A Balcony Over Jerusalem

by John Lyons

  Colin Rubenstein is the man who runs AIJAC and is hugely influential in shaping the opinion of the Australian Jewish community, and Australian politicians and journalists. I would only fully appreciate his views when I read on AIJAC’s website a speech he made in Melbourne during the 2014 Gaza War. Rubenstein told the audience on the steps of the Victorian Parliament: ‘Israel does more than any other country to avoid killing civilians.’

  It revealed something to me about AIJAC. In effect, Rubenstein was saying that he believed that the Israeli Army acted according to higher moral values than other countries, including his own.

  I’ve always had the view as a journalist that each story, each government and each country should be judged on its merits. Countries, armies and governments can change; they can improve or deteriorate. To make a blanket statement like ‘Israel does more than any other country to avoid killing civilians’ flies in the face of logic. The media regularly place the US, Australian and other armies under scrutiny and sometimes find their behaviour unacceptable. Yet somehow the Israeli Army is better than these armies.

  During the ‘golden period’ soon after my arrival in Israel, I got invited to lunch by an American-born Israeli who runs a Jerusalem-based lobby group designed to influence foreign media and closely aligned with the Israeli Government. He wanted to convince me of several things. One of them was the special status of the Israeli Army.

  I asked him why the Israeli Army had higher moral standards than the Australian Army.

  He talked about the codes of conduct of the Israeli Army. I replied that while I didn’t unconditionally defend the Australian Army – that they had sometimes been involved in bad behaviour – they also had a strict code of behaviour.

  Finally, the lobbyist came to the point. ‘Because the Israeli Army has Jewish values,’ he said.

  I asked prominent Israeli journalist Gideon Levy what he thought of the idea that the Israeli Army has higher values because they are Jewish values.

  ‘It’s like claiming it’s the most moral army in the world,’ he responded. ‘Most Israelis surely believe in that … the denial and self-cheating [are] so deep that it doesn’t matter that there are 2200 or whatever civilians killed, that half of Gaza is destroyed, they’re all terrorists and not human beings.’

  I pointed out that if someone claimed the Australian or US Army was the most moral in the world, no one would believe it, so why could people get away with saying it about Israel?

  Levy answered: ‘Because it is the chosen people. I tell you “the chosen people” is a key thing here. It explains a lot.’

  He told me that ‘the notion that we are the chosen people is very deep-rooted in this place, much more than people tend to see. Most Israelis are deeply convinced that they stand for the chosen people – most Israelis are deeply convinced that after the Holocaust the Jews have the right to do whatever they want. Most Israelis are deeply convinced that international law applies to any country in the world except Israel because Israel is special. These are all things you get here from childhood.’

  Levy said the sense of being ‘the chosen people’ was taught to Israeli children in many ways.

  ‘You don’t have to call it the chosen people but you may call it “Israel is something else”.’

  Since the occupation began, the messianic right of Israeli politics has convinced the public that ‘Judea and Samaria’ were given to them by God. And for non-religious Israelis, the mantra for an endless occupation has been security – a claim that can be debunked with the simple question: if the West Bank is so dangerous, why has Israel given financial incentives to more than 600,000 citizens to move there since 1967?

  Both the right and the centre of Israeli politics are now hooked on occupation. For the right, it represents a completion of the biblical circle in which they have finally returned home. For the centre, it represents cheap housing. If Israel were ever forced to end the occupation it would not be a security crisis it would have to deal with – no other country better knows how to deal with security – but a housing crisis. Suddenly, 600,000 Israelis would have to be housed in Israel.

  To understand the mindset of Israelis, one needs to consider their view of the international community. They argue that when the Nazis were engaging in their State-sponsored campaign to kill Jews, the world did nothing. They watched as trainloads of their fellow Jews were being taken to concentration camps. They watched as, in the heart of Europe, their people were almost extinguished. Israelis frequently ask: do we trust the international community?

  Israeli land expert Dror Etkes said:

  We have to understand the human drama in this story. Think about Israel in 1967. This is 22 years after Auschwitz was liberated and Holocaust survivors were still in Israel. The vision of the Jewish Israeli leadership was still very much shaped by the Second World War and of course 1948 and the huge events and demographic transitions that took place in historic Palestine in 1948, 1949 and 1950. There were Palestinians who became refugees who vanished in 18 months – it had never happened in the history of Islam that this amount of people had been transferred in such an efficient and compressed period of time out of their country. The minute this encounter between modern Israel and the West Bank occurred there was almost an inevitable explosion of emotions and ideological aspirations [by Jews] which could not be fulfilled.

  Legendary New York Times journalist Clyde Haberman wrote that the verbal attacks on successive NYT correspondents have been because ‘Jews still don’t believe that the world won’t turn on them. It’s hardwired into their systems. They can’t accept that the Holocaust is a distant memory for most of the world’s population and they get upset when they are not perceived as perennial victims, even though they hardly look like victims anymore.’3

  Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar said: ‘Ezer Weizman, our former President, used to say, “The Jews left the ghetto but the ghetto did not leave the Jews.” The ghetto mentality is inside us … We love to be victims and we will not give the Palestinians even the benefit of the doubt that they are victims. If you listen to people from the left they will tell you that we are also victims of the occupation. The occupier is the victim of the occupation also.’

  Israeli-French journalist Sylvain Cypel wrote: ‘“Them against us” is the mode of mental functioning that explains why so many Israelis know deep down or perceive privately that crimes against the Palestinians are committed in their name yet refuse to admit this, at least publicly, in front of the “others”, since this would mean betraying the fundamental affiliation and running the risk of expulsion from the cocoon that ensures their loved ones’ solidarity … the IDF, its leaders keep repeating, remain the most moral army in the world.’4

  The majority of Israelis today were either born into the occupation or migrated into it. Israelis now entering the army at 18 were born a generation after the occupation began. Unlike their grandparents, who often had relationships with Palestinians, the only Palestinians young Israelis know are those they have met at checkpoints, or those that they have read about as terrorists. They have been educated to believe that they are the victims rather than the occupiers. Famous Israeli historian Benny Morris has echoed this sentiment: ‘We are the greater victims in the course of history and we are also the greater potential victim. Even though we are oppressing the Palestinians, we are the weaker side here.’5

  ‘I think the real danger in this country,’ said Crispian Balmer, ‘is that if you arrived in Tel Aviv and that’s where you stay then this country is a great country.

  Who wouldn’t want to live down there by comparison to anywhere else in the Middle East? It’s fantastic. But most people have no idea that 60 kilometres away there’s some [Israeli soldier] kid at a checkpoint humiliating a little old [Palestinian] lady – I’ve seen it happen – getting a little old lady out of a car to stand there … That is just a half-hour drive from the beaches of Tel Aviv. I think one of the problems of modern-day Israel is that most people have absolutely no
contact with Palestinians whatsoever so a lot of people are in total denial with what’s going on, they bury their heads in the sand and assume it’s not so bad. They say, ‘Well, it’s much worse in Syria.’ They’re right – who wouldn’t prefer to live in Ramallah [in the West Bank] than Damascus? – but that’s not the point. The point is there’s a continuous occupation for which there’s no end in sight and you have a political class here that really has no vision, no united vision whatsoever, as to how to end this occupation.

  We weren’t prepared for the amount of racism we encountered in Israel. It seemed particularly entrenched among younger Israelis. One poll found that 56 per cent say that their fellow citizens who are Arabs should not be allowed to vote in Israel’s national democratic elections; 52 per cent of schoolchildren say that Arabs should be banned from the Knesset; and 48 per cent of Israeli Jews want Arabs transferred out of the country.6

  Often leading rabbis drive racism. The King’s Torah, a 2009 book written by two prominent rabbis, told Israelis that ‘there is justification for killing [Palestinian] babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us [Jews]’. A year after we arrived in Jerusalem, 50 leading rabbis signed a letter urging Jews not to rent apartments to Arabs, which would be bad for property prices. It said: ‘Among [Gentiles] are those who are bitter and hateful toward us and who meddle into our lives to the point where they are a danger.’ Any Jew who did rent to an Arab should be ostracised: ‘The neighbours and acquaintances must distance themselves from the Jew, refrain from doing business with him, deny him the right to read from the Torah and similarly [ostracise] him.’ All 50 rabbis were government-paid, but not one was reprimanded.

  In Israel’s Yellow Pages phone directory, some companies advertise ‘Avodah Ivrit’ – ‘Hebrew Labour’. A Tel Aviv cleaning company offers its customers different hourly rates according to the race of its cleaners – African, Eastern European or Western European; Arab workers are not offered.7 Many carers for elderly Israelis are Filipinas who talk to each other in Tagalog. Even though there are hundreds of young Palestinian women in the villages of the West Bank, Israelis would rather spend thousands of dollars arranging visas for Filipinas.8

  I’ve always loved sport. As a boy in Melbourne I’d go with my father on Saturdays to watch our AFL team, Fitzroy. To me sport is something you throw yourself into. In early 2013 I went to a game of soccer in Jerusalem involving Beitar Jerusalem, which had just recruited two Muslim players from Chechnya. When one of the Muslims got the ball, the crowd jeered. So angry were some supporters that police had to take them away. Israeli media reported that at one game on the day the players were signed, fans of the club displayed a banner bearing the words ‘Beitar – pure forever’ and ‘chanted anti-Arab slogans’, leading to four arrests. On 8 February 2013, two fans set fire to the club’s offices, apparently in response to the new players from Chechnya. On 3 March, one of them scored his first goal for Beitar, prompting hundreds of the team’s fans to leave the stadium. At the game I attended I asked one Beitar supporter: ‘If the score was level, would you prefer one of the Muslim players to score a goal or for your team to lose?’

  ‘That’s a hard one,’ he said.

  But of all the discrimination we saw in Jerusalem, there was one situation that appalled me every time: soldiers at checkpoints making Palestinian ambulances wait. In contrast, Israeli ambulances were always waved straight through. I’d often see soldiers smoking or on their phones, as Palestinian ambulances, their lights flashing, just sat there. The Israeli media reported how on one occasion soldiers sat around eating pizza while a Palestinian boy who urgently needed dialysis was made to wait. Journalist Gideon Levy told me about a story he wrote of a Bedouin woman in labour who was rejected at one checkpoint after another, and finally lost her baby giving birth in the car. The reaction was a public scandal.

  A report by Physicians for Human Rights in 2015 found infant mortality in the occupied territories was 18.8 per 1000 births compared with 3.7 in Israel. The maternal death rate in the occupied territories was 28 per 100,000 births in contrast with seven in Israel. The average life expectancy was 10 years lower and the gap had increased in recent years. The major factor was the Israeli limitation on the freedom of movement of patients, medical professionals, ambulances and medications.9

  For years, leaders of the Australian Jewish community kept telling me the Israeli Supreme Court was a stronghold of justice. Living in Israel soon dispelled this myth. While Israelis become used to stories of legal disparities, they stood out for us. One case involved an Israeli woman and Palestinian man who had consensual sex. Sabbar Kashur, a 30-year-old Palestinian from East Jerusalem, was a delivery man for a legal firm. He met a Jewish woman while doing his rounds and they agreed to adjourn somewhere for sex. The woman apparently assumed he was Jewish, but later discovered he was an Arab. Six weeks later the police placed him under house arrest and eventually he was sentenced to 18 months’ jail.

  Kashur later told the media: ‘If I were Jewish, they wouldn’t have even questioned me.’ But the judges were steadfast: ‘The court is obliged to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price – the sanctity of their bodies and souls. When the very basis of trust between human beings drops, especially when matters at hand are so intimate, sensitive and fateful, the court is required to stand firmly at the side of the victims – actual and potential – to protect their wellbeing.’ The judges acknowledged the sex was consensual, but they found Kashur guilty of ‘rape by deception’.

  Israeli journalist Gideon Levy said: ‘Do the eminent judges understand the social and racist meaning of their florid verdict? Don’t they realise that their verdict has the uncomfortable smell of racial purity, of “Don’t touch our daughters?” The court had established a precedent for rape by deception based on race.’

  Living in Israel, I saw discrimination everywhere. One of the reasons I thought it best to leave after six years was that daily humiliation against Palestinians almost became unremarkable – at that point I think a foreign correspondent faces the danger of ‘going native’ and can fail to notice the extraordinariness of events around them.

  Gideon Levy has been writing about the occupation for 30 years. He has noticed that while some Israelis used to feel a sense of injustice at the treatment of Palestinians, this has largely dissipated. In 2012 he wrote a story revealing how Israeli military officials had calculated the minimum number of calories a Palestinian in Gaza needed so as not to starve: 2279 per day. After its calculation, the army added another 34 tons of food a day as a charity to ensure toddlers did not starve. Israel has a naval blockade around Gaza and decides which goods come in and out. They allow virtually no goods to leave for export and only limited goods to enter. Levy wrote: ‘Who came up with the idea of calculating the caloric intake for 1.5 million people under siege? What train of thought even gives Israel the right to enter the mouths and invade the stomachs of the people living under its jackboots? So now it’s not just their bedrooms that are brutally broken into every night; now it’s also their digestive system.’

  The document was prepared by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, who said it was just a ‘working paper’. Levy wrote:

  The very fact that such a document was composed, whether it was used or not, points to a satanic way of thinking. But the reason the army didn’t want this document made public had nothing to do with its diabolical content. Nor did it fear a public storm [in Israel], which it knew wasn’t likely to happen in a country afflicted with blindness. The reason the Israeli Defence Forces was reluctant to publicise this document was because it would make Israel look even worse in world opinion than it already does. It’s a matter of image, you know: the goyim [non-Jews] shouldn’t find out. It’s not nice for the goyim to know how low Israeli racism could sink.10

  Israelis now regard it as normal that their army practices on real Palestinians. For training
purposes, Israeli soldiers storm into the houses of Palestinians at two or three in the morning, throwing stun grenades and shouting. Terrified residents, including children, have no idea what is going on. One Israeli newspaper accompanied Israeli soldiers on such an exercise in Bir Zeit, a Palestinian village near Jerusalem, which is home to the largest Palestinian university. The journalist reported that for the exercise the army needed to land at a nearby Jewish settlement, Beit Arye. When an attack helicopter landed without prior warning, the public relations man from the settlement angrily complained to the army, saying that it ‘woke up children and caused panic among the inhabitants’. The army apologised and explained that the helicopter was meant to have landed next to a nearby Palestinian village. The reporter noted: ‘After almost 48 years of occupation, it seems that only an outsider is taken aback by situations the IDF blithely accepts … the Palestinian residents become extras who are not asked whether they want to take part in the dress rehearsal and receive no warning of what is about to take place. Their homes are targets for night visits, searches and the family’s coerced awakening.’11

  One case of racism in the Israeli Army suggested a culture that had been allowed to develop. It involved Colonel Itai Virov who, when defending one of his soldiers for assaulting Palestinians, explained that ‘a slap, sometimes a blow to the neck or chest or sometimes choking to calm down [a suspect] is reasonable’. Such violence, he said, was sometimes necessary for ‘completing the mission’.