JEWISH QUESTIONS

RAMZY BAROUD—While Trump’s (and Netanyahu’s) divisive language is nothing new, Afek and Ney were entrusted with the difficult task of using legal language to explain their countries’ aversion for international law. Prior to the Herzliya Conference, Afek addressed the Israel Bar Association convention in Eilat on May 26. Here, too, he made some ludicrous claims as he absolved, in advance, Israeli soldiers who kill Palestinians. “A soldier who is in a life-threatening situation and acts to defend himself (or) others (he) is responsible for, is receiving and will continue receiving full back-up from the Israeli army,” he said. The above assertion appears far more sinister once we remember Afek’s views on what constitutes a “life-threatening situation”, as he had articulated in Herzliya a few days later.

ERIC ZUESSE—I think that Atzmon is correct: Jews throughout the world (not only the ones in Palestine) get the blowback from the evilness of the “Jewish entity.” If that “entity” (the supremacist-Jewish nation that currently exists there) represents all Jews, then all Jews are evil, but it doesn’t, and so not only are the non-Jews there suffering from this, but so too do non-bigoted Jews, everywhere — if any such still exist. (If they do exist, then they need to organize to end “the Jewish entity.” But good luck to them then trying to find any Jewish billionaires who would help to fund such an organization.

ANDRE VLTCHEK—So, back to the Israeli life. Its Human Development Index (HDI) is the 22nd highest in the world, above that of France, South Korea and Italy. Not bad, is it? The question is again – for whom? The interesting thing was that whenever I tried to discuss Palestine, Golan Heights, Syria, Iran, I encountered no anger. Do the white, European Israelis really hate Palestinians, Arabs, Iranians? My conclusion is: no, they don’t! They don’t, because these people do not exist. You cannot hate what doesn’t exist, can you? The bombing of Syrians, shooting at Palestinians – it all has become like a video game. Nothing personal – something that ‘has to be done’ in order to preserve privileged status of European Jews. The same as building the settlements.

Most readers do not read further than the headline and maybe the first paragraph. Their impression will understandably be that “militants in Gaza” started the fight and that the Zionists “responded”. But that is far from the truth.One has to read down to the fifteenth paragraph to learn that those ‘facts’ are probably false:The Israeli military reported on Friday that two soldiers were lightly wounded in a shooting incident along its border with Gaza. In response, Israel struck sites belonging to the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, killing two fighters.Also on Friday, two Palestinian protesters were killed taking part in ongoing weekly demonstrations at the border fence with Israel, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.