B. Michael – Israeli journalist of courage and integrity

B.Michael isn’t as well known outside Israel as he should be. He writes for the mass circulation Hebrew newspaper Yediot Aharonot, commenting with sardonic wit on the self-delusions of Israeli politics.

In his most recent column (15 May), Presidential demagoguery, takes on the notion of ‘natural growth’ as a justification for further settlement construction:

During President Shimon Peres’ public relations campaign on behalf of the Netanyahu government, he sank as low as to defend the weakest national-religious-Orthodox bluff: The myth of natural growth as a pretext for settlement construction.
After the American vice president refused to be impressed by this folly, our honorable president gaped at him with amazement and a sense of insult. What do they want? He asked in a whiny voice, that young couples will get married and have nowhere to live?
However, Mr. Peres, where does it say that young couples must live near their parents? And where does it say that the State’s duty is to supply every young man and woman with a plot of land at their birthplace?
… Does every young couple in northern Tel Aviv see the government build an apartment for them in northern Tel Aviv? Or is this bizarre prerogative only reserved for the children of settlers and their partners?
Our honorable president would do well to be informed of the following: There is plenty of room between Metula in the north and Eilat in the south. In this great space, every settler couple can find a place of residence in line with their financial abilities. This is what any other young couple in Israel does, and there is no reason why a young settler couple would conduct itself any differently…

Or again, at the very start of the war on Gaza (29 Dec 2008) he wrote in Déjà vu in Gaza that only ‘hatred, bereavement, pain, and desire for revenge will come out of Gaza op’. All the ‘operations’,’wars’, ‘battles’ and ‘campaigns’ since the war of 1967 ‘constitute one ongoing war; one great butcher shop. The war of occupier against occupied, and the war of the occupied against the occupier.
And again we hear all the great words about courage, surprise, sophistication, and success. Yet the nature of the “surprise” we delivered against Hamas isn’t quite clear. I mean, did the group fail to deploy its airplanes? Did it fail to advance its armored corps in advance? Did it fail to deploy its Patriot missile batteries? …
Yet we have seen this bleeding folly time and again. After all, this was precisely the way Israel conducted itself during the terrible years of the Intifada. After every terrible attack by Palestinian groups, Israel bombed a police station or office of facility belonging to the Palestinian Authority, to the point where the PA lost its power and status, allowing Hamas to rise to power on its ashes…

And his Let us remember and not forget, for Holocaust Memorial Day 2009, reproduced elsewhere on this website.

For more go to Ynet News and search for “B. Michael”