W
hen the New York Times featured an opinion article by billionaire Michael Bloomberg this week, it harmonized with a crescendo of other recent pleas from prominent American supporters of Israel. Bloomberg warned that Israel’s new governing coalition is trying to give parliament the power to “overrule the nation’s Supreme Court and run roughshod over individual rights, including on matters such as speech and press freedoms, equal rights for minorities and voting rights.” Such a change would, Bloomberg added, undermine Israel’s “strong commitment to freedom.”
Strong commitment to freedom? That would sure be news to the more than 5 million Palestinian people living under Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank.
The pretense is that what’s happening now with Israel amounts to a surprising aberration from its natural state. At times, the denial even rests on the tacit and absurd assumption that Jews are less inclined to commit atrocities than any other people. But recent events in Israel are continuing a long Zionist process that has been propelled by mixtures of a valid yearning for safety and extreme ethnocentrism, with terrible results.
R&I. -TxPAT
Shaky
Article URL : https://www.salon.com/2023/03/10/israels-liberal-supporters-speak-out-against-netanyahu--but-theyre-still-in-denial/