Posted By Matthew Berkman
Friday, April 1, 2011 - 2:32 PM
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This week, in response to the highly publicized murder of a Jewish family in the West Bank settlement of Itamar, a group of 27 U.S. senators signed a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging her to press Palestinian leaders to end "incitement directed against Jews and Israel within the Palestinian media, mosques, and schools." According to the letter, the grisly killings in Itamar (for which no suspects, Palestinian or otherwise, have been identified), "is a sobering reminder that words matter, and that Palestinian incitement against Jews and Israel can lead to violence and terror."
As evidence for the allegation of pervasive anti-Jewish incitement in Palestinian society, the letter cites a recent, official ceremony honoring Delal Mughrabi, a perpetrator of the 1978 coastal road massacre in Israel, as well as a payment of financial compensation made by the Palestinian Authority to the family of a deceased terror suspect.
Such actions are deserving of condemnation. But if it is indeed the case that "words matter" -and if the elimination of violent and dehumanizing rhetoric is, as the letter says, "critical to establishing the conditions [for] a secure and lasting peace"-then what can explain the senators' silence on the veritable carnival of hate and racist incitement against Arabs and Palestinians that has lately engulfed Israeli society?
Anyone who reads Israel's press these days will find it difficult to do so without chancing upon yet another outrageous example of such incitement. Be it the declaration of Rabbi Dov Lior, a senior authority on Jewish law in the Religious Zionism movement, that the offspring of non-Jews possess "genetic traits" of "cruelty and barbarism"; or an open letter signed by dozens of Israel's municipal chief rabbis calling on Jews "to refrain from renting or selling apartments to non-Jews"; or the wives of those state-sponsored rabbis urging Jewish girls not to date, work with, or perform national service in the company of Arabs; or even news of the publication of "The King's Torah," a theological text widely endorsed by settler rabbis that authorizes the killing of non-Jewish children and babies, since "it is clear that they will grow to harm us."
Could it be that the senators who so rightfully condemn the glorification of violence when it issues from an obscure Palestinian official are simply unaware of the multiple proclamations of such a prominent figure as Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of the Shas party (a member of Prime Minister Netanyahu's governing coalition) and a former Chief Rabbi of Israel's Sephardi Jewish community? "It is forbidden to be merciful to [Arabs]," Yosef was quoted as saying in 2001, "You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable." More recently, Yosef sermonized that "Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] and all these evil people should perish from this world." "God should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians," he said.
The poisonous effects of these statements are no less publicly available than the statements themselves, and of equal concern to anyone seeking "to establish the conditions for a secure and lasting peace." Polling has routinely documented the explosion of anti-democratic and militaristic sentiment in Israel, particularly among the youth population. In a Tel Aviv University poll released last year, 49.5 percent of Israeli high school students responded in the negative when asked whether "Arab citizens should be granted rights equal to that of Jews," while a majority of 56 percent said that Israel's Arab citizens should be ineligible to serve in the country's parliament. "While an overwhelming majority (91 percent) expressed a desire to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces," reported Haaretz, "48 percent said they would not obey an order to evacuate outposts and settlements in the West Bank." As recently as this week, a new poll was released attesting to the diminished importance of "democracy" among Israeli teens (only 14 percent of whom consider it a national priority), as well as unprecedented levels of reverence for Israel's military and a marked desire for "strong leadership" at the expense of minority rights.
Not surprisingly, this rising tide of racism in Israeli society has translated into both discriminatory legislation directed against Israel's Arab citizens and into violent hate crimes which, while not as gruesome as the massacre in Itamar, are more pervasive, bordering on quotidian.
As the New York Times reported last week, a law passed by Israel's Knesset on March 23 allows "that communities with 400 or fewer families [in the Negev and Galilee, areas with large Arab populations] may set up committees to screen potential residents for whether they fit in socially" - a statute intended to legitimize the barring of Israeli Arabs from Jewish villages. Yet another law, passed during the same legislative session, imposes financial penalties on state-subsidized organizations that would publicly mourn the losses incurred by Palestinians during Israel's 1948 war of independence. This flurry of anti-democratic legislation follows the successful attempt last year by Israel's foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman (who supports a form of ethnic population transfer), to establish a "loyalty oath" requiring non-Jews seeking Israeli citizenship to pledge allegiance to the "Jewishness" of the state.
Such legislation promotes the sense among Jewish Israelis that Arab citizens of Israel present a threat to the body politic, and to the physical security of Jews. It is therefore no coincidence that Israel has recently witnessed a spate of violent attacks on its Arab population. According to the Israeli news website Ynet, a gang of seven Israeli youth, including a fourteen-year old girl, were arrested in December for reportedly "luring" young Arab men to Jerusalem's Independence Park, where the Arabs were "brutally attacked by the teens with stones, glass bottles and tear gas." Earlier this week, four Palestinian laborers were assaulted in the middle of the night by police after being falsely accused of raping an 11-year-old boy (the boy later admitted he had fabricated the story). "The police treated us like dogs, not like human beings," one of the Palestinians told Israeli Army Radio in an interview on Thursday.
But it should be made clear that the routine acts of violence against Arabs within Israel - and even the daily pogroms, or "price-tag" attacks, inflicted on West Bank Palestinians by rogue settler bands - are only the tip of the iceberg. The whole wide-ranging system of occupation in the West Bank, and the hardhearted policies that promote the economic asphyxiation of the entire civilian population in Gaza - themselves the most deadly form of "incitement" - are underwritten on the ethical and cultural plain by the growing disdain and racial animus against Arabs in Israeli society. On Thursday, Ynet reported that when "Asked how they feel when they think of Arabs, 25% [of Israelis polled] responded with ‘hate' and 12% responded with ‘fear.'" Is it any surprise, then, that Israelis have grown increasingly tolerant and supportive of government policies that undermine not only the prospect of peace and coexistence with their neighbors, but also their country's own, much vaunted democratic character?
The senators are correct to inveigh against Palestinian incitement. But doing so in the conspicuous absence of any assessment of Israel's own rampant and destructive incitement speaks to an agenda driven less by a genuine concern for the physical and moral well-being of Israelis and Palestinians than by domestic politics. Leadership - and peace - demands more than that.
Matt Berkman is a Research Associate at the U.S./Middle East Project, a policy institute in New York City.
AFP/Getty images
EXPLORE:MIDDLE EAST, ARAB WORLD, MIDDLE EAST, NORTH AMERICA, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, ISRAEL/PALESTINE, U.S. CONGRESS, U.S. FOREIGN POLICY 
Serious double standard. Pathetic and telling
The brutal murders of the five members of the Fogel family was horrendous. Even though the Fogel family were illegal Israeli settlers . And there is no excuse for these same Senators not to write one of these letters every time innocent Palestinians are brutally murdered by Israeli forces.
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/children.html
It is deeply disappointing that Senator Sherrod Brown (I live in Ohio) signed this letter and never ever pushed for the Goldstone Report to be honestly reviewed and debated by the Senate. You can be sure some of us will be contacting him. What a serious double standard
The brutal murders of the five members of the Fogel family
RE: "The brutal murders of the five members of the Fogel family was horrendous." - LEEN
ALSO SEE – Sources: Thai workers questioned in Itamar, Ma’an News Agency, 03/16/11
[excerpt] NABLUS (Ma’an) — Israeli forces on Monday afternoon summoned all Thai workers employed in the Itamar settlement, the site of the murder of five members of the Fogel family, and held them for questioning, Ma’an has learned.
Sources close to some of the laborers said that all of the workers had been gathered and taken for questioning in relation to the stabbing deaths of a settler family on Friday night.
Though Palestinians have been forbidden from working in the settlements of the northern West Bank, foreign workers, mostly from Thailand and the Philippines, have been contracted for labor in the area.
It was unclear if Israeli investigators were widening their investigation to include the possibility that a foreign worker was involved in the attack, which has been blamed in the Israeli media on Palestinians.
Israeli officials have refused to comment on the issue. Israel’s national police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Ma’an that a gag order has been imposed on information connected to the investigation…
RE: "what can explain the senators' silence...
...on the veritable carnival of hate and racist incitement against Arabs and Palestinians that has lately engulfed Israeli society?" - Berkman
'OLDE SNARKY' SEZ:
Gimme an 'A'!
Gimme an 'I'!
Gimme a 'P'!
Gimme another 'A'!
Finally, gimme a 'C'!
Now, what have ya got? AIPAC!!! (And racism, ignorance, indifference, the poor state of international news coverage in the US, etc.)
These are of coures press reports that we know about. We don't know about the dozens of Hebrew Facebook groups titled "Death to Arabs", and the fact that 46% of Israeli yougnsters actually support the price tag attacks (recent poll) . We never went to a match of an Israeli football club called Beitar Euroshalaym, where "death to Arabs" chants are part and parcel of their support for their team.
In Israel, they say that it might lose its soul because of the occupation and hatred. But in reality, Israel has lost its soul long time ago and actually, it's now started to eat itself.
As for the US lawmakers, well, it's obvious that Netanyahu and AIPAC wanted to milk as much as they could from the Itamar incident and their blind support for Lilkud policies is not new. Former Israeli PM Sharon once said, if you want to help Israel, don't donate for us, donate for AIPAC,
But mind you, incitement among pro-Israel jews in America is immense, and far more dangerous. Just look at the comment section below any article in Israeli Ynet News website. You'll see wonders.
We're still waiting for lifting the strange Israeli gag order on the Itamar investigation to know who actually did that murder.
Everyone I know is fed up with Israel
Everyone I know is fed up with Israel, and by extension, all the right-wing extremists (jewish and non-Jewish) here in the US who support that fascist country.
Pro-Israel American Jews are mean and vindictive in the service of their claimed victimhood. The Israelis even worse.
The flip side Midtown88, and with all respect to everyone you know, is simply Little Satan is the only nation state in the area Americans can sympathize with - sharing the same fun and free choice values Great Satan has.
A tiny tiny tolerant egalitarian society surrounded by rocket rich rejectionists who, for whatever reasons, appear intolerant, murderously revanchist and somewhat unhinged is always going to score high with Americans - and not because of the PBUH guy, the Bible or Hillbilly Xians.
Little Satan is right smack in the middle of the Arab world - and by every measure of economic, political, social, and cultural - a success thriving amid misery. Without oil, without a large population, without friendly homies on her borders, without vast real estate, and without the Suez Canal, she somehow provides her citizenry with a way of life far more humane than what is found in Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, or Egypt.
When the Arab lobby starts buying senators, we'll have some critique of Israeli incitement.
Write these Senators who signed the letter. Let them know plenty of people object to this double standard. Ask them no demand that they hold hearings on the Goldstone Report on the UN report about Israeli soldiers murdering human rights activist on the Mavi Marmara. Ask them whey they did not write a letter like this when 1400 Palestinians were murdered by Israeli forces in the Gaza.
Where was their letter about those killings?
Ramblings on the Goldstone Report
All of you talking about Israeli incitement are forgetting a fundamental issue. Palestinian incitement is at the official level where a condemnation of the Itamar killings had to be dragged out of Abu Mazen, it felt like it hurt him to say so.
No one would argue that the Israeli settler movement and many Israeli youth dislike Arabs, but that is not the official line of the Israeli education system. I am unsure if the same can be said about the Palestinian system.
Oh, and the Goldstone report, you should probably read this Op-Ed by Goldstone where he pretty much says that the only fault of Israel is their lack of cooperation in his biased report, as for Hamas- war criminals. Enjoy.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/reconsidering-the-goldstone-report-on-israel-and-war-crimes/2011/04/01/AFg111JC_story.html
The Jew's problems and the Jewish problem has gone on now for centuries and centuries.
The Israel problem has gone on for 6 decades.
From Europeans as existential enemies to now Palestines and Arabs as existential enemies.
When and how do the Jew's 'problems' and the 'Jewish problem' ever end?
What will it take.
Mr. Berkman,
You display a massive lack of intimate knowledge/ignorance on this subject.
Incitement in Israel against Arabs exist. As you yourself mentioned, this on the most part takes place within the extreme religious sector of Israeli society. What you so conspicuously fail to mention is that there is rampant opposition within Israeli society to these racist attitudes, coming not only from mainstream society, but also from religious authorities themselves. You so visibly fail to mention that after a slight uproar, those same Israeli Rabbis re-drafted the letters, leaving the 'arabs' out and replacing it with the term 'hostile elements.' These are small yet significant differences. When is the last time there was any internal opposition to incitement from within the Palestinian community? Learn to make a distinction, Mr. Berkman.
Furthermore, you claim that it is not what results from the incitement, but the incitement itself, that matters. I find that a sad way to live. If Incitement brings about the cold-blooded murder of babies, horrendous civilian-targeting suicide bombings, and indiscriminate missile firing, then it is surely worse than incitement that brings about housing discrimination and loyalty oaths. Am I wrong, Mr. Berkman? Can you not make a distinction?
Please refrain from spewing illogical, poorly researched material into the glorious website we call foreign policy.
Matt, a very distasteful comparison with a little white lies
and twisting some facts, but hey all the Israel bashing crowd is happy to jump on the wagon yet not a good case for your claim.
You make it seem as if the Israeli media is inciting, you must point out that the Israeli media is the one that is critical of these examples you give about the rabbis. Their ideas are not close to 99. something% of the population and most are against it.
You make it seem like there is no democracy, because a lot of kids said they would not evacuate settlements, let me remind you that in 2005 the army did its job evacuating settlements in gaza, and there are often clashes between soldiers and police who come to destroy illegal outposts going om these days, which get ruined.
Those polls are worth you know what. If the polls were telling the truth we would never need to have elections just polls, the facts are that the Israeli arab citizens are treated with respect and get their rights as every citizen, they could be treated better but we have a difficult situation.
You give example of a few loonies and you try to make a case for Israeli kids hate and incitement. all examples you brought are marginal in the society, you had to work hard to find them too .
Can you tell me how many palestinians died because of Israeli Incitement? can you tell me how come most Israelis are willing to make peace?
Now on to our palestinian friends, how can you compare the Israeli "incitment" to the palestinian Institutionalized incitement that has been going on for years, in the school system, in the media and government institutions.
when a terrorist is released from prison he gets a government job, when he is in there he gets a monthly check, the terrorist who kills civilians is praised in society , his pictures all over town, the school books are filled with hate, yes for the little ones too.
The Israeli government has cut off the funds to the rabbis school which wrote that book and he is being investigated, show me one example of an official government figure that has incited to kill like the palestinians are doing.
The comparison is fundamentally wrong , the palestinians are raising a generation of hate and are ruining the chances for peace and this is in the moderate peaceful PA, yet you focus on a few lousy statements and polls that no one in Israel takes seriously and try to present them as a reflection of the society shame on you,
Why "anti-Israel crowd" You call yourselves pro-Israel, why not call them "pro-Palestinian" ?
Logic will definitely sway reasonable people.
Here's the straight up logic: Israelis incite against Palestinians just as much as Palestinians incite against Israelis. Not a big surprise, but it would be if you only paid attention to congressional resolutions and votes.
ALERT, ALERT: The American congress is for sale, just like all politicians around the world. Pro-Israel interests have learned this well....the rich gulf countries either don't care or haven't picked up on it yet.
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