I'm attemptig to be balanced on this subject so this article is somewhat
more optimistic and more pro Israel than what I usually read. But I have to
say that I tried listening to the CAP interview with Netenyahu and I had to
stop before I was halfway through because I couldn't bear listening to his
lies and obfiscations, and the questions were so very polite and gentle. But
of course CAP is a Clinton supporter and Clinton is getting money from a
billionaire Israeli supporter.
Miriam
The Disconnect Between Benjamin Netanyahu and Reality
Friday, 13 November 2015 00:00 By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
The Israeli journalist and TV producer Avi Issacharoff looked around our Tel
Aviv meeting room and sighed. "The reality is so complex to understand, it's
so difficult, that for someone who comes from abroad, it's Mission
Impossible," he said.
I was someone from abroad, he was describing his homeland, and although it
was my second time in this country, I already was wrestling once again with
its impossibilities.
"Even for journalists coming from abroad who are staying here in Israel,
living here," Issacharoff continued, "it takes years and years in order to
get what is going on around here.
To see more stories like this, visit Moyers & Company at Truthout.
"You need to show the complexity of the conflict. There are no blacks and
whites here. Only different shades of gray." He joked ruefully, "Maybe even
more than fifty."
Our trip to Israel and Jordan had been in the works for a year. For the
first week, I was going for a meeting of the International Affiliation of
Writers Guilds, hosted by the Scriptwriters Guild of Israel. Who knew back
when we planned it that we'd arrive in the middle of an escalation of
violent confrontations between Palestinians and Israelis that many feared
would turn into a third intifada?
As we flew into Tel Aviv last month, this new Palestinian uprising against
Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza had been in full swing for
more than a week, but unlike past revolts, primarily this was a series of
random stabbings by frustrated, angry Palestinian youth, mostly young men
but some women, too, urged on in part by social media. Many of these turned
into suicide missions as the assailants were gunned down within moments by
authorities or in some cases, civilians.
(In one tragic case, an innocent Eritrean refugee was shot by a private
security guard when he was mistaken as an accomplice to a Bedouin Arab who
had opened fire in a Beersheba bus station, killing an Israeli soldier and
wounding several other bystanders. While a few tried to protect him, the
refugee was kicked and beaten by an angry mob and died the next day.)
There have been other incidents, too: shootings on buses and trains, cars
ramming into pedestrians, stone throwing and daily demonstrations that were
met with massive displays of force by police and military using concrete
road barriers, rubber bullets (or worse), tear gas, and the spraying of an
especially putrid substance called "skunk water."
At this writing, according to Reuters, "Seventy-six Palestinians have been
shot dead by Israeli security forces, including 44 people Israeli police
said were carrying out or about to carry out attacks." Twelve Israelis have
been stabbed, shot or "killed in vehicle attacks."
In Tel Aviv, much of the time this seemed a world away. Here were bright,
hot sunny days overlooking the blue Mediterranean with luxury yachts in the
distance and windsurfers scudding near the shore. Sure, at the big, downtown
shopping mall, security guards lightly wanded us with handheld metal
detectors and made bad jokes about detonators and bombs in my girlfriend
Pat's small backpack. But if it wasn't for CNN and newspaper reports you'd
hardly know that just a few miles away, Palestinians and Israelis were dying
in the streets.
Unlike my first trip to Israel eleven years and a half years ago, when I
stayed for two weeks in East Jerusalem and the West Bank without incident
and in the company of some extraordinary activists, this time, friends and
colleagues warned us to cancel planned trips to Jerusalem and Bethlehem. One
mourned, "I feel as if I'm in ancient Greece sliding into the Dark Ages."
And when I phoned a prominent Israeli writer and peace advocate to ask for
an interview he graciously but firmly declined. "I've been shouting about
this for thirty years," he said, "and nothing ever changes."
Ostensibly, the immediate alleged cause for this latest strife is in
Jerusalem's Old City - the site Muslims call the Al-Aqsa mosque or the Noble
Sanctuary and Jews call the Temple Mount. Since the late 12th century, all
have been allowed to enter this place that is holy to both religions but
only Muslims may pray there. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has
pledged to maintain this so-called status quo, but the Waqf, the Islamic
trust that administers the mosque believes, Reuters reports, "Israel has
been slowly chipping away at the rules, with increasing numbers of religious
Jews visiting the area and many of them surreptitiously praying.
"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected those suggestions,
saying repeatedly that the government has not changed the rules and has no
intention of doing so."
But of course, Netanyahu is part of a bigger problem, ginning up fear and
paranoia among the Israeli population to solidify his support, much as he
did this past March during the nation's elections. He insisted that not only
did Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refuse to be a partner in
peace but that he was a "steady inciter" of the stabbings and other
violence: "He and his Fatah partners and the official websites of the PA
incite day in and day out on social networks." This despite reports that the
military and Israel's domestic intelligence service, Shin Bet, believed that
while some in the PA were stirring up trouble, Abbas was doing what he could
to quell the bloodshed.
One night on CNN, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said to an interviewer
that he had told the Israeli government two months ago that "a sea of blood
is coming. Please, let's work together," but that Netanyahu was dictating,
not negotiating: "He has been killing hope."
Shortly after, Netanyahu ratcheted up the rhetoric even further, claiming
that in 1941 it was then-Palestinian leader Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand
mufti of Jerusalem, who had persuaded Hitler to ignite the Holocaust,
annihilating Europe's Jews rather than deport them. Historians quickly
discredited the claim.
Because it works so well for him, this disconnect between Netanyahu and
reality is commonplace, as are the retractions that often follow once the
damage is done (Within days, Netanyahu had backed off his mufti assertions).
For example, although it was not widely mentioned in American mainstream
media (except for short pieces in The Washington Post and USA Today), while
we were in Israel the progressive newspaper Ha'aretz reported that the
country's Atomic Energy Commission had come out in support of the Iran
nuclear deal. Netanyahu's government, so fiercely opposed to the agreement,
had no comment.
Further, as JJ Goldberg recently wrote in the American Jewish newspaper the
Forward, ".Voices have been raised in a most unlikely corner to insist that
Palestinian hostility to Israel - including Palestinian terrorist violence -
is at least partly a response to Israeli actions and policies, and not
simply a deep-seated hatred of Jews. That corner is the Israel Defense
Forces.
". Two active-duty IDF generals who are among the army's top experts on
Palestinian affairs spoke out publicly to state that Palestinian violence is
driven to a considerable degree by anger at Israeli actions. One of the two
went a step further, warning that only a serious Israeli diplomatic
re-engagement with the Palestinians will help to quell such violence over
the long term."
In February, Israeli television viewers were presented a look at the IDF and
Palestinians they had never seen before. Turned down by commercial
broadcasters, the TV series Fauda (Arabic for "chaos") aired on the Yes
network, a satellite channel, sort of their equivalent of HBO or Showtime.
The aforementioned Avi Issacharoff, co-creator of the series with Lior Raz,
was surprised to find they had a hit on their hands. Warts and all, it tells
the story of an elite, undercover army unit hunting down a Hamas activist,
but from both sides' points of view. Until now, Special Forces in Israel
have been regarded as "our best boys," Issacharoff said. "But sometimes even
our best boys are not very good. It's very sad but it's the reality of the
Middle East - blood and violence over peace." Most Israeli TV viewers, it
seems, could handle the truth.
As if to emphasize Issacharoff's words, at the end of that first week,
before leaving Tel Aviv for Jordan, I sat down with Avihai Stollar, a former
IDF soldier who works with Breaking the Silence, an organization of
ex-military "who had served in the Occupied Territories and now strive to
expose the Israeli public to the day-to-day reality of the occupation." They
collect testimonies from veterans and current IDF members.
"The bottom line of the last month," he said, "is the bottom line of every
circle of violence that we've had here, that Israelis and Palestinians will
physically suffer as long as there is an ongoing reality of occupation.
We're living in this pressure cooker that's constantly cooking, constantly
blowing steam, but most of the time - especially when it's not over-spilling
- we, as Israelis, prefer to turn a blind eye and say that this is
manageable. That's the new discourse is Israel, that we can manage it. We
don't need to solve it as long as we can manage it. And then it spills, and
then it blows up in our faces because you can't contain it and you can't
manage injustice because that's the way it works."
There may be many shades of gray, but the one, big black-and-white reality
is the occupation, the settlements, the infamous security wall. "Obviously,
Israelis have the right to live with physical safety and not be concerned
about being stabbed by a random assailant," Stollar said. "But most of the
time, and for most of us, we do have the safety, we do have the security
while we deny it to the Palestinians, because the daily life of a
Palestinian in the occupied territory, being subjected to an ongoing
military occupation, is not the same. I know that as one of the people who
perpetuated it, and I know it because that's the way it works.
". What gives me hope is that this is completely unsustainable because at
the end of the day Israelis want to sit here in Tel Aviv in cafes, have
their lattes, close their eyes really hard and imagine that they're sitting
in Rome or Paris. I think hedonistic tendencies will end the occupation."
One night in Tel Aviv, we were taken to a club where hedonism bloomed and
the Palestinian-Israeli hip-hop group System Ali performed. The ten members
started playing together in 2006 at a bomb shelter in Jaffa and now rap away
in peaceful coexistence in Hebrew, Arabic, Russian and English.
"Funny this is where you find the one bit of sanity," an Israeli friend
said, and danced away into the darkness.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not
be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
MICHAEL WINSHIP
Michael Winship is an Emmy Award-winning writer, and served as senior writer
of the public television series "Moyers & Company." He is also a senior
writing fellow at the public policy and advocacy group Demos, and the
president of Writers Guild of America, East.
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The Disconnect Between Benjamin Netanyahu and Reality
Friday, 13 November 2015 00:00 By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
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reference not valid.
. The Israeli journalist and TV producer Avi Issacharoff looked around
our Tel Aviv meeting room and sighed. "The reality is so complex to
understand, it's so difficult, that for someone who comes from abroad, it's
Mission Impossible," he said.
. I was someone from abroad, he was describing his homeland, and
although it was my second time in this country, I already was wrestling once
again with its impossibilities.
"Even for journalists coming from abroad who are staying here in Israel,
living here," Issacharoff continued, "it takes years and years in order to
get what is going on around here.
To see more stories like this, visit Moyers & Company at Truthout.
"You need to show the complexity of the conflict. There are no blacks and
whites here. Only different shades of gray." He joked ruefully, "Maybe even
more than fifty."
Our trip to Israel and Jordan had been in the works for a year. For the
first week, I was going for a meeting of the International Affiliation of
Writers Guilds, hosted by the Scriptwriters Guild of Israel. Who knew back
when we planned it that we'd arrive in the middle of an escalation of
violent confrontations between Palestinians and Israelis that many feared
would turn into a third intifada?
As we flew into Tel Aviv last month, this new Palestinian uprising against
Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza had been in full swing for
more than a week, but unlike past revolts, primarily this was a series of
random stabbings by frustrated, angry Palestinian youth, mostly young men
but some women, too, urged on in part by social media. Many of these turned
into suicide missions as the assailants were gunned down within moments by
authorities or in some cases, civilians.
(In one tragic case, an innocent Eritrean refugee was shot by a private
security guard when he was mistaken as an accomplice to a Bedouin Arab who
had opened fire in a Beersheba bus station, killing an Israeli soldier and
wounding several other bystanders. While a few tried to protect him, the
refugee was kicked and beaten by an angry mob and died the next day.)
There have been other incidents, too: shootings on buses and trains, cars
ramming into pedestrians, stone throwing and daily demonstrations that were
met with massive displays of force by police and military using concrete
road barriers, rubber bullets (or worse), tear gas, and the spraying of an
especially putrid substance called "skunk water."
At this writing, according to Reuters, "Seventy-six Palestinians have been
shot dead by Israeli security forces, including 44 people Israeli police
said were carrying out or about to carry out attacks." Twelve Israelis have
been stabbed, shot or "killed in vehicle attacks."
In Tel Aviv, much of the time this seemed a world away. Here were bright,
hot sunny days overlooking the blue Mediterranean with luxury yachts in the
distance and windsurfers scudding near the shore. Sure, at the big, downtown
shopping mall, security guards lightly wanded us with handheld metal
detectors and made bad jokes about detonators and bombs in my girlfriend
Pat's small backpack. But if it wasn't for CNN and newspaper reports you'd
hardly know that just a few miles away, Palestinians and Israelis were dying
in the streets.
Unlike my first trip to Israel eleven years and a half years ago, when I
stayed for two weeks in East Jerusalem and the West Bank without incident
and in the company of some extraordinary activists, this time, friends and
colleagues warned us to cancel planned trips to Jerusalem and Bethlehem. One
mourned, "I feel as if I'm in ancient Greece sliding into the Dark Ages."
And when I phoned a prominent Israeli writer and peace advocate to ask for
an interview he graciously but firmly declined. "I've been shouting about
this for thirty years," he said, "and nothing ever changes."
Ostensibly, the immediate alleged cause for this latest strife is in
Jerusalem's Old City - the site Muslims call the Al-Aqsa mosque or the Noble
Sanctuary and Jews call the Temple Mount. Since the late 12th century, all
have been allowed to enter this place that is holy to both religions but
only Muslims may pray there. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has
pledged to maintain this so-called status quo, but the Waqf, the Islamic
trust that administers the mosque believes, Reuters reports, "Israel has
been slowly chipping away at the rules, with increasing numbers of religious
Jews visiting the area and many of them surreptitiously praying.
"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected those suggestions,
saying repeatedly that the government has not changed the rules and has no
intention of doing so."
But of course, Netanyahu is part of a bigger problem, ginning up fear and
paranoia among the Israeli population to solidify his support, much as he
did this past March during the nation's elections. He insisted that not only
did Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refuse to be a partner in
peace but that he was a "steady inciter" of the stabbings and other
violence: "He and his Fatah partners and the official websites of the PA
incite day in and day out on social networks." This despite reports that the
military and Israel's domestic intelligence service, Shin Bet, believed that
while some in the PA were stirring up trouble, Abbas was doing what he could
to quell the bloodshed.
One night on CNN, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said to an interviewer
that he had told the Israeli government two months ago that "a sea of blood
is coming. Please, let's work together," but that Netanyahu was dictating,
not negotiating: "He has been killing hope."
Shortly after, Netanyahu ratcheted up the rhetoric even further, claiming
that in 1941 it was then-Palestinian leader Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand
mufti of Jerusalem, who had persuaded Hitler to ignite the Holocaust,
annihilating Europe's Jews rather than deport them. Historians quickly
discredited the claim.
Because it works so well for him, this disconnect between Netanyahu and
reality is commonplace, as are the retractions that often follow once the
damage is done (Within days, Netanyahu had backed off his mufti assertions).
For example, although it was not widely mentioned in American mainstream
media (except for short pieces in The Washington Post and USA Today), while
we were in Israel the progressive newspaper Ha'aretz reported that the
country's Atomic Energy Commission had come out in support of the Iran
nuclear deal. Netanyahu's government, so fiercely opposed to the agreement,
had no comment.
Further, as JJ Goldberg recently wrote in the American Jewish newspaper the
Forward, ".Voices have been raised in a most unlikely corner to insist that
Palestinian hostility to Israel - including Palestinian terrorist violence -
is at least partly a response to Israeli actions and policies, and not
simply a deep-seated hatred of Jews. That corner is the Israel Defense
Forces.
". Two active-duty IDF generals who are among the army's top experts on
Palestinian affairs spoke out publicly to state that Palestinian violence is
driven to a considerable degree by anger at Israeli actions. One of the two
went a step further, warning that only a serious Israeli diplomatic
re-engagement with the Palestinians will help to quell such violence over
the long term."
In February, Israeli television viewers were presented a look at the IDF and
Palestinians they had never seen before. Turned down by commercial
broadcasters, the TV series Fauda (Arabic for "chaos") aired on the Yes
network, a satellite channel, sort of their equivalent of HBO or Showtime.
The aforementioned Avi Issacharoff, co-creator of the series with Lior Raz,
was surprised to find they had a hit on their hands. Warts and all, it tells
the story of an elite, undercover army unit hunting down a Hamas activist,
but from both sides' points of view. Until now, Special Forces in Israel
have been regarded as "our best boys," Issacharoff said. "But sometimes even
our best boys are not very good. It's very sad but it's the reality of the
Middle East - blood and violence over peace." Most Israeli TV viewers, it
seems, could handle the truth.
As if to emphasize Issacharoff's words, at the end of that first week,
before leaving Tel Aviv for Jordan, I sat down with Avihai Stollar, a former
IDF soldier who works with Breaking the Silence, an organization of
ex-military "who had served in the Occupied Territories and now strive to
expose the Israeli public to the day-to-day reality of the occupation." They
collect testimonies from veterans and current IDF members.
"The bottom line of the last month," he said, "is the bottom line of every
circle of violence that we've had here, that Israelis and Palestinians will
physically suffer as long as there is an ongoing reality of occupation.
We're living in this pressure cooker that's constantly cooking, constantly
blowing steam, but most of the time - especially when it's not over-spilling
- we, as Israelis, prefer to turn a blind eye and say that this is
manageable. That's the new discourse is Israel, that we can manage it. We
don't need to solve it as long as we can manage it. And then it spills, and
then it blows up in our faces because you can't contain it and you can't
manage injustice because that's the way it works."
There may be many shades of gray, but the one, big black-and-white reality
is the occupation, the settlements, the infamous security wall. "Obviously,
Israelis have the right to live with physical safety and not be concerned
about being stabbed by a random assailant," Stollar said. "But most of the
time, and for most of us, we do have the safety, we do have the security
while we deny it to the Palestinians, because the daily life of a
Palestinian in the occupied territory, being subjected to an ongoing
military occupation, is not the same. I know that as one of the people who
perpetuated it, and I know it because that's the way it works.
". What gives me hope is that this is completely unsustainable because at
the end of the day Israelis want to sit here in Tel Aviv in cafes, have
their lattes, close their eyes really hard and imagine that they're sitting
in Rome or Paris. I think hedonistic tendencies will end the occupation."
One night in Tel Aviv, we were taken to a club where hedonism bloomed and
the Palestinian-Israeli hip-hop group System Ali performed. The ten members
started playing together in 2006 at a bomb shelter in Jaffa and now rap away
in peaceful coexistence in Hebrew, Arabic, Russian and English.
"Funny this is where you find the one bit of sanity," an Israeli friend
said, and danced away into the darkness.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not
be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Michael Winship
Michael Winship is an Emmy Award-winning writer, and served as senior writer
of the public television series "Moyers & Company." He is also a senior
writing fellow at the public policy and advocacy group Demos, and the
president of Writers Guild of America, East.
Related Stories
Netanyahu's War: What Is It Good For?
By Robert Naiman, Truthout | Op-EdNetanyahu at Congress: Not the Only
Israeli Imposition on US Politics
By David Palumbo-Liu, Truthout | Op-Ed
Show Comments
