Israel has waged a long war against Palestinian history. Today, archives are sealed up, Palestinians are penalised in the law courts, the past is rewritten for the classroom, and reality is erased from the maps produced by digital behemoths like Google and Apple.
Washington and Israel are trying to intimidate the Hague 'war crimes' court so it drops its plans for investigations. But it is critically important to probe the US as the most powerful offender, and Israel as the most persistent.
Israel has ignored warnings by the United Nations that Gaza is about to become uninhabitable, acting as if Palestinians there can be caged, starved and abused indefinitely. Now crises are unfolding on all fronts – social, economic, political and humanitarian – and Israel is running out of time to find solutions
In the early 2000s, at the dawn of the social media revolution, Israelis used to dismiss filmed evidence of brutality by their soldiers as fakery. It was what they called “Pallywood” – a conflation of Palestinian and Hollywood. In truth, however, it was the Israeli military, not the Palestinians, that needed to manufacture a more convenient version of reality.
A display of Israeli-style community policing before an audience of hundreds of young schoolchildren was captured on video. It shows four officers staging a mock anti-terror operation. As the “terrorist” lies badly wounded, the officers empty their magazines into him from close range. In Israel it is known as “confirming the kill”. Everywhere else it is called murder.
Israel received three F-35 stealth fighter jets from the United States at the weekend - a new generation of "near-invisible" planes that critics fear will free Israel's hand to launch air strikes and spying operations against neighbouring states undetected. In total, Israel has bought 50 F-35s from Lockheed Martin, and claims it will have the first squadron combat-ready before the end of the year.
Israel has given itself almost complete immunity from paying compensation in cases where its soldiers have killed, injured or disabled Palestinian civilians, Israeli human rights group B'Tselem warned in a new report this week. It said changes to Israeli law over the past 15 years meant Israel now denied many thousands of Palestinians redress in its civil courts, even for harm caused in non-combat situations.
The Israeli leadership shows no signs of heeding the lessons of an official report into the 2014 Gaza war that led to massive destruction and loss of life in the tiny coastal enclave, Palestinians warned this week. In particular, Israel's State Comptroller faulted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for failing to address the mounting humanitarian crisis in Gaza – conditions that made hostilities ever more likely, according to the report.
Human rights groups and Palestinian leaders condemned what they called the “extremely lenient” punishment of Elor Azaria, the Israeli army medic who was filmed executing a severely wounded Palestinian in Hebron last year. On Tuesday, a military tribunal sentenced the soldier to 18 months in jail and a demotion. The sentence was much lower than the three to five years demanded by the prosecution.
The popular reaction in Israel to the military court’s decision to convict Elor Azaria was far more telling than the decision itself. Like Brexit and Trump, Azaria’s trial exposed not only a deep social fissure, but also a moment of transition. Those who see a virtuous system punishing a rotten apple are now outnumbered by those who see a rotten system victimising a hero.
