It’s time to talk about the 2005 Gaza disengagement. Or the right’s inflationary use of it. Try to hold a conversation with a right-winger about the situation without the routine wail, “but in the disengagement,” meant to create the myth that the right accepts democratic decisions and, out of respect for the state, never breaks the rules. Utter nonsense.
It’s time to say it: The only reason Ariel Sharon wasn’t murdered during the disengagement is that it’s not nice to twice murder a leader. The right came to the disengagement neutered after the murder of Yitzhak Rabin, and therefore acted with comparative restraint. That’s all. Rabin’s murder saved Sharon. They can’t tell us there’s some kind of code of statesmanship that they, unlike the left, obey. Where was that code when Rabin signed the Oslo Accords?
In truth, it’s quite astonishing that mouthpieces of the left spokespeople submissively accept the myth of the disengagement and never bring up Oslo. This is related to a much broader development by the right of policing discourse. The right has drafted its own version of political correctness and imposed it on the public conversation. Take, for example, the use of the word “murdered” rather than “killed” for victims of terror attacks – and by progressive rightists, even for soldiers. Or the ritual of condemnation and repudiation forced on every leftist and Arab spokesperson the day after an attack. Or the obligation to treat attacks in the settlements the same way as we treat those inside Israel on both the public and the emotional level.
What left-wing progressives do to natural categories in the name of equality, right-wing progressives do to political categories: removing them from the context in which they were born. For instance, journalist Amit Segal talks a lot about selective enforcement and discriminatory treatment of settlers by the High Court of Justice.
Not long ago, he tweeted, “The question isn’t only why a 14-year-old girl was jailed until the end of proceedings against her, but how the High Court back then deemed attempts to block roads a seditious movement, whereas now, ‘days of rage and disruption’ are announced in ads in the newspapers, accompanied by the blocking of roads, without anything similar happening. This selective enforcement is the reason for the anger half the nation feels toward the law enforcement system.”
Only one tiny detail was omitted from his description of this discrimination against the settlers: The settlements are illegal. The occupation is illegal, and with the exception of the Jewish right, the entire world sees settlers as criminals and the settlements as a war crime.
Just this week, I heard satirist Yotam Zimri preaching to Gideon Levy on the television show “The Patriots” that there’s no difference between Levy’s home in Ramat Aviv and a home on occupied territory in a settlement. But there is a difference. The entire world thinks there’s a difference between sovereign Israel and the West Bank and recognizes this difference. In fact, the only people who deny this difference are opponents of dividing the land in both Israel and Palestine and enemies of Israel.
The progressive right excises the historical context that led to Israel’s establishment and bases the justification for the state’s existence on a divine promise and the Bible. Meanwhile, it ignores all the historical events that have occurred since biblical times, including the birth of the Palestinian people.
Would anyone dream of retroactively invalidating other population migrations throughout history and changing the borders on the grounds that “we were here first”? And if so, going back to what moment in time? At this rate, the progressive right will yet seek to return the planet to the apes in the name of their primitive right to the land.
The right goes crazy when transgender women compete in women’s sports and challenges the legitimacy of their victories. But it has no problem with demanding that settlers be given identical treatment in the eyes of the law, both Israeli and international, as well as in the eyes of justice, just because they decided of their own accord that there is no difference between the settlements and sovereign Israel. It’s simply progressive trolling.
The Israeli Right’s Progressive Trolling
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17.04.2023
It’s time to talk about the 2005 Gaza disengagement. Or the right’s inflationary use of it. Try to hold a conversation with a right-winger about the situation without the routine wail, “but in the disengagement,” meant to create the myth that the right accepts democratic decisions and, out of respect for the state, never breaks the rules. Utter nonsense.
It’s time to say it: The only reason Ariel Sharon wasn’t murdered during the disengagement is that it’s not nice to twice murder a leader. The right came to the disengagement neutered after the murder of Yitzhak Rabin, and therefore acted with comparative restraint. That’s all. Rabin’s murder saved Sharon. They can’t tell us there’s some kind of code of statesmanship that they, unlike the left, obey. Where was that code when Rabin signed the Oslo Accords?
In truth, it’s quite astonishing that mouthpieces of the left spokespeople submissively accept the myth of the disengagement and never bring up Oslo. This is related to a much broader development by the right of policing discourse.........
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Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Andrew Mitrovica
Belen Fernandez
Tafi Mhaka
Marwan Bishara
Timotej Milanov
Ahmadi Ali
