Gideon Levy on the dehumanization of Palestinians by Israelis

By the end of the day, how many Israelis did ever try, for a moment, to put themselves in the place of the Palestinians, for a moment, for one day?  And I want to give you two examples which will demonstrate it.

Many years ago, I interviewed then candidate for Prime Minister, Ehud Barak.  And I asked him a question which I try to ask in any occasion: "Mr. Barak, what would have happened if you would have been born Palestinian?"  And Barak gave me the only honest answer he could give me.  He said "I would have joined the terror organization."  What else would he have done?  Would he become a poet?  He doesn't know to write poems.  Would he become a pianist?  He's quite a bad pianist and I doubt he would have become a collaborator because he is a fighter.  And it became a scandal because how can you dare to put Ehud Barak to think what would have happened if he would have become a Palestinian.

And the second incident briefly: second intifada, the city of Jenin, the most closed city in the West Bank, real, total seige.  I go out from Jenin, I come to the checkpoint, Palestinian ambulances parking there with the red lights.  I stand after him.  No cars can get out of Jenin in those days, no cars can get out, and I wait.  The soldiers are playing backgammon in the tent.  Usually, I know, I know myself, it's better that I don't get into confrontation with the soldiers because it always ends up very badly.  So I stayed in the car.

But after 40 minutes, I couldn't take it.  And I went out from the car, I went first to the Palestinian ambulance driver and I asked him, "What's going on?"  He told me, "That's the routine.  They let me wait one hour until they come and check the ambulance."  And I couldn't take it anymore and I went to the soldiers.  It became a confrontation.  But the question that I asked them which really brought them to direct their weapons toward me was one: "What would have happened if your father would have been lying in this ambulance?"  This freaked them out.  They lost control.  How can I dare to compare between their father and the Palestinian in the ambulance?  And this set of beliefs, that they are not human beings like us, enable us - Israelis - to live in so much peace with those crimes, ongoing crimes, for so many years, with losing any kind of humanity, values.

I heard today, people talk about Jewish values.  I must be frank with you, I don't know what are Jewish values.  I know what are universal values.

~ Gideon Levy, "How Israelis Live So Easily With Occupation," Saad Tasleem, 3:35 mark, November 7, 2023

Assaf Harel on the importance of human rights organizations in Israel

The human rights organizations are the most legitimate and healthy thing today in Israeli society.  They are trying to wake a dormant society, a blocked society...  And the reason [prime ministers Naftali] Bennett and Bibi [Netanyahu] are spending so much time saying they're illegitimate is because they're saying the truth about the occupation and of what's happening.  And Bibi and Bennett know that on the day Israeli citizens wake up and discover what's happening beyong the Green Line, what it does to our solidiers, to the children who are raised there, to the elderly, to the families, to the millions of innocent people, what it does to our budget, our society, our economy?  On that day, the people will ask themselves if the occupied territories are really worth it.

[...]

If for once we could wake up before the war.  Because before now we only wake up after.  We had to have the Yom Kippur War to have peace with Egypt.  We had to have the intifada to have the Oslo Accords.  If only for once we could be smart enough to reach a peace agreement before the war.  Worse case, after it or another one after that, but in the end we'll wake up.

~ Assaf Harel, "Israeli comedian slams Israel for apartheid," Middle East Eye, 3:45 mark, March 2, 2017

Omar Baddar on Israeli human right abuses towards Palestinians

There's all these announcements about they're [Israeli Defense Forces] going to do everything they can to avoid civilian casualties.  It is really worth emphasizing here that Israel has bombed Gaza many, many times before and Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International and even Israeli human rights organizations like B'Tselem say that this is not at all what Israel's conduct is.  There isn't an effort to minimize civilian casualties.  There is mass indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas and frankly, we're watching that unfold right now as well.  The policy is essentially to punish the entire Palestinian population, cutting off electricity to all of Gaza, preventing anyone in Gaza from coming in and out.  This is an act of collective punishment and this is exactly the trajectory that we unfortunately are on.  I think we are going to see much greater death that's going to cover the entire Gaza strip and at the end of it, Palestinians are going to remain a population that is captive and under an illegal seige, as recognized by the U.N.  And we're only setting ourselves up towards another round of this in the future.  

What we need right now is the world community to come together and start dealing with this issue seriously, understanding that this policy of giving Israel carte blanche to behave however it wants towards Palestinians is not a way to actually achieve long-lasting peace.  You can't keep doing the same thing over and over againd and expecting a different result.  The one thing that has not been tried so far is allowing Palestinians to be free of Israeli occupation and military dictatorship.  Until we start taking Palestinian grievances seriously, until Israel starts seeing Palestinians as equal human beings who are deserving of the same human rights and decency and dignity that Israelis enjoy, I'm afraid we're going to be stuck in this situation for a very, very long time.

~ Omar Baddar, Palestinian-American Middle East analyst, CNN interview, 3:25 mark, October 9, 2023

Jen Psaki on imposing trade sanctions against Xinjiang, China

We believe the private sector and the international community should oppose PR- — the PRC’s weaponizing of its markets to stifle support for human rights. 

We also think that American companies should never feel the need to apologize for standing up for fundamental human rights or opposing repression. 

As we’ve said before, we call on all industries to ensure that they are not sourcing products that involve forced labor, invol- — including forced labor from Xinjiang.

~ Jen Psaki, Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jen Psaki, December 23, 2021

(President Biden signed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act earlier that day.)