The Friday Edition
Our Wednesday News Analysis | Judea vs ‘Fantasy Israel: Ilan Pappe on the Collapse of Israeli Pillars and Opportunities for Palestine
Source: Palestine Chronicle
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/judea-vs-fantasy-israel-ilan-pappe-on-the-collapse-of-israeli-pillars-and-opportunities-for-palestine/
By Ilan Pappe
Published July 31, 2023
Israel's so-called Flag March. (Photo: Nettadi, via Wikimedia Commons)
The future liberated and de-Zionised Palestine may look now as a fantasy, but unlike Fantasy Israel, it has the best chance to galvanize locally, regionally and globally every person with a modicum of decency.
Israel’s legitimacy, in fact, its very viability, rests on two main pillars.
First, the material pillar, which includes its military strength, high-tech capabilities, and a solid economic system.
The above factors enable the state to build a strong network of alliances with countries that would like to benefit from what Israel has to offer: arms, securitization, spyware, high-tech knowledge, and modernized systems of agricultural production.
In return, Israel does not just ask for money but also for support against its eroded international image.
Second, the moral pillar. This aspect was particularly important in the early days of the Zionist project and statehood.
Israel sold to the world a twofold narrative: One, that Israel’s creation was the only panacea for antisemitism, and two, that Israel was built in a place that religiously and culturally belonged to the Jewish people...
___________________
ISRAELIS’ DEFIANCE OF NETANYAHU HOLDS A LESSON FOR ANYONE WHO CARES ABOUT DEMOCRACY
Source: The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/28/israelis-benjamin-netanyahu-democracy-protests-donald-trump
By Jonathan Freedland
Published July 28, 2023
Mass protests by ordinary people against the man who was Trumpian before Trump are part of a worldwide struggle
‘They have not allowed the right to denounce them as unpatriotic: they swiftly co-opted the national flag and made it a symbol of dissent.’ A mass protest in Jerusalem against Netanyahu’s judiciary bill on 23 July 2023. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Beware the strongman leader who fears jail. Donald Trump is running for president in part because he sees a return to the White House as a literal get-out-of-jail-free card: reinstalled in the Oval Office, he would be able to pardon himself for the mounting pile of serious federal crimes for which he is indicted. His legal strategy is his political strategy.
But the exemplar of the phenomenon is the man who was Trumpian before Trump: the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. It is Netanyahu – and the war he is currently waging against his own country – whom all those who care about the wider future of democracy should be watching. For Israel has become the test case in the global fight against ultranationalist populism.
On Monday, Netanyahu’s coalition passed a new law curbing the powers of Israel’s judiciary. No longer will the supreme court be able to block the government from taking action the judges deem “extremely unreasonable”. That matters, because in Israel the courts are pretty well the only restraint on government power: there is no second chamber, no established constitution. And Monday’s vote was merely the first in a series of moves designed to gut the power of the judiciary: opponents, who have been out on the streets in huge numbers since January, call it a “judicial coup”...
Read more: Israelis’ defiance of Netanyahu holds a lesson for anyone who cares about democracy
___________________
THE WOUNDED JEWISH PSYCHE AND THE DIVIDED ISRAELI SOUL
Source: Jews for Justice for Palestinians
https://jfjfp.com/the-wounded-jewish-psyche-and-the-divided-israeli-soul/
Yossi Klein Halevi writes in Times of Israel
Published July 28, 2023
Understanding Israel’s moment of truth – from the war on Start-up Nation, to the moral crisis in Orthodox Jewry, to the author’s personal failure of empathy for political opponents
Demonstrators wave large Israeli flags during a protest against the Netanyahu government's overhaul of the judicial system, outside the Knesset in Jerusalem, on Monday, July 24, 2023, as parliament passed the 'reasonableness' law. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
It is 3 a.m. in Jerusalem. These days, that is not an unusual time for me to be awake. Like many Israelis, I have become a political insomniac. The disruption of sleep is a small reflection of the dread so many of us feel for the long-term viability of the Jewish state.
Here, then, in no particular order, are some late-night thoughts on this Israeli moment.
The war on the Start-Up Nation
For me, the most compelling of all the slogans of the democratic movement was imprinted on a giant banner one recent Saturday night at the weekly protest on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv: “Save Our Start-Up Nation.”
Even more than a struggle for democracy, this is a struggle to save the Israeli success story.
The greatest danger to the Start-up Nation is an emigration of despair. In fact, that exit has quietly begun. And if the government continues to fundamentally transform Israel in its image – an alliance of ultra-nationalists, religious fundamentalists and the merely corrupt – we will experience our first ideologically motivated mass flight, among those who connect this country to the global economy and the democratic world.
In one sense, what is happening to Israel is hardly unusual. Populist wars against elites are being waged all over the world. And yet Israel is unique: While other societies can endure a populist wave of resentment and even violent hatred, Israel’s long-term survival in the Middle East depends on maintaining its modernist elite (while expanding the entry points into the elite to ensure greater diversity). The alternative is gradual – or perhaps rapid – descent into a dysfunctional society led by corrupt counter-elites, precisely the scenario modeled by this government...
Read more: The wounded Jewish psyche and the divided Israeli soul
LATEST OPEN LETTERS
- 23-12Tens of thousands of dead children.......this must stop
- 05-06A Call to Action: Uniting for a Lasting Peace in the Holy Land
- 28-05Concerned world citizen
- 13-02World Peace
- 05-12My scream to the world
- 16-11To Syria and Bashar al-Assad
- 16-11To Palestine
- 24-10Japan should withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations (UN), WHO's controlling parent body, to protect the basic human rights and lives of its citizens.
- 09-08Open Letter to António Guterres: Will the UN Protect Our Rights and End Our Suffering?
- 09-06Urgent Appeal
Latest Blog Articles
- 24-12I am living my own Nakba
- 24-12Inside ‘Greater Israel’: myths and truths behind the long-time Zionist fantasy
- 24-12'We Need to Protect the Palestinians in the Name of a Shared Future,' Says Israeli-German Philosopher Omri Boehm
- 23-12The Evangelical Pope | Do Not Fear the Other
- 19-12Our Friday News Analysis | What the World Reads Now!
- 18-12Our Wednesday News Analysis | Death feels imminent for 96% of children in Gaza, study finds
- 17-12Death feels imminent for 96% of children in Gaza, study finds
- 17-12Opinion | Israelis Feel the War Is Over. For Gazans It's a Different Story
- 17-12Genocide Israel is living in the past
- 16-12The Evangelical Pope | The Gospel of Life is for All Humanity
- 12-12Our Friday News Analysis | What the World Reads Now!