Our Wednesday News Analysis | The siege is only a symptom

Source: +972 Magazine
https://www.972mag.com/siege-symptom-gaza-zionism/

By Ben Reiff
Published August 11, 2022

To confront Israel’s violence against Palestinians, progressive Jews in Israel and around the world must reckon with the ideology that lies at its root.

"Imagining a liberated future for Palestinians and Jews beyond relations of supremacy — between the occupied and the occupier, the colonized and the colonizer — begins with recognizing that opposing supremacy means opposing Zionism."

In the summer of 1969, an article appeared in Al Hamishmar, the newspaper of the socialist Zionist party Mapam, attacking the anti-Zionist Israeli organization Matzpen (“Compass”). Mapam, one of the predecessors of today’s left-wing Meretz party, was in government at the time after merging with Labor to form the Alignment, and had joined the relentless chorus of criticism from across the political spectrum against Matzpen’s strident opposition to Israel holding onto the territories it occupied in 1967. The article, written by the head of Mapam’s international department, was titled: “Fighters for Peace or Warmongers?”

In response, two Matzpen activists penned an article in their organization’s own journal, under the heading: “Against the Zionist Left.” Pointing out that Mapam was part of the governments that had been responsible for both the 1956 Suez War and the 1967 Six-Day War, the authors argued that when Mapam talks about peace, “what they really mean is that the Arabs should peacefully accept the accomplished facts that Zionism created at their expense, that they should peacefully accept Zionism.” But a Zionist Israel, they wrote, “can never achieve peace and it can never achieve security.”

               What was needed for real peace, the authors continued, was “de-Zionization,” or the “struggle to abolish the Zionist nature of Israel.”

               This included “the abolition of Jewish exclusiveness (which is inherent in the Law of Return) whereby a Jew living in Brooklyn gets more civil and political rights in Israel and over Israel than a Palestinian Arab who was born here (whether he is now a refugee or even an Israeli citizen).”

               According to Matzpen, any political arrangement that does not include de-Zionization “will be only imaginary and temporary: the basic problem will continue to exist.”...

Read more: The siege is only a symptom

Expanding the Occupation of Palestinians in the Name of Jesus

Source: Informed Comment
https://www.juancole.com/2022/08/expanding-occupation-palestinians.html

By H. SCOTT PROSTERMAN
Published August 30, 2022

Most people agree that imperialism has been a very bad thing for the world. American Indian leader Dennis Means addressed a capacity crowd at the Rackham Auditorium at the University of Michigan in 1981. When I asked him to compare the plight of American Indians with the Palestinians, Mr. Means said, “Palestinians are the Indians of the Middle East and we are the Palestinians of America.”

Christian missionaries are now settling in the occupied areas of Palestine, and benefitting from Israeli land grab policies. American Evangelicals have allied with far right Zionist settlers to further entrench an imperial presence in occupied Palestine. Missionaries have been in Palestine since 1819.

Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment) – Though the United States was founded on freedom of and from religion, Evangelical Americans set out to “save” American Indians, Jews, Catholics and other non-believers since before the Salem Witch Trials.

               They imported a narrow interpretation of Biblical myth, which they implemented in the name of Jesus.

               Non-believers were to be converted or smote. Jews are to be rounded up so the Apocalypse can commence.

               While they aid and abet the Jewish state in solidifying the occupation of Palestine, they fantasize about an Apocalypse, during which Jews must convert to Christianity or suffer in hell.

Har Bracha, is an American evangelical settlement, which promotes projects in Judea and Samaria, the biblical names for the West Bank. Hayovel (The Harvest) is a “faith-based service organization” of Christian missionaries that recruits young Evangelicals to Israel to “plant trees, harvest grapes and prune vines.” They position this as an opportunity to “fulfill Biblical prophecy.” This supports Israeli imperialism and defies international law at the same time. Planting trees is a noble act to support and enrich the earth. In this case, it’s also a front to further entrench the Israeli occupation of Palestine; this time for the benefit of Christians, not Jews. It is an unlawful land grab occurring on land owned by Palestinians...

Read more: Expanding the Occupation of Palestinians in the Name of Jesus

Opinion | How Israelis Are Taught to Erase the Palestinians
Source: Haaretz

Source: Haaretz

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-08-28/ty-article-opinion/.highlight/how-israel-expels-the-palestinians-from-its-schools/00000182-e32c-d9c0-a3d3-fb3e25e30000?utm_source

By Eitan Nechin
Published August 28, 2022

When Israel's education ministry ordered the removal of maps showing the 1967 borders from classrooms, it was just the most recent blatant, dangerous, absurd attempt to erase the occupation – and the Palestinians
 

               "We were taught a narrative in which millennia of the Jewish people’s history was entirely reframed to serve the narrative arc of Zionism.  

               According to those parameters, school did in fact teach us everything we, as Jewish Israelis, need to know about the occupation, oppression and dispossession of Palestinians – absolutely nothing.

 
               Not only do Palestinians not really exist in our history books, but if they do, they’re only featured as an obstacle in the way of Israelis living in peace."

This week, kids from all over Israel will start a new school year. They’ll be learning all the usual subjects: history, literature, math, English. But there’s one subject the Education Ministry insists will not be in this year’s curriculum: the truth. The truth about living in this country.

The controversy surrounds a decision by the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality to offer schools a map showing the Green Line – Israel’s post-1967 border. The education ministry ordered the municipality to take the maps down, on the grounds that their production was amateurish and not approved by the Survey of Israel.

The excuse is tenuous. First, the Survey of Israel has repeatedly refused to reveal where the Green Line runs, for fear, they claim, of "undermining the state’s international relations."

Secondly, it’s not like the ministry’s position has ever been supportive of educating kids about the occupation or Israel’s policies towards Palestinians. The opposite is true: In 2014, Adam Verete, a high-school teacher, was fired for questioning the morality of the behavior of Israel's military. Last year, the ministry tried to block mathematician Oded Goldreich from being awarded the Israel Prize for calling to boycott Ariel University in the West Bank...

Read more: Opinion | How Israelis Are Taught to Erase the Palestinians