Israeli attitudes to the Occupation

In one of the earlier sessions we touched briefly on Israeli attitudes to the range of human rights abuses and war crimes perpetrated in the West Bank and why they didn’t voice objections.

One argument advanced was that because Haaretz regularly publishes articles accurately describing the situation in the West Bank that Israelis know about this. However, the circulation of Haaretz is 75, 000 per day whereas the two largest right-wing papers have combined weekday sales of 550,000 and 850,000 at the weekend. Little or nothing of the Israeli human right abuses will be published there. As one commentator said, “A settler dog being killed will get more attention than the murder of 20 Palestinians.” Further, there is no TV equivalent of Haaretz, so the Israeli public is generally ill-informed of what happens in The West Bank and too many simply dismiss Palestinians as terrorists as a result of the right-wing propaganda.

One tour guide with a group of US youth was filmed saying that it was often said that one Jewish life is worth more than 10 Arab ones. He then continued that actually as far as he was concerned one Jewish life is worth more than 1000 Arabs. I suspect that this approach is common among the Ultra-Orthodox in particular.

However, in Tel Aviv – 4m inhabitants, about half the country - many secular Israeli Jews enjoy a great life style and the young ones a spectacular night life. Yes, they served in the West Banks after indoctrination, but the majority seem to put that behind them once they are back. As Gideon Levi writes, life is so good for them, they ignore what is happening in The West Bank as it doesn’t impinge on them. I heard Levi speak in London and his first words were, “Wow, this is more than double the audience I would get in Tel Aviv.” He has also pointed out that various commentators say that the situation is unlikely to change in The West Bank any time soon, so better to ignore it and get on and enjoy your life.

Yes, there are the excellent people in Breaking The Silence, B’tselem, Peace Now, Rabbis for Human Rights, ACRI (the largest Israeli human rights organisation) and Gisha (a human right, NGO focusing on the right to free movement), but they are a small minority. At its foundation in the early part of this century, Breaking the Silence mounted a photo-journalism exhibition by ex-IDF soldiers about IDF abuses in Hebron. It was displayed in The Knesset and toured local schools – both unthinkable now. Israel continues to shift to the right with a corresponding support for the settlement enterprise. In the latest Israeli polling, the left wing party, Meretz would get around 8 seats out of 120 and the centre left Labour party, which supports the settlement project anyway, would fail to meet the threshold to win a seat.

This is perhaps why many of the NGOs mentioned above reach out to Diaspora Jewish groups in the UK, USA and elsewhere as they get a better reception than at home and apart from fund raising, they hope that the Diaspora view will eventually be noticed in Israel. The NGOs are often criticised and even called traitors in the non-Haaretz media for washing Israel's dirty linen in other countries.