According to Ronen Bergman in the
New York Times many of the military leaders of the State of Israel "detest" Prime Minister Netanyahu.
But
above all, the clash between the political and defense establishments
can be summed up in two words: Benjamin Netanyahu. Many of the military
and intelligence officers who have served under him simply detest him.
“I told Netanyahu that a chasm of non-confidence had opened up between
him and them,” Uzi Arad, a former national security adviser, told me.
“He is the worst manager that I know,” said Meir Dagan, the former
director of the Mossad. “I quit the job because I was simply sick of
him.”
In
2010, Mr. Netanyahu got into a serious fight over Iran with Mr. Dagan
and his two colleagues, Yuval Diskin, the former director of the Shin
Bet, Israel’s internal security service, and Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi,
the former I.D.F. chief of staff. The military and intelligence leaders
believed that the prime minister’s plan to attack Iran’s nuclear
installations was politically motivated by electoral considerations and
would embroil Israel in a superfluous war. Moreover, they thought he was
going about it illegally, bypassing the cabinet. (Ronen Bergman, Israel’s Army Goes to War With Its Politicians, New York Times, May 21, 2016.)
Palestinians remember what Jaffa was like before the mass expulsion of Palestinians in 1947-9.
In Jaffa the Dajani family name harkens a time of
past prestige, of a distinctly Palestinian-Arab sort. Before their
diaspora the clan made their fortune in agriculture and were prominent
landowners. Jaffa’s first modern hospital took the Dajani name after an
endowment. Dajani said his father was treated there for an ear infection
with penicillin shortly after the first round of mass production of the
antibiotic, a sign of Jaffa’s affluence and modernity.
Dajani tracked down that hospital.
“I found the fountains in the garden,” he said of
the old medical facility. The fountains were just where his father told
him to look. When he laid his eyes on them, it was like seeing through
time: “I got something back.”
“It showed we were a really strong, well established society in Palestine and we must live in the future together,” he said. (Allison Degar, The sacking of Jaffa during the Palestinian Nakba, as narrated by three Omars,
Mondoweiss,
May 15, 2016.)
In Israel it is the case that Palestinian citizens of Israel are exempted from serving in the army.
Palestinian Israelis do pay taxes, but they are exempted from serving in the Israeli army,
though they constitute roughly one-fifth of the country’s population.
That’s because they are not considered sufficiently loyal to the
country, for obvious reasons: Israel is constituted as a “Jewish state,”
and many of its enemies are Palestinians, people who were forced off
their lands to permit the state’s establishment, or who now live under
occupation with no rights, right alongside Jewish colonists who have
full rights, and have to serve in the army. So the Israeli army is
overwhelmingly Jewish (though many Druze serve). ...
Americans ought to be asking, Why would you want to have a society that
one-fifth of the population wouldn’t want to defend? Because the
definition of citizenship overlaps with a tribal definition that is
highly exclusive, and not at all equal, is why. (Phillip Weiss, ‘Everyone’s a veteran’ in Israel, says Junger. Well, not really, Mondoweiss, June 3, 2016.)
Militarization in youth movements in Israel. (Israel Social TV,
June 9, 2016.)
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