“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
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“When in the course of human events…”
[ Editor’s note: We have certainly been expecting an article from Uri on the Swedish and British Palestinian votes, and he did not disappoint us.
As a lifelong member of the minority peace movement in Israel, he knows what it is like to always lose elections. But he also knows what it is like to never lose one’s voice.
As he points out below, as a veteran Israeli soldier, that compulsory military service for young men and women has succeeded in “militarizing the perspective” of most Israelis with regard to their outlook on key issues. The earlier Zionists were no dummies when it came to herding their flock.
Crimes against humanity by their country and the IDF are harder for Zionists to condemn if they are alumni of the organization. There is also the problem of critics ending up on a blacklist to effectively remove the privileges in Israeli society for being a veteran.
Uri has confirmed what we all know here, that the worm is beginning to turn regarding the free pass the Zios have had in the treatment of the Palestinian hostages and internees. I have a short training course to pull the rug out from under any defensive or moral justification on what the Israelis have done.
I simply ask Zionist supporters — If Jews were being treated the same way anywhere in the world, and with the same “justifications” used by Israelis and their supporters, would the world Jewish community respond with, “Oh yes… since Jews did it to others, they have the right to do it to Jews using the same reasons.”
I can guarantee you that no one has ever put it to them like that, and they are quite shocked. And while they are thinking for some kind of comeback — they have no canned answer for this — I hit them with the closer.
The settlers… teaching kids how to do it
“Do you think — using the WWII holocaust reparations precedent — that all Jews should have to pay reparations to the victims of Jews, at least for as long a period as Jews have occupied Palestine?”
The look on their faces is priceless — and to date I have not had one person email or speak to me again.
The red line that Uri did not touch in his thoughtful article below is how so many Israelis enjoyed what can only be described as a climactic pleasure watching Gazans, including women and children, being blown to bits.
Of the negative photo images mentioned, Uri left out any mention of the drive-in-movie crowd of Zios on the hills watching the bombings-at-dusk Matinee Feature while sipping wine and enjoying popcorn.
And yes, they WERE representative of a huge segment of Israelis. If all the settlers could have used the Star Trek transporter to instantly move themselves there, then the “Coliseum audience” would have been 500,000-strong of arm-chair terrorists… Jim W. Dean ]
If the British parliament had adopted a resolution in favor of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the reaction of our media would have been like this:
“In an atmosphere of great enthusiasm, the British parliament adopted with a huge majority (274 for, a mere 12 against) a pro-Israeli motion…Over half the seats were occupied, more than usual…the opponents of Israel were in hiding and did not dare to vote against…”
Unfortunately, the British parliament voted this week on a pro-Palestinian resolution, and our media reacted almost unanimously like this:
“The hall was half empty…there was no enthusiasm…a meaningless exercise… Only 274 Members voted for the resolution, which is not binding… Many Members stayed away altogether…”
Yet all our media reported on the proceedings at length, many related articles appeared in the newspapers. Quite a feat for such a negligible, unimportant, insignificant, inconsequential, trivial, petty act.
A day before, 363 Jewish Israeli citizens called upon the British Parliament to adopt the resolution, which calls for the British government to recognize the State of Palestine. The signatories included a Nobel Prize laureate, several winners of the highest Israeli civilian award, 2 former cabinet ministers and four former members of the Knesset (including myself), diplomats and a general.
The official propaganda machine did not go into action. Knowing that the resolution would be adopted anyhow, it tried to downplay the event as far as possible. The Israeli ambassador in London could not be reached.
Was it a negligible event? In a strictly procedural sense it was. In a broader sense, far from it. For the Israeli leadership, it is the harbinger of very bad news.
The Prime Minister Stefan Lofven announced Sweden would recognize Palestine
A few days before, a similar news item came from Sweden. The newly elected leftist prime minister announced that his government was considering the recognition of the State of Palestine in the near future.
Sweden, like Britain, was always considered a “pro-Israeli” country, loyally voting against “anti-Israel” resolutions in the UN. If such important Western nations are reconsidering their attitudes towards the policy of Israel, what does it mean?
Another unexpected blow came from the South. The Egyptian dictator, Muhammad Abd-al-Fatah al-Sisi, disabused the Israeli leadership of the notion that the “moderate” Arab states would fill the ranks of our allies against the Palestinians.
In a sharp speech, he warned his new-found soul-mate, Binyamin Netanyahu, that the Arab states would not cooperate with Israel before we make peace with a Palestinian state.
Thus he punctured the newly inflated balloon floated by Netanyahu – that pro-American Arab states, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar, would become open allies of Israel.
In South America, public opinion has already shifted markedly against Israel. The recognition of Palestine is gaining ground in official circles, too. Even in the US, unconditional support for the Israeli government seems to be wavering. What the hell is going on?
What is going on is a profound, perhaps tectonic change in the public attitude towards Israel. For years now, Israel has been appearing in world media mainly as a country that occupies the Palestinian lands. Press photos of Israelis almost always show heavily-armed and armored soldiers confronting protesting Palestinians, often children. Few of these pictures have had an immediate dramatic impact, but the cumulative, incremental effect should not have been underestimated.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has warned there will be “harsh and grave consequences” if the Palestinians persist with their plan to seek UN membership as a state.
A truly alert diplomatic service would have alerted its government long ago. But our foreign service is thoroughly demoralized. Headed by Avigdor Lieberman, a brutal heavyweight bully considered by many of his colleagues around the world as a semi-fascist, the diplomatic corps is terrorized. They prefer to keep quiet.
This ongoing process reached a higher pitch with the recent Gaza war. It was not basically different from the two Gaza wars that preceded it not so long ago, but for some unfathomable reason, it had a much stronger impact.
For a month and a half, day after day, people around the world were bombarded with pictures of killed human beings, maimed children, crying mothers, destroyed apartment buildings, damaged hospitals and schools, masses of homeless refugees. Thanks to Iron Dome, no destroyed Israeli buildings could be seen, nor hardly any dead Israeli civilians.
An ordinary decent person, whether in Stockholm or Seattle or Singapore, cannot be exposed to such a steady stream of horrible images without being affected – first unconsciously, then consciously. The picture of “The Israeli” in the mind’s eye changes slowly, almost imperceptibly. The brave pioneer standing up to the savages around him mutates into an ugly bully terrorizing a helpless population.
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Zionist cultural Supremacy
IDF sniper
Why do Israelisnot realize this? “Because We Are Always Right.”
It has often been said before: the main danger of propaganda, any propaganda, is that its first victim is the propagandist himself. It convinces him, rather than his audience. If you twist a fact and repeat it a hundred times, you are bound to believe it.
Take the assertion that we were compelled to bomb UN installations in the Gaza Strip because Hamas was using them to launch rockets at our towns and villages.
Kindergartens, schools, hospitals and mosques were targeted by our artillery, planes, drones and warships. 99% of Israelis believe that this was necessary. They were shocked when the UN General Secretary, Ban Ki-moon, who visited Gaza this week, claimed that this was totally inadmissible.
Doesn’t the General Secretary know that ours is the “Most Moral Army in the World”?
Another assertion is that these buildings were used by Hamas to hide their arms. A person of my age reminded us this week in Haaretz that we did exactly the same during our fight against the British government of Palestine and Arab attackers — our arms were hidden in kindergartens, schools, hospitals and synagogues. In many places, there are now proud memorial plaques as a reminder.
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Soldiering is just a profession like any other
In secret combinations, US Zionists partnered with Israel to foment the conflict in Palestine
In the eyes ofthe average Israeli, the extensive killing and destruction during the recent campaign was completely justified.
He is quite incapable of understanding the world-wide outrage. For lack of another reason, he attributes it to anti-Semitism.
After one of the Lebanon wars (I forget which) I received an unusual message: an army general invited me to give a lecture to his assembled officer corps about the impact of the war on the world media. (He probably wanted to impress his officers with his enlightened attitude.)
I told the officers that the modern battlefield has changed, that modern wars are fought in the full glare of the world media, that today’s soldiers have to take this into account while planning and fighting.
They listened respectfully and asked relevant questions, but I wondered if they were really absorbing the lesson.
Soldiering is a profession like any other. Any professional person, be he (or she) a lawyer or a street-cleaner, adopts a set of attitudes suitable to it. A general thinks in real terms: how many troops for the job, how many cannon. What is necessary to break the enemy’s resistance? How to reduce his own casualties?
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What will break the Enemy’s resistance?
What exactly was the lesson the Israeli Generals taught this little girl?
The General does not think about photos in the New York Times. In the Gaza campaign, children were not killed nor houses destroyed arbitrarily. Everything had a military reason.
People had to be killed in order to reduce the risk to the lives of our soldiers. (“Better a hundred Palestinians killed than one Israeli soldier.”)
People had to be terrorized to make them turn against Hamas. Neighborhoods had to be destroyed to allow our troops to advance, and also to teach the population a lesson they will remember for years, …thus postponing the next war.
All this makes military sense to a general. He is fighting a war, for God’s sake, and cannot be bothered with non-military considerations. Such as the impact on world public opinion. And anyway, after the Holocaust… What the general thinks, Israel thinks.
Israel is not a military dictatorship. General al-Sisi may be Netanyahu’s best friend, but Netanyahu is not a general. Israel likes doing business, especially arms business, with military dictators all around the world, but in Israel itself, the military obeys the elected civilian government. True, but…
The State of Israel was born in the middle of a hard-fought war, the outcome of which was by no means assured at that moment. The army was then, and is now, the center of Israel’s national life. It may be said that the army is the only truly unifying element in Israeli society.
It is where males and females, Ashkenazi and Oriental, secular and religious — except the orthodox — wealthy and poor, old-timer and new immigrant meet and are indoctrinated in the same spirit.
Most Jewish Israelis are former soldiers. Most officers, who leave the army in their mid-40s, spread out in the administrative, economic, political and academic elite. The result is that the military mindset is dominant in Israel.
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In-your-face Chutzpah
This being so, Israelis are quite unable to comprehend the turn of world public opinion. What do they want from us, these Swedes and Britons and Japanese? Do they believe that we enjoy killing children, destroying homes?
Do Zionists “enjoy the killing and maiming”? …Who will frown upon this individual’s hate speech? …Are chosen-ists too self-involved to care?
As Golda Meir memorably once declared: “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children, but we shall never forgive them for compelling us to kill their children!”
The founders of Israel were very conscious of world public opinion. True, David Ben-Gurion once declared that “it is not important what the goyim are saying, what is important is what the Jews are doing!”
But, in real life, Ben-Gurion was very conscious of the need to win over world opinion. So was his adversary — the right-wing Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky — who once told Menachem Begin that if he despairs of the conscience of the world, he should “jump into the Vistula”.
World public opinion is important. More than that, it is vital. The British Parliament’s resolution may be non-binding, but it expresses public opinion, which will sooner or later decide government action on arms sales, Security Council resolutions, European Union decisions and what not.
Jim W. Dean was an active editor on VT from 2010-2022. He was involved in operations, development, and writing, plus an active schedule of TV and radio interviews.
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