Sunday, December 1, 2013

Train To The East

It is not a concentration camp, it is a "state-sponsored township."
Al Araqib is one of the Bedouin communities known as an "unrecognised village", which receive no state services such as electricity, water or sanitation. As many as 200,000 Bedouin live in the Negev, an area comprising 60 percent of Israel's territory. Under a government proposal known as the Prawer-Begin Plan, $340m has been allocated for land and monetary compensation to move up to 40,000 of the Bedouin into state-sponsored townships.

[...]

In July, Navi Pillay, the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, expressed concern that the Prawer-Begin plan might threaten Bedouin culture. "If this bill becomes law, it will accelerate the demolition of entire Bedouin communities, forcing them to give up their homes, denying them their rights to land ownership, and decimating their traditional cultural and social life in the name of development," she said at the time.

Amos Gvirtz, one of the many Jewish Israelis supporting the Bedouin at Hura's demonstration, described the plans as "racist" and said the majority of Israelis did not understand the issues facing the Negev's Bedouins. "It's like a wall we have to break through," he said. "A lot of people don't even know about the Bedouins' issues. Removing people from their villages is removing their human rights and we are legalising the theft of their land."
O.K., now can they be compared to, you know ... Wait, news flash coming in ... sez right here that anything organized or hierarchical is by definition fascist & approved by Hitler. O.K., then. No point in anything but the rankest nihilism, is there? Start planting the bombs.

From War in Context.

2 comments:

Weird Dave said...

Something about not learning from history?

M. Bouffant said...

Two Wrongs Editor:
Or "becoming one's enemy."