Anat Saragusti on the recent AIPAC Conference in Washington DC (the last few paragraphs of her article in Haaretz): AIPAC’s annual policy conference is the largest Jewish gathering in the United States. It’s not only a display of power and influence, it’s also the place to which Jews come from all corners of North America to be imbued with strength and support, to hear directly from leading opinion makers about Israel, to get information. But the 14,000 delegates who packed the giant convention were not permitted to hear about the real Israel. They were not allowed to hear any words of criticism, they did not hear the term “occupation,” they weren’t presented with differences of opinion, they weren’t given to understand that there’s a combative opposition, that the numbers of Israel’s poor and those suffering economic hardship are growing. The participants of the AIPAC conference did not hear about Israel. They heard about The Iranian Threat. The real Israel is coming up to its 50th year of rule over another people and the dispossession of that people’s rights in nearly every sphere. This is the longest occupation in modern history. This occupation deprives hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their basic human and civil rights every day. And those who view themselves as its supporters and its representatives to the strongest democracy on earth must not ignore this. Reality is forever complex. It means, among other things, a multitude of views about this reality, and that the voices of dissent must not be silenced, the debate must not be distilled to just one issue: The Iranian Threat. Israel is a vital society with much to be proud of, and it is a country wrestling with many serious issues. People who love Israel should be learning about and engaging with this real-life country, and not with a two-dimensional placard.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 08:43:34 +0000