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The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil,    but because of the people who don't do anything about it

Occupation magazine - Commentary Home page  back Print  Send To friend Red Rag column: Brexit; letter to Supreme Court judges; `Consensus` at Ben-Gurion University By: Gideon Spiro 29 June 2016 (English translation 14 July 2016) Ghosts from the past Britain’s departure from the European Union recalls similar events in Israel, where the Right strikes wherever it can. The methods too are similar: murder and racist incitement. Netanyahu ensured his electoral victory with the threat that Arabs were flowing in their masses to the polls. The British Right ensured its victory in the same spirit of “beware, the Albanians, the Poles and the Turks will swamp us.” Playing on strings of fear of the Other and the different has proved effective, there and here. The murder of a left-wing Labour Member of Parliament, Jo Cox, by a neo-Nazi, advanced, or at least did not hamper, the victory of the Right, just as the murder of Rabin did not impede the victory of Netanyahu, who was himself one of the inciters at the time. Britain’s departure has fed the fascist and neo-Nazi Right in other countries, which is likely to cause a chain reaction that will shatter the European Union and return it to the era of borders, hostility and nationalism. The European Union definitely needs reform, but the solution is not to dismantle it, but to renovate it. The winds of the extreme Right that blow strongly in a large part of the Union, including Hungary, Poland, Germany, France and Belgium, are of a kind with the winds of the extreme Right in Israel, but only a typical Israeli simpleton would see them as allies. In the long run these are antisemitic groups for whom hatred of the Jews is part and parcel of their hatred of the Other and the different: Muslims, Roma and others. The big question now is whether the leadership of the Union that has not yet dissolved will wake up to the danger before the occurrence of a new disaster. [1] To the triumvirate of judicial criminals Meltzer and Shaham and Baron The Supreme Court of War Criminals Jerusalem 25 June 2016 This protest follows your ruling (High Court of Justice 1633/16 of 31 May 2016) that permits the army of Occupation to demolish a two-storey house which is home to a Palestinian family of seven in the village of Amra in the West Bank. The demolition is a collective punishment of a family that committed no crime but is being punished for a crime committed by a minor who is a member of the family. The word “justice” is castrated when children and old people are made homeless under its aegis. This is Occupation justice of war criminals. Your ruling is full of quotes from similar past rulings, as befits thieves who seek cover and rationalization from thieves who preceded them. The ruling leaves the impression that you live in outer space. There is no Occupation, there is no violation of human rights, there is no torture, there is no land theft, no apartheid regime, no murder of thousands of Palestinians, including children and babies, no daily harassment that has converted the lives of millions of Palestinians into perpetual hell for fifty years now. There is only a crime committed by one Palestinian minor, devoid of all context. The illegal presence of settlers in the Occupied Territories does not justify their murder. Their right to life is not in question. The solution is not to demolish the houses of Palestinian families, whose right to shelter is an inseparable part of their right to life. The solution is to end the Occupation and return the settlers to the State of Israel. A hypocritical and cynical highlight of your ruling is the statement that demolishing the house is not a punishment but a deterrent. In my brain flashed the question: how can we influence judges to stop imposing this barbaric punishment? Will the knowledge that every judicial authorization of the demolition of the house of a Palestinian family will lead to demolition of the house of the judge’s family – not as a collective punishment, God forbid, but as a deterrent alone – be effective? Please reply. The sanctity of the consensus Professor Rivka Carmi, president of Ben-Gurion University, overruled the conferral of a prize to the organization Breaking the Silence on the pretext that the organization is outside the consensus. This is abject submission to the evil spirits of Israeli fascism and a turning away from what a democratic university is supposed to represent. Democratic universities were and are hothouses for non-consensual ideas and organizations. In Rivka Carmi’s summer 2016 Pyongyang-University-model university, Albert Einstein, a follower of Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolence, would have been rejected, because he certainly would have supported Breaking the Silence. Translator’s note 1. The Hebrew word used here for “disaster” – sho’ah – is also used in Israel to refer to the Holocaust. Translated from Hebrew for Occupation Magazine by George Malent gm Links to the latest articles in this section Three weeks into the Gaza War - a somber and sober assessment, with some historical perspectives Israelis, Palestinians, Gaza, Hamas - trying to preserve sanity Gush Shalom: The UN decision is a very necessary message to Israel’s extreme right-wing government