In spite of the excepcional and sophisticated efforts made by many states to depict modern, fair and above all democratic country pictures, reality sometimes plays a bad trick on them and shows stained images.  Israel is not only no exception to this fact but its permanent state of conflict conditions finds it forced to improve the plastic surgery operations performed on its features. When reality is problematic, the the plastic surgeons’ scalpel is of no avail as public opinion, especially about our international image, feeds mainly from small bits of information that, even though individually harmless, are powerfully damaging when piling up in countless numbers.  

As an example, the next lines detail a few notes published and catalogued as innocent that, on the same day (October 13, 2009), the majority of Israeli citizens overlooked with indiference.

1. Erdogan: “Innocent children from Gaza were attacked with phosphorus bombs” (Ynet October 13, 2009). This horrid statement accusing Israel did not come out from the lips of a classic veteran enemy, nor from a red traitor reader of  “Haaretz” – the much criticized left-wing journal – but no more and no less than from the Prime Minister of a State that has been the most important strategic partner of Israel in the region for more than 50 years: Turkey.  Meanwhile, the much discussed Israeli Chancellor, Avigdor Liberman, applied the tradicional Israeli answer and replied without blinking an eye: “Turkey has decided to approach the axis of evil”. The well-known liberal Israeli concept came to light: either one is a Jewish floor mop, such as the American governments, or one is part of the die-hard anti-semitic enemies. No middle of the road to walk on.

2. “Extreme right-wing pamphlets for the making up of bombs to be used against homosexuals” (Haaretz 13 October, 2009). In Adei Ad, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, pamphlets instigating the use of home-made bombs against homosexuals as well as instructions to make them were found. It is worth while recalling that, a couple of months ago, a gay club in Tel Aviv was brutally attacked by masked people resulting in the death of two young men. Strangely enough, and contrary to the common results in the case of Arab terrorist activities, law and order in general and the powerful Israeli intelligence system have neither been able to find the pamphlet writers nor, of course, to locate the attackers.

3. “Israeli police deploys a secret camouflaged unit to operate within the Arab-Israeli population” (Haaretz, 13 October, 2009) The Chief of Police reported that he lacks the information infrastructure to ´deal with´the Israeli Arabs and that this new unit will be a big leap forward. Its main purpose is not ‘to deal with’ delinquency – with roots so much into the Arab as into the Jewish population; the purpose is ‘to deal with’ the Arabs. It would be quite interesting to find out what statements would be made by the Israeli Ambassador to Argentina or the DAIA President should they happen to learn that Argentine police forces deployed a special unit of highly trained and camouflaged agents with Kipa and Talit (ítems of religious Jewish clothing) to extract information from corrupt or potentially delinquent Jewish individuals.

4. ‘Children of foreign people born in Israel shall be deported at the end of the school year’ (Ynet, October 10, 2009). Members of the Israeli Cabinet that took part in a meeting with the Prime Minister informed the the 1,200 children of foreigners, workers and refugees, shall not be entitled to any kind of protection and shall be banished at the end of the year term. The above statement deals with children born in Israel whose daily language is Hebrew, their friends are Israelis, attend schools with an Israeli curriculum, are ready to serve in the Jewish Army, are not thieves or have good-for-nothing parents; their only bad point is that they were born from non-Jewish parents that arrived in Israel to survive starving conditions or persecution in their country of origin.

My late grandfather, Bernard Kupervaser, who instilled in me the real values of humanist judaism and who, at the beginning of the past century was forced to emigrate to Argentina where he found a haven from persecution and the possibility to honestly keep his family as a farmer, would have surely been deeply upset and turned in his sacred grave if he had happened to learn what nowadays is done in the name of Judaism.  Even the urgent claim from the organizations composed of Holocaust survivors cannot bend this firm and deep-rooted racist stand, the only aim of which being to guarantee Israeli ethnic purity.

5. Rally in front of the Main Courts of Law: “Do not be silent before the murder of a little girl’ (Walla news, October 13, 2009). On the first days in January, 2007 an Israeli Jeep drove into Anabta, an Arab West Bank village. In the midst of the hostile crowds and flying stones the soldiers shot rubber bullets and a 10-year-old girl, Avir Aramin, fell dead at the side of her school from a hole in her head. Mysteriously, the Israeli State Prosecution decided to file the case records in spite of all its power and facilities as it does not consider itself capable of proving whether this girl died from a shot or ‘a stone thrown by her neigbours’. The Israeli Human Rights Association Yesh Din (Justice exists) made a complaint before this high tribunal demanding a revision of the above decision as well as requesting crimes of this nature not to be so grossly covered up. 

6. ‘The Jewish Agency decrees an end to olim ceremonies (new Jewish immigrants) at the Western Wall’ (Aurora, October 13, 2009). The Jewish Agency will put an end to nationalization ceremonies of new immigrants at the Western Wall Square according to the requests made by the rabbi responsible for the place. The rabbi’s demand is based on that Jewish religion demands sex seggregation and forbids women to be seated next to men. It is again proved that, in some aspects, religious Jewish behaviour is similar to that of the Talibans that, quizzically enough, has been the object of too much laughter and criticism.

7. To quote the Betzelem Human Rights Organization: ‘ Israeli soldiers sabotaged Arab vehicles in Hebron’  (Walla News, October 13, 2009) According to this report, 8 vehicles with Palestinian workers, whose only crime was to illegally work in Israel in order to survive, were intercepted by an Israeli patrol in the Hebron zone. In the course of the chase, the workers escaped from the vehicles which were set on fire and thrown down the cliffs by the soldiers. The report attaches photographs where one can see a vehicle enveloped in flames with several burning tyres underneath to spread the fire. The army made its usual answer: ‘this occurrence seems to be in contradiction with the soldiers’ instructions and shall be duly investigated’. We shall see.  

8. The army suspended the chance of humanitarian help to human rights Jewish organizations that had the purpose of speeding up the obtention of transit permits outside Gaza in special cases. (Haaretz, October 13, 2009) From now on, only the normal procedures remain in force and this presupposes a strong impediment or a long delay, especially in serious cases such as invalids, patients with complicated illnesses and/or students that do not constitute a security risk.

The image depicted by this group of news shows a country that has taken the wrong road and is being led by seggregational policies fed on an instinct of revenge and cruelty that bears little relationship with real defence. On the one hand, the racist, seggregational, fanatical, fundamentalist and indiscriminate use of force attitudes are worsening and deepening and, on the other, the majority of the population feel indiferent to and immune from the results of such a worrying image. Only a few, criticized and reproached by the apathic majority, are capable of sounding the alarm about the dangerous roads taken by the Israeli society. We are becoming more and more similar to other societies or processes of the old days, the memories of which are terrifying.  

I hope I am wrong.

Daniel Kupervaser

Herzlya – Israel October 14, 2009

http://daniel.kupervaser.com/blog/en