Israeli president’s diagnosis - ‘Israel is a sick society’

[introspective]

Did you hear that the president of Israel said Israel is a “sick society”? Reuven Rivlin, a Likudnik, said this over the weekend. There’s been lots of coverage in Israel, but as Sullivan points out, the declaration hasn’t gotten much attention stateside. I should think it would be viral.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s report:

“It is time to honestly admit that Israeli society is ill – and it is our duty to treat this disease,” Rivlin told the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities on Sunday at a conference titled “From Xenophobia to Accepting the Other.”

“The tension between Jews and Arabs within the State of Israel has risen to record heights, and the relationship between all parties has reached a new low,” he said. “We have all witnessed the shocking sequence of incidents and violence taking place by both sides. The epidemic of violence is not limited to one sector or another, it permeates every area and doesn’t skip any arena. There is violence in soccer stadiums as well as in the academia. There is violence in the social media and in everyday discourse, in hospitals and in schools.”

From the Jerusalem Post:

The time has come to admit that Israel is a sick society, with an illness that demands treatment, President Reuven Rivlin said at the opening session on Sunday of a conference on From Hatred of the Stranger to Acceptance of the Other.

Rivlin wondered aloud whether Jews and Arabs had abandoned the secret of dialogue.

With regard to Jews he said: “I’m not asking if they’ve forgotten how to be Jews, but if they’ve forgotten how to be decent human beings. Have they forgotten how to converse?” In Rivlin’s eyes, the academy has a vital task to reduce violence in Israeli society by encouraging dialogue and the study of different cultures and languages with the aim of promoting mutual understanding, so that there can be civilized meetings between the sectors of society.

JTA says that Rivlin spoke of abuse he’s received on his Facebook page. Presumably from the right, not the left. This is a country where a settler extremist assassinated a prime minister who was saying he wanted to compromise with Palestinians, 19 years ago.

Rivlin is obviously referencing the teen murders of the last summer and the chants of “Death to Arabs” that resound in the streets of Jerusalem. This is the hardline rightwing society that Max Blumenthal described in his book Goliath, that Shlomo Sand has sought to resign from by stopping being a Jew, and that Nathan Thrall cites in his takedown of Ari Shavit’s usefulness to American Jews as a liberal voice when he’s anything but. And the president of the country is saying this? A Likudnik politician? As Sulllivan says, any American who said this would be instantly marginalized and smeared as an anti-Semite. Witness Blumenthal’s blacklisting by the Times, and the fact that Sand and Thrall appear in English publications. While liberal American Jews hold on to their dreamcastle Israel, with the help of Shavit and his media posse; and the New York Times gives a platform to wingnut Caroline Glick to malign Palestinian leaders. This is a very dangerous situation. Though I imagine if there’s enough controversy over the comments, The New York Times will cover them. Chris Matthews has surely seen Rivlin’s comment but won’t touch it until safe media here have picked it up.

By the way, in a radio discussion on Open Source a month ago, I said that Zionism began in 1894 with Theodor Herzl hearing the chant, Death to the Jews, in Paris, and that it has now culminated 120 years later with nationalist Jews chanting Death to the Arabs in Jerusalem. That is the alpha and omega of political Zionism, which has failed Herzl’s own test, that the stranger will be welcome in Jewish society. Bernard Avishai responded that I was offering a “caricature” of the movement. I don’t think it’s a caricature; it’s a realistic interpretation of the failure of an ideology to create a better society. Rivlin must share something of my view, despairingly. Does he have the makings of a De Klerk, the ability to state to his fellow citizens that the project has failed and must be reimagined?


--Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.

Source:http://mondoweiss.net/2014/10/israel....qKyCviFS.dpuf

[syed_z]

Thanks for sharing that.

In the following Article Dr. Anisa Abd el Fattah , a political analyst explains that a homeland for Jews had already been designated long before their exodus to Palestine took place. This was inside Russia near the border with China and Joseph Stalin had done this for a new homeland for the Jews named Jewish Autonomous Oblast. The name of this territory still exists in Russia and was given for the Jews living inside USSR. However, Theodore Herzl and his Western Sponsors had other plans, which was to start again where the Crusaders had failed in the Holy Land.

The Herzl Conspiracy

Presently, approximately 6,000 Jews continue to live in the JAR. 40,000 Jews are said to have migrated there from 1928 to 1989 when many began to leave for Israel after the breakup of the Soviet Union. On the website for the administrative offices of the Jewish Autonomous Region, we find the following:

The main ideologist and organizer of the formation of the Jewish Autonomous Region was P.G. Smidovich - the head of the Committee on land settlement of Jewish workers (KOMZET) created in 1924 at the Presidium of the Soviet of Nationalities of the USSR. He was occupied in search of places for compact settlement of Jews and adaptation of the Jewish people to agricultural work as well.

On March 28, the decision of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR passed the decree "on the attaching for KOMZET of free land near the Amur River in the Far East for settlement of the working Jews, including the area of Birsko-Bidzhanskiy district".

And in May, 1928 Tikhonkaya railway station has accepted the first Jewish settlers from various cities, villages and places of Ukraine, Belarus and the central areas of Russia. Simultaneously the necessary money resources and technical equipment for their arrangement were allocated by the state’s decision.


The prospect of revival of the Jewish state has found the response from abroad, first of all from Jews of the USA and Canada. IKOR, a special organization on rendering assistance to the Jewish land management in the USSR, has been created. It rendered settlers such free aid as various equipment, engineering, agricultural stock, building materials, and medicines. On August 20, 1930 the Central Executive Committee of RSFSR has accepted the decision "On Formation of Birobidzhan National Region in the Structure of the Far Eastern Territory".

On May 7, 1934 the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee has accepted the decision about transformation of the Biro-Bidzhanskiy national district to the Jewish Autonomous Region in structure of the Russian Federation. Administratively it entered into the Far Eastern territory. In 1938, because of division of the Far Eastern territory into the Primorye and Khabarovsk Territories, the JAR became a part of the Khabarovsk Territory. And in 1991 after acceptance of the Declaration by the Supreme Soviet of RSFSR about state legal status of the Jewish Autonomous Region, it became the full subject of the Russian Federation.”

It may seem at first glance that these facts are little more than historic trivia. Yet, when we think about it, we realize that it is much more than trivia. It is proof that Theodore Herzl and other Zionists were lying when they insisted as late as 1948 that Jews were in need of a homeland in Palestine where they could be safe from European anti-Semitism. These facts prove that a homeland for Jews had already been established as far back as 1928 in Russia. It was established and was already attracting Jews from throughout Europe and other parts of the world.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/01...zl-conspiracy/