DesertPeace
Im Tirtzu hides behind respectable mask of ‘Zionism’ 
By Gideon Levy
Binyamin Ze’ev is turning in his grave once again: A McCarthyite movement has taken his best-known slogan for its name. Im Tirtzu, which deceptively calls itself a “moderate, centrist movement,” gives a bad name to Herzl, a democrat and liberal, who coined the phrase “Im tirtzu, ain zo agada” (If you will it, it is no dream). The group’s latest trick: a dirty war against the New Israel Fund for its funding of 16 organizations that provided documentation used in the Goldstone report.
Oy, gevalt! There are nongovernmental organizations that want Israel to be a better, more just state, and that the New Israel Fund dares to underwrite. Cities were plastered with posters featuring a caricature of NIF president Naomi Chazan wearing a horn – that’s the level that the “movement” behind the campaign sinks to – and with the last name of that reviled figure, Goldstone, added to hers.
Maariv, the tabloid daily that never shrinks from McCarthyism, hastened to publish a ludicrous “expose” that is nothing more than a copy of Im Tirtzu’s report. The Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee created a subcommittee to “examine the sources of funding,” media personality Avri Gilad called for Chazan’s dismissal and the Jerusalem Post has already fired her as columnist for the newspaper. It’s exactly how McCarthyism operated.
There’s no lack of fascist movements in Israel and the wider world, nationalist, militarist and racist organizations that don’t pretend to be anything but. Im Tirtzu hides behind the respectable mask of “Zionism.” Under this camouflage people hunt down all signs of democracy and critical thought. Quiet, we’re shooting, all the time. That is their “second Zionist revolution,” an Israel without the High Court of Justice and without B’Tselem, militarist with neither criticism nor supervision. If that is Zionism, then it’s better to be anti-Zionist.
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian
No comments:
Post a Comment