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Amos Oz

[ 33 ] January 12, 2013 |

I’m glad someone in Israel is still willing to speak the truth about where the policies of the Netanyahu government is taking the country–down the road to apartheid.

Also, Oz’s cat is super cute.

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  • TT

    Shorter Elliott Abrams: “Oz’s views are out of the mainstream. Plus, his frequent criticism of Netnayahu has a strong whiff of anti-Semitism to it.”

  • Green Caboose

    What do you mean “down the road to apartheid”? I’m sure you could nit pick details but it’s there already. There are reasons that the RSA National Party and the Israeli government were BFFs before apartheid ended.

    And don’t get me started about the Gaza Ghetto.

  • BobS

    Which means there’s at least one more person in Israel than US elected officials in Washington DC.

  • LeeEsq

    Erik, do you have any idea what you are really talking about? Under Netanyahu’s government, Israel’s president, Moshe Katsav, was put on trial for rape in a trial presided by an Arab-Israeli Judge and found guilty. Would an apartheid government do something like that? How many Black Judges were their in Apartheid South Africa and how many judged white officials for high crimes? There are currently 17 Arab in the Knesset. Arabs serve in the IDF, work in the Israeli bureaucracy, are judges, and hold elected positions on the local and national level. How true was this in South Africa?

    Meanwhile, the President Assad of Syria has killed more of Syrians in the past few months than the entire Arab-Israeli conflict. Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood are intent turning Egypt in Pakistan on the Nile. Christians are leaving every Middle Eastern country accept Israel in droves.

    The reason why Israelis vote for Likud is that they don’t trust the Israeli Left. The Palestinian leadership as made it clear that the only result they view as just is “no Israel.” Hamas is open in its calls for Israel’s destruction. Fatah plays a double game, they seem open for negotiations but at the same time refuse to make any counter-offers or negotiate in good faith. Whne Barak and Omert made serious peace offers, including splitting Jerusalem, the Palestinian leadership responded by walking away. How can an Israeli government negotiate with people use view of a just result is the complete destruction of Israel?

    • Your reasoned view on this issue has been proven repeatedly.

    • When Israel tears down the settlements and returns to the 1967 boundaries, we can talk.

    • Dagney

      Fatah/the Palestinian National Authority is a very marginal player now. The central Palestinian address is Gaza not, not the West Bank. The central Palestinian player is Hamas now.

    • wengler

      All mainstream parties in Israel are for the indeterminate continued military occupation and settlement building that makes that occupation permanent.

      The only thing that possibly change the political situation is if the US stopped giving blank check support to the Israeli leadership.

      • LeeEsq

        Okay, this is factually inaccurate on several levels. If all mainstream parties favored indefinite occupation than there would have been no Oslo, no offers under Barak and Olmert, and Sharon would not have unilaterally withdrawn from Gaza and Lebanon. Since Oslo, all the mainstream political parties in Israel have undertaken actions that show that they are no interested in indefinite occupation and what did they get in return, terrorism and war. What actions have the Palestinians and other Arabs taken that show that they are interested in peace with Israel?

        Second, the settlements are not really an issue. The Israeli government has dismantled several settlements since Oslo. Many in the West Bank and all in Gaza. The settlements that have seen growth were the ones near that 1967 borders, that occupy about 4% of the WB, and that most people involved in the conflict see Israel as annexing in exchange for land on Israel’s side of the 1967 borders. Finally, when Abbas demanded a settlement freeze as a precondition to negotiation; Netanyahu gave him a ten month settlement freeze and Abbas just set up more preconditions in exchange.

        Do not the Palestinians have any agency? Isn’t it even slightly that the reason why there is no Palestinian state because Palestinian leadership never negotiates in good faith and keeps asking for things that they know no Israeli government would agree to, like the return of millions of Palestinians to Israel’s pre-1967 borders. Do you think that when poll after poll Palestinians and other Arabs say that the only acceptable result is “No Israel” that they might be at least slightly serious about it?

    • When people refer to Israel as an apartheid state they mean it is in violation of the 1973 UN convention outlawing the crime of apartheid not that it is an exact replica of South Africa. In some cases the Israelis have some token Arabs in official positions. Although there were plenty of Black collaborators in South Africa as well. On the other hand in many cases Israel is far worse than South Africa was. South Africa did not have Whites only roads like the “no Palestinians allowed” roads in the West Bank. The SADF also did not routinely attack the Bantustans the way Israel does Gaza. Finally, there were no walls around and through the Bantustans.

  • LeeEsq

    See also:

    http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/121183/the-death-of-the-party

    http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/netanyahu-s-palestinian-strategy-by-alex-joffe#DGR8yxpTdbx2iyzZ.01

    http://hurryupharry.org/2013/01/11/the-end-of-the-peace-process/

    http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/121396/charles-darwin-was-a-bad-jew

    http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/121419/jordan-pulls-israel-card-to-deny-syrians-help

    I conclude the last two links because pressure is always put on Israel to make concessions and offers in exchange for peace. But Israel does not get any peace in return because the Arab world has made it clear since 1948 that the only just result from their point of view is “No Israel”. And more than no Israel, they want a Jew free Middle East. The amount of Jew-hatred routinely expressed in Arab and Muslim media is staggering. Article after article, book after book, cartoon after cartoon, lesson after lesson, and sermon after sermon. How much evidence is needed to prove that it just might be a remote possibility that the reason why there is no Palestinian state and that the Middle East is a constant state of despair because Muslims in general and Arabs in particular have decided to poison themselves with anti-Semitism and blame Israel and the Jews for everything that goes wrong rather than you no negotiate with Israel in good faith.

  • Dagney

    Oz wants Israel to return to the 1967 lines.

    Yet it’s tactilly impossible from a defensive perspective; it would be suicidal for Israel — especially now that the armies of allah are riding towards Damascus. Once Assad is gone, and once the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda and other salafi jahidis will have consolidated (under the supervision of Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the Obama régime), then the next target of the professional jihadis that went from Afghan to Bosnia, recently to Libya, and are now to Syria — will be… JERUSALEM.

    They’re saying it openly.

    Israel can’t afford to go back to the 1967 lines if she wants a chance to defend herself.

    • Entertaining. Israel’s military needs are concrete; meteorology and biology are insubstantial and airy.

    • Hogan

      the armies of allah are riding towards Damascus.

      As opposed to the army that’s there now? Or are you flashing back to the Ummayad caliphate?

      • Dagney

        I was referring to the various war machines operating either autonomously or within the Free Syrian Army (such as Abu Issa’s or Jamal Maaroouf’s), to many other salafi jihadist organizations (such as the Freemen of Syria), al-Nusra (basically the most prominent al-Qaeda front in Syria): they all aim (at various speeds) to throw the forces of Assad out of Damascus.

        I know that Assad was a friend of Hamas (which is hostile to Israel), and a strong, loyal ally of the islamic Republic of Iran and of Hizbollah in Lebanon; but he had no overt project to storm Jerusalem.

        Al-nusra, many salafist warlords and even defected officers now working within the FSA openly claim that Jerusalem is next after Damascus.

        They follow a line converging around the Temple of the Rock, not a statist line à la Assad.

    • Um, not so much. Israel is hardly the plucky little underdog of 1967. They’re a nuclear power and practically a conventional superpower in their own right.

      The “OMG! Israel is surrounded by enemies!” line is about 30 years past its shelf life.

      • Dagney

        I don’t see Israel using nukes. Nor the armies of allah being deterred by the possibility of being nuked.

        • Oh I see. They can’t be deterred by nukes but they can be deterred by not moving back to the 1967 borders.

          Got it.

          • Dagney

            They won’t be deterred; they will attack; at least, that’s what they’re saying.

            Israel would hardly stand any chance of fighting ’em back within the borders prior to the six-day war.

            • wengler

              I’m sure that old Soviet equipment will fare much better than it did in ’91.

              The Israelis don’t have the technology to fight off T-55s and T-72s after all.

              • Dagney

                What about Egypt’s arsenal? Egypt is ruled by the same political project as Hamas, remember: the project framed by al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.
                What about all the weapons being funneled from Libya to Syria via Turkey and now Jordan?
                What about TURKEY?
                What about all the money flowing from Qatar and private Saudis to Syria?
                What about al-Nusra and al-Qaeda?
                All of this will be converging towards Jerusalem after the Assad régime is done with.
                We’re not talking Fatah and PLO only now.

              • Dagney

                And a lot of the Assad arsenal will fall into the hands of those armies of allah, also.

      • LeeEsq

        Whether or not Israel is a plucky underdog, has nothing to do with Israel is surrounded by enemies or not. Arab media is saturated with Nazi-level Jew-hatred that makes no distinction between Israelis and Jews. Most of what amounts to leadership and opposition blatantly state that the only solution that they will accept is no Israel. The Islamists are especially blunt in their hatred of Jews. Yet, somehow its ignored and seen as being completely irrelevant to the lack of progress in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

  • Dagney

    Some peope say that Israel should execute the last chapter of Sharon’s unilateral disengagement plan — with the Israeli government closing Israel’s borders with Gaza forever and the reopening Rafah.

    Make Gaza de facto part of Egypt, some say. Gaza is controlled by Hamas now, and Hamas belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood; Morsi and Hamas have shared interests in Sunni islamic rule.

    Just reintegrate Gaza into Egypt, in exchange for a complete, total, radical cease-fire.

    But then.. what if the Muslim Brotherhood wants to party like it’s 1947?

    • wengler

      You really don’t have much of an understanding of Middle East politics, do you?

      What makes you think Egypt even wants Gaza back?

      And why would a Palestinian Hamas leader subordinate himself to Egyptian authorities?

      There is a theme in rightwing thought that if they’re brown they all march together, but especially in the backstabbing world that is Arab Middle East politics this is just racist makes no sense.

      • Dagney

        Egypt, Gaza: both are all under the despotic domination of the Muslim Brotherhood now.

        Hamas is a MB front. The party of Morsi now holding power in Egypt is a MB front.

        Also: Fatah/PLO are not powerful anymore in Gaza, not since Hamas won the election, and especially not since 2007, when Hamas ousted Fatah forces from Gaza in a coup, throwing their members off the roofs of buildings.

  • Dagney

    You guys know why Jerusalem is at the center of this unfolding war between the Zionists-and-the-Crusaders versus the armies of allah, right?

    • Ken

      Not exactly, but I’m sensing one of the phrases “Book of Revelations”, “contrails”, “Zeta Reticuli”, “Rothschild”, or “Illuminati” in the near future.

      • Dagney

        Because of the place where is the Temple of the Rock now.

        The Jewish people believe that Adam’s body was buried there; that is was also at that spot that Mechizedek blessed Abram after the Patriarch (still a young man at that time) came back from the grand slaughtering of a bunch of human-sacrifricing people and their various kings; that it was there also that the Covenant took place, where the Jewish people were elected as proxy of mankind; that is was there that Solomon had the Temple built.

        Now it’s a muslim temple at that holy, Jewish place.

        • Is this really Dagney? There’s not enough superfluous multisyllabic words.

          • Dagney

            Yes sir. The Temple of the Rock on Mount Moriah (or Zion) remains to this day THE focal point of the conflict; each side claims sovereignty over it.

            Israel controls the site since the Six-Day War of 1967.

            After the islamic conquest of Jerusalem in 637, the construction of the Dome was commissioned by caliph Umar. It was completed in 692 — making it the oldest islamic structure after the Kaaba.

            It’s interesting to note that the al-Aqsa mosque rests on the southern side of the Mount, faces Mecca.

        • wengler

          Did you learn that at Glenn Beck University?

          • Dagney

            Reading rabbinical literature, mostly.