Something Is Rotten in the State of Israel<\/i><\/p>\n
It is said that the devil has about him the smell of fire and brimstone (sulphur). Evil deeds are often described as \u201cmost foul.\u201d On the other hand, people who appear, accurately or not, as always innocent are described as \u201csmelling like roses.\u201d There seems, then, to be a long standing, if improbable, association between behavior and smells.<\/p>\n
The Israeli army has recently dedicated itself to demonstrating this association. Back on 6 March 2013 the Middle East Monitor <\/i>reported<\/a> that<\/p>\n Israeli forces have sprayed Palestinian homes in the village of Nabi Saleh with Skunk<\/i> as punishment for\u00a0organizing weekly protests against the Apartheid Wall built on occupied land. Human rights watchdog B\u2019Tselem \u00a0published a\u00a0video\u00a0<\/a>showing Israel\u2019s armored tanker trucks fitted with \u201cwater canons\u201d [spraying] the foul fluid.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/i>Skunk is a fluid so offensive smelling that people automatically retreat from anywhere or anyone doused with it.<\/p>\n This is not the first time the Israelis have used such noxious tactics. Zionist settlers are fond of diverting the sewage<\/a> from their illegal settlements, which are usually placed on high ground,\u00a0 into the fields and towns of Palestinians living in the valleys below. This is apparently done with the knowledge and approval of the Israeli state.<\/p>\n I doubt if many of the Israelis involved in these maneuvers have ever read Dante\u2019s Inferno. In that epic poem, Hell is a place steeped in sewage and rot, and\u00a0Israeli actions seem intent on reproducing this scenario.\u00a0 Are the Israelis then trying to turn the Holy Land into Hell? \u00a0Well, yes, for the Palestinians. To\u00a0 this end the settlers and soldiers mimic Dante\u2019s demons.<\/p>\n Selective Smelling<\/strong><\/p>\n How far does the bad smell of Israeli actions reach? We can be sure that it reaches as far as London, where MP David Ward<\/a> of the Liberal Democratic Party recently wrote in a Holocaust Memorial book that,<\/p>\n having visited Auschwitz twice . . . I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza.<\/p>\n Ward\u2019s reference to \u201cthe Jews\u201d have been qualified, because not all Jews support Zionism or Israel\u2019s claim to \u201cJudea and Samaria,\u201d much less the pogrom-<\/a>like way the Israelis are going about ethnically cleansing the areas under their control. In fact, an increasing number of American Jews are, if you will, washing their hands<\/a> of Israel in general. Yet Ward was correct when it comes to the \u201cJewish state\u2019s\u201d behavior. Perhaps Mr. Ward\u2019s confusion was a product of Israel\u2019s constant insistence that it represents all the world\u2019s Jews.<\/p>\n Not everyone seems to smell the odor emanating from Israel.\u00a0Mr. Ward\u2019s Liberal Democratic Party called him to account for daring to draw attention to the fact that foul acts continue to be committed against the Palestinians by the self-proclaimed representative of the Jews. A quiet word to Ward about avoiding generalizations would probably have sufficed but, using a process similar to those carried out by totalitarian regimes, Ward\u2019s party ordered him \u201cto meet with the party\u2019s \u2018Friends of Israel\u2019 chapter to \u2018identify and agree on language that will be proportionate and precise when he speaks out again on the Israeli-Palestine conflict.\u201d He did so and issued the required apology. This\u00a0 \u00a0 smells like censorship to me.<\/p>\n Foul Is Fair<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s one thing to punish someone for calling attention to Israel\u2019s rank behavior. It is something else to insist that foul is actually fair\u2013-to say the sewage smells like roses. Who would be reckless enough to imply such a nauseating thing and do so with a straight face before cameras with the whole world watching? How about the President of the United States? He lives in Washington D.C., where denial of Israel\u2019s malodorous nature is almost unanimous.<\/p>\n President Obama had an interview<\/a> with Israel\u2019s Channel 2 TV station on 15 March 2013, just before he left to visit that country. In the interview he stated that he admires Israel\u2019s \u201ccore values.\u201d\u00a0The Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who has an honest nose for these things, editorially asked Obama<\/a>,<\/p>\n which values he was talking about? The dehumanization of the Palestinians? The attitude toward African migrants? The arrogance, racism and nationalism? Is this what he admires? Don\u2019t separate buses\u00a0for Palestinians remind him of something? Doesn\u2019t two communities living on the same land, one with full rights and the other with no rights, ring a bell . . . ?<\/p>\n To admire \u201ccore values\u201d while knowing we\u2019re talking about one of the most racist countries there is, with a separation wall and apartheid-like\u00a0policies, means betraying the core values of the American civil rights movement that made the Obama miracle possible.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, upon arriving in Israel, President Obama said that U.S. support for the very same Israel Levy describes will \u201cbe forever.<\/a>\u201d It might be added that, at the same time, the president insisted that the Palestinians cease demanding a halt to the building of settlements, with their targeted open- sewer policies, before any further \u201cpeace\u201d negotiations with the Israelis.<\/p>\n When it comes to Israel, President Obama, and most of the Congress as well, can\u2019t tell the difference between fair and foul.\u00a0That is because they live in a peculiar professional world whose parameters, in reference to Israel and Palestine, are defined by a Zionist lobby with Orwellian powers.\u00a0In this special world, double-think abounds.\u00a0Racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and the tactical use of Skunk and raw sewage disappear and are replaced by imaginary \u201ccore values\u201d that smell like roses.<\/p>\n Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n The president can privately smell garbage and call it roses all he wants.\u00a0But when he tries to sell the rest of us on this connection, the credibility of his language sinks into the gutter.\u00a0Remember what George Orwell tells us about the potential for harm in the misuse of political language.<\/a> Misused, such language offers a \u201cdefense of the indefensible\u201d and is \u201cdesigned to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.\u201d That is what most politicians\u2019 language has sunk to when it comes to Israel\/Palestine.<\/p>\n That this should go on \u201cforever,\u201d as the president claims, is just hyperbole. Consider the fact that a recent CIA report <\/a>calls into question the Zionist state\u2019s ability to last for more than another twenty years. No, the bad smell coming from Israel denotes internal socio-political rot, as well as rotten tactics toward non-Jewish inhabitants. Sooner or later everyone possessing a humane conscience, to say nothing of a functioning honest nose, will refuse to have anything to do with this \u201capartheid-like\u201d state.<\/p>\n _____________________________<\/p>\n Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University in West Chester PA. His academic work is focused on the history of American foreign relations with the Middle East. He also teaches courses in the history of science and modern European intellectual history.<\/i><\/p>\n