It all depends where you live. That was the geography of Israel's propaganda, designed to demonstrate that we softies – we little baby-coddling liberals living in our secure Western homes – don't realise the horror of 12 (now 20) Israeli deaths in 10 years and thousands of rockets and the unimaginable trauma and stress of living near Gaza. Forget the 600 Palestinian dead; travelling on both sides of the Atlantic these past couple of weeks has been an instructive – not to say weirdly repetitive – experience.
Here's how it goes. I was in Toronto when I opened the right-wing National Post and found Lorne Gunter trying to explain to readers what it felt like to come under Palestinian rocket attack. "Suppose you lived in the Toronto suburb of Don Mills," writes Gunter, "and people from the suburb of Scarborough – about 10 kilometres away – were firing as many as 100 rockets a day into your yard, your kid's school, the strip mall down the street and your dentist's office..." READ MORE
Israel considering banning Arab party from elections... "There is a limit to democracy"
As a popular party with Israel’s large Arab minority, the Balad Party has been seen as a prime mover behind the nation’s domestic antiwar movement. Though officials have repeatedly warned them that “there is a limit to democracy” in Israel, this opposition party never seems to have fully learned its lesson.
“The goals of Hamas and Balad are the same: to destroy Israel,” insists the always bellicose Yisrael Beitenu chairman Avigdor Lieberman, who favors a ban on the party. The Balad Party’s stated goal is to “transform the state of Israel into a democracy for all its citizens, irrespective of national or ethnic identity,” a goal which makes it dangerously radical in a state which views its non-Jewish citizens as second-class in the best of times and traitors during most wars. READ MORE
No comments:
Post a Comment