My daughter went to school this morning worried about her civics exam. She came home worried about explosive warheads.
As of this week, she's in range.
Her school is now within reach of rockets that travel farther and with far more deadly payloads than the weapons we knew just a short time ago. With blasts strong enough to shatter apartment windows seven stories in the air.
My daughter is an unarmed noncombatant. That should matter. It should matter, in particular, to progressives who believe, and justly so, that the inalienable rights of human beings, children in particular, take clear precedence over the strategic designs of nation-states and the appetites of nationalism.
It should matter, as well, when progressives turn a blind eye to war crimes committed against Israel -- or, for that matter, to war crimes committed by Syria against Syrians. The assumption is that Israel's crimes are of such Third Reich magnitude, that anti-civilian violence committed by its enemies is either negligible or justified.
I'll grant that it may be easier to see things this way from a distance. Say, the greater Akron, Ohio area, where last week Kent State history professor Julio Pino stormed out of a lecture given by Israeli diplomat Ishmail Khaldi -- the first Bedouin Arab to serve in Israel's foreign service -- shouting "Death to Israel."
Prof. Pino did not explain what he meant by death to Israel. Nor did Utah attorney Robert Breeze, when Salt Lake City granted him a municipal permit to stage a 14-hour "Death to Israel" rally in Salt Lake City in 2006.
Closer to home, though, where the Islamic Jihad's calls of "Death to Israel" come wrapped in Iranian steel and 40 pounds of explosives, the message is sharp as shrapnel: a call for genocide.
"Death to Israel" means death to Israelis. It means death to the members of my family. Like many in Israel, a family which has long worked hard and consistently and intensively for the rights of Palestinians, Muslims and Christians alike, to live in safety and sovereignty in a country of their own. What we want for ourselves is no less just. It is, in fact, the very same: freedom to live in safety and sovereignty.
I'll grant also that for some progressives, it may all come down to a question of numbers. I wonder how -- or if -- Pino relates to the death last weekend of Moshe Ami, the father and grandfather killed by an Islamic Jihad rocket, put to death on the streets of Ashkelon for the crime of Driving While Israeli.
Pino may see disproportionality and injustice in the fact that only one Israeli died in the rocket attacks, while army air strikes in Gaza killed at least 10 members of the Islamic Jihad and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, several of them while in the act of firing rockets at southern and now central Israel.
It should matter that Israel took pains to spare Palestinian civilians in these raids. It should matter, just as the wrongheaded, ultimately self-destructive excess and civilian casualties of past operations have mattered to those who justly condemned them.
It should matter that the Islamic Jihad, Iran's direct foothold in Palestine, knows precisely what Death to Israel means. As does Iran.
What is this country that Julio Pino and Robert Breeze believe deserves to die? They may think they know Israel. They may think this is one huge, Arab-loathing, mass-murdering, land-thieving plague of an illegitimate entity.
It is certainly easier on the political conscience to see us this way.
But if progressives cannot see Israelis as people, if they -- we -- cannot summon up the same compassion and concern for unarmed combatants on both sides of a battle front, it's time they checked their ideology for holes.
The country that Pino and Breeze want to see eradicated is far more complex and worthwhile than they want to consider. It is a country in which a clear majority of the population, battered by wars and terrorism and heartbreak and frustration, still wants to see negotiations leading to a Palestinian state alongside Israel, and an end to occupation.
My daughter's civics teacher, who teaches her class about the natural rights of all peoples to liberty and security, gives extra credit to students for going to demonstrations and protests.
You can be sure that each one of those pupils, left, right or center, knows exactly what "Death to Israel" means. Not one of them, left, right or center, will stand for it. Not one of them should.
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Originally published on Haaretz.com
Follow Bradley Burston on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bradleyburston
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta spoke sternly on Friday to America’s closest ally in the Middle East, telling Israel that it is partly responsible for its increasing isolation and that it now must take “bold action” — diplomatic, not military — to mend ties with its Arab neighbors and settle previously intractable territorial disputes with the Palestinians.
“I believe security is dependent on a strong military, but it is also dependent on strong diplomacy,” Mr. Panetta said. “And unfortunately, over the past year, we have seen Israel’s isolation from its traditional security partners in the region grow, and the pursuit of a comprehensive Middle East peace has effectively been put on hold.”
So, if you don't want the chants of "Death to Israel" to end, then Israel should seriously embrace peace through justice instead of their peace through bullets policies. Even the American government is starting to suggest this to Israel. Will Israel see this in time?
Just 34% said they accepted that concept, while 61% rejected it.
What about the idea of phased destruction that Yasser Arafat said all along was the goal of the Palestinian Authority? Well, the Palestinians are still on board with that.
Sixty-six percent said the Palestinians’ real goal should be to start with a two-state solution but then move to it all being one Palestinian state.
It isn’t Israeli hearts and minds that need changing. It is the Palestinians. And settlements don’t seem to be the real obstacle to peace. Look at these findings:
Asked about the fate of Jerusalem, 92% said it should be the capital of Palestine, 1% said the capital of Israel, 3% the capital of both, and 4% a neutral international city.
Seventy-two percent backed denying the thousands of years of Jewish history in Jerusalem, 62% supported kidnapping IDF soldiers and holding them hostage, and 53% were in favor or teaching songs about hating Jews in Palestinian schools.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ5-91kUu98
that's a good fellow
what's this...camps
of sick and poor Syrians,
nevermind Isreal makes for
a good distraction.
I think Mr. Burston is correct - it is just easier for "progressives" to ignore what it is they are saying, to ignore that "death to Israel" does mean death to Israeli civilians.
As for a professor so unprofessional as to storm out of a room like that - well F him I guess, it is good to be a college professor sometimes.
When Palestinians say Death to Jews, it resonates with 1000 years of Christial discrimination, persecution blood libels. pogroms and murder, as well as the Holocaust. Too many Jews and Israelis are not able to consider the relative military strengths and know that the Palestinians cannot destroy the State of Israel, because they hear the death slogan in the vortex of Never Again.
What to do about this, who knows. and the Palestinians have their own psychological triggers. But to understand the Israelis and Israeli policy, you have to understand this.
Sorry kid, you don't get the exclusive by a long shot and the Tutsi haven't used their misfortune to justify taking anything from anyone.
Tell that to the Palestinians.
"The golden dome [of the mosque] shines with colors of the sky, with the white of clouds, while the joyous holiday [Eid Al-Adha] is good to the residents. The light rain cleanses the steps of the foreigners [Jews] so that the feet [of Muslims] in prayer will not step on impurity"
Palestinian TV (Fatah)10/25/2011 praises terrorist who planned Passover suicide bombing that killed 30
PA TV host: "We are outside the home of the patient, heroic fighter who is resolute, overcoming his chains, desiring freedom - Abbas Al-Sayid, the lion of the prison cells."
PA TV host interviews released prisoner in the house of Al-Sayid:
Host: "What's your feeling now in the home of Abbas Al-Sayid - the leader, hero, defeater of the enemies, defeater of the dungeons, and lion under interrogation?"
Female terrorist, Du'a Al-Jayousi: "He was an example and role model for us, we wanted very much to meet him."
Male terrorist, Muayyad Al-Jallad: "I do not forget our neighbor and brother, Abbas Al-Sayid. He is the crown on our heads.... He is honor to the nation, and there is no doubt that he makes us proud. Allah willing, he has enough patience and will... We are all familiar with his manly qualities of heroism and strength."
DEATH TO ISRAEL IS A LITERALISM.
I think we might have a solution to Burston's worry. We could have people like his daughter live under the conditions that Israel enforces on Palestinian unarmed noncombatants, and switch the Gazans to living under the conditions that Israeli unarmed noncombatants live. Burston seems to be indicating that he thinks that would be an improvement since he does not sees Israelis treatment of the Gazans as humane. I think it is a safe bet the Palestinians would welcome such a trade. And then everyone would be happy. Unless Burston is arguing in bad faith.
I am bringing the Palestinians into it, because if one leaves them out one cannot possibly understand what is going on. I hope your view on the issues do not depend on people not understanding what is going on.
"It should matter that Israel took pains to spare Palestinian civilians in these raids. It should matter, just as the wrongheaded, ultimately self-destructive excess and civilian casualties of past operations have mattered to those who justly condemned them."
And he did condemn them.
Have you noticed how Zionists exclusively focus on the battles they fight without any consciousness of the underlying land grab that is the very cause of the conflict. And if someone has the audacity to mention this cause, it is reflexively dismissed as "anti-semitism."
This is the Zionist ideology at work. It promotes an intentional blindness to the displacement of an indigenous population (i.e. the "hole" in their ideology). This "hole" is reinforced with myths like "a people without a land, a land without a people." And while this myth was designed to soothe the conscience of well-intentioned Zionists, it has morphed into the more nefarious "there are no Palestinians."
This "hole" requires ignoring the reality of ghettos and open-air prisons that followed for those it displaced. It compounds such sin by engaging in further displacement by building more and more settlements.
But when decades of frustration boil over into rage, the Zionist ideology's blindness to such displacement ("hole") conveniently allows them to play the victim.
This is not to excuse the violence, but to point out the "hole" in its ideology that hinders peace.
In order to find a solution, one must properly identify the causes of the conflict. We will not acheive peace by ignoring (or belittling) the legitimate grievances of the dispossesed with "ideological holes."
Secondly, Palestinians have the right under the Geneva Conventions to resist the occupation. Shooting of rockets towards random civilian targets is wrong, but attacks on the IDF and adult settlers who are armed and dangerous is not terrorism and is lawful resistance to the occupation whether one believes violence will be successful or not.
I empathize with all victims of violence but there is no question that Palestinians and Lebanese have suffered the worst.
The prohibition ‘Thou Shalt Not Murder’ applies only “to a Jew who kills a Jew,” write Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur of the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar and who wrote The King’s Torah. Non-Jews are “uncompassionate by nature” and attacks on them “curb their evil inclination,” while babies and children of Israel’s enemies may be killed since “it is clear that they will grow to harm us.”
I can. Because that "suffering" was caused by the Palestinians' own actions.