MY TURN
Greenfield Recorder, Saturday, June 5, 2021
By PAT HYNES
In his memoir, “Friendly Fire,” Ami Ayalon former director of Shin Bet, Israel’s counterintelligence and internal security service (akin to the CIA) concludes that Israel’s militarized, punitive and intentionally humiliating policies toward the Palestinians are undermining Israel to where it is becoming “its own worst enemy.”
A secular, self-described leftist Zionist, Ayalon fears that “the secular majority … motivated by fear and propelled by silence” are leading Israel away from democracy and toward an “Orwellian dystopia.” His memoir appeared just before the recent Israeli police demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem; raiding of al-Aqsa Mosque; and air strike slaughter of more than 240 Palestinians in Gaza, displacement of tens of thousands and demolition of critical infrastructure. GazabasedHamas rockets fired in response to Israel’s actions in East Jerusalem had killed 12 Israelis.
The journalist Robert Scheer points out a great irony of history, namely that as a result of Israel’s policies, the Palestinians are in the position that Jews were in before the Holocaust. “They’re in a hostile diaspora, they are oppressed in this diaspora.” A further irony is that as American Democrat attitude, including among young Jewish Americans, has begun to shift away from unquestioning support of Israel, Israel’ s reliance on the evangelical religious right has become increasingly important.
On the day of the ceasefire between Israel and Gaza, May 21, the US State Department, under President Biden’s bidding, approved the sale of $735 million in laser-guided weapons to Israel, in violation of national and international law. A few days later, the State Department pledged $5.5 million in emergency aid to Gaza for rebuilding: blood-soaked crumbs to its victims after the toxic feast of bombs offered to Israel.
Pat Hynes is a board member of the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice in Greenfield.
Copyright © 2021 Greenfield Recorder 6/5/2021