What does 'Death to Israel' mean to you?
If progressives cannot see Israelis as people, if they - we - cannot summon up the same compassion and concern for unarmed combatants on both sides of a battle front, it's time they checked their ideology for holes.
By Bradley Burston Tags: anti-Israel anti-SemitismMy daughter went to school this morning worried about her civics exam.
She came home worried about explosive warheads.
As of this week, she's in range.
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Pro-Palestinian activists hold anti-Israel banners during a protest in New York, September 15, 2011. |
| Photo by: Tracy Levy |
Her school is now within reach of rockets that travel farther and with far more deadly payloads than the weapons we knew just a short time ago. With blasts strong enough to shatter apartment windows seven stories in the air.
My daughter is an unarmed noncombatant. That should matter. It should matter, in particular, to progressives who believe, and justly so, that the inalienable rights of human beings, children in particular, take clear precedence over the strategic designs of nation-states and the appetites of nationalism.
It should matter, as well, when progressives turn a blind eye to war crimes committed against Israel - or, for that matter, to war crimes committed by Syria against Syrians. The assumption is that Israel's crimes are of such Third Reich magnitude, that anti-civilian violence committed by its enemies is either negligible or justified.
I'll grant that it may be easier to see things this way from a distance. Say, the greater Akron, Ohio area, where last week Kent State history professor Julio Pino stormed out of a lecture given by Israeli diplomat Ishmail Khaldi - the first Bedouin Arab to serve in Israel's foreign service - shouting "Death to Israel."
Prof. Pino did not explain what he meant by death to Israel. Nor did Utah attorney Robert Breeze, when Salt Lake City granted him a municipal permit to stage a 14-hour "Death to Israel" rally in Salt Lake City in 2006.
Closer to home, though, where the Islamic Jihad's calls of "Death to Israel" come wrapped in Iranian steel and 40 pounds of explosives, the message is sharp as shrapnel: a call for genocide.
"Death to Israel" means death to Israelis. It means death to the members of my family. Like many in Israel, a family which has long worked hard and consistently and intensively for the rights of Palestinians, Muslims and Christians alike, to live in safety and sovereignty in a country of their own. What we want for ourselves is no less just. It is, in fact, the very same: freedom to live in safety and sovereignty.
I'll grant also that for some progressives, it may all come down to a question of numbers. I wonder how - or if - Pino relates to the death last weekend of Moshe Ami, the father and grandfather killed by an Islamic Jihad rocket, put to death on the streets of Ashkelon for the crime of Driving While Israeli.
Pino may see disproportionality and injustice in the fact that only one Israeli died in the rocket attacks, while army air strikes in Gaza killed at least 10 members of the Islamic Jihad and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, several of them while in the act of firing rockets at southern and now central Israel.
It should matter that Israel took pains to spare Palestinian civilians in these raids. It should matter, just as the wrongheaded, ultimately self-destructive excess and civilian casualties of past operations have mattered to those who justly condemned them.
It should matter that the Islamic Jihad, Iran's direct foothold in Palestine, knows precisely what Death to Israel means. As does Iran.
What is this country that Julio Pino and Robert Breeze believe deserves to die? They may think they know Israel. They may think this is one huge, Arab-loathing, mass-murdering, land-thieving plague of an illegitimate entity.
It is certainly easier on the political conscience to see us this way.
But if progressives cannot see Israelis as people, if they - we - cannot summon up the same compassion and concern for unarmed combatants on both sides of a battle front, it's time they checked their ideology for holes.
The country that Pino and Breeze want to see eradicated is far more complex and worthwhile than they want to consider. It is a country in which a clear majority of the population, battered by wars and terrorism and heartbreak and frustration, still wants to see negotiations leading to a Palestinian state alongside Israel, and an end to occupation.
My daughter's civics teacher, who teaches her class about the natural rights of all peoples to liberty and security, gives extra credit to students for going to demonstrations and protests.
You can be sure that each one of those pupils, left, right or center, knows exactly what "Death to Israel" means. Not one of them, left, right or center, will stand for it. Not one of them should.
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A person wearing jeans shouting "death to Israel" vs the PM of a country preparing to launch an airstrike.
Since I've stumbled over Judaism which includes Israel and Zionism, I have myself got nearer to death: I spoiled my career through stupid declarations of solidarity on this newspaper and by discussions in Europe. I wasted money for trees for the JNF, I meddled with Jewish affairs in Germany. And for a little while I was about to make the same mistake again, to let myself impress by Burston's article. But he is an old man, he has lived his life successfully. He has grown old, he has a wife, a daughter. So my message is this: If you are young, never allow yourself to let your lives destroy by listening to this awful Israeli discourse. If it's not rockets themselves, it is this discourse which holds the people in fear and separation from the people that surround them. Send your pity and your loving elsewhere but to Israel where it is drowned, Israel is a black hole for love and good will. It won't come back, there's no reward whatsoever, you charge yourselves with problems, stop it before you begin to confound Israel with your own ideals, before you are being brainwashed into believing that the IDF defends humanism or human life in general, while they only defend Israeli human life, just like all nationalists only defend the lives of their own people. Your tenderness will remain unaswered and your efforts for peace will proove vain. The only thing you get, is wrinkles and more sorrows, while life is too short for weeping over 3000 years of sorrowful history. If one day you should read such titles like "Confessions of an anti-German racist" by BB and you are shocked, do not ask yourselves if your feelings are appropriate, nor try to understand someone who writes such things. Just feel, stay apart and continue to be yourselves.
Very well written and presented. Too bad there are anti-semites and anti-Israels as Pino and Breeze. We must educate people like them, and teach them what democracy is all about..
'Progressives' are hard leftists who prefer dictatorships to democracies. They seek to impose their 'failed' ideologies on everyone else. They are petty, they lie easily, they are prone to violence, they are anything but just. They are very immature and get unreasonable angry and violent when crossed. The far left people who call themselves 'progressive' are actually reactionary and seek to return to a time when communism and socialism were still seen as solutions. They fully ignore the fact that these approaches have failed miserably, and we are still paying for them today...which has led to the fiscal and financial problems today. Their constant posturing is so ridiculous.
Do I just let him have it with no hard feelings and move on? Get real. Israels and Palestinians cannot be compared in such convenient terms.
Good article Bradley, however you keep reffering to these people that you want to see the light, as progressives. I see them for what they are regressive anti semites who feel that Jewish life has no value
This article is an excellent example of the fallacious argument strategy of "false equivalence".
I was in Palestine for about 8 weeks the last 3 years. I never met somebody who was saying, “death to Israel” No I met people who were saying ,give us peace, stop destroying our land and trees, give us water and go . Don’t touch our children when they go to school, when they are playing on the streets, don’t steel our houses .Let us live .What they see is, more settlements, more roadblocks, more settlers, more trees burning and less water.
The Syrian state cannot, as a matter of international law, be at war with its citizens. Get your terms straight.
this may explain a lot about 'couch' politicians
I agree w Bradley Burston' basic premise - that innocents on either side of the wall of shame are equally deserving of compassion. absolutely! I have always interpreted such phrases as "death to Israel" as a call for the end of that state...'s power, especially the power of edeath and destruction. Such calls as we have read come from Iranian Amendinajad have, in fact been specifically clarified by him as NOT referring to the Israeli people, but the state. That said, I do think numbers matter. A death - any death is the end, and I see it impossible to try to compare pain! Yet in all the years of conflict, there is no denying the imbalance of the death toll. In societies where the death of one of its members is like a death in one's own family, the numbers do matter.
It's Turtle Time. No time to be a Hawk. The enemy are eating their own. Let it be.
We can't be stupid. The Iranians are practically in our backyards too. Lots of Mexicans have left the Catholic religion for Islam. San Diego is a matter of minutes from Mexico. Two hours from here. We are in danger. Duck and cover time. Sorry.
it means you leftist and all of haaretz should get the hell out of israel and leave us alon that what it mean
"Death to Israel" means death to the Israel that believes it is above all law and human morality (and is), the Israel that is run by insane religious fanatics, death to the Israel that believes it can target children with rockets that can hit a pinprick from a thousand miles away, death to the Israel that believes it has the right to destroy the world, so it can move Eastern European fanatic Jews (who are not even truly Jews) into Palestine, death to the Israel that pretends to be America's greatest friend, but is really its greatest enemy, death to the country that manipulates international politics so it doesn't have to make peace, Death to the country that uses the Holocaust as an excuse to murder thousands of children (can you spit on the graves of the Jews who were brutally murdered any more than using them as an excuse to do the exact same thing to Palestinian children?), Death to the Israel that lies through its teeth to justify its existence and theft of Palestine, death to the Israel that is only supported by America, because Americans are so fanatically racist towards Arabs and Muslims. (IT WAS THE PALESTINIANS WHO COMMITTED 9/11!!!!! I THINK IT WAS PALESTINIANS was the rallying cry on September 11, 2001) When that Israel is dead, and a new Israel rises from the ashes, then the whole world can celebrate.
kudos to Israel. Shame on the countries their surrounding countries that are racist and taught in school to hate Jews. Its sick. AM YISRAEL CHAI. Israel lives now and it will till the end of time... so get over it :)
and it hits the nail on the head. Unfortunately, it will only be heard by the choir, and not those progressives who it is directed towards.
All these lugheads who scream for the destruction of Israel should first look at the size of the country and compare it, say, with Iran. Israel has always been the underdog in all these conflicts, and yet there is something utterly spectacular and divine in the way it has won in all of them. This fact makes me hope the trend will continue into the future and that Israel will survive into the future.
Come ON! You want to know what it means? Very simple. READ the HAMAS charter! "Oh Muslim, Oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me! Come and kill him!" Recall Hizbullah and the happiness that so many Jews now live in Israel making it less of an effrot to wipe them out - they don't have as big a humt world wide... WAKE UP!
Many more Arab civilians were killed by Israeli Air Force bombs than Israeli civilians killed by Arab rockets. We have such war crimes committed by both sides. But while the "title" of the crime is the same for Israelis and Palestinians, the Palestinians have good mitigating circumstances, which Israel lacks. They had no other choice of even a semi-effective weapon. Therefore, if both sides are put on trial (say, in the Hague in front of an unbiased court), the Palestinians may end up getting a slap on the wrist while Israeli commanders may get a life sentence. I hope you understand this before the next Yom Kippur.
See you soon Iran.
Just the other day there were writings on Yaffo walls "Death to Arabs" (plus desecration of two Arab cemeteries).. What does it mean, genocide? It is silly to take it literally, and not because this was written by Jews. It means the writers want to get the Arabs out of their city/country. If the Arabs leave out of fear, the writers will no doubt will be happy enough not to chase and kill them. Likewise, "Death to Israel" means, put an end to the Zionist state of Israel. It does not mean genocide. Incidentally, I suspect the writers are mostly Mizrahi Jews. (Ashkenazi Jews are used to different hate speech.) In this sense, we have an exact translation of the phrase, given to it in Arabic culture.
When rockets fell on other Israelis he kept producing anti-Israel articles. Finally we get a pro-israel article because it finally is in his own backyard.
I don't think that he is Anti-Israeli. He has never supported rocket attacks on Israel. Just because he criticozes Likud doesn't mean that he support Palestinian extremists and I have seen articles by him that condemns Palestinian extremism and terrorism as well.
they reject you because you're an israeli. it hurts. wouldn't that be nice to sit somewhere in europe/us and condemn others. remember, they only hate israel, and us for that matter, because it is safe for them. because democracies allow them to be against the government. there is no point arguing with the 'progressives'. fortunately, they are irrelevant, although noisy and smell bad.
Dear Professor Pino, I would like to thank you for your recent demonstration and remark, "death to Israel" at Ishmael Khaldi’s lecture. In my opinion, you have once again exemplified and illustrated what is truly wrong with Arab leadership; thinking and mindset. Similar words to yours were expressed more than 60 years ago by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini and then carried forward by his nephew Yasser Arafat, you and other radical terrorist Arab leaders. Personally, I feel extreme sorrow for the Arab’s not only in Gaza and the West Bank who have been subjected these many years to similar rhetoric from their heinous leaders, despots, mullahs and people like you who instead should be seeking and encouraging paths to compromise and peace. The Arabs of Gaza and the West Bank had opportunities as did the State of Israel only the terror propagated by the Arab leadership against their own people has led them along the same wrong and self-destructive paths these many years. I can only hope that reason and rational thought will eventually prevail for Arabs who have been inhumanely subjugated by fellow despotic Arabs and religion and that these peoples eventually overcome the inhumanity and hatred you and others preach against anyone. Al-Husseini and Hitler didn’t succeed in their protestations and you and your other hatemongers will similarly falter. Sincerely, Herb
This is an important idea. I am a liberal Israeli, against the occupation, and I am appalled by the "death to Israel" liberals. These are probably people with personality problems who use public issues to disguise their own inner ugliness. These people want to put Israelis into a kind of moral ghetto, where they have no existence apart from the issue of the occupation. As such, it is similar to medieval anti-semitism.
American Vet, you are AGAIN presenting untrue statements as fact. No such targetting of "house and apartment buildings" ever happened. No "1,000 Palis" were murdered. HaAretz should let such garbage through. Where are the editors???
How about dealing with the tens of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians the American army killed. You don't seem to have a problem with that.
The assumption is that Israel's crimes are of such Third Reich magnitude, that anti-civilian violence committed by its enemies is either negligible or justified. -Bradley - YOU are one of the people that purports this perception of Israel.
Just a normal reaction to a threat.
The truth, is that people who are saying "death to israel" are angry people that are seeking revenge. This I concede is wrong, in the same way that it is wrong to be a vigilante. But if they are "angry and seeking revenge", it is because they were grossely harmed in the most criminal of ways, and they have every right to express their anger, even if they do so in the most irrational ways. Israel or it's supporters cannot use this as a pretext for escalating conflict.
after every atrocity the Jewish people suffered and endured for the last 2000 years--just think about it.
Your one-sided view misses the point. Human beings have brains with to think of other solutions than violence against innocent people. They have every right to express their anger, but not to kill innocent people. If you are an American, I can understand how you think anger should include violence. One-sided morality is not justice. If you say the Israelis are only suffering 1 per cent of what the Palestinians are, you are very wrong. This is a statement with evidentiary support. It is your opinion and that is all it is only. If you believe all that propaganda, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn I think you would like to purchase.
You had supported these pal crazies and their shills up to the time your daughter began to be threatened by the "Qassams shmassams".. You still suport pal arguments on "their ancestral right to return" You are a slow learner and an opportunist,an asset to Berkeley
You had supported these pal crazies and their shills up to the time your daughter began to be threatened by the "Qassams shmassams".. You still suport pal arguments on "their ancestral right to return" You are a slow learner and an opportunist,an asset to Berkeley
Thank you for your clear and just article. However, with antisemtism still very alive in the western world, too many people wil not read it proper I am afraid. What I can't understand from some so called leftist: Nationalism is not left but rightwing politics. How can leftwingers support rightist politics so fanatically?
Where was your article back in 2008 when you killed 500 kids in Gaza? your mistake is that you think everybody value your and your kids life more than any other life. It all reminds of the moaning from Germans back in WWII about civilian being killed. protect your kid and all other kids in the area by changing your and your goverments politics and get a REAL peace so everybodys kids can be safe!
It is a never ending story. Many believe that "Israel must die" because it "stole" Palestinian land. In the same way many believe (and some still do) that Jews must die because they killed god's son, kill babies for their blood, poison wells and spread deadly deceases. Next time, Bradley, think before you criticize Jews who settle in Judea, because to Pinos and Breezes you and your daughter are just like them - dirty JOOOOOS who don't deserve to live.
This is exactly why! Its not Belief. Its actions and words. The article states that Israelis want to see a Palestine, But do everything to prevent it. Israelis say they Respect and Honor Human Life, yet they (Israelis) support the Removal, Theft, Humiliation, Disgrace, Discrimination, and on, and on, and on, of Humanity (i.e, Israeli Arab, and Occupied Palestinians). Its Because you are Hippocrates!!!
and you are a total moron!!
Beautifully stated. Both your compassion for Palestinians and your demand from progressives for compassion for us Israelis demonstrates your humanity. Kol HaKavod!
Calling for peace talks with Hamas, being silent of the outrageous Palestinian school curriculum, always finding fault with Israel in any situation etc. are just a few of these treasonous deeds.
your history starts several decades later than reality. the occupation is a result of arab aggression and the security wall is a result of continued suicide bombings. this is not a case of chicken and the egg. this is arab murder and attempted genocide led to the crappy situation that arabs find themselves in today. they have no one to blame but themselves.
The "occupation" you're referring to is every cm of Israel, as they declare openly 4 times a week so we won't forget. You know it, we know it, they know it. All the blood of this conflict, both innocent and guilty alike, is on the hands of the Islamic terrorists you support. The sooner you change your views and and stop being such radicals, the sooner peace would arrive. Indeed improvement begins with I.
How about looking forward and saying we can't occupy another people forever without either incorporating them or freeing them
No progressives call for "Death to Israel." None. The people you cite, and others in the genocide caucus, are Trotskyists, Maoists, Stalinists or just crazy. To ascribe their behavior to progressives is like blaming liberals for Soviet Communism or conservatives for fascism. It is, frankly, ridiculous.
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You agree?
great article, right on.
Thank you so much Bradley for expressing what myself and thousands of other Israelis believe in their hearts but cannot articulate as eloquently as you did. Thank you.
Ask yourself why Israelis are hated, and then attempt to remedy the situation. And if you think electing a government filled with Bibis and Liebermans will save Israelis then you really are crazy.
Brad is pointing that those who advocate "Death to Israel" don't realize the full implication of their battle cry. People like yourself, don't care that there are real flesh and blood human beings on the receiving end of such rhetoric. Brad is exposing that hypocrisy.
No one I know voted for Lieberman - nor Bibi. Bibi didn;t even get a majority in this messed up electoral system. Don't hate Israelis because of their government. Then we should be hating many other nationalities too. Most Israeli's desperately want peace. Don't think for a minute otherwise.
You think we should ask ourselves why we were hated before there was an Israel? You think blacks should ask themselves why they're hated? Maybe it's just cuz of haters. Like you.