Israeli's stopping the Aid Truck obstruction

@israelilefty While I have a few Jewish Israeli friends I would not be able to maintain a friendship with a settler in the WB as I would feel too uncomfortable with it. So I know no settler Israelis, in answer to your question.

I think we can call the ideological settlers who are racist extremists a bigoted and racist community. That seems straightforward, and I wonder why a group like ST would resist denouncing their behaviour and views.

I think economic, centrist settlers are also subject to normalised racism and bigotry. The bigger, cheaper housing, the fresh air, more space for the kids, the pools - these do come at the expense of another group. A group which is 'other' and not allowed to participate in the better lifestyle enjoyed in the settlements. Even if these centrists, who seek only affordable housing. don't hate the outgroup excluded from this affordability bubble, they consider them less important and subordinate to their own needs.

Those who work or study at certain institutions maintain an illegal occupation and I think are therefore racist and bigoted, since they consider the 'other' as undeserving of freedom.

The settlers who live in towns with an established pre-1948 presence are the only settler community you mention that I do not think are necessarily racist or bigoted. However, I don't see why those towns should become part of Israel. The Jewish presence could remain and the towns become part of a future Palestinian state.

I don't think it matters whether a community is religious or secular. Either can be racist or bigoted.

Primo Levi wrote, I think in 'the drowned and the saved', about the letters he received from Germans. They all seemed to fall very short of acknowledging the true horror of what was done by German officials, the army and the people themselves. It was as if whole communities had been led to believe really heinous things, to consider them normal. This is why I believe one can, and should denounce communities if they operate within racist, bigoted parameters, because there are consequences to not doing so. I understand the political tactic of not using inflammatory rhetoric, of winning hearts and minds, but I wonder if it is the right one for a group like ST to use, and what happens if one tries to make friends with people who hold extremist and racist ideas.

I completely respect your decision not to live in the WB.

How many West Bank settlers do you actually know personally? They aren't just one "community". There are ideological settlers who are racist extremists (the ones who you are presumably picturing), and there are settlers who are centrists who would prefer to live somewhere else but got priced out of the housing market and live in the West Bank for economic reasons, or are there because they work or study at certain institutions. There are settlers who live in outposts that impinge on private Palestinian land, and there are settlers who live in established towns where there was a pre-1948 Jewish presence and almost certainly will become part of Israel in a two-state solution via land swaps. There are religious settlers and secular settlers. There are even a small number of religious Jewish settlers who set up peace initiatives and criticise the government's annexation plans (see Roots-Judur).

I personally would not choose to live in the West Bank because I believe that the settlements are an obstacle to peace and prolong the occupation - and I don't want to participate. But it's wrong to dismiss all settlers as bigoted and racist. Some certainly are. But others are no more racist and bigoted than inhabitants of places with similar socioeconomic profiles within the Green Line.

@israelilefty I don't have much time right now, but one small question. I don't agree with refusing to denounce entire communities as bigoted and racist. These attitudes can infect a community so that they hold racist and bigoted views as normal. Do you think the settlers in the West Bank are not bigoted and racist?

@stormy4319trevor just to clarify I don't think BDS is actually working with Netanyahu - I just suggested that in some areas their rhetoric produces a similar effect.

By the way, I wouldn't describe ST as simply "left leaning". While they are unaffiliated, they emerged from political activists from the Habash/al-Jabha party, which is a joint Palestinian-Jewish (majority Palestinian) socialist political party in Israel, who in turn emerged from the Communist party, the political home of many major Palestinian intellectuals including Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian national poet.

I'm not sure what you mean by a non-moral stance. I think they have a highly moral stance and very clear values. What they avoid is denouncing entire communities as fascist/racist, and "arrogant moralising", but rather looking for areas of shared interest. This is a very important intervention in Israeli politics, which is highly "tribal" and based on crude stereotypes, for example, secular leftists often assume they can't have any common political interests with ultra-Orthodox communities, or someone might assume all Mizrahim are right-wingers, or all religious people are racist, and so on.

@israelilefty Thank you for your thoughts. Of course you do not expect Palestinians to appreciate or thank you for objecting to your government's actions, because I'm sure you act from moral obligation and not a desire for recognition. I would recognise that it is always courageous to speak out when you see something wrong, particularly when you are in the minority.
It is understandable that you object to left leaning groups like ST being misrepresented. It may well be untrue that, as BDS claims, they focus on hatred between Israelis and Palestinians as the problem. I do not know enough about ST to say. You say that BDS are conflating rhetoric, ideology and strategy to come up with the criticism that ST holds hatred between the 2 parties as the problem, rather than oppression of one party by the other. So, it seems you are saying that ST does have elements of 'it's mutual hatred, not oppression' in their rhetoric, ideology and strategy and that BDS have combined these elements to come up with their criticism.
Abed appears to argue that given Israeli hegemony, it is public attitudes in Israeli society which need to change. The fear of Palestinians must be overcome and this can be achieved by building a social movement. This seems like a logical and reasonable argument to me.
I do not agree that shouting 'apartheid' and 'genocide' may make people feel good. On the contrary, they are utterly gut wrenching concepts which cause people great pain to call out. I appreciate that this does not work in Israel and that it is considered more practical to not be inflammatory. As ST state on their website, they do not seek to alienate those who others may call 'bigots' or 'fascists' but to find ways to bring them on board and offer ideas which might benefit them. I see the logic here, too. I suppose it's a matter of debate whether that's an acceptable approach. It could be argued to be more realistic, but I think others on the left would think it dishonest or lacking in integrity.
If BDS is, as you say, misrepresenting ST, it is certainly a mistake. It is not helpful to the Palestinian cause or to the need in Israel for some form of counter balance to the right. I am not sure whether I agree that BDS is working with Netanyahu to prevent Palestinians voting, but perhaps you have some reason for thinking that.
I think I have no idea whether BDS is misrepresenting ST, or whether there are genuine reasons to doubt their strategies and ideology. Personally, I do query the non-moral stance they wish to take, while also understanding that they want to be practical. However, I understand that there needs to be a significant movement for the left and I hope that can be supported, even if their approach on Palestine does not satisfy every supporter of the Palestinian cause.

@israelilefty

That's very interesting, thank you.

@HelenHen, this is not just a politically naive reaction to hate - it's a deep-based ideological difference between BDS and ST. For a much more eloquent explanation than I can provide, see:

https://portside.org/2024-02-02/why-faction-bds-attacking-standing-together

@stormy4319trevor Let me make something clear. As an Israeli leftist protesting the actions of my own government, I don't expect appreciation or thanks from Palestinian society. It is my moral obligation, and it is my belief that urgent change is needed within Israeli society. It is my responsibility to do everything I can within Israeli society both to actively protest specific instances of oppression and to participate in making the structural changes that will end the occupation and build a just, democratic, equal society.

However, there is a difference between not "appreciating" and actively misrepresenting and denouncing, as the BDS movement has chosen to do to Standing Together. The narrative that you cite in your post about Standing Together claiming that this is just about "hatred" is simply not true - it is a spin that is convenient for BDS but it deliberately conflates rhetoric, ideology and strategy, and it also flies in the face of what ST actually says AND what it does. See for example this interview with ST spokesperson Sally Abed:

"JW [interviewer]: Standing Together is not just an idealistic vision of a peaceful future for Israel and Palestine. You are organizers. You have a strategy for change. Tell us a little about that.

SA [Sally Abed]: We’re actually not idealistic at all. We’re ideological. We have a deep-rooted ideology of equality and social justice. And we have a theory of change, of how we do it. We acknowledge the hegemony of Israeli society and the control and the power differential that it has in this situation.

We understand that we need to build the political will within the Israeli public to end the occupation, to end the military control, and take real steps towards peace. To do that, you need a deep shift in the Israeli public that for many decades has been told that’s not possible. “In order for us to be safe, we absolutely need to oppress, incarcerate, control, and kill Palestinians. We have to.” That’s what they’ve been told.

Creating that shift has been almost a mission impossible. But October 7th, in many ways, shattered that conception— or at least challenged it deeply. We are at the point where we see ourselves as the social movement that will lead that shift in paradigm. I don’t say that lightly. I don’t say that to brag. In order to change reality and change institutions politically, socially, culturally, to shift a society, you need to build a social movement. And that doesn’t only require shouting the ugly truth, but organizing people, building leadership, building the communities on the ground."

See also ST's statement on the BDS denunciation: drive.google.com/file/d/1Gq6uqfmkA5Jq_FGjUgG8G70b-VFiu4Vx/view

In short, ST could yell slogans about apartheid and genocide, which is a rhetorical choice that can make the people shouting them feel good, but it is not an effective strategy inside Israel. The people who choose to do this (and they exist) forever remain a tiny group on a street corner in Tel Aviv. Standing Together has decided to go for effective opposition to the occupation, placing emphasis on structural change and direct action rather than inflammatory rhetoric. It's clear that this is working. Just in the past few months ST has managed to get thousands out on the streets to call for a ceasefire. They have managed to stop the settler attacks on humanitarian aid. When they call for meetings on an urgent issue, tens of young, ideological people turn up ready to take action. They have managed to get their Palestinian member Sally Abed (quoted above) elected to Haifa city council.

Again, this is not about seeking approval. Not every leftist agrees on rhetoric or strategy. It's about a deliberate decision to misrepresent and then denounce ST. And doing so is not politically neutral - it directly empowers the Israeli right, both because Netanyahu uses such announcements to bolster his claims that "they all hate us, no matter what our position", and because it contributes to delegitimising any possibility of social and political change within Israel, which encourages many Palestinian citizens to choose to avoid political participation altogether. In the end, Israel has very strict proportional representation, and the biggest reason that Palestinian citizens are way underrepresented in the Knesset (under 10% of members of Knesset for over 20% of the population) is because voting rates are so low--a situation which ironically Netanyahu and BDS work together to ensure, to the sole benefit of the Israeli right. To sign off - this is just one of the reasons I'm so passionate about this specific issue.

@israelilefty I think it's positive that they want to create a left to balance the surge to the right. I had a look on their website, They are rather vague about what they do, but mention protesting for the climate, social equality, ending the occupation, which are all good causes (and recognisably left wing.) They also mention a desire to avoid being moralistic, or to label communities as 'fascist', or bigoted, that they will not use 'human rights rhetoric', and do not give any strategy for ending the occupation, though they state they would like to. I think they probably do some good things, but I can see why their refusal to discuss human rights, oppression, apartheid and their refusal to morally condemn people who some might call fascists is problematic to BDS which takes a firm moral stance on all those things, and believes in putting pressure on other countries/institutions/corporations to end complicity. Maybe you are right that support from anyone should be welcomed, it doesn't have to be from a group that is fully morally aligned. I try to imagine if I was watching my people being killed every day, evicted, my homeland slowly taken over by another group, whether I would appreciate help from a group who think it's a hatred problem rather than an oppressive situation. I don't know, in the short term possibly I'd just appreciate the help. But in the long term there has to be more honesty than this.

I have no issue whatever with constructive disagreements about protest tactics. What I have an issue with is the BDS movement actively seeking to delegitimise and denounce Standing Together by branding it with every possible "traitor" label: "Serving Apartheid Israel's Propaganda"; "intellectually dishonest", seeks to "whitewash" etc etc, while failing to engage with what they actually do.

How does it help the Palestinian cause to delegitimise an organization which is putting people out there on the front lines to stop settler violence and to protect aid convoys? Which is protesting against the witch-hunting of (mainly Palestinian) university lecturers and public figures who are being demonised for attending a Nakba rally, speaking about genocide or eulogising a Palestinian convicted in Israel as a terrorist? Which was afaik the first organization to draw hundreds to protest for a ceasefire on the streets of Tel Aviv? How can they claim that Standing Together is paying lip service to occupation when literally one of the two main aims of the organization is ending the occupation? How can they claim that Standing Together is "based on a master-slave relation rather than justice, reparations and full equality" when literally the other main aim of Standing Together is "democracy, equality, solidarity and justice in society".

In my view it is BDS who are whitewashing here: they are making an arbitrary litmus test based on a dogmatic, exclusionary conception of pro-Palestine activism then declaring that Standing Together fail it, rather than acknowledging the group's actions, or their weight in political terms, being one of the only such voices operating within the mainstream of Israeli society, not on some radical fringe. And I feel passionately about this because I've seen exactly this vindictive litmus testing far too many times.

I encourage anyone wanting an in-depth discussion of these dynamics to listen to the 'Unapologetic' podcast, made by two young Palestinians, which offers a nuanced "third narrative" on the conflict outside the mutual demonisation of "pro-Palestine" and "pro-Israel voices".

Totally agree on Unholy - it's a brilliant podcast. I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the Israel-Gaza situation. I'll look up the other one too- thanks for the recommendation @israelilefty

BDS seems to criticise Standing Together for denying oppression and apartheid, paying lip service to occupation and ignoring the disparity in power between Palestinians and Israelis. That doesn't seem unreasonable, given their own perspective,

You are making a fair point. As a French citizen who has lived in the UK for the last 36 years, I can relate to been divorced from the mainstream French society and opinion, despite being in touch with family in France.
It's a mistake to think that what you hear in English is representative of the conversation in Israel.
This is reassuring as I have found, at times, their views to be troubling.

Remember though that the pro-Israel voices you hear in English are also generally not Israelis - or if they are, they are often propagandists, or members of Israel's English-speaking immigrant population, which is actually a very small part of Israeli society and in many cases like any immigrants can be quite divorced from mainstream Israeli society and opinion (Of course the same criticism can be levelled against me - though I don't live in one of the main areas of English speakers, and I work in a fully Hebrew-speaking environment and consume primarily Hebrew media so I like to think I'm reasonably in touch). It's a mistake to think that what you hear in English is representative of the conversation in Israel.

This is one of the reasons I recommend the podcast 'Unholy' as one of the co-hosts, Yonit Levy, really is a prime-time Israeli news anchor so at least when you hear her you are hearing someone on the ground. Likewise I will add to the list the amazing podcast 'Unapologetic' by two Palestinian-Israelis, which I think also represents the position of many Jewish-Israeli ideological leftists.

Thanks.

Just started reading and it's on my watch list.

Very interesting, articulate and measured.

@israelilefty Thank you

It does sound as if you are part of a small percentage of the population - the non left are as you say not necessarily raging right wingers - but those raging are the voices we unfortunately end up hearing, you only have to look on these threads to see lots of them.

Nonetheless @israelilefty thank you.

It's not difficult for the mainstream Israeli left to protest. I was in 3 demonstrations last week, one against the war, one against the government and one for a ceasefire deal and freeing the hostages. In the massive democracy demonstrations of 2023 in every single demonstration I attended there were people with anti-occupation slogans (usually several, even in small local demonstrations) - and at the big demonstrations there was a huge bloc of anti-occupation demonstrators within the more general pro-democracy protests). My t-shirt slogan, from that same bloc, said "Democracy cannot coexist with occupation" in 3 languages. Having said this, freedom of speech has been restricted due to threats and heavy policing by the police, especially since our most far right minister (Ben Gvir) is the police minister. Generally police ban protestors from carrying Palestinian flags or using terms like "genocide" about the war (which most Jewish Israeli demonstrators don't seek to do but some on the far left do and some Palestinian citizens would choose to do), and they also particularly intimidate Palestinian-Israeli protests against the war.

Aside from this, the main thing that makes it difficult at the moment is that there are so many different demonstrations/campaigns that it's difficult for people to find time for them all. Of course people are also involved in political activities that are not demonstrations, and many are focusing on the hostage issue until it is resolved.

This is very encouraging to read. I have to say everything I have read re the Israeli left suggested it had become so hard for them to object/protest that they had almost been made to disappear from view. That must have been quite a sight to see them stood there. I hope their families are proud of them.

I think sometimes in discussions (and I use that lightly) the concept of dismantling the state is “ideal” because other posters are totally in denial of the existence of a functioning society prior to their arrival. Practically dismantling a state is as impractical as creating a state while dismantling the existing status quo.

The settler’s activities have always been supported by the state.

I forgot to write in the previous post, for anyone who wants to read a bit more from an Israeli leftist, I have been doing an epic AMA on the Ask Me Anything board, here:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/AMA/4967191-im-a-jewish-israeli-ama

It's really helpful and interesting to hear your perspective as a left leaning Israeli- thank you.

The left in Israel is much smaller than it used to be, mainly to do with people being disillusioned with the peace process after two intifadas and endless rounds of violence, and after years and years of rightist incitement.

Recently the left wing party (Meretz-Labour combination) is polling at 10 seats out of 120 in the Knesset, and the majority Arab party Hadash-Taal is polling 5 seats, and the Islamic party Raam (not leftist on social issues but yes anti occupation) is polling 5 seats.

But the definition of left really depends what's on the table. Nobody is out right now demonstrating about the occupation or the two state solution (aside from smaller protests on the left against settler violence) because there is no proposal on the table. On the other hand, the majority of Israelis support a ceasefire deal for the return of the hostages, and the majority of Israelis did not support the judicial coup Netanyahu's government tried to enact in 2023.

In short, the left is not tiny but it's not a majority. It really needs to rebuild, and get out of the stagnation of the last years. It won't be easy. Oct 7 was a huge moment of despair for anyone who thought peace was anywhere near and it will take a lot for most Israelis to have any kind of trust in a Palestinian partner, and I'm sure vice versa. But now is the time for rebuilding and organizations like Standing Together are at the frontline of working for equality and cooperation between Palestinian and Jewish Israelis in civil society, which I believe is an essential part of undoing the racist and rightist incitement that has taken over much of Israeli society in recent years.

Editing to add: not everyone who isn't a leftist is a raging rightist. There is a big centre including plenty of people who support a two state solution in principle, but don't see it on the cards any time soon and generally think that leftists are naive.

To be honest @israelilefty I knew there was a minority left wing in Israel but have to admit I'm kind of surprised to hear what you're saying and had no idea it's a lot more widespread than I thought.

The pro-Israeli voices on mumsnet don't particularly speak to a left wing anti occupation narrative and obviously what we've been getting fed through our mainstream and social media doesn't cover this too.

But I am interested to find out more - is it a small minority of people? what kid of percentage would you say it is?