The Balancing Act is Over: What Elor Azaria Taught Us about Israel
22 January 2017
By Ramzy Baroud
For some, the 'manslaughter' conviction – following the murder by Israeli army
medic, Elor Azaria, of already incapacitated Palestinian man, Fattah al-Sharif
– is finally settling a protracted debate regarding where Israelis stand on
Palestinian human rights.
Nearly 70 percent of the Israeli public supports calls to pardon the convicted
soldier, who is largely perceived among Israelis as the ''child of us all.''
Israeli leaders are also lining up to lend their support to Azaria and his
family. These sympathetic politicians include Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, and ministers Naftali Bennett and Miri Regev, among others. Leading
opposition leaders are also on board.
Pro-Israeli pundits, who never miss an opportunity to highlight Israel's
supposed moral ascendancy took to social media, describing how the indictment
further demonstrates that Israel is still a country of law and order.
They seem to conveniently overlook palpable facts. Reporting on the verdict,
'The Times of Israel', for example, wrote that ''last time an IDF soldier was
convicted of manslaughter was in 2005, for the killing of British civilian Tom
Hurndall two years earlier.''
Between these dates, and years prior, thousands of Palestinians were killed in
the Gaza Strip alone, mostly in the Israeli wars of 2008-9, 2012 and 2014.
Although thousands of children and civilians were killed and wounded in Gaza
and the rest of the Occupied Territories and, despite international outcries
against Israel's violations of international law, there is yet to be a single
conviction in Israeli courts.
But why is it that some commentators suggest that the Azaria trial and the
show of unity around his cause by Israeli society is an indication of some
massive change underway in Israel?
Yoav Litvin, for example, argues in 'TeleSur' that the ''precedent set by this
case will further solidify the complete dehumanization of Palestinians and
pave the way for further ethnic cleansing and genocide in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories.''
In an article, entitled: ''Like Brexit and Trump, Azaria verdict exposes a
moment of transition in Israel'', Jonathan Cook also eluded to a similar idea.
''The soldier's trial, far from proof of the rule of law, was the last gasp of
a dying order,'' he wrote.
Neither Litvin nor Cook are suggesting that the supposed change in Israel is
substantive but an important change, nonetheless.
But if the past and the present are one and the same, where is the
'transition', then?
The creation of Israel atop the ruins of Palestine, the ethnic cleansing that
made Israel's 'independence' possible, the subsequent wars, occupation and
sieges are all devoid of any morality.
Indeed, Israel was established with the idea in mind that a ''Jewish state''
is not possible without the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian
Arabs.
In a letter to his son in 1937, David Ben Gurion, Israel's first Prime
Minister after the country's establishment in 1948, wrote: ''We must expel the
Arabs and take their places and if we have to use force, to guarantee our own
right to settle in those places then we have force at our disposal.''
In the year that Israel was established, the United Nations defined genocide
in Article 2 of the 'Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime
of Genocide', as follows:
''Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in
part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing
members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the
group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part..''
In other words, there is nothing new here since the 'mainstreaming of
genocide' in Israel took place before and during the founding of the country,
and ever since.
Fortunately, some Israeli leaders were quite candid about the crimes of that
era.
''Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even
know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because
geography books no longer exist,'' former Israeli leaders, Moshe Dayan said
while addressing the Technion as reported in 'Haaretz' on April 4, 1969.
''There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former
Arab population.''
But throughout these years, Israel has managed to sustain a balancing act,
generating two alternate realities: a material one, in which violence is meted
out against Palestinians on a regular basis, and a perceptual one, that of a
media image through which Israel is presented to the world as a 'villa in the
jungle', governed by democratic laws, which makes it superior to its neighbors
in every possible way.
Former Israeli President, Moshe Katsav, demonstrate the latter point best.
''There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies,'' he was quoted in
the 'Jerusalem Post' on May 10. 2001. ''They are people who do not belong to
our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy.''
In fact, Israeli commentators on the Left often reminisce about the 'good old
days', before extremists ruled Israel and rightwing parties reigned supreme.
A particular memory that is often invoked was the mass protest in Tel Aviv to
the Israeli-engineered Sabra and Shatila massacres of Palestinian refugees in
South Lebanon in 1982.
Protesters demanded the resignations of then-Prime Minister, Menachem Begin,
and his Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon. Both men were accused of allowing the
massacres of Palestinians by Christian Phalange to take place. An Israeli
commission of investigation found Israel guilty of 'indirect responsibility',
further contributing to the myth that Israel's guilt lies in the fact that it
allowed Christians to kill Muslims, as Sharon complained in his biography,
years later.
At the time, it did not occur to Israeli protesters as odd the fact that
Begin, himself, was the wanted leader of a terrorist gang before Israel's
founding and that Sharon was accused of orchestrated many other massacres.
Many in Israeli and western media spoke highly of the moral uprightness of
Israeli society. Palestinians were baffled by Israel's ability to carry out
war crimes and to emerge in a positive light, regardless.
''Goyim kill Goyim and the Jews are blamed,'' Begin had then complained with a
subtle reference to what he perceived as a form of anti-Semitism. Aside from
Sabra and Shatila, tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians were killed
in the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
Historical fact shows that Israel is not experiencing a real transition, but
what is truly faltering is Israel's balancing act: its ability to perpetrate
individual and collective acts of violence and still paint an image of itself
as law-abiding and democratic.
Zionist leaders of the past had played the game too well and for far too long,
but things are finally being exposed for what they really are, thanks to the
fact that Jewish settlers now rule the country, control the army, have growing
influence over the media and, therefore, define the Israeli course and PR
image.
''This new army (of settlers) is no longer even minimally restrained by
concerns about the army's 'moral' image or threats of international war crimes
investigations,'' wrote Cook.
And with that new-found 'freedom', the world is able to see Israel as it is.
The balancing act is finally over.
– Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20
years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an
author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books
include ''Searching Jenin'', ''The Second Palestinian Intifada'' and his
latest ''My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story''. His website
is www.ramzybaroud.net.
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