Israelisch Expansionisme 37

Galilee October 1948, Ethnically Cleansed Palestinians on their way to Lebanon.

Electronic Intifada:

'PALESTINE: ROLE OF THE MEDIA:
With the New Year, will Ha'aretz's op-ed page be any
different? By Zachary Wales.

On New Year's Day, notions of resolve, reform, or reflection come as no surprise on newspaper editorial pages. Similarly unsurprising are the op-eders that carry on with business as usual. Things were no different on Ha'aretz's opinion page, which kept an even keel of New Yearisms. Rather untypical, however, was the limited role that honesty played in the mix. The most curious example was the lead editorial, -- often viewed as any paper's mouthpiece -- entitled, "Our obligation to refugees, as refugees." One might guess that it covered the subject of Palestinian refugees, a conundrum that has crippled every "peace process" since Israel's creation in 1948. Subsequent to the expulsion of some 800,000 Palestinians during that period, Israeli perceptions of the refugee problem back then led almost directly to the state's claim as an inclusive democracy now. To prevent the imminent return of refugees, Israel gave the remaining Palestinian population (then about 150,000 and now about 1.4 million) Israeli ID cards, thus creating the minority known as the "Israeli Arabs." A cynical interpretation is that ID cards back then served the purpose that fences and walls serve now: demographic control. More cynical still is the extent to which Israel is an inclusive democracy -- take the state-sanctioned Arab-Jew segregation in public schools, service distribution, housing rights, and just about everything else. Even the country's political establishment left considers "a state for all citizens" treasonous words. But let us not stray too far. "Our obligation to refugees, as refugees" was concerned with the 300 Sudanese refugees who were recently denied amnesty in Israel. For a citizenry that swallows a daily existence as segregated, racialized, discriminatory, administratively unfair, and internationally outlawed, Sudan is a digestible, understandable distraction. It is also a liberal cause, perhaps as much so as Liberia was to all those well-meaning Confederates in 1847. Almost any country, particularly your correspondent's, can ignore its domestic qualms and purport to "do something" about Sudan. The hitch, however, is self-awareness, and this is where Ha'aretz gives its intentions away. The piece tactfully ignores the Palestinian refugee problem while examining how "dulling the senses has overtaken Israeli society," vis-à-vis the Sudanese refugees and the Jewish refugees (later to become colonizers) who fled European anti-Semitism. Influential Israeli scholars have also adopted this tone. "As members of the Jewish people, for whom the memory of the Holocaust burns, we cannot stand by as refugees from the genocide in Darfur hammer on our doors," Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum, told The Christian Science Monitor on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Israeli human rights groups plan demonstrations for next Monday outside of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's residence. It would seem that Ha'aretz, which has repeatedly demonstrated a critical lens on Israel's political ironies, would grant at least a token acknowledgement to this one, especially as it calls on Israel to "open its gates, and also its heart, to the refugees." References to Palestinian refugees, even in the most minimal sense, are nowhere to be found. It is as if for a moment, one of the most salient topics of Israeli politics leaves the editorial conscience. Then readers are asked to remember the Jewish refugee narrative in isolation from that of the Palestinians, although the two are inseparable. One can only ask, is this editorial about Sudanese refugees in the first place? Or is it about overwriting the historical conscience? Such exercises are the things of Israeli "birthright tours," not newspaper editorials.'

Lees verder: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6345.shtml
Zie ook: http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/Story562.html