Toast Easily

In the past year, even before the events in Egypt and Tunisia, we connected the dots and decided what was needed in the division, down to the level of inventory of crowd-dispersal means and the preparation of infrastructure to prevent such events from taking place.

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An unnamed Israeli army officer in this Ha’aretz article. The whole thing is an exercise in not hearing what you are saying. When do they realize they are performing the functions of the various state security services of regional dictatorships? Albeit without the same level of sustained and systemic brutality other services are known for. Many Israelis, or other sympathetic parties, are fanatically concerned with preserving the legitimacy of Israel. I can’t even comprehend the level of bile that would spew out from them if widespread and decisive numbers of people went out and demonstrated. The article makes good points about the people being tired from the Second Intifadah and that they doubt that any large-scale demonstrations would be non-violent.

I would point out that those arguments were made about Egyptians. 

Other things to consider:

• Both sides benefit from the lessons learned during other regional protests.
• Shin Bet and the IDF have a close to unified command structure with a common interest.
• Currents in Israeli society that disagree with continuing the occupation not to mention a near-parity in population numbers between Arab-Israelis and Jewish-Israelis.
• Any monitoring of social networks by the Israeli military and security services can be countered to a degree by Palestinian activists. Many Israeli soldiers are kids with the same connection to the internet that Palestinian youths have.
• There has long been a non-violent resistance movement in the West Bank and they are knowledgeable in Israeli response to protests and marches.
• Western new outlets aren’t likely to be sympathetic towards any Palestinian action non-violent or otherwise but with al-Jazeera’s cornering of the market on Arab Intifadahs as of late, it might be able to break the critically- acclaimed ‘Hasbara Mindlock.’

Who knows what will happen? I hope for freedom sooner rather than later because I would like to return some day and not have to deal with the headaches and heartbreak I dealt with on my first trip.