by Dror Eydar
The Zionist Left is ignoring the hostile takeover of the Labor and Meretz parties by fringe extremists.
Amid the sea of astonishing headlines the Haaretz peace-on-Mars conference supplied last week, statements by journalist Amira Hass were reported by the NRG news site and the newspaper Makor Rishon: "Anyone who plans to make aliyah to Israel should know he's about to commit a crime." I was reminded of a similar article by journalist Rogel "hold me back, I'm leaving the country" Alpher, who called on the Jews of France not to make aliyah because "the Zionist enterprise is dead" and Israel was like Germany of 1933. And Haaretz Publisher Amos Shocken insists that his paper is "Zionist."
It would be hard to ask Hass to be more extreme. For years, she has been rending her garments in mourning for her people and cut herself off from us to the extent of identifying with the enemies that are seeking to kill us. Two and a half years ago, she published a piece in which she took the side of the "rock throwers" -- being one in her words "is the right and obligation of anyone under foreign rule." At that time, toddler Adele Biton was fighting for her life as a result of a rock-throwing attack. In the end, her life was taken from her because of that same "right." Before Adele and after, we saw cases of people murdered by thrown rocks.
Hass' basic assumption about why aliyah is a "crime" is not the Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria (which she deems "occupation"), but rather the Law of Return -- the right granted exclusively to Jews to make aliyah to their own country. The basic demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the national home of the Jewish people stems precisely from the same dangerous direction present in the Left: great difficulty accepting the most just law that grants the Jewish people a single state on a tiny bit of territory among a sea of Arab and Muslim countries.
The moment we have any agreement, the guns of a thousand leftist groups and nongovernmental organizations will be aimed inward at "little Israel" and blame it for what Hass, Alpher, and other nuts call "apartheid." (Do they know the history of South Africa? It's doubtful they know the history of their own people.) Today, Israel is a country of "all its citizens"; the true demand at the heart of the Left's fight is for Israel to be a country "of all its nations" -- thereby stripping it of its Jewishness.
The Zionist Left is in denial about this danger and is ignoring the hostile takeover of the Labor and Meretz parties by fringe activists. Before us we have more evidence of what I have referred to as "Samson's choice": Some of what was once Zionism's avant-garde, the legitimate offspring of great left-wing Zionist movements, has been politically, culturally and socially pushed aside. Others, whose fathers used to stand outside the door of the Zionist project, are putting their hands to the plow and taking up the burden of leading the state: See who now heads the Shin Bet, the Mossad and the Israel Police. The situation is the same in the IDF. In such a situation, some have chosen "let me die with the Philistin(ians)." As far as they are concerned, "the Zionist enterprise is dead," and if not -- they'll help it die.
Beyond the expected remarks from Hass, the audience's response was telling: riotous applause. The same audience had a chilly response for President Reuven Rivlin, who said that the IDF was the most moral army in the world, and remained quiet when Zionist Union co-chair Tzipi Livni attacked the anti-IDF movement Breaking the Silence. Channel 2 correspondent Amit Segal reported that the applause to a speech by Joint Arab List Ayman Ouda "almost blew the roof off." The Israeli Left is desperately seeking "an authentic Palestinian representative" who will forgive it for the "crimes" of the "Zionist regime." The day isn't far off when Ouda or his successor will replace Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog or his own successor as head of the camp. Then aliyah to Israel will be declared a crime, war will be marketed as peace, and rock throwing will be recognized as a right. The Zionist enterprise isn't dead, heaven forbid. The opposite -- the return to Zion is the only historic law that has worked in recent centuries. It's the Zionist Left that is gasping its last breath.
Will it recover?
Will it recover?
Dror Eydar
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=14711
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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