Gideon Levy and Israel

Gideon Levy has this issue with Israel. He's sobbing over the fact that the vast majority of Jewish Israelis don't agree with him. He claims that the occupation has been "completely missing from the national agenda" because the Knesset is "devoid of Jewish anti-occupation activists".

There are some very fundemental flaws in his argument. First of all, assuming that there are no "anti-occupation" Jewish MK's, does that mean that all the Jewish MK's are in favor of ruling over another people just for the heck of it? Second, does supporting a two-state solution to end the occupation not "anti-occupation" enough? The answer to these two questions is obviously no. In Netanyahu's first speech as PM, he said that Israel does not want to rule over another people. And Kadima, the party which supports a two-state solution, has won the most seats in the recent election.

Levy's columns are usually about how horrible the occupation or the wars are and how Israelis are generally blind to it. The most surprising thing in this is that he blames the "blindness" on the Israeli media. Hello? You are party of the media, Mr. Levy. You are write regularly in Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper. Not only that, who does he think mans the checkpoints? Settlers? No, the IDF does, and who serves in the IDF? I really doubt that soldiers are silent about what they do in the West Bank.

Rather than focus on why so many Israelis support the security measures, aka the occupation, Mr. Levy focuses on why everybody else doesn't share his passion showing how bad Israelis are. I'd like to see Levy write saying that he supports unilateral withdrawl of the West Bank and what he thinks will happen afterwards. Isn't that what he supports? His biggest audience is outside of Israel, people who like to get their fix from the source.

Levy is blinded by his ideology. He is neither effective nor constructive. There are too many negative adjectives one can attach to Levy. Take your pick.