Our Wednesday News Analysis | Opinion | Suddenly, Everyone Fears for Israeli Democracy

Source: Haaretz
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2022-10-23/ty-article-opinion/.highlight/suddenly-everyone-fears-for-israeli-democracy/00000184-00d3-de24-a1df-fbfb72a50000?

By Gideon Levy
Published October 23, 2022

"Now you wake up? Where were you up to now? “Liberal and democratic” Israel is in danger? It hasn’t been liberal or democratic for a long time now, in part because you shut your eyes. In fact, it never was. A country where there has always been military rule (with the exception of a few months preceding the June 1967 Six-Day War) cannot be considered a democracy by any measure."

A wave of democratic awakening has hit Israel ahead of the election – everyone fears for democracy.

The danger lurks only on the right, of course. The center-left is agitated and flustered. Pathos is working overtime, as are dramatic exaggerations. Nehemia Shtrasler warns of the assassination of democracy (Haaretz, October 21); former Shin Bet security service head Yuval Diskin cautions against civil war. Journalist Ben Caspit shouts: “A hair’s breadth separates liberal and democratic Israel from a government of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich.”

Some people are already talking about leaving the country after the election. Suddenly, everyone fears for democracy.

               Suddenly, everyone fears for democracy.

               Suddenly, everyone fears for democracy in a country about half of whose subjects live under a military tyranny that is among the cruelest in the world.

               Suddenly, everyone worries about the future of the justice system, in a country where that system legitimizes almost any war crime and crime against humanity and openly defies international law.

               Suddenly, everyone is upset over the possibility of decriminalizing the offense of fraud and breach of trust, in a country where the crime of murder has been nearly entirely eliminated when the murderer is a soldier or a settler and the victim is Palestinian.

                Suddenly, everyone is horrified by religious extremism, in the most religiously coercive country in the Western world today...

Read more: Opinion | Suddenly, Everyone Fears for Israeli Democracy

THE QUESTION OF VIOLENCE

Source: Mondoweiss
https://mondoweiss.net/2022/10/the-question-of-violence/

By MITCHELL PLITNICK
Published October 22, 2022

"None of this is new; they are the characteristics of Israeli oppression of Palestinians and Palestinian resistance to that oppression that has been visible for decades.

But the Palestinian response is now entering a new phase."

Back in 1993, the exchange of letters between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasir Arafat officially began the Oslo era of endless negotiations, expanding Israeli settlements, and a deepening occupation that would eventually destroy any possibility of the two-state solution that those supporting Rabin and Arafat were envisioning.

In his letter to Rabin, Arafat explicitly renounced violent resistance to Israel’s occupation. He wrote, “Accordingly, the PLO renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence and will assume responsibility over all PLO elements and PLO personnel in order to assure their compliance, prevent violations and discipline violators.”

Those words produced an expectation that Palestinians will employ only non-violent means to resist Israel’s occupation, dispossession, and apartheid. This idea of restricting violence is directed solely at Palestinians. Israel, being a state and therefore being perceived as having a state’s monopoly on violence, is judged by a different standard.

Although in the west the terminology used to defend Israeli violence is almost always couched in terms of self-defense, the idea that Palestinians might also defend themselves is rarely considered in similar terms. Palestinians are condemned whenever they use violent means, even when throwing rocks at armored Israeli soldiers. Israel, which employs far more violence and, because of its far greater technical capabilities, has much less excuse for the vastly higher number of civilian and non-combatant casualties it causes, is, at best, criticized for “excessive” use of force...

Read more: The question of violence

PALESTINIAN GRANNY’S PLEA EVOKES SYMPATHY AMONG MANY EXCEPT EUROPE, AMERICA AND NATO

Source: Palestine Chronicle
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/palestinian-grannys-plea-evokes-sympathy-among-many-except-europe-america-and-nato/

By Iqbal Jassat
Published October 20, 2022

"Israel’s violent crimes against Palestinians and the brutality associated with the inhumane conduct of racist right-wing settlers alongside soldiers go on with impunity.

European leaders from Britain to France including the entire NATO, are sheepishly silent observers of the atrocities committed by their ally Israel."

In one of the most heartbreaking pleas an 89-year-old granny in Occupied Palestine, asks “Until when will this grave injustice go on?”.

Her name is Samia Khoury, described by Susan Abulhawa as an author, a Palestinian icon, and a friend.

In her plea, Khoury sketches what transpired in the early hours of Tuesday, October 18, 2022.

Around 12 Israeli army and secret service troops stormed her son’s house after forcibly breaking the gate at the entrance of the compound where they all live.

They arrested her sixteen-year-old grandson Shadi Khoury and beat him so severely that he was bleeding all over the room and along the path on the way out of the house. Despite bleeding, blindfolded and barefoot, they dragged him without allowing his parents to examine the source of his bleeding.

Shadi, a student at the Quakers Friends School in Ramallah. was taken to the interrogation section in the police compound called “the Russian compound”.

Once there, the child was interrogated without the presence of his parents or a lawyer. Khoury points out that her grandchild’s arrest, detention and interrogation is “a tactic used systematically to terrorize children into submission, and ultimately using their own words to incriminate them”.

“Shadi is a case among so many Palestinian children that are being harassed, tortured and imprisoned for no reason other than being a Palestinian seeking to live in dignity and freedom in their own country”.

Khoury’s plea reminds us that she is an 89-year-old grandmother who has lived through the Nakba, the 1967 war, the first and second intifada...

Read more: Palestinian Granny’s Plea Evokes Sympathy among many except Europe, America and NATO