LEVY, Gideon

(Haaretz columnist)

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When I first started covering the West Bank for Haaretz, I was young and brainwashed, I would see settlers cutting down olive trees and soldiers mistreating Palestinian women at the checkpoints, and I would think, ‘These are exceptions, not part of government policy.’ It took me a long time to see that these were not exceptions – they were the substance of government policy.

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Israel is not being asked to 'give' anything to the Palestinians; it is only being asked to return—to return their stolen land and restore their trampled self-respect, along with their fundamental human rights and humanity….The Gaza War was a failed campaign and its objectives were not achieved. The conclusion is that Israel is a violent and dangerous country, devoid of all restraints and blatantly ignoring the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, while not giving a hoot about international law.

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Zionism is a totalitarian ideology that brooks no dissent. Everyone kept saying, Israeli soldiers could change things by talking about the occupation, but when Breaking the Silence came forward it was crushed. Anyone who raises a question is immediately erased, demolished.

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The first value: we are the chosen people. Secular and religious will claim it. Even if they don’t admit it they feel it. If we are the chosen people, who are you to tell us what to do.

The second very deeply rooted value: we are the victims, not only the biggest victims, but the only victims around…. I don’t recall one occupation in which the occupier present himself as the victim. Not only the victim– the only victim….

There is a third very deep rooted value. This is the very deep belief again everyone will deny it but if you scratch under the skin of almost any Israeli you will find it there, the Palestinians are not equal human beings like us. They don’t love their children like us. They don’t love life like us. They were born to kill, they are cruel, they are sadists, they have no values, no manners… This is very, very deep rooted in Israeli society.

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