality. In the discourse of Israel’s Knesset (the legislative body) and media, the Israel Defense Forces represent a “people’s army.” Refusal to serve is portrayed by politicians and pundits — many of whom began their careers through service in elite units — as treacherous and marginal. This rhetoric becomes the common wisdom: A popular bumper stickers reads, “A real Israeli doesn’t dodge the draft.
The outrage is disproportionate. Rarely do more than a few hundred Jewish Israelis publicly refuse to serve each year in protest against Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. The shrill condemnation of refusers is thus an indication of the establishment’s panic.
That panic is the same kind of panic you see when conservatives talk about Voter ID. It’s the panic of a group that knows their time is almost up and the public is about to resoundingly reject them. In Israel’s case, it’s a public just about fed up with the violence and indifference to human life displayed by a brutish right wing government:
The idea that the “real Israelis” serve and those who refuse are “traitors” is a false dichotomy. As Ms. Rotem told me, “Israeli patriotism today means resisting anything which frames the occupation as normal.” It’s also inaccurate: The reality is that a majority of Israeli citizens do not serve in the military, including Palestinian citizens of Israel, or the “fifth column,” as they are often branded, and the ultra-Orthodox, or “leeches,” as they’ve been called.
“Real Israelis?” “Traitors?” Where have we heard this song before? That’s right, in the wake of 9/11, the right wing media branded anyone not interested in starting a war in Iraq as a “traitor” and “real Americans” were supposed to be all for bombing civilians.
This movement is only going to grow. The most obvious tactic to combat it is provoke the Palestinians so they’ll attack Israel, thus “proving” that Israel has to keep occupying the territory in “self-defense.” Remember, the Israeli military ransacked neighborhoods in Gaza for weeks on the pretense of “looking” for three teens they already knew were dead. These raids resulted in a number of dead Palestinians and that, in turn, provoked a round of rocket attacks on Israel. Ta-daaaa! “Justification” for slaughtering thousands of Palestinian civilians. And no, Hamas did not actually kill those teens so even that weak excuse doesn’t work.
“Real Israelis” are supposed to get up on that hillside and cheer the death of children. Because, you know, those kids were monsters that might want to kill us someday. But more and more Israelis are rejecting that premise and the warmongers of the right are growing increasingly desperate to keep the war drums beating.
No comments:
Post a Comment