Common Grounds


Our Wednesday News Analysis | War on Gaza: How Israel's leftists quickly lost their compassion for Palestinians

March 20, 2024

Source: Middle East Eye
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/war-gaza-israel-leftist-lost-compassion-palestinians

 

By Orly Noy
Published March 16, 2024

 

Liberal Israeli sympathy for Palestinians was based on the colonial mindset that the subjugated are inferior and should be grateful for their support


Israeli protesters demonstrate near the defence ministry in Tel Aviv, on 16 December 2023 (Alberto Pizzoli/AFP)

 

The Hamas attack of 7 October and the war that Israel launched after that introduced a new conceptual category of persons to the Hebrew-Israeli vocabulary: the “disillusioned” - meaning, the folks who have now “sobered up”.

 

These people insist that, until 7 October, they were humanistic seekers of peace for whom the Hamas attack changed everything: in its wake, they molted their former selves and now passionately supported the genocide that Israel is perpetrating in Gaza.

 

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Editor’s Note | The Pendulum Swings Back and Forth

 

No worries! The pendulum swings.

Jews are known to care for Jews only.
It’s NOT just a Jewish herd mentality.
It’s just being part of Jewry.

 

The Peace Activists before October 7
are still Peace Activists today, if only presently in spirit.

Jews are in shock. The natives are restless.

 

Israelism is colonialism —
a master race that views itself as ‘more human.'
versus their conquered, belittled, and decimated Palestinians.

 

The minority — kill, get killed — tyrannizes the majority (live, let live).

 

Most Jews realize inside their soul that
Israel’s Scorch Earth Policy cannot survive.

 

Change, not chains, must be the goal.

 

The Israeli Peace Activists will make a difference.


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For more than five months, they have continued to flog one another for the sin of their earlier left-wing innocence. After suitable ritual absolution, they enter into the bosom of the tribe and are showered with forgiveness in the name of the people and the nation...

 

Read more: War on Gaza: How Israel's leftists quickly lost their compassion for Palestinians

 

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ISRAEL HAS SEVERED THE WEST BANK FROM GAZA. DURING WAR, IT BECOMES A DEATH SENTENCE

Source: Haaretz
https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/2024-03-13/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israel-has-been-separating-the-west-bank-from-gaza-during-war-it-becomes-a-death-sentence/0000018e-3874-d2fd-a1fe-3df58c940000

 

By Amira Hass
Published March 13, 2024

 

Since the '90s, Israel has been working to separate the two parts of the Palestinian territories. The fact that a temporary displacement of Gazans to the West Bank isn't being considered shows how embedded the split created by Israel is

 

Children sit among the rubble and scattered belongings in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on March 13, 2024.Credit: AFP

 

 

"The Palestinian Interior Ministry had issued him (a young doctor practicing in Jericho) an ID card with his address in Jericho, but Israel didn't approve this change. The soldiers at the roadblock, who have access to the Israeli copy of the Palestinian population registry, saw that his address was "Gaza" and detained him. "

 

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Editor’s Note | Unfathomable! The Only Democracy in the Middle East?

 

Almost all my friends and acquaintances, especially those living in democracies, cannot fathom that Amira Hass’ article is true.

 

The report is published in Israel
by the esteemed Israeli daily, Haaretz Israel.

 

Read this article! It’s an eye-opener. A wake-up call!

 

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Haroun lost his mother, five of his six daughters and his son in an Israeli airstrike on their home in the city of Zawaideh in the Gaza Strip on November 1. Haroun (not his real name, like others in this story), is a 50-year-old laborer, a former officer in the Palestinian Authority's security forces.

 

With an official Israeli permit, he started working at a sewing factory in Israel on October 3 and moved to the West Bank immediately after the Hamas massacre. When he heard that his family members were killed, he asked to leave for an Arab country where the only survivors, his wife and his eldest daughter, were hospitalized in serious condition.

 

In contrast to claims by Hamas and Israel, this separation was not established after Hamas took charge of Gaza in 2006, but was implemented in the early '90s...

 

Read more: Israel Has Severed the West Bank From Gaza. During War, It Becomes a Death Sentence

 

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Israel’s Ultra-Orthodox ‘Problem’ – A Threat to the Zionist Project?

Source: Palestine Chronicle
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/israels-ultra-orthodox-problem-a-threat-to-the-zionist-project/

 

By Robert Inlakesh
Published March 18, 2024

 

The Haredim, or Ultra-Orthodox Jews, are crucial to the Israeli state model in a number of ways, yet, in others, are antithetical to the Zionist mission.

 

Ultra-Orthoox Jews writing a Torah scroll in the Haredi settlement of Beitar Illit, near Jerusalem. (Photo: דודי פרידמן, via Wikimedia Commons)

 


This issue could prove existential, if not in the immediate,
most certainly in the future.

 

If the Haredim chooses to leave the country altogether or become such a powerful voting group, this could lead to massive social issues and even a threat to Israel’s “population balance.”

 

 

Although Ultra-Orthodox Jews hold Israel’s highest population growth rates, occupy a large portion of illegal settlement housing, and now hold considerable power in government, there is growing resentment in Israeli society against their inaction towards state function.

 

This is now coming to a head in the Knesset and may threaten Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition, as well as the emergency war government.

 

Highest Population Growth

 

The Haredim, or Ultra-Orthodox Jews, are crucial to the Israeli state model in a number of ways, yet, in others, are antithetical to the Zionist mission.

 

With the highest population growth of any group of Israeli citizens, the Haredim, last recorded to have a population of 1.28 million in 2023, is on track to become 16 percent of the total Israeli population by the end of this decade.

 

Israel’s explicit goal of being a state in which only Jews are afforded self-determination, enshrined in the Nation-State Law of 2018, would seem to indicate that the Haredim represent a significant portion of the population when it comes to maintaining Israel’s infamous ethnic balance between Jews and Arabs.

 

Yet, many Israelis, specifically of the secular Jewish population, take issue with the way Haredi society functions...

 

Read more: Israel’s Ultra-Orthodox ‘Problem’ – A Threat to the Zionist Project?