The War for Israel`s Soul

September 29, 2008 – By: Weiss, Philip

Further evidence of the war within Israeli society: The tragedy of the occupation has brought about  “an unprecedented number of young people who are choosing to go to jail rather than serve in the Israeli army,“

says a Refuser Solidarity group. And the government of Israel is trying to shut down New Profile, a leftwing feminist group that supports these young “shirkers,” New Profile reports. The group describes the spiritual despair that the occupation, and the Nakba before that, has caused inside Israel.

And mentions soldier suicides as the leading cause of death:

• Four generations and over six decades of repeated, unending “military solutions” have engendered an expanding movement of young people who experience and express excruciating inner struggles and rifts in face of the legal duty to serve. …
• For some young people, [these crises] involve highly dangerous levels of personal distress and indeed, in recent years, suicide has claimed the lives of more Israeli soldiers than all other causes-of-death combined.
• Rather than listening to the voice raised by these future citizens, rather than fathoming the social change it reflects and responding with changed, innovative policies, Israel ’s state institutions have chosen to wage a “war” against these youths and the developments they represent.

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Wake Up! (Leftwing Israeli Injured by Pipe-Bomb Warns of ‘Disintegration of Democracy’)

A truly disturbing and shocking story from Israel of an attack on leftwing prof/columnist Ze’ev Sternhell (lately quoted by Eric Alterman in the Nation). He walked out of his door in Jerusalem at midnight and a pipe bomb went off. Police suspect Jewish extremists connected to settlers. Sternhell from his hospital bed:

“the very occurrence of the incident goes to illustrate the fragility of Israeli democracy, and the urgent need to defend it with determination and resolve.”

For me, so far away, this is a story about Reality and Denial. What is the crisis in Israel’s soul brought on by occupation and apartheid? Who in the States is talking plainly about this new reality (besides Lustick, Alterman, Mearsheimer)? What can progressives and lovers of human rights do to change that society? How long will the Israel lobby deny it? Where is Bernard-Henri Levy with his sable tresses?

Says my tipster:

“The sad truth is, the situation in Israel only gets worse with time. This is a country in real trouble. And the American Jewish community, at least the part that cares the most about Israel, will respond by sticking its collective head deeper and deeper into the sand. How could such a smart and accomplished people be so foolish!”

The NYT has a great piece of reporting by Isabel Kershner on radicalised settlers and the war they promise inside Israeli society over withdrawal from the West Bank. The piece begins with the Sternhell pipe bomb attack in Jerusalem. Kershner’s fundamentalist Jews are nuts; and Israeli government is, as always, stymied and does nothing:

• In Jewish settlements like Yitzhar, an extremist bastion on the hilltops commanding the Palestinian city of Nablus in the northern West Bank, a local war is already being waged…
• [At Annapolis] the Israelis agreed to freeze all settlement activity and immediately remove settlement outposts erected since March 2001.

In practice, only a handful of the 100 or so outposts, at least half of which were erected since 2001, have been removed, and construction in the official West Bank settlements goes on.

Philip Weiss lives in New York and is an investigative journalist who has been a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, Jewish World Review, The New York Observer and other mainstream publications as well as being as being a contributing editor to Esquire and Harper’s Magazine. Weiss is the author of the 2004 book “American Taboo: A Murder In The Peace Corps.” He is now working on a book about Jewish issues. He writes a blog for the New York Observer, Mondoweiss.

Filed under Israeli politics, Opinion Editorials, Israeli Palestinian relations, Settlements, Palestinian society, Zionism – on

conscientious objectors, military IDF, Nakba, suicide, Israeli lobby,

Refuser Solidarity group

New Profile, a leftwing feminist group that supports these young “shirkers,”