Max Blumenthal - Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel

GOLIATH

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

Republican Gomorrah

GOLIATH

Life and Loathing in Greater Israel

MAX BLUMENTHAL

Copyright 2013 by Max Blumenthal

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Editorial production by Lori Hobkirk at the Book Factory.

Designed by Timm Bryson.

The Israeli-Palestine map was created by Mike Morgenfeld. The map of depopulated Palestine towns and villages of 1948 is a simplified version of one compiled by Dr. Salman Abu Sitta, founder and president of Palestine Land Society, in London; permission has been granted for use. The map of the West Bank is a simplified version of one created by BTselem. Permission has been granted for use, and they can be found at http://www.btselem.org. The Gaza Strip map was created by Mike Morgenfeld. Several names throughout the text have been changed.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Blumenthal, Max, 1977- author.

Goliath : life and loathing in greater Israel / Max Blumenthal.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Arab-Israeli conflict1993- 2. IsraelPolitics and government1993- 3. Palestinian ArabsGovernment policyIsrael. 4. Blumenthal, MaxTravelIsrael. I. Title.

DS119.76.B58 2013

956.94054dc23

2013026422

E-Book ISBN: 978-1-56859-972-5

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In memory of Akiva Orr

(19312013)

The people dont like to be conquered, sir, and so they will not be. Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars. You will find that is so.

MAYOR ORDEN, FROM THE MOON IS DOWN,

BY JOHN STEINBECK

Israel is a normal country that is not normal.

ISRAELI SUPREME COURT JUSTICE

ELYAKIM RUBINSTEIN

CONTENTS

In pursuing this reporting project, I have relied on the same journalistic methods that I employed in writing my last book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party. Just as before, when I journeyed into the American far right and documented its takeover of the Republican Party, I immersed myself in the atmosphere of my subject and cultivated intimate access to those who defined its unique sensibility. This time, my subject is the State of Israel during a period of deepening political and societal crisis. Most Americans know far less about this situation than they do about the political polarization in their own country, but it is an issue on which they have opinionsand an issue of paramount significance to US national security and relevance to their own professed values of democracy, equality, and decency. And it is Americans tax dollars and political support that are crucial in sustaining the present state of affairs. I want to show what they are paying for, the facts as they really are today, in unadorned and unsanitized form, without sentimentality or nostalgia.

I began working on this book in May 2009, almost as soon as I completed the book tour of Republican Gomorrah, and I have conducted uninterrupted research for four years, through early 2013. When I began, Israelis had just elected the most right-wing government in their history in an election conducted during Operation Cast Lead, a three-week-long military assault on the Gaza Strip that left much of the besieged coastal enclave in ruins. A transitional period that began with the collapse of the Camp David negotiations in 2000 was accelerating, with extreme nationalist elements consolidating control over the key institutions of Israeli society, from the Knesset to the courts to the educational system and the army. Through my reporting, I attempted to illuminate the impact of this momentous transition on the people themselvesboth Jews and Palestinianscharting its progression through the 2012 Israeli national elections, and against the historical backdrop of the cataclysmic events of 1948 that haunt the Holy Land to this day.

Thanks to my US passport and Jewish heritage, I have been able to report from the frontiers of Israel-Palestine with relative ease, receiving favorable treatment from ethnic profiling experts at Ben Gurion International Airport, passing effortlessly through checkpoints, and cruising from the West Bank to Tel Aviv on highways made off limits to most Palestinians. I spent months living in Ajami, a rapidly gentrifying Palestinian ghetto just south of Tel Aviv; in central Jerusalem, an increasingly frenetic hotbed of Jewish religious nationalism; and in Ramallah, the occupied, seemingly prosperous capital of a Palestinian state that may never be. I have interviewed leaders of Israeli political parties and leaders of Palestinian protests. And I have done my best to explore everywhere in between and speak with as many people as I could.

The stories that make up this book unfolded all around me, in the cities and towns throughout Israel-Palestine, in the streets outside my rented flats, and inside their walls through the lives of my roommates, friends, and journalistic colleagues. These are the stories of people living under a regime of separation, grappling with the consequences of ethnic division in a land with no defined borders.

Readers may not agree with all of my conclusions, but I hope they will carefully consider the facts that appear on these pages. They are, after all, the facts on the ground.

Max Blumenthal

B y the end of 2008, the 1.5 million residents of the Gaza Strip had been left to fend for themselves. Gaza was surrounded on all sides by Israeli sniper towers, electrified fences, concrete walls, and a naval blockade that prevented fishermen from trawling waters more than 3 kilometers from shore. Weaponized drones hovered overhead night and day, humming an incessant single note dirge that served as a constant reminder of Israeli control. Heeding Israeli government pledges to push Gazas economy to the brink of collapse, army bureaucrats in Tel Aviv developed complex mathematical formulas to regulate the caloric intake of each person trapped inside the coastal strip. Gazans were forbidden from exporting products and prevented from importing cardamom, potato chips, seeds and nuts, cement, fruit preserves, ginger, fishing nets, notebooks, musical instruments, size A4 paper, and toys.