I've been meaning to do a diary forsome time on Shlomo Sand's book, but alas, life has intervened. But in the meantime, I just saw thisa video and it is just horrible, & must be seen;
Here it is again, with some commentary from Al JAzeera
Violence erupted in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday when a Palestinian man entered a petrol station at the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba in the occupied West Bank and stabbed two settlers.
But that was not the end of the story. According to the Israeli army, the Palestinian was then shot by a soldier, after which a car, apparently driven by a settler, ran over the wounded Palestinian, twice, with Israeli soldiers all around.
Jacky Rowland reports.
*Viewers may find some of the images disturbing.
Just horrible, I really am without words.
But as much as we point to the violence of the settlers, that dosen't get the not so silent majority off the hook;
The party of the great vacuum
By Gideon Levy
That is how Kadima stole the left's votes. Tens of thousands of naive (and foolish) people gave their votes to the "center" party, which is not centrist but clearly right-wing, like the entire imaginary Israeli center. In what way is Kadima's Tzachi Hanegbi preferable to Likud's Gideon Sa'ar for voters who deserted Labor and Meretz for the party of the Great White Hope? Why is Mofaz preferable to Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and in what way is Livni better than Netanyahu?
Instead of isolating itself in the opposition, Kadima blurred itself into oblivion. It's true that with his vain words Netanyahu pulled the dubious ideological rug out from under Kadima - after all, hollow talk about two states is what Kadima does - but Netanyahu went one step further and declared a construction freeze in the settlements, even if a temporary and absurd one. When Kadima was in the government it didn't do even that.
And on the settlement front, East Jerusalem is being ethnically cleansed at an alarming rate;
Israel strips thousands of Palestinians of Jerusalem residency rights
By Vita Bekker in Tel Aviv
Israel revoked the residency status of more Palestinians from East Jerusalem in 2008 than during any other year since it captured the territory in 1967, a human rights group said on Wednesday.
HaMoked Centre for the Defence of the Individual, an Israeli organisation advocating Palestinian rights, cited figures obtained from the interior ministry under the Freedom of Information Act. They showed that Israel stripped 4,577 Palestinians of their residency status in the disputed city last year.
That is more than half of the 8,558 total residency revocations in the past 40 years, HaMoked said.
Ethnic cleansing, pure and simple
Israel stripped over 4,500 Jerusalemite Palestinians of their "residency rights" in 2008.
This marks a huge acceleration of a policy that has been in force since Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967. In these 41 years, Israel has now stripped over 12,000 Palestinians of their "permits" to live in Jerusalem, 35 per cent or so of those in 2008 alone.
It also maps out exactly where the current right-wing Israeli government, which has made no secret of its wish to Judaise Jerusalem, a travesty of history if ever there was one, is heading.
The policy shows many things about Israel to anyone who wants to see. One is this: Israel does not even bother to pretend to adhere to any kind of international law or internationally accepted standards for behaviour towards a population under occupation.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
This diary has been updated; material pertaining to Shlomo Sand has been removed,and will be presented later, in itsown diary. My apologies for rushing this, as there is much to talk about. That said, I would appreciate it if the discussion of Sand halts for now, to resume in its own diary.
jon
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Just going through the threads of past diaries, and I felt that this one deserved some more discussion in the diary of the various forms of violence contained within. It was discussed in the threads, by myself and others, so I will provide my 2 cents & a link to another threadas well. To say the least, this discussion should have been contained in the diary, but I rushed it; I'll make sure not to do that again.
You know, one of the ways in which this diary was a bit substandard was that I took on a subject that needed more attention & nuance, and just laid it out there for all to freak out at. I of course, focused on the car, others the stabbing, hell others thought the settler's action to be justified. It deserves more time and thought than I gave, or have right now.
But to be brief, I reject the frames that the question in said comment by our dearly departed Ambrose. What has started the incident that the video describes is a 43 year old occupation. The lashing out by the individual by stabbing a settler, however much I don't like it and would have wanted to prevent it, is coming from that larger substrate and environment of colonization and Israeli violence.
When I was there, one of the things I found so hard was to keep my temper; every day you are assaulted, visually, verbally, physically, mentally, the occupation binds you physically in your being. I almost got in trouble once when I lost my temper with a soldier, who then declared "I will treat you like i treat them" and forced me to wait for an hour before he then tried to get police to arrest me (they did not, to his frustration). I cannot imagine how Palestinians can manage, living in such violence and maintaining their dignity, which so many do so well; I mean I was there 6 months!
So this is where the violence starts, and then after the man is shot, helpless and seemingly in custody, this settler sees fit to make an example of him, to show just how worthless he is in the eyes of the Israeli settler, how inconsequential his life is. He is literally roadkill, and I feel this incident is very close in spirit to a lynching.
So none of the violence is to be approved ofimho; but the context is crucial, as you can see.