Thread by @HagaiElAd

1/ Carolina Landsmann's interesting review of "Who Do You Think You Are?" also mentions - and diagnoses - @btselem (and me personally, perhaps thanks to the comprehensive and generous interview she conducted with me 5 years ago). So, I wanted to respond 🧵
haaretz.com/israel-news/.p…

2/ The thread weaved throughout Landsmann's @haaretzcom critique is the Zionist left's grief over its defeat. But in doing so, if I may, @carolinalandsm1 is writing about herself, while projecting onto the rights organizations that "lost,"...

3/ ...a defeat that "happened a few years earlier to the executive director of B’Tselem, Hagai El-Ad, and to his NGO, and is happening today to @amnesty International: Despairing of the struggle against the occupation, they shifted to waging a battle against Israeli #apartheid."

4/ Well, no. B'Tselem certainly hasn't despaired and I don't feel defeated. It is not despair that led us to look at reality with open eyes, but a commitment to humanity and hope for change. As we wrote in "This is Apartheid" a little over a year ago: btselem.org/publications/f…

5/ In that 2017 interview with Carolina, I said similarly: "we have to tell the truth... this is more meaningful and hopeful than continuing an empty routine... It’s not a consequence of despair. It’s a consequence of realism + listening to Palestinians."
haaretz.com/israel-news/.p…

6/ Carolina writes about "leftists for whom the distinction between the two sides of the Green Line crumbles", as if it was a virtue -- not a key mechanism in the service of Jewish control from the River to the Sea, while reengineering demography, space and political structure.

7/ It's not a "crumbling" of something genuine, it's the exposure of a lie. It would have been accurate to write the opposite: not crumbling, but rather gaining clarity. To write about those for whom the *lack* of distinction between the two sides of the Green Line becomes clear.

8/ Similarly the attempt to hold on to the "seminal distinction" between 1948 and 1967 -- ignoring that Israel was, and is, implementing, with (self-serving) adjustments in time/space, the same policies (including military regime) against Palestinians wherever under its control.

9/ Or the effort to distinguish "between legitimate Israel and the illegitimate occupation." But who exactly is conducting that occupation, where exactly is it taking place, and how much longer can one close one's eyes? In short: read @NathanThrall in @LRB lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/…

10/ Finally, Landsmann asks "Why would Israeli Jews want to abolish apartheid if what they can expect... is in effect to take the place of the Palestinians and live in fear in neighborhoods with bars on them, or in gilded refugee camps surrounded by soldiers and police?"

11/ The question is asked by Landsmann manipulatively -- as if these are the only options. It reminded me of Jefferson (1820) on slavery: "we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other"

12/ I don't understand (nor do I believe) -- is Landsmann here retroactively justifying the continuation of (South Africa) apartheid? for as long as white supremacy ruled there, whites (as if) did not live in fear in closed neighborhoods, surrounded by soldiers.

13/ Or did they actually live in fear? And needed soldiers, to kill blacks, to maintain their supremacy?
Not to mention the millions of blacks who most definitely lived in fear. So, who lived in fear and injustice? Only the blacks? Suppose so, how can that be justified?

14/ And perhaps, in fact, all were, separately together, living in fear.
In any case, the toil and risk which are part-and-parcel of dismantling horrible injustice cannot justify its continuation.

15/ Back to the here and now: now, without apartheid here being abolished, Jews are demanding to be "surrounded by soldiers and police". And also demand that Palestinians be surrounded. And also demand a fence without breaches, and a soldier in every breach. Had Gadya, Had Gadya.

16/ Maybe it's time to reconsider the cause-and-effect, what is it that makes life without fear possible. For everyone. //end//