\n<\/p>\n
Defying a chorus of global condemnation and international law, Israel nevertheless proceeded earlier this month with the de facto annexation of the West Bank, home to more than three million Palestinians and a territory it has illegally occupied since 1967.<\/p>\n
The international criticism that met the announcement was hardly new. Over the two years of its genocide in Gaza, Israel has set itself on course to become, in the words of some of its own lawmakers, a \u201cpariah state\u201d. Its prime minister and former defence minister are wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, while global revulsion over its actions in Gaza has pushed the boycott of Israeli goods to the forefront of consumers\u2019 minds.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Four countries \u2013 Spain, Slovenia, the Netherlands, and the Republic of Ireland \u2013 are refusing to take part in the popular song competition Eurovision in protest at Israel\u2019s presence. A global campaign is also under way to suspend Israel from both European UEFA and international FIFA football competitions, while South Africa\u2019s case accusing Israel of genocide in the International Court of Justice is ongoing.<\/p>\n But in Israel, this international isolation \u2013 and the killing of more than 72,000 Palestinians \u2013 is not significantly changing opinions on how the country should behave. In fact, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu still has a strong chance of winning elections set to be held this year, and much of the opposition towards him comes from his domestic policies, rather than disagreement over how he has treated Palestinians, which many remain indifferent to.<\/p>\n \u201cMost people don\u2019t even know we\u2019ve largely annexed the West Bank,\u201d said Orly Noy, the editor of the Hebrew-language news site Local Call. \u201cIt just isn\u2019t reported that way.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey may be aware that some of the rules of governance have changed, but they probably won\u2019t know that it\u2019s been de facto annexed until there\u2019s an international response that affects them, such as Eurovision,\u201d she said, noting that the withdrawal of the four nations in objection to Israel\u2019s genocide has been framed in Israel as being motivated primarily by anti-Semitism.<\/p>\n For many Israelis, Palestinians barely exist, observers have said, with the extreme settler violence perpetrated upon them going largely unreported or cast as somehow deserved.<\/p>\n \u201cThe media never really reports opposition to anything Israel does,\u201d Noy continued. \u201cIt simply dismisses it as anti-Semitic, and presents the world as being made up of those that are either for us, or against us.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy would they [Israelis] ever reflect on any of their government\u2019s actions?\u201d she asked rhetorically. \u201cThey have the answers already: anti-Semitism, victimhood and defiance.\u201d<\/p>\n Little of the carnage that Israel has inflicted on Gaza has made its way to Israeli television \u2013 overwhelmingly the most popular way of receiving news \u2013 over the course of the war. On the contrary, Israeli news channels covering the conflict have focused on the number of \u201cterrorists\u201d killed, or framed concern over the nature of the war entirely through the prism of the 250 or so captives taken by Hamas and other groups in 2023.<\/p>\n In print, criticism of the government or its war has largely been left to smaller outlets on the left.<\/p>\n In such a landscape, where Israel\u2019s actions go largely unreported, criticism of its government\u2019s conduct is easily cast by lawmakers as anti-Semitic in origin, with just the accusation serving as a second \u201cIron Dome\u201d \u2013 a reference to Israel\u2019s anti-missile defence system \u2013 in deflecting criticism of the state, said Neve Gordon, an Israeli professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London.<\/p>\n \u201cIsrael always has to be the victim, and that victimhood justifies any level of violence in its defence,\u201d Gordon said.<\/p>\n \u201cI visited Israel around 10 times during the first year and a half of the war,\u201d\u00a0 he said, describing the period of war when Israel had killed tens of thousands of men, women and children in Gaza and starved thousands more.<\/p>\n \u201cAll you heard about was the hostages. You never heard about what was happening in Gaza,\u201d he said, \u201cIt\u2019s a repetition of trauma that erases everything else, including compassion.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Netanyahu \u2013 speaking at a conference in January \u2013 the anti-Semitism that Israel faces runs deeper than mere racism.<\/p>\n Rather, the battle against anti-Semitism is the battle over the future of civilization, Netanyahu said.<\/p>\n \u201cRacism has existed throughout history. That\u2019s not what anti-Semitism is,\u201d he told attendees. \u201cAnti-Semitism began as a creed 2,500 years ago, 500 years before the birth of Christianity, with an ideological attack against the Jews that kept on metamorphosing over centuries.\u201d<\/p>\n Decades of similar statements from a variety of politicians have left their mark, said Daniel Bar-Tal, professor of social-political psychology at Tel Aviv University, noting that an entire nation is now \u201cindoctrinated\u201d into a world view that positions its own history as the overwhelming counterweight to whatever actions it chooses to undertake or criticism of it.<\/p>\n \u201cMany Israeli Jews have a kind of siege mentality,\u201d Bar-Tal said, describing how criticism of Israel was met by a form of \u201cmoral silencing\u201d weaponised and propagated by the government. \u201cThey imagine that the rest of the world just wants Israel to disappear.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey think, you Europeans didn\u2019t say anything about us during World War II,\u201d he added. \u201cYou did nothing to stop the Holocaust, and now you want to attack the one place where Jews feel safe?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Defying a chorus of global condemnation and international law, Israel nevertheless proceeded earlier this month with the de facto annexation of the West Bank, home to more than three million Palestinians and a territory it has illegally occupied since 1967. The international criticism that met the announcement was hardly new. Over the two years of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
Disinterest<\/h2>\n
Siege mentality<\/h2>\n
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