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Israel's Shabbas Goy
From time to time, the Palestine
Center
distributes
articles it believes will enhance understanding
of the Palestinian
political
reality. The following article
by Christopher Hitchens was published by
Slate on 15 November 2010. To view
this article online, please go to http://www.slate.com/id/2274918/.
"Israel's Shabbas
Goy"
By Christopher
Hitchens
Those of us who keep an
eye on the parties of God are avid students of
the weekly Sabbath sermons of Rabbi Ovadia
Yosef. In these and other venues, usually
broadcast, this elderly Sephardic ayatollah
provides an action-packed diet that seldom
disappoints. A few months ago, he favored his
devout audience with a classic rant in which he
called down curses on the Palestinian Arabs and
their leaders, wishing that a plague would come
and sweep them all away. Last month, he
announced that the sole reason for the
existence of gentiles was to perform menial
services for Jews: After that, he opined, their
usefulness was at an end. A huge hubbub led to
his withdrawal of the first of these diatribes.
(I would be interested to know if this was on
partly theological grounds. After all, the
local Palestinians may still have some labor to
perform before the divine plan is through with
them.) The second sermon, so far as I know,
still stands without apology. Why on earth
should anybody care about the ravings of this
scrofulous medieval figure, who peppers his
talk of non-Jews in Palestine with comparisons
to snakes, monkeys, and other lesser creations,
rather as Hamas and Hezbollah refer to the
Jews? Well, one reason is that he is the
spiritual leader of the Shas Party, an
important member of Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu's coalition. Indeed, two key
portfolios, of the Interior and of Construction
and Housing, are held by Shas members named Eli
Yishai and Ariel Atias.
Yishai recently
delighted the Diaspora by saying that only
those Jews who converted via the Orthodox route
could carry "the Jewish gene." Atias has
expressed alarm about the tendency of Israeli
Arab citizens to try to live where they
please—or "spread," as he phrases it—and has
advocated a policy of segregation in housing
within Israel proper. He also advocates the
segregation by neighborhood of secular from
Orthodox Jews, adding that he does not wish his
own children to mix with their nonreligious
peers. It is Yishai's ministry that is famous
for making announcements about new "housing"
developments outside Israel itself and in
legally disputed territory. Very often,
Netanyahu himself has claimed to be taken by
surprise at these announcements, which usually
involve tense areas of Jerusalem. Thus the huge
embarrassment inflicted on Vice President Joe
Biden earlier this year, when fresh settlement
construction was proclaimed in the middle of
his high-level visit. And thus the undisguised
irritation of President Obama and Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton last week, when yet
another round of such housing was scheduled
while Obama was in Asia and Netanyahu was in
the United States. Apparently, the latest
high-level round of the peace process has
included the modest and tentative suggestion to
Israel that such disclosures be timed with
greater tact and coordination in the
future.
It's not only the doings of his
Interior and Housing ministries of which
Netanyahu has to remain resolutely uninformed.
His foreign minister is not a part of Israel's
most important external negotiation. This is
perhaps just as well, since the holder of the
post, Avigdor Lieberman, regards the whole
"process" as a waste of time. He said as much
at the United Nations last September. It was
patiently explained at that time that Netanyahu
had not been favored with advance notice of the
contents of the speech.
Lieberman has
another distinction that I believe is unique.
He does not live in the country whose foreign
ministry he heads. He chooses, rather, to make
his home in the West Bank settlement of Nokdim,
a tenaciously held outcrop with a population of
fewer than 1,000 people. The party which he
heads—Yisrael Beiteinu—is a nationalist rather
than religious faction, but in a competition
with Rabbi Yosef for vicious anti-Arab
rhetoric, it's not immediately clear which one
would emerge the winner.
Now we read
that, in return for just 90 days of Israeli
lenience on new settlement-building (this brief
pause or "freeze" not to include the crucial
precincts of East Jerusalem), Netanyahu is
being enticed with "a package of security
incentives and fighter jets worth $3 billion"
and a promise that the United States government
would veto any Palestinian counterproposal at
the United Nations. Netanyahu, while graciously
considering this offer, was initially reported
as being unsure whether he "could win approval
for the United States deal from his Cabinet."
In other words, we must wait on the pleasure of
Rabbi Yosef and Ministers Atias, Yishai, and
Lieberman, who have the unusual ability to
threaten Netanyahu from his right
wing.
This is a national humiliation.
Regardless of whether that bunch of clowns and
thugs and racists "approve" of the
Obama/Clinton grovel offer, there should be a
unanimous demand that it be
withdrawn.
The mathematics of the
situation must be evident even to the meanest
intelligence. In order for any talk of a
two-state outcome to be even slightly
realistic, there needs to be territory on which
the second state can be built, or on which the
other nation living in Palestine can govern
itself. The aim of the extreme Israeli
theocratic and chauvinist parties is plain and
undisguised: Annex enough land to make this
solution impossible, and either expel or
repress the unwanted people. The policy of
Netanyahu is likewise easy to read: Run out the
clock by demanding concessions for something he
has already agreed to in principle, appease the
ultras he has appointed to his own government,
and wait for a chance to blame Palestinian
reaction for the inevitable failure.
The
only mystery is this: Why does the United
States acquiesce so wretchedly in its own
disgrace at the hands of a virtual client
state? A soft version of Rabbi Yosef's
contemptuous view of the gentiles is the old
concept of the shabbas goy: the non-Jew who is
paid a trifling fee to turn out the lights or
turn on the stove, or whatever else is needful
to get around the more annoying regulations of
the Sabbath. How the old buzzard must cackle
when he sees the gentiles actually volunteering
a bribe to do the lowly work! And lowly it is,
involving the tearing-up of international law
and U.N. resolutions and election promises, and
the further dispossession and eviction of a
people to whom we gave our word. This craven
impotence will be noticed elsewhere, and by
some very undesirable persons, and we will most
certainly be made to regret it. For now,
though, the shame.
The
views
expressed in this article are those of the
author and do not
necessarily
reflect
those of The Jerusalem
Fund.
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