Empire Notes--Azmi Bishara and Israeli Ethnocracy

Tweet "Unfortunately, the chances of such a [PEACE] process beginning in the case of Israel were almost negligible; as I pointed out at the time, the problem was not so much the lack of a Palestinian Mandela as the lack of an Israeli de Klerk, not to mention the growth of an increasingly corrosive nationalism and racism among the Israeli public.Since that time, that ugly turn has just intensified. It’s distressing to note that the preliminary Winograd commission report on the war made a point of laying some of the blame on Ehud Barak’s withdrawal from Lebanon. The crowd of more than 100,000 that gathered after the report drew at least as much from the right wing as from the left; it called for Olmert’s dismissal without calling for a change in Israel’s militaristic stance. And for the right, Olmert’s real crimes are losing the war by not bombing hard enough and, even more important, the Gaza withdrawal.

"Another illuminating sign of this growing trend is the persecution of Azmi Bishara, leader of a growing civil rights movement among Israeli Palestinians and until recently an Arab member of the Knesset.Bishara has been charged with treason for supposedly passing information to Hizbullah during the war and receiving money for it. I am not privy to the details of Shin Bet’s charges, but the claim seems silly. Unlike Arafat, he is no believer in the kindness of strangers with big guns and big moneybags (whether Syria or the United States), preferring instead to base his work on democratic politics and universal human rights principles.

"And, as Bishara himself pointed out in a piece in the LA Times, what information exactly would an Arab MK have about the Israeli military that could compare with Hizbullah’s?

"My favorite charge is that Bishara warned Hizbullah that during the war the Israelis would try to kill Hizbullah leader Hasan Nasrallah. One wonders if he also passed on crucial information regarding the possibility of the sun rising in the east.