Israeli Jews fight for their own freedom and against Palestinian freedom

[yankeedoodle]

There's a strange dynamic going on within Israel.  Every weekend for the past thirteen weeks, there have been massive protests by Israeli Jews against the democracy "steal" by the governing coalition.  Even this past weekend's protest–occurring amidst security threats ranging from brutal Israeli assaults on Al Aqsa mosque to multiple terror attacks inside Israel and Israel-colonized West Bank—brought out 150,000 (a quarter of the previous week's total).

The repeated (over three days) state-sponsored terror attacks on Al Aqsa during the holy month of Ramadan, incited a rocket barrage both from Gaza, Syria and Lebanon.  It threatened to turn into a repeat of May 2021, when Hamas mounted massive attacks against southern Israel in response to similar violent incitement at the holy shrine. There have also been multiple acts of Palestinian resistance: two girls who lived in the settler colony of Efrat were killed in one attack. Efrat is built on land stolen from neighboring Palestinian villages.  Those two phenomena are directly connected. Land and life are precious. If you lose one you will lose the other.

[...]

Bibi as Pharaoh: Let my people go!

The divided Israeli psyche

Israelis thus live a divided existence: they treat their own domestic politics as life or death, with deeply personal implications.  That's what draws such large crowds to the weekly demonstrations.  When the people believe their leaders want to steal their freedoms, they rally to protect them.  Thus, pro-democracy activism has led to a grassroots national movement which may, if it succeeds, topple the fascist government.

While this to many Israelis would be a cause for massive celebration, that's not how Israeli Palestinians or occupied Palestinians see it.  For them, nothing will change.  Their lives will not improve.  The government will not, all of a sudden become less racist, more generous with government funding, or more serious about suppressing crime in their communities (which have been abandoned by Israeli Jewish police).

Israeli Jews, I'm sorry to say, want it that way.  While they might wish that the Palestinian "problem" would just go away, they are willing to live with a permanent disjunction in which they enjoy supremacy, while non-Jews suffer as the permanent underclass.

As I watched the videos of tens of thousands of Israeli Jews holding aloft a massive banner featuring Bibi Netanyahu as Pharaoh, with the caption, "Let my people go," I couldn't help thinking that in the back of their minds had to be fear or anxiety about the security threat.  How do you balance those polar opposites within one nation?

Not to mention that if the people you want to liberate are Jews, when will the other people, Palestinians, be liberated from their bondage?  Though Israelis have lived such an existence for decades (perhaps even since 1948), it is difficult to see how they can perpetuate it forever.  Eventually, such systems based on injustice and mass violence must collapse under the weight of their own contradictions, as have many societies before, going back to the Romans and Greeks, if not earlier.  The arc of the universe may not bend toward justice, but given enough pressure, it will break.

The foregoing is an excerpt from this larger article from Richard Silverstein:
Israel Fights on Two-Front Battlefield at Home and Occupied Palestine
Israeli Jews fight for their own freedom and against Palestinian freedom
https://www.richardsilverstein.com/2023/04/09/israel-fights-on-two-front-battlefield-at-home-and-occupied-palestine/