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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 - Hassan Nasrallah: ally of Israeli civil society By: Gideon Spiro 19 February 2017 Hassan Nasrallah – an ally of civil society in Israel Politics sometimes produce strange alliances and collaborations between erstwhile deadly enemies. For many years environmental protection organizations have been campaigning for the removal of the ammonia tank in Haifa, which could cause mass casualties in the event of its being the target of a terrorist attack. The owners of the ammonia tank, who belong to the tycoon class, succeeded in ridiculing the leaders of the campaign and with the help of the authorities implemented the classical capitalist maxim according to which profits are more important than human life. Until, that is, Nasrallah came along and changed the rules of the game. His threats that in the event of war he will launch missiles at the ammonia tank in Haifa turned the tank into an acute problem that had to be dealt with urgently. Thus was born the decision of a Haifa judge that the ammonia tank was to be emptied within 10 days, and thus was created the improbable alliance between Israeli civil society and Hezbollah. Nasrallah did not rest on his laurels. After he finished helping to eliminate the ammonia site in Haifa (with the hope that that will in fact happen), he moved on to the next target, warning Israel of a strike at the nuclear reactor at Dimona. According to Nasrallah, what was supposed to be a means of intimidating the Arab world will become an internal problem for Israel as soon as Nasrallah’s missiles can reach as far as the reactor at Dimona. And indeed the reactor at Dimona constitutes above all a danger to Israel itself, whether due to war or an earthquake, and it endangers the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens who risk being harmed by radiation. I hope that environmental organizations appreciate the danger that is presented by the nuclear reactor at Dimona, and concentrate on a campaign to neutralize it, shut it down and bury it. We are better off in a Middle East without nuclear reactors and without nuclear bombs. God bless the women who refuse Occupation! A full basket of blessings from this column to the women who are refusing to serve the Occupation and the female prisoners of conscience in who are incarcerated in the military prison: Tamar Alon, Tamar Ze’evi and Atalya Ben-Abba. If I were a religious man, I would say their actions will bring about the rebuilding of the Temple. But since I am not, I will settle for the hope that thanks to them and generations of Occupation refusers, male and female, the regime of Occupation and apartheid will dissolve. President Rivlin in President Trump’s footsteps In press conference President Trump conducted along with his groupie Netanyahu, said the President that it is all the same to him if the solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians takes the form of one state or two states. The president of the State of Israel, Ruvi Rivlin, hastened to declare that Israel should annex all the Occupied Territories and grant civil rights to the Palestinians who live in those territories. This prompts lamentations from Israeli liberals and leftists who declare that the one-state solution is the end of Israel as a Jewish state. “The end of the Zionist dream”, as the newspaper Haaretz put it in an editorial. These lamenters warn that the one-state solution is a recipe for bloodshed and Balkan-style civil war, and that the only choice for resolving the conflict is two states. In their view the one-state solution represents a delusional convergence of the positions of the messianic nationalist Right and the radical Left. But this convergence is only superficial. The plans of the two sides are polar opposites. Whereas the vision of the Left calls for a secular and democratic state, a state of all its citizens, the programme of the Rights is built on a foundation of apartheid and expulsion, which is indeed a recipe for bloodshed. For my part, what troubles me is the question of whether the two peoples, after over a hundred years of war and struggle, are ready to create together a secular democratic state, and whether there may not be a need for a temporary solution of two-states that will exist alongside each other in peace? 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