Israeli leftists have a racist past, too

Ha'aretz-Yitzhak Laor – The serene liberal loves to be appalled by the right's racism. But the older form of racism, that of the center-left, can actually teach us something about its origins.

....imagine Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman saying, "Gaza is an abscess, a troublesome pus. Until they understand what has to be done over there, nothing will move over here." Facebook would erupt, the comments would look akin to Der Sturmer, and intellectuals would wax nostalgic for Zionism's glory days (when they did things they didn't talk about and talked about things they didn't do ).

But the description of the Gaza ghetto as an "abscess, a troublesome pus" was uttered - without any public reaction - by the Labor Party's Matan Vilnai, who has been working for years, in the name of the liberal consensus, to turn Gaza into hell, with a cruelty that owes nothing to any racist rabbi's wife.

....The serene liberal loves to be appalled by the right's racism. He feels so righteous at such moments. But the older form of racism, that of Vilnai and his ilk, can actually teach us something about its origins.

....Two years ago, Lieberman's star was rising: "He says what everyone thinks." That's a fascist motto. That's exactly how Rabbi Meir Kahane rose from the ashes of the failure in Lebanon, back in 1984, after the Sabra and Chatila massacres. He, too, said "what everyone thinks."

So what does everyone think? Whatever the army does. And what does the army do? It shoots peasants and shepherds. And the people know perfectly well what "the people's army" is doing...

And that's how things are in an era of utter impotence, in which no political party has a plan, in which the center is high on hedonism and the increasingly impoverished margins are "rebelling."

In the past, we extricated ourselves from diplomatic dead ends through action - i.e. wars. But today, when it's clear we have no partner for war, the diplomatic dead end has no military alternative, not even in Lebanon, which in the past served as an artillery and air force practice ground for every leader who wanted to show "determination."....

For years, this was Shimon Peres' trademark: "When there is talking, there isn't shooting." And they really did talk, all through the Oslo period. And they also expropriated, and settled, and shot, and arrested, and tortured, and prepared reprisal operations.

Now, we aren't talking, but it's highly doubtful that we can bomb, aside from routine fire on the miserable Gaza ghetto...

.....Here, with the exception of a few enthusiastic young people, there is no struggle. Even the trickle of people refusing to serve in the army has dried up... Read more