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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 3/25/13

The Holy Land Gets Skunked -- An Analysis

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Part I -- Something Is Rotten in the State of Israel 

It is said that the devil has about him the smell of fire and brimstone (sulphur). Evil deeds are often described as "most foul." On the other hand, people who appear, accurately or not, as always innocent are described as "smelling like roses." There seems, then, to be a long standing, if improbable, association between behavior and smells. 

The Israeli army has recently dedicated itself to demonstrating this association. Back on 6 March 2013 the Middle East Monitor reported that...

"Israeli forces have sprayed Palestinian homes in the village of Nabi Saleh with Skunk as punishment for organizing weekly protests against the Apartheid Wall built on occupied land. Human rights watchdog B'Tselem  published a video  showing Israel's armored tanker trucks fitted with 'water canons' [spraying] the foul fluid." 

Skunk is a fluid so offensive smelling that people automatically retreat from anywhere or anyone doused with it. 

This is not the first time the Israelis have used such noxious tactics. Zionist settlers are fond of diverting the sewage from their illegal settlements, which are usually placed on high ground, into the fields and towns of Palestinians living in the valleys below. This is apparently done with the knowledge and approval of the Israeli state. 

I doubt if many of the Israelis involved in these maneuvers have ever read Dante's Inferno. In that epic poem, Hell is a place steeped in sewage and rot, and Israeli actions seem intent on reproducing this scenario. Are the Israelis then trying to turn the Holy Land into Hell? Well, yes, for the Palestinians. To this end the settlers and soldiers mimic Dante's demons. 

Part II -- Selective Smelling 

How far does the bad smell of Israeli actions reach? We can be sure that it reaches as far as London, where MP David Ward of the Liberal Democratic Party recently wrote in a Holocaust Memorial book that...

"...having visited Auschwitz twice ... I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza."

Ward's reference to "the Jews" have been qualified, because not all Jews support Zionism or Israel's claim to "Judea and Samaria," much less the pogrom-like way the Israelis are going about ethnically cleansing the areas under their control. In fact, an increasing number of American Jews are, if you will, washing their hands of Israel in general. Yet Ward was correct when it comes to the "Jewish state's" behavior. Perhaps Mr. Ward's confusion was a product of Israel's constant insistence that it represents all the world's Jews.  

Not everyone seems to smell the odor emanating from Israel. Mr. Ward's Liberal Democratic Party called him to account for daring to draw attention to the fact that foul acts continue to be committed against the Palestinians by the self-proclaimed representative of the Jews. A quiet word to Ward about avoiding generalizations would probably have sufficed but, using a process similar to those carried out by totalitarian regimes, Ward's party ordered him "to meet with the party's 'Friends of Israel' chapter to 'identify and agree on language that will be proportionate and precise when he speaks out again on the Israeli-Palestine conflict.'" He did so and issued the required apology. This    smells like censorship to me. 

Part III -- Foul Is Fair 

It's one thing to punish someone for calling attention to Israel's rank behavior. It is something else to insist that foul is actually fair -- to say the sewage smells like roses. Who would be reckless enough to imply such a nauseating thing and do so with a straight face before cameras with the whole world watching? How about the President of the United States? He lives in Washington D.C., where denial of Israel's malodorous nature is almost unanimous. 

President Obama had an interview with Israel's Channel 2 TV station on 15 March 2013, just before he left to visit that country. In the interview he stated that he admires Israel's "core values." The Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who has an honest nose for these things, editorially asked Obama...

"...which values he was talking about? The dehumanization of the Palestinians? The attitude toward African migrants? The arrogance, racism and nationalism? Is this what he admires? Don't separate buses for Palestinians remind him of something? Doesn't two communities living on the same land, one with full rights and the other with no rights, ring a bell ...?

"To admire 'core values' while knowing we're talking about one of the most racist countries there is, with a separation wall and apartheid-like policies, means betraying the core values of the American civil rights movement that made the Obama miracle possible." 

Nonetheless, upon arriving in Israel, President Obama said U.S. support for the very same Israel that Levy describes will "be forever." It might be added that, at the same time, the president insisted that the Palestinians cease demanding a halt to the building of settlements, with their targeted open-sewer policies, before any further "peace" negotiations with the Israelis.  

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Lawrence Davidson is a history professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. He is the author of Foreign
Policy Inc.: Privatizing America's National Interest
; America's
Palestine: Popular and Offical Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli
Statehood
; and Islamic Fundamentalism. His academic work is focused on the history of American foreign relations with the Middle East. He also teaches courses in the history of science and modern European intellectual history.

His blog To The Point Analyses now has its own Facebook page. Along with the analyses, the Facebook page will also have reviews, pictures, and other analogous material.

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