30 Aug, 2014
Israel’s Controversial Palestinian Policy Polarizes American Jewish Community | Alternet
The rising tensions between the supporters of Israel’s use of military force and the dissenters has led to an unprecedented polarization in the American Jewish community as Operation Protective Edge continues without a permanent cease fire, much less visible prospects for the moribund peace process.
While #IfNotNow’s actions and protests thus far have been tiny—numbering in the hundreds—they are reflective of a burgeoning discontent with institutional Jewish reaction to the current Gaza conflict. That institutional reaction, these dissenters charge, not only unquestioningly supports the official Israeli narrative that Hamas left Israel no choice but to attack—and no choice but to target locations packed with civilians—but fails to acknowledge and address the ongoing violence and repression inherent in the occupation.
That institutional reaction, additionally, fails to reckon with countervailing evidence to the official Israeli narrative of the immediate causes of the current escalation. That includes evidence that the Israeli government knew the three Israeli students kidnapped in the West Bank in June had been murdered, but still ginned up emotions, in Israel and the diaspora, for a search the government knew was futile to find them alive. The Jewish Daily Forward’s J.J. Goldberg has meticulously documented the series of events leading up to an “unnecessary war” that “nobody wanted.” The government claim to be searching for the three kidnapped students, was, Goldberg wrote, “simply put, a lie.”
Read the rest: Israel’s Controversial Palestinian Policy Polarizes American Jewish Community | Alternet.
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