Israel is sick and needs treatment says president


October 22, 2014
Sarah Benton

1) Mondoweiss on President Rivlin’s speech, 2) Times of Israel report of the conference.


President Reuven Rivlin, above, has been more overtly hostile to a Palestinian state than his predecessor Shimon Peres, but appears to be more perturbed about the effects of the status quo on Israelis.

Israeli president’s diagnosis — ‘Israel is a sick society’ — doesn’t go viral in the U.S.

By Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss
October 22, 2014

Did you hear that the president of Israel said Israel is a “sick society”? Reuven Rivlin, a Likudnik, said this over the weekend. There’s been lots of coverage in Israel, but as Sullivan points out, the declaration hasn’t gotten much attention stateside. I should think it would be viral.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s report:

It is time to honestly admit that Israeli society is ill – and it is our duty to treat this disease Rivlin told the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities on Sunday at a conference titled “From Xenophobia to Accepting the Other.

“The tension between Jews and Arabs within the State of Israel has risen to record heights, and the relationship between all parties has reached a new low,” he said. “We have all witnessed the shocking sequence of incidents and violence taking place by both sides. The epidemic of violence is not limited to one sector or another, it permeates every area and doesn’t skip any arena. There is violence in soccer stadiums as well as in the academia. There is violence in the social media and in everyday discourse, in hospitals and in schools.

From the Jerusalem Post:

The time has come to admit that Israel is a sick society, with an illness that demands treatment, President Reuven Rivlin said at the opening session on Sunday of a conference on From Hatred of the Stranger to Acceptance of the Other.

Rivlin wondered aloud whether Jews and Arabs had abandoned the secret of dialogue.

With regard to Jews he said: “I’m not asking if they’ve forgotten how to be Jews, but if they’ve forgotten how to be decent human beings. Have they forgotten how to converse?” In Rivlin’s eyes, the academy has a vital task to reduce violence in Israeli society by encouraging dialogue and the study of different cultures and languages with the aim of promoting mutual understanding, so that there can be civilized meetings between the sectors of society.

JTA says that Rivlin spoke of abuse he’s received on his Facebook page. Presumably from the right, not the left. This is a country where a settler extremist assassinated a prime minister who was saying he wanted to compromise with Palestinians, 19 years ago.

Rivlin is obviously referencing the teen murders of the last summer and the chants of “Death to Arabs” that resound in the streets of Jerusalem. This is the hardline rightwing society that Max Blumenthal described in his book Goliath, that Shlomo Sand has sought to resign from by stopping being a Jew, and that Nathan Thrall cites in his takedown of Ari Shavit’s usefulness to American Jews as a liberal voice when he’s anything but. And the president of the country is saying this? A Likudnik politician? As Sullivan says, any American who said this would be instantly marginalized and smeared as an antisemite. Witness Blumenthal’s blacklisting by the Times, and the fact that Sand and Thrall appear in English publications. While liberal American Jews hold on to their dreamcastle Israel, with the help of Shavit and his media posse; and the New York Times gives a platform to wingnut Caroline Glick to malign Palestinian leaders. This is a very dangerous situation. Though I imagine if there’s enough controversy over the comments, The New York Times will cover them. Chris Matthews has surely seen Rivlin’s comment but won’t touch it until safe media here have picked it up.

By the way, in a radio discussion on Open Source a month ago, I said that Zionism began in 1894 with Theodor Herzl hearing the chant, Death to the Jews, in Paris, and that it has now culminated 120 years later with nationalist Jews chanting Death to the Arabs in Jerusalem. That is the alpha and omega of political Zionism, which has failed Herzl’s own test, that the stranger will be welcome in Jewish society. Bernard Avishai responded that I was offering a “caricature” of the movement. I don’t think it’s a caricature; it’s a realistic interpretation of the failure of an ideology to create a better society. Rivlin must share something of my view, despairingly. Does he have the makings of a De Klerk, the ability to state to his fellow citizens that the project has failed and must be reimagined.


Leaders put ‘sick’ society under a microscope, but find few cures

Politicians, intellectuals and religious figures at Jerusalem conference discuss opportunities and challenges in combating hatred and incitement

By Renee Ghert-Zand, Times of Israel
October 21, 2014

President Reuven Rivlin lashed out against racism in Israeli society, telling a Jerusalem conference the country was “sick” earlier this week.

The remarks came at a conference sponsored by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, as high-profile Israeli politicians and intelligentsia wrestled with the issue of xenophobia in society.

The leaders and thinkers gathered for the day-and-a-half event and bemoaned the current situation and the damage it is doing to Israeli society and culture, though few could offer any far-reaching concrete solutions to the problem.

“Israeli society is sick and we must treat the disease,” said Rivlin, who has focused on anti-discrimination efforts since taking office nearly three months ago.

Rivlin was referring to a wave of racism, hatred and incitement against both Palestinians and left-wing Jewish Israelis that swelled within Israel, on the streets and on social media, during this past summer’s conflict with Hamas in Gaza.

However, as with most illnesses, the symptoms did not appear out of nowhere. Processes of disease had been underway well before this year, politicians at the conference said.

“The wave of violence on the eve of the war did not come from zero,” said Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, referring in general to the violent response to the kidnapping and murder of Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Fraenkel and Gilad Shaer by Palestinian terrorists, and in particular to the retaliatory random murder of East Jerusalem teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir, who was kidnapped and burnt while still alive by Jews.

Many at the conference mentioned that the challenge of racism was especially daunting because of the particular nature of Israeli society, which operates against the backdrop of a long-standing, unresolved national conflict.

And while high-minded ideas were floated, the conference was notably short of representatives from minority communities including Arab Israelis, Mizrahi Jews and the ultra-Orthodox.

Educational, religious and legal approaches for ousting xenophobia were examined, but each alone fell short. Speakers implied that a combination of the three might be effective, but the complexity of the situation prevented anyone from suggesting a possible recipe for success.

While Livni touted new anti-discrimination initiatives within the Justice Ministry, legal experts, speaking on Monday morning, suggested that the law alone would not be able to put an end to racism and divisiveness in Israel.

“Can law overcome racism? No. At least not by itself,” said State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan. “The social and educational struggle against racism is more important.”

To support his point, Nitzan explained how the extremely narrow Israeli legal definition of “racism” makes it hard to prosecute inciters. In addition, he noted that the publication of a quote or reference from a religious text is not legally considered incitement.

“This can be problematic, because religious leaders make racist statements,” Nitzan said.

As an illustration, he brought the example of Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, candidate for chief rabbi of Jerusalem, who has issued religious rulings, backed by his interpretation of halacha, forbidding Jews from renting apartments to Arabs or foreign workers.

All the legal experts on the panel agreed that free speech must be protected, and that individuals only be prosecuted for speech that clearly incites to violence.

“Law must deal with behavior, not speech,” said Hebrew University law professor Ruth Gavison.

Michael Karyani, also from the Hebrew University law faculty, echoed an assertion by Gavison that the law can be only part of the answer.

“Laws cannot change basic social values. It’s the other way around,” he said.

Karyani, a Palestinian who lives in the mixed community of Neve Shalom outside Jerusalem, said Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel needed to determine who they are collectively, and to figure out what unites them.

Speakers on the education panel that followed suggested that this could be too tall an order for a country in which the majority Jewish population itself is fractured into innumerable sectors that don’t interact very much, if at all, with one another — let alone with Arab-Israelis.

“The different streams in the education system [public, religious-public, Haredi, private, Arab] separate kids from one another. Israeli kids grow up from a very young age in a context of separation,” said Eyal Naveh, a professor of history at Tel Aviv University.

Naveh warned that unchecked separation leads to exclusion, which can lead to discrimination, and ultimately to racism and incitement.

While Naveh and others among the education experts remain optimistic about the potential for education to combat intolerance and hatred, Gavriel Salomon, an educational psychologist from the University of Haifa, is more doubtful.

“In 15 years of research, we have not found any evidence that education programs for co-existence leave an impression even two months later,” he reported.

“Not everyone can overcome the fear of getting to know the other’s narrative,” he said.

According to Salomon, if anti-racism curricula and programs are to have any chance of working, they need to be long-term and to be integrated into all subjects taught in the school. They must take not only a cognitive approach, but a social one as well. Equally important, parents must be involved in and supportive of the process.

Many of the presenters, including Education Minister Shai Piron and settler movement leader Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun, pointed to fear as the main obstacle to overcome in efforts to bring about change.

“Fear and terror are being used as a strategic weapon,” said Bin-Nun. “We can’t allow ourselves to be caught up with fear and intimidation.

“In our conceptualization of ourselves, we are a society of minorities. And minorities are afraid of losing their identities,” said Eyal Kaminka of the Yad Vashem International School for Holocaust Studies.

“It is natural to be afraid, and fear can lead to hate. But the point is not to fear. The point is to overcome the fear and to do the right thing,” he said.

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