‘It is a time of witch hunts in Israel’
JVL Introduction
The risk of being “witch-hunted” has become a common subject of conversation on the UK left since 2015. We even promoted a film with the title in 2019 and were ourselves witchhunted for doing so. The personal consequences could be severe – public denunciation, loss of position, threats to jobs, emotional and mental stress. But the dangers were trivial compared with those faced by dissidents in parts of the world where stepping out of line invites imprisonment, torture or a bullet in the head.
Members of the tiny and embattled Israeli left have always been at pains to stress that the dangers they face are nothing beside those confronting their Palestinian comrades. The piece we publish below, about teacher Meir Baruchin, itself includes reference to “The country’s differing free-speech standards for Jewish and Palestinian citizens … cited by a group of prominent Israelis in a letter warning that incitement to genocide had been normalised in the country.”
But Baruchin’s case is chilling in what it tells us about the growing determination of the Israeli authorities to crush dissent among its Jewish as well as its Palestinian citizens.
NWI
This article was originally published by The Guardian/Observer on Sat 13 Jan 2024. Read the original here.
Teacher held in solitary confinement for posting concern about Gaza deaths
Meir Baruchin, who was fired and jailed for criticising the military, says that many who agree with him are afraid to go public.
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It is of course good that the Guardian has highlighted Meir Baruchin’s case, though not that of the dozens of Israeli Palestinians who are being imprisoned, attacked, sacked and otherwise persecuted because they dare to raise the question of Israel’s genocidal attacks.
What the Guardian hasn’t done is to raise the question of those of us who have been arrested for ‘supporting’ Hamas, i.e. daring to say that they aren’t the devil and that the proscribing of Hamas as a terrorist organisation is entirely bogus and indeed racist
Today in an interview on Not The Andrew Marr Show, Michal Sapir of Anarchists Against the Wall said that Jewish citizens of Israel like her have in fact been allowed to express opposition to the war: they may be targets for hate, but the state hasn’t moved against them. By contrast she related how Arab/Palestinian citizens for Israel have been imprisoned and handed long sentences even for saying such things as “There are children in Gaza”.
thank you enormously for printing this frightening article.
Where does this unreasoning hate come from?
I have read various articles quoting evidence that the Hamas raid on 7/10/ 23 was not a surprise at all. Could you assemble them all together so that we can see that it was really a false flag operation?
Correction — I of course meant citizens OF Israel who are Arab (as Michal Sapir described them) or Palestinian (as we would more usually say). Definitely not FOR Israel – that was a typo, apologies.
Anyone else amazed by the comments of Ami Ayalon, former leader of Shin Bet security force (reported in The Guardian on 15 January)? I somehow doubt he will be arrested despite saying: We Israelis will have security only when they, Palestinians, will have hope……. You cannot deter anyone, a person or a group, if he believes he has nothing to lose …… Releasing Marwan Barghouti [Palestinian in jail since 2002] would be a key step towards meaningful negotiations……. He is the only leader who can lead Palestinians to a state alongside Israel ……. Every time when I say hatred is not a plan, it is not a policy, people are very upset.
Malcolm Bradstock asks: “Where does this unreasoning hate come from?”
That (arguably) most famous Jew of all is quoted as saying: “Love thy neighbour as thyself.”
As with so many things that Jesus of Nazareth said, there is a subtle sub-text which is frequently not understood. What he understood was that, my attitude to my fellow human beings – and towards the world in general – will be filtered through the regard that I have for myself. If I love myself, then I will love others; if I hate myself, then my world-view will be filtered through my own self-hatred and projected on to “the other”.
Furthermore, if I have been subject to constant vilification, amplified over generations, then I will often take in the hatred that others appear to have for me, and it will become internalised.
Of course, I might be seen as guilty of generalisation here; I would say that there is, nonetheless, a broad truth. What is remarkable is how human resilience means that so many do not absorb that spirit of hatred; or at least understand it for what it is, and work to see the world otherwise than through that filter.
The misfortune is that the energy of hatred/self-hatred is powerful and destructive – above all destructive of any residual capacity for self-love. The more destructive I am of others, the more difficult it must become to listen to my own conscience and take ownership of my own offences against both others and against myself.
It is a form of living hell, vomited outwards on to others, then re-absorbed with interest out of the suffering that I have created.
Which is why, despite all my instinctive urge towards revenge on those who commit such crimes, I have to remember that I do not serve the world or myself if I take such revenge. Justice, yes; and those who commit such crimes must become answerable for those crimes. But compassion is the only hope for a future that does not commit itself to an endless round of revenge and counter-revenge. It’s a forlorn hope, but the only hope I have; where anything else is a counsel of despair.