The word came out yesterday in the Israeli media; as part and parcel of the Israeli campaign against Arabs in Gaza, Israel will begin intensifying the discrimination it applies to its own Israeli-Arab population. Arab political parties are being banned from running in next month's Knesset elections. http://www.haaretz.com/... The Mideast's only supposed "democracy" just made an effort to disenfranchise 1/5th of its population.
This is on top of the use of white phosphorous against civilians in Gaza. http://www.haaretz.com/... On top of the herding of 110 civilians into a building in Zeitoun, only to shell the building 24 hours later, killing over thirty of them, many of them children. http://www.haaretz.com/... On top of barring journalists from Gaza in an effort to prevent full disclosure of what is happening there. On top of keeping the borders closed with the complicity of Egypt so that the civilians who they drop leaflets on, telling them to take refuge elsewhere, can't possibly flee from the most densely populated area in the world under full Israeli siege, and if they could, would they ever be allowed back to their homes? On top of keeping the region deprived of food, water, electricity, on a subsistence level for all necessities of human life for well over a year now. On top of the provocation of using fighters to cause sonic booms over Syria as they launched this invasion, a clear threat to wage war there as well if Syria interferes and also a clear violation of Syrian sovereignty. On top of planning an attack on Iran. On top of threatening Lebanon daily with overflights, again a clear violation of Lebanese sovereignty. And what has it cost? 900+ Palestinians killed, around 4000 wounded thus far, with no end in sight. But hey, as long as Israeli casualties are low, anything goes, right? At around 13 killed so far, mostly from friendly fire, Israel's well surpassing its recent average annual kill ratio of about 20 Palestinians for every Israeli.
And the whole murderous operation is in response to what? Hamas' katyusha rocket attacks during a period of cease-fire that killed and injured nobody, a violation of a cease-fire that Israel violated first on Nov. 4 when it killed 6 Palestinians in Gaza.
And why such overwhelming carnage? Because Ehud Barak wants to catch up with Bibi Netanyahu in the race to become the next Prime Minister, and that job goes to the guy who shows he can kill the most Palestinians and intimidate the Arab world the most without completely cratering Israel's support worldwide. Way to hang ten on that razor's edge, guys.
The banning of Arab political parties takes it all a step further, even though it seems insanity to take it even as far as it's gone. It says to peaceful people who live side-by-side daily with Israelis, "You aren't our equals. We don't respect you. You will never be free here, you will always be subordinate to us. Leave before we do to you what we're doing to your relatives in Gaza. You aren't wanted here. You remain at your peril." It is in line with the politics of guys like Moshe Feiglin, who was recently kept out of a Knesset seat by a reorganization of Likud's rankings, but who has said of Israeli-Arabs "We will give them human rights without civil rights. If they want the right to self-determination, let them seek it in the Arab states." In fact, the overwhelming violence of the current assault is entirely in line with Feiglin's beliefs, although he advocates an even more blunt form of conquest and ethnic cleansing. The slight marginalization of Feiglin recently by Likud had provided some small hope that the politics of ethnic supremacism weren't going to be allowed such a free hand in Israel, but by banning the Arab parties the Israeli government is essentially adopting Feiglin's views without having to deal with his controversial history. What one hand giveth, the other taketh away, so to speak. Jewish supremacism is on the rise in Israeli politics. Hardly surprising, given the impossibility of reconciling the nature of a "Jewish State" with egalitarian values and Jeffersonian democracy. The only way to reconcile those concepts is to engage in complete ethnic cleansing before adopting democratic and egalitarian values. Then you don't have to worry about the minorities you discriminate against, because they no longer exist. Guys like Feiglin want to correct what they see as an error committed during the founding of Israel... they think it was a mistake to let any Arabs remain at all. And they don't care what the world thinks of them, or what they have to do to achieve their goals.
In the end, I have to remind myself that there are good people in Israel, people such as Amira Hass and Gideon Levy, and there's nothing better for countering the buildup of bile one feels when reading the seemingly endless piles of Israeli government lies and half-truths in which they claim to be maintaining the moral high ground while committing one atrocity after another than a brief period of reading the opinions of the good folks at Hagada Hasmalit http://www.hagada.org.il/... . There I feel reassured that even some, if only a few, Israelis still want peace.