Secular People, Gays and Arabs Don't Have Feelings in Israel

[Israeli]

I’m offended to the depths of my soul by what is done here in my name every day, but being neither religious nor right-wing, no one cares about offending my sensibilities.

Gideon Levy
Jul 21, 2016

As with every other human thing in Israel, feelings, too, belong only to Jews. And, in fact, only to religious Jews. The meticulous will also add Holocaust survivors and bereaved families. It’s only their feelings that one is forbidden to offend. Everyone else has no feelings, or at least they needn’t be taken into account.

There’s no such thing as offending the sensibilities of secular people, leftists or just plain people, and certainly not of Arabs.

The Gay Pride Parade, for instance, is liable to offend religious sensibilities and therefore it can’t be allowed to march down the main street of Be’er Sheva. And in Jerusalem, populist mayor Nir Barkat will stay away from today’s Pride Parade so as “not to offend people’s feelings.”

The Jerusalem Day flag parade through that same city seriously offends my feelings every year. It fills me with terrible shame. But the feelings of secular people, liberals or Arabs? There’s no such thing.

read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.732361

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Not much different than here: only white, Christians can be

offended.

[shira]

2. I'm offended by terror supporting Hamas cheerleading sacks of shit like Gideon Levy.

Just a sample of his vile support...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1134&pid=123071

[Little Tich]

10. I followed your links and they don't show that Gideon Levy supports terror or Hamas.

He is however critical of how Israel treats the Palestinians - perhaps you're confusing his criticism with supporting terror?

[shira]

12. Lulz..... Mahmoud Abbas doesn't support terror either, nor does Mondoweiss - right?

Who do you think you're kidding? Here's Levy being congratulated at Mondoweiss for writing that it's Palestinians' right and duty to resist.

The only restrictions are on the means of resistance. The Palestinians have tried almost all of them, for better and worse – negotiations and terror; with a carrot and with a stick; with a stone and with bombs; in demonstrations and in suicide. All in vain. Are they to despair and give up? This has almost never happened in history, so they’ll continue. Sometimes they’ll use legitimate means, sometimes vile ones. It’s their right to resist.
See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2014/10/resistance-duty-too/#sthash.btJwIByC.dpuf

Couldn't be more clear. It's their right to resist, even if by vile means.
And what's the reaction from the Mondoweiss author?
Does he read it the same way I read it?
Let's see...

Within the Israeli political spectrum, Levy’s writing is incendiary. Calling for Palestinian resistance is a clarion call to resist his own government. To resist Israeli soldiers. Settlers.

Treason?

The means are open. Levy doesn’t shut down armed resistance – specifically. But that and other forms of Palestinian resistance have failed. So the means are open. They’re also exhausted and failing.
See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2014/10/resistance-duty-too/#sthash.btJwIByC.dpuf

The only way to read Gideon Levy is as a terror supporter.
When Hamas and friends read that, they must read it as support.
This is nothing but incitement to terror.

[shira]

13. Gideon Levy: "Palestinian terror is the resort of those who have no choice.

Last edited Wed Jul 27, 2016, 01:49 AM - Edit history (2)

This one is even more clear.
Palestinian terror is justified, as in it is their right to do so.
Other terrorism isn't justified.

You agree with this?

The second kind, Palestinian terror, is criminal in its methods but justified in its cause. There is no connection between the man who committed suicide in Brussels’ Metro and the youth who stabs Israelis at Damascus Gate. A thousand speeches by Benjamin Netanyahu at AIPAC won’t confuse decent people. Palestinian terror is the resort of those who have no choice, a tool of the weak to gain their more-than-justified goals.

It’s true that this kind of terror also hurts innocent people brutally. Its means are similar too. Palestinians attacked planes when Osama Bin Laden was still a business administration student in King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, and Palestinian suicide terrorists preceded ISIS. But all this cannot cover up the difference: ISIS’s goals are insane, the Palestinians’ goals are justified.

What would you say to a Gazan youngster hesitating whether to join the resistance? Is there any point to his life and any chance for his future if he and his colleagues bow their heads submissively before their jailers? Is there anyone, in Israel or the rest of the world, who would remember their existence without the violent resistance that is tagged as terrorism? And their brothers in the West Bank — violence may not have given them any real achievements, but at least it raised their issue and put it on the agenda.

Let’s be honest about it: Had the Palestinians not hijacked airplanes in the early '70s, would anyone in the world know about their disaster? Be interested in their fate? True, nothing has been solved since then, but this is despite their desperate resort to terror, not because of it.

Israel has given the Palestinians and the Arab world a fateful lesson — it understands only force. Only force got Israel to return Sinai, only force led it to the Oslo talks, only by force will the Palestinian problem be solved. This force, in the case of people who have no army or air force, is terror.

The first 20 years of occupation, during which there was little terror, passed pleasantly, so it occurred to nobody to give the Palestinians even a few of their rights. Terror put these rights onto the agenda. Because of the first intifada, they reached Oslo.

The second intifada, which was more savage, brought disaster on them — they lost some of the world’s sympathy and some of the sympathy toward them in Israel. But terror was and remained their only weapon. They have no other. Even if they destroy their entire shabby weapons’ arsenal and swear to walk in the light of Mahatma Gandhi, they have no chance of getting what is theirs without terror.

read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.710588

[shira]

14. And of course, Mondoweiss cites this one...

http://mondoweiss.net/2016/03/netanyahu-defends-israeli-military-after-soldier-caught-on-tape-executing-palestinian-any-challenge-to-the-morality-of-the-idf-is-outrageous/

[Little Tich]

18. Describing cause and effect isn't a justification of the effect.

Pointing out that Palestinian terrorism may have a cause, and that that cause is Israel's treatment of Palestinians doesn't mean a justification of terrorism. Levy is pretty clear that the cause for terrorism should be addressed, not ignored.

Perhaps you don't think that Israel's treatment of Palestinians is the direct cause of terrorism? That would go a long way towards explaining why you think that Levy is a terror supporter.

[shira]

19. You're completely contradicting yourself. Why the change?

Last edited Wed Jul 27, 2016, 01:55 AM - Edit history (1)

What happened to Little Tich from Oct. 2015? Is that a different Little Tich?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1134&pid=115420

It's justification.
Gideon Levy flat-out admitted terror is justified against Israelis & not justified against Europeans.
Levy could not have made the case for terror better than any Hamasnik.
The entire article is incitement.

[Little Tich]

20. I must admit that I probably missed or ignored the stab (no pun) at Levy in that article,

but apart from that I still agree with the argument that even if the occupation is the main cause of Palestinian terrorism, it doesn't absolve the terrorist.

Yes, the occupation is the central cause of terrorism. But it is also not the only cause.

http://zionish.com/newtons-third-law-of-palestinian-stabbings/

[shira]

21. You support Levy's argument that terrorists have no other choice? n/t

[Little Tich]

22. I personally don't like putting it like that. It diminishes the moral agency in terrorism.

But it's probably true that some Palestinians believe that there's no other way to stop the occupation. Mentioning it is in no way support for terrorism.

Levy is still OK.

[shira]

23. Levy argues they have no other choice but terror & that's incitement....

Last edited Wed Jul 27, 2016, 06:14 AM - Edit history (1)

He's not merely reporting what Palestinians think and believe.

That's his argument too, no matter how much you want to deny the obvious.

[shira]

24. Nothing? This is what BDS is all about & I'll keep reminding you of it.

BDS = Support for terror, destroying the Jewish state.

100% antisemitism.
Pure filth.
You're on the wrong side of history.

Game over.

[Little Tich]

3. Barkat is bowing down to homophobes. n/t

[Israeli]

4. Homophobia rears its ugly head in Pride month in Israel

‘Sick,’ ‘perverts,’ ‘abomination,’ ‘blasphemers,’ ‘handicapped’: Hate speech against Israel’s LGBTQ community has reached fever pitch this week, and comes as police have detained queer activists and the High Court has capitulated to homophobia.

By Natasha Roth
Published July 21, 2016

All this has happened in the run-up to Thursday’s pride parade in Jerusalem. The event has attracted the customary protest and plans for counter-demonstrations from the far-right Jewish purity group Lehava, and Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox communities, whose neighborhoods have been dotted with posters calling the parade an “abomination.” Jerusalem’s deputy mayor, Meir Turgeman, told Army Radio on Wednesday that “Jerusalem is a holy city and [the pride participants] are blasphemers.” The chief rabbi of Hebron and Kiryat Arba, Dov Lior, also called the event an “abomination,” while a faction of religious Zionist rabbis has published a letter accusing the parade and its attendees of “desecrating” Jerusalem.

This is the same kind of hate speech that could be heard leading up to to last year’s Jerusalem Pride, at which Yishai Shlissel, an ultra-Orthodox man, stabbed teenager Shira Banki to death and wounded five other people. (Police have issued a restraining order barring members of Shlissel’s family from Jerusalem during this year’s parade, for fear that they may pose a threat to participants. They also arrested Shlissel himself, in prison, for conspiracy to carry out another attack.)

In the face of this incitement, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat declared in an interview with Yedioth Ahronoth that he would not be attending Thursday’s march because he doesn’t want to “harm the ultra-Orthodox and religious-Zionist public.” Barkat could have kept silent on his reasons for not attending the march. Instead, he chose to validate the same homophobic sentiments that the march exists to stand up to.

Source: http://972mag.com/homophobia-rears-its-ugly-head-in-pride-month-in-israel/120745/

[Israeli]

5. Secular patience wearing thin.........

Op-ed: Religious Zionists hold many views that are abhorrent to the secular, though their response to these views varies based on their potential closeness to the issues; only a minority actually express these beliefs, held by the majority, and the secular sector's patience is wearing thin with them.

Sima Kadmon
Published: 23.07

The shock in the secular world caused by Rabbi Yigal Levinstein's statements was so strong that even the chairman of Bayit Yehudi, Education Minister Naftali Bennett, had to condemn him. And after him, as always, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Basically, if you want to know what Netanyahu thinks about a specific topic, all you have to do is wait to hear Bennett's opinion, and then start the countdown to the PM's response. But there's no doubt that there are days when even the most committed atheist prays to God that Hell really exists, just so Levinstein and his ilk can go—after living to a ripe old age, of course—to their rightful place.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4832210,00.html

Just a week previously, people were shocked by pretty similar statements given in rabbinical rulings to religious questions put to the candidate for IDF chief rabbi. Just three months before that—and honestly, when aren't they?—our ears were ringing from the honest statements of faith by MK Bezalel Smotrich and his wife that only racially pure hands should touch a newborn. Really, why are we shocked again and again?

Few in the religious sector honestly and openly express their faith. Most of them belong to the school of pretending innocence and eye-rolling, while it's disseminated via yeshivas like Ateret Hacohanim and others like it to the pre-army preparatory yeshivas (mechinot) and from there to the junior command ranks in the army, and within a short time, also to the senior command. Rulings, instructions and statements of people of that sector that shock us every time anew, like we haven't heard such things regularly. Worldviews that are likely to one day decide that it's permissible and even required to violate the Sabbath to save a Givati brigade commander, but it's utterly forbidden to save a Golani brigade commander on the Sabbath because he isn't Jewish.

Reform Jews are Christians. It's permissible to rape an attractive woman during war to keep up soldiers' morale. It's permissible to harm innocent Arabs—and innocent children, if they're Arab, because they'll grow up to be terrorists. And obviously there's no need to treat terrorists as human beings, because they're "animals," and the maxim states that he who is merciful to the cruel will end up being cruel to the merciful.

It's forbidden for women to enlist, and if, God forbid, they enlist, it's forbidden to be around them, certainly not when they're commanders. Because the presence of a female commander around male soldiers requires them to focus their gaze on her, which violates the prohibition on looking.

And anybody who doesn't believe all this just has to google the website Kipa or a collection of rabbinical rulings, and they'll believe.

Sometimes something slips by. The order for the operation to invade Gaza. The King's Torah. The ruling forbidding selling apartments to Arabs. The ruling to fake documents for the purchase of land from a gentile. False testimony in court. And whoever turns in the burners of babies to law-enforcement authorities has committed the egregious sin of snitching. And who really knows on which side they will be in the moment of truth?

Travelers on a full cart don't really believe that travelers on empty carts have values, faith or morals. The biggest insult that a secular person could say to a religious one is, "Believe me that the respect that I have for you is exactly like the respect that you have for me."

Well, we understand. We're the messiah's donkey, destined to do the dirty work, not out of stupidity, but out of patience. But even patience has an end. And even though Rabbi Levinstein says behind closed doors that it's possible to help people change their tendencies, it's doubtful it it's possible to help people to be rehabilitated from the darkness of their religious faith.

[Israeli]

25. " Secular patience wearing thin ".........

Series of scandals rocks Israeli Orthodox Zionism

First there was the “Gays are Perverts” speech by Rabbi Yigal Levenstein, one of the leading educators of the younger generation of Orthodox Zionism. This was followed by the disturbingly unenlightened ideas expressed by Col. Eyal Karim, who is designated to become the next chief rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Then came Orthodox former commander retired Maj. Gen. Gershon HaCohen’s defense of Orthodox Zionist Brig. Gen. Ofek Buchris upon being accused of rape. All of this should compel Orthodox Zionism to engage in some serious soul-searching.

Even when taken individually, each incident is so unacceptable that its very roots should come under investigation. When these events follow one another in a period of weeks, they expose the powerful forces at work to change the very essence of Orthodox Zionism as we once knew it.

At the center of each of these incidents are some of the most senior and influential figures in Orthodox Zionism, the very people charged with educating the next generation. For that reason alone, what happened cannot be considered a series of stand-alone incidents. They represent a line of thought and action that must prompt a much more comprehensive debate than simply focusing on “incitement against gays and lesbians.”

HaBayit HaYehudi Chairman and Minister of Education Naftali Bennett did have the courage to renounce Rabbi Levenstein’s “pervert speech,” even if it meant coming out against a popular figure who plays a dominant role in his own religious Zionist electorate. On the other hand, he did not go far enough. For example, he did not demand that Rabbi Levenstein be removed from his position as head of the pre-military yeshiva in Eli. The reason for this is simple. While Bennett realizes that Levenstein’s remarks are destructive and ignorant, and that they are tearing Orthodox Zionism apart from the inside, he is also aware that Levenstein’s followers have enormous public and electoral strength — as evidenced by the hundreds of rabbis who signed a letter in support of Levenstein. Bennett focused on Rabbi Levenstein’s boorish remarks about gay people, but he ignored the fact that Levenstein also said that reform Jews are ''part of Christianity.'' Obviously this would have been one battle too many for him. At the same time, Bennett also ignored the underlying principle behind Rabbi Levenstein’s comprehensive ideology, which advocates the superiority of Jewish law and religion over national institutions, chief among them the IDF.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/07/orthodox-zionist-eyal-karim-gays-speech-ofek-buchris.html#ixzz4FgD4vOfT

[oberliner]

6. What a moronic article

The paragraphs excerpted completely contradict themselves.

1. The Pride Parade occurs. No one prevents it from happening for fear of offending people's feelings. Most religious people don't take part.

2. The Jerusalem Day Parade occurs. No one prevents it from happening for fear of offending people's feelings. Most secular people don't take part .

Neither event is canceled because it fills Gideon or anyone else "with terrible shame".

[shira]

7. For BDS morons who eat this idiocy up. n/t

[Israeli]

8. My deepest heartfelt apologies ....

..........that our Gideon offends you both so much .

He doesn't compromise shira .....

[shira]

9. He supports terror attacks against Israelis. See #2 above.

He's a vile, pathetic POS and it's no wonder the past Zionist potzers from all of Israel can barely fill a small room.

[Israeli]

11. Sure shira ...sure ....

.......

[shira]

15. Gideon Levy: "Palestinian terror is the resort of those who have no choice."

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.710588

Nothing but a justification for Palestinian terror.

Pure incitement.

[6chars]

16. someone demonstrating no knowledge of humanity would say that

Last edited Tue Jul 26, 2016, 10:25 AM - Edit history (1)

"the resort of those who have no choice" - what about all the other people in the world who are able to find a choice other than terror? there are plenty of choices. By saying there is no choice, Gideon Levy is just encouraging the Palestinians by implying terrorism is the RIGHT choice. horrible.

[shira]

17. Yes, life is so miserable there is no other choice...

...than to stab, run over, & blow up innocents. That's what everyone in the world does, right?