Image courtesy: Malta Today

We recently learned of your hosting a performance event, “End of the Wall”, presented by the Consulate General of Israel, Bengaluru on the 12th of September. We wish to bring to your attention to some urgent concerns raised by this. 

Israel is a settler-colonial and apartheid state. Palestinian people in the West Bank live under its brutal occupation, and the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza have been living under an over a decade-long siege and blockade, witnessing repeated massacres in the period. Israel works diligently to cover up these massacres and war crimes because it’s bad for its “image”, and through its agencies whitewashes its crimes to present itself as a liberal, cultural space. This “Brand Israel” project has seen numerous manifestations across the world and in India, especially under the regime of Netanyahu’s new-found ally Mr Modi. 

This event, being hosted at your premises, is part of this “cover-up” project which has been opposed and called out by artists and institutions across the world. Just a couple of weeks prior to this event, the Consulate General of Israel in Mumbai organised a discussion on Hindutva and Zionism, laying bare the real motivation behind the growing ties between India and Israel. It should be concerning, that its parallel agency in Bengaluru is organizing a dance performance, after having hosted a discussion promoting racist ideologies. 

Particularly outrageous is the advertised “message” of this event. Talking about “walls” and “physical boundaries” in an event organised by an agency of the state of Israel, while an actual, physical, 8 metres high and thousands of kilometres long concrete wall, constructed by Israel, segregates occupied West Bank, breaking up homes, schools, villages, cities, and families takes a rare kind of hypocrisy. The International Court of Justice, in its 2004 Advisory Opinion, declared this wall to be illegal, asking for its dismantling and for reparations to Palestinians. Israel continues to build this wall so that it can turn occupied West Bank into South African style bantustans. It is this perfection of the tools of repression that India has been borrowing from Israel, imposing a siege and communication black out in Kashmir for over a month.

We, members of the undersigned fora, support the call by Palestinian artists, academics and overwhelming majority of Palestinian civil society to boycott artistic tie-ups with the state of Israel and its agencies and lobby groups. In doing so, we are also respecting the work of art itself, which must not be allowed to be cynically used by Israel for whitewashing its decades long violations of international law and Palestinian human rights. We urge you to reconsider your decision to host this event.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum
 

The post Open Letter to Bangalore International Centre: Don’t Host Apartheid appeared first on SabrangIndia.

India claims that it is not racist, that it has no prejudice against any skin colour, that it does not treat Africans any differently than it would any other foreigner. But the conditions in which Africans are kept in deportation camps directly contradict these claims.

Every now and then, reports emerge of the inhumane conditions in which foreigners are kept inside these camps, of the filth they are fed as food, and of the absence of medical care. The Nigerians inside the camp are distraught and helpless, and at a complete loss as to why they have been imprisoned in the camp for such a long time. “If my Visa has expired, send me back. Why have I been kept here for more than a year?”

Two weeks ago, Indian Express published a report on a hunger strike carried out by the 50 inmates living inside the detention facility, protesting the awful state in which they were being kept. Following up on that story, NewsClick decided to visit the camp to find out more about the living conditions. The camp is not easy to reach. It is located right at the edge of the city, on the Haryana border, in a village called Lampur which is beyond Narela. It is 21km from the nearest metro station. Google maps does not have a location for the camp.

The inmates of the camp wrote a letter addressed to the President, the Prime Minister, the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Home Affairs. In the letter, they described the conditions in which they are kept. They wrote that the FRRO (Foreigners Regional Registration Office) and the Bureau of Immigration is extorting money for deportation. The travel charges of deportation are supposed to be borne by the government, but here, the administration is demanding the inmates pay money ranging from Rs 70,000 to Rs 1,20,000 if they want to be deported.

In the letter, they have alleged that the General Director of FRRO, and the inspector in charge of deportation, Mr Anand Kumar, have transformed the deportation camp into an avenue for making money.

The visitation rules for the camp are generally not too strict. You can give the name of whoever you want to meet, and you’ll be permitted to enter. Post the hunger strike, however, things have changed. On inquiring about the sudden change in rules, an official replied, “It used to be lenient. Par fir inn logo ne hungama kar diya. Uske baad se strict kar diya hai. (It used to be lenient. But then these guys created a ruckus. Things have been made stricter since then.)” So not only did the demands of the hunger strike go unheard, the detainees of the camp are being punished further, for daring to protest for a more just and humane treatment. These orders, according to the official, were issued by the FRRO in RK Puram. And if one is to visit the camp, one has to get a permit from the FRRO.

After pleading and requesting for some time, the officials of the camp granted us permission to speak to whoever we wish to visit for five minutes from outside the gate. We were thus able to speak with three Nigerians whose names we had obtained from other sources. Two of those Nigerians had been living inside the camp for over a year now. They had a lot of complaints: “The food is garbage. The toilets are filthy. We’re given expired medicine.” Medical assistance, if any, can only be received after having to beg. And even then, the doctor just comes till the gate and hands them expired or nearly expired medicine. “We refuse to take such medicines. We are not animals. We are not dogs. We are humans.”

The state of the deportation camps throughout the country is quite poor, and has been reported in the past. But no action has been taken to bring about any improvement. The Nigerian embassy has sent multiple letters to the Ministry of External Affairs requesting improvement in the camp facilities, but they haven’t gotten any response. Sushma Swaraj, who has often been hailed as a foreign minister who is fast and efficient in sending help to those in need, doesn’t seem to be very helpful when it comes to Africans stuck in India. Can the country still claim it is not racist?

Courtesy: Newsclick

The post Apartheid and Racism Still Rampant in the Indian System appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Ibrahim Mosque. Photo courtesy: Wikimedia)

The post Israel slams UNESCO World Heritage decision on Hebron as Palestinians celebrate 12-3 vote in favor appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The joint statement released after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel has a resonant declaration in its very first paragraph: “The historic first ever visit by an Indian Prime Minister to Israel solidified the enduring friendship between their peoples and raised the bilateral relationship to that of a strategic partnership”.

Media reports suggest that early versions of the statement circulated by the two sides showed a certain discrepancy. The Israeli draft spoke of new dimensions in the relationship but did not specifically mention a “strategic partnership”, though India’s did. The matter reportedly was sorted out in a subsequent huddle, though not without a visible display of befuddlement from the Indian side.

Perhaps in the process, there had been some bargains struck over other aspects of the statement. A specific mention of terrorism in its “cross-border” manifestation was lacking, in favour of a broad and more general deprecation of the sources and sponsors of terror in all its variants. India may have yielded some ground there since it has a recognisable border, which enables it to externalise all problems. Israel is yet to define its borders, is in illegal occupation of other peoples’ land and sees terrorism as a moving target defined at its convenience. A large part of terror as Israel sees it, originates within territory that it seeks to control as part of its supposed destiny.

Events as they unfolded that day, suggest that the term “strategic partnership” was included at India’s instance. The story of what transpired may never be known, except in self-serving driblets of information leaked out by the policy establishment.

Media commentary prior to Modi’s visit, suggested a certain anxiety on India’s part to make up for lost time. In the quarter century since the two countries established full diplomatic relations, partnerships had multiplied in military hardware and technology. There was also a degree of political convergence, especially in growing Indian indifference towards the Israeli occupation of Palestine and its daily catalogue of atrocities.

Israel nonetheless had a grievance that the pace of political convergence did not quite mesh with the material underpinnings of growing military cooperation. India’s transformation of a “bilateral relationship” into a “strategic partnership” is perhaps down payment on a future of deepening ties in military equipment and technology.

As a phrase, “strategic partnership” has tended to be much over-used in a world order that is rapidly fraying. It is often deployed in official statements to cover up a lack of substance, and by security analysts as a substitute for understanding. Though the sense of a strategic partnership can vary, one case to another, the term in general embraces a shared will and intent to shape the political environment across a wide arc, without the restraints imposed by national frontiers.

Modi’s remarks at the release of the joint statement suggest such an intent. “India and Israel live in complex geographies”, he said, “we are aware of the strategic threats to regional peace and stability”. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and he had “agreed to do much more together to protect our strategic interests and also cooperate to combat the growing radicalisation and terrorism, including in cyberspace”.

A first manifestation of the new strategic partnership is the exclusion of the Palestinian political leadership and civil society from all Modi’s public engagements. The joint statement also had no more than a cursory, single-line reference to the issue of Palestine, in the twentieth of twenty-two paragraphs.

This was a convenient evasion of brute reality. Aside from a fringe of civil society groups that actively campaign for an honourable peace deal, the entire Israeli political spectrum has nothing to offer the Palestinians, except apartheid in various degrees of severity.

India’s final abandonment of the cause of Palestine has come in stages, each one blending into the next as wishful thinking has yielded to sheer opportunism. If the shifts were to be judged by the assessments given in annual reports of India’s Ministry of Defence (MoD), the attitude has been to either wish the matter away, or hope for peace against all reasonable evidence.

In its annual report for 2013-14, MoD recorded that the “escalation of violence between Israel and Palestine is a matter of concern and further threatens the peace and security of the region”.

Thefollowing year, the MoD placed what was clearly a grossly unrealistic burden of hope on the so-called “Quartet” process led by the highly compromised and mistrusted former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. As the MoD annual report for 2014-15 put it: “The tensions between Israel and Palestine is (sic) also a matter of concern as it threatens regional peace and security. India supports a negotiated solution resulting in a sovereign, independent, viable and united State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, living within secure and recognised borders, side by side at peace with Israel as endorsed in the Quartet Roadmap and relevant UNSC Resolutions”.

This theme was reprised in the MoD annual report for 2015-16, with the significant omission of any mention of East Jerusalem as the capital of the prospective Palestinian state. The following year, the MoD chose to avoid all mention of peace in Palestine.

India’s growing ardour for Israeli military hardware and its repudiation, by stealth, of the Palestinian cause has been attended by growing political paranoia over internal security: “Popular discourse increasingly portrays India, a country of 1.2 billion, as sharing Israel’s predicament – a nation under siege, surrounded by hostile Muslim neighbours, plagued by Islamic terrorism, and threatened by a Muslim enemy within. In other words, India is importing not just weapons from Israel, but a political mindset as well”.

Does strategic partnership also mean the adoption of Israeli military tactics in dealing with the discontents of the Indian nation-state? The catalogue of crimes by the Israeli state since it torpedoed the peace process by offering the Palestinian side a demeaning and deeply dishonourable deal at Camp David in 2000, needs no recapitulation. It is also essential to record that aside from these crimes against an occupied people, Israel has carried out a campaign of military terrorism in the neighbourhood.

Clandestine interventions in various Arab states and Iran have been widely suspected but remain to be documented. There is no such ambiguity about the 2005 assault on Lebanon, which involved indiscriminate bombing, the targeting of civilian infrastructure, proscribed weaponry such as white phosphorous, and the premeditated murder of refugees at a UN shelter in Qana.

The emergence of a new entity in the region is now cause for a realignment of forces. The Islamic State or IS, has no clear parentage, except in the chaos that followed the US invasion of Iraq. Despite that uncertain provenance, the IS has become the pivot around which a massive realignment of forces is happening in the region and elsewhere.

Reflecting on how the US in Iraq had transformed relative stability into nightmarish confusion, two respected American political scientists, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, argued in a solidly researched paper in 2006, that the “Israeli government and pro-Israel groups in the United States .. worked together to shape the (US) administration’s policy towards Iraq, Syria and Iran, as well as its grand scheme for reordering the Middle East”. Though not the only factor, “pressure from Israel” and its lobby within the US was “critical” in shaping the decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

Israel has continued playing a role in the ensuing chaos, seeking the isolation of Iran and the dismemberment of Syria through endless internal strife. Ample evidence is available in this respect in Netanyahu’s own public utterances and the papers and statements issued by Israeli strategic analysts in recent times.

Clearly, Israel has the luxury of complete impunity in deploying a range of options within its very broadly defined strategic frontiers. Even with all ethical questions taken out of the equation in favour of sheer pragmatism, a strategic partnership with Israel may be for India, a burden too heavy to carry.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author's personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sabrangindia.

Courtesy: Newsclick
 

The post A Strategic Partnership and its burdens appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image Credit: Carlos Latuff/Mondoweiss

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared his support this month for the so-called “muezzin bill”, claiming it was urgently needed to stop the dawn call to prayer from mosques ruining the Israeli public’s sleep. A vote in the parliament is due this week. The use of loudspeakers by muezzins was unnecessarily disruptive, Mr Netanyahu argued, in an age of alarm clocks and phone apps.

But the one in five of Israel’s population who are Palestinian, most of them Muslim, and a further 300,000 living under occupation in East Jerusalem, say the legislation is grossly discriminatory. The bill’s environmental rationale is bogus, they note. Moti Yogev, a settler leader who drafted the bill, originally wanted the loudspeaker ban to curb the broadcasting of sermons supposedly full of “incitement” against Israel.

And last week, after the Jewish ultra-Orthodox lobby began to fear the bill might also apply to sirens welcoming in the Sabbath, the government hurriedly introduced an exemption for synagogues.

The “muezzin bill” does not arrive in a politically neutral context. The extremist wing of the settler movement championing it has been vandalizing and torching mosques in Israel and the occupied territories for years.

The new bill follows hot on the heels of a government-sponsored expulsion law that allows Jewish legislators to oust from the parliament the Palestinian minority’s representatives if they voice unpopular views.

Palestinian leaders in Israel are rarely invited on TV, unless it is to defend themselves against accusations of treasonous behavior.

And this month a branch of a major restaurant chain in the northern city of Haifa, where many Palestinian citizens live, banned staff from speaking Arabic to avoid Jewish customers’ suspicions that they were being covertly derided.

Incrementally, Israel’s Palestinian minority has found itself squeezed out of the public sphere. The “muezzin bill” is just the latest step in making them inaudible as well as invisible.

Notably, Basel Ghattas, a Palestinian Christian legislator from the Galilee, denounced the bill too. Churches in Nazareth, Jerusalem, and Haifa, he vowed, would broadcast the muezzin’s call to prayer if mosques were muzzled.

For Ghattas and others, the bill is as much an assault on the community’s beleaguered Palestinian identity as it is on its Muslim character. Netanyahu, on the other hand, has dismissed criticism by comparing the proposed restrictions to measures adopted in countries like France and Switzerland. What is good for Europe, he argues, is good for Israel.

Except Israel, it hardly needs pointing out, is not in Europe. And its Palestinians are the native population, not immigrants.

Haneen Zoabi, another lawmaker, observed that the legislation was not about “the noise in [Israeli Jews’] ears but the noise in their minds”

Haneen Zoabi, another lawmaker, observed that the legislation was not about “the noise in [Israeli Jews’] ears but the noise in their minds”. Their colonial fears, she said, were evoked by the Palestinians’ continuing vibrant presence in Israel – a presence that was supposed to have been extinguished in 1948 with the Nakba, the creation of a Jewish state on the ruins of the Palestinians’ homeland.

That point was illustrated inadvertently over the weekend by dozens of fires that ravaged pine forests and neighboring homes across Israel, fuelled by high winds and months of drought.
Some posting on social media relished the fires as God’s punishment for the “muezzin bill”.

With almost as little evidence, Netanyahu accused Palestinians of setting “terrorist” fires to burn down the Israeli state. The Israeli prime minister needs to distract attention from his failure to heed warnings six years ago, when similar blazes struck, that Israel’s densely packed forests pose a fire hazard.

If it turns out that some of the fires were set on purpose, Netanyahu will have no interest in explaining why.

Many of the forests were planted decades ago by Israel to conceal the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages, after 80 percent of the Palestinian population – some 750,000 – were expelled outside Israel’s new borders in 1948. Today they live in refugee camps, including in the West Bank and Gaza.

According to Israeli scholars, the country’s European founders turned the pine tree into a “weapon of war”, using it to erase any trace of the Palestinians. The Israeli historian Ilan Pappe calls this policy “memoricide”.

Olive trees and other native species like carob, pomegranate and citrus were also uprooted in favor of the pine. Importing the landscape of Europe was a way to ensure Jewish immigrants would not feel homesick.

Today, for many Israeli Jews, only the muezzin threatens this contrived idyll. His intermittent call to prayer emanates from the dozens of Palestinian communities that survived 1948’s mass expulsions and were not replaced with pine trees.

Like an unwelcome ghost, the sound now haunts neighboring Jewish towns.

The “muezzin bill” aims to eradicate the aural remnants of Palestine as completely as Israel’s forests obliterated its visible parts – and reassure Israelis that they live in Europe rather than the Middle East.

The “muezzin bill” aims to eradicate the aural remnants of Palestine as completely as Israel’s forests obliterated its visible parts – and reassure Israelis that they live in Europe rather than the Middle East.

The post Israel’s “Muezzin Bill” to Silence Azaan; Synagogue Sirens Exempt appeared first on SabrangIndia.

'Not in our name': members of Jewdas at a Free Palestine demo, 2014. Credit: Ray Filar.

The Israeli government deliberately invokes terrorist attacks, rockets, and scary brown men in headscarfs to stoke the population's fear, but I am scared of the racism Zionists use to justify the occupation. Originally published August 2014.

“I was in prison for eleven years,” says Munib, angrily. He explains how his Israeli jailers would make him stand in water: “Up to my neck, for three days”. He gesticulates, showing how he was also electrocuted on the leg, as we drive the narrow road to Bil'in, a tiny Palestinian village south of Jerusalem, next to the separation wall.

I am in the West Bank to understand why everything I have been taught is wrong. Munib is there because – though constantly under attack – Palestine is his home. The facts are casual to him, but they are told with fury.

Later I speak with Ertefaa, a self-deprecating Palestinian woman who works at the refugee centre in Aida camp near Bethlehem, where 5000 Palestinian refugees live in cramped confines: “My husband was in jail twice, six months. My brothers were imprisoned. The brothers of my husband, two brothers, were killed – four months in between both of them. My daughter's husband was also imprisoned.”

As a child I learned that “the Israel/Palestine conflict” is highly complex, with a long history of wrongs on both sides. Growing up as a member of an orthodox synagogue, pro-Israel politics were the norm, and certain kinds of questions frowned upon. Zionists – those who believe Israel should be a Jewish homeland – say it is us vs. them: the victimised Jews against the murderous Arabs. To condemn Israeli human rights abuses is to ignore the Jewish history of persecution that makes the modern Israeli mentality intelligible.

Those who support Israel are buying into the idea that Palestinian lives are worth less than those of Jews. A cursory glance at prisoner exchange numbers is demonstrative: in 2011 IDF soldier Gilad Shalit was exchanged for 1027 Palestinians. 

But the reality is much more simple. Today the so-called “Jewish, democratic state” is synonymous with daily brutality, land occupation, militarism, settlements, and dispossession. Though varying forms of Zionist thought exist – each imbues the worthwhile aim of protecting the Jewish people with nationalist imperative. For us to be safe, the thinking goes, we must have our own country. To keep the country safe, we must use force to keep out threats. Because the people living there don't like us pushing them out, they are by definition threatening, and in need of suppression.
 

Despite all this, at Sunday morning Hebrew school, Diaspora Jews like me learn to celebrate the 1948 Declaration of Independence, with nothing said about what this meant for the 700,000 Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed or displaced from their homes. I was taught that any criticism of Israel, or of Zionism, means that you want to see Israel destroyed and the Jewish people evicted.

At 19, at the time of a university occupation against Operation Cast Lead, I found out for the first time that many people thought Zionism was wrong, that massacring the people living in Gaza could not be justified as self-defense. I was shocked, then angry, then upset. A combination of revisionist history and group mentality maintains a significant Zionist consensus among Diaspora Jews – we see Palestinians living in poverty, their families killed and their homes destroyed, and are told that this is because Hamas does not care for its own people…unlike Israel.

Operation Protective Edge, in which over 1900 Palestinians and nearly 70 Israelis have now been killed, is just the most recent, inevitable consequence of a brutal, militaristically-advanced settler-colonial occupation encroaching on the lives and lands of a subjugated people – using a 30-foot wall, settlements, missiles, tanks and the withholding of basic human necessities to perpetrate continued domination. This form of militarism is not specific to Israel – the Islamic State, the treatment of Native Americans in the USA, and South African apartheid bear comparison – but that doesn't make it any more defensible.

People arguing in favour of Israel often play on its relative democracy and tolerance, its status as a beacon of enlightenment in the savage east. But Israel today is obsessed with ethnic purity – its more totalitarian policies strategically enacted out of sight of Tel Aviv's bougie bars and beaches.

While in Israel this year I lost count of the number of times I was quizzed as to my religious heritage by random Israelis. The question,“Are you a Jew?” was asked of me more in a month than at any other time in my life. Refusing to answer caused some consternation – and where all interactions are guided by fears of the Palestinian majority, of the loss of “the Jewish democratic state”, I can see why. As a counterpoint I also experimented with purposefully telling Palestinians that I am Jewish, the primary reaction being surprise, then pleasure, and the short response: “welcome”.

In this way Israel is characterized by the twin paranoias of security and ethnicity. The government pretends that ever increasing policing of Palestinian identities is what will eventually lead to Jewish safety – but the continual violent suppression of another group will only cause violent resistance. 

The policing is enacted through daily indignities, including restrictions on freedom of movement. Military checkpoints like Qalandia – which guards the route between the West Bank and Jerusalem – exemplify the harsh reality of occupation. With its blackened concrete towers and enclaves of barbed wire, Qalandia is strategically designed to convey a message to Palestinians: you are criminals.

To cross the checkpoint you queue in steel bar enclosed cages barely wide enough for one person to stand, surrounded by rubbish and asinine “keep clean” signs. IDF guards bellow through loudspeakers from behind small, plastic windows: “Israel forever” is graffitied onto one window, next to a Star of David. Travelling to Jerusalem one day on a Palestinian coach, I was surprised when the majority of the people got off the coach and stood outside in a queue, leaving three other non-Palestinians and me.

As a white tourist I was allowed to stay on the coach, treated politely by teenage, machine-gun wielding IDF soldiers, while people in their own country were routinely lined up outside, treated as suspicious terrorist others.

These facts of Palestinian life don't gel with what pro-Israel Diaspora Jews believe about Israelis and Palestinians. Zionist Jews simply do not comprehend that the only people who are in real danger of being made refugees are the Palestinians, that while Israelis stress the abstract right to exist, Palestinians are being killed in their thousands. Like other neoliberal states, Israeli government strategy deliberately plays on the population's existential fear: invoking terrorist attacks, rockets, and frightening brown men in headscarfs. This enables the occupation to entrench itself across land it is not entitled to. 

All of this erases an important anti-Zionist Jewish tradition. While today a majority of observing Jews identify with the state of Israel, there is both a growing and visible minority of anti- and non-Zionist Jews, and a rich history of anti-Zionism within Judaism. Political movements like The Jewish Labour Bund and thinkers such as Abraham Serfaty, Emma Goldman and Leon Trotsky are often ignored or dismissed as “self-hating traitors”.In the UK today groups like Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Jewdas, Young Jewish Left and the International Jewish Anti-Zionist networkare active voices against the occupation. 

In practice Zionism is indistinguishable from the Israeli nationalism that sees the oppression of Palestinians like Ertefaa or Munib as necessary collateral for Jewish survival. Those who support Israel are buying into the idea that Palestinian lives are worth less than those of Jews. A cursory glance at prisoner exchange numbers is demonstrative: in 2011 IDF soldier Gilad Shalit was exchanged for 1027 Palestinians. 

This month, hundreds of thousands of people have demonstrated worldwide against the massacre in Gaza. Marching in London with the Jewish bloc has been a powerful experience. Under the banner “not in my name”, we show that Israel does not speak for all Jews.  

Some names have been changed.

This article was first posted on: Open Democracy

The post Why I am an anti-Zionist Jew appeared first on SabrangIndia.

At a secret conference organised by Israel Minister Gilad Erdan with 150 top supporters of Israel, American right wing pollster Frank Luntz rolled out statistics which show that most US Jewish students don’t see Israel as ‘civilized’ or a ‘democracy”.
 
According to the independent website, Mondoweiss, which attracts a million views a month, Luntz made the disclosure at the secret conference organised to consider ways of combating the growing global campaign, ‘Boycott, Disinvest and Sanctions’ (BDS) movement against Israeli oppression of Palestinians.   
 
Highlights of Luntz’s disclosure:

• The ministry of tourism’s attempt to market Israel as a cool destination (girls and bikinis) has failed.
•  Jewish American students have an increasingly negative image of Israel  
• Just 42% believe Israel wants peace.
• Just 38% believe “Israel is civilized and Western”.
• Just 31% believe Israel is a democracy.
• No less than 21% believe the US should side with the Palestinians.

In November 2014, the Republican pollster and best known propagandist for selling Israel to the American public had conceded that Zionism had become a dirty word for American opinion-making elite. Clearly, his prescription then was to keep reminding Israel’s critics in the US, “we’re allies.” But the magic mantra does not seem to be working.
Mondoweiss now reports that “the new, or not so new, agenda” put forward by Luntz, the “guru of political opinion” at the conference was this: Israel’s supporters should say that they are in favour of a dialogue and peace-building through diplomacy, and accuse BDS supporters of obstructing dialogue, and spreading hate.

The post “Most US Jewish students don’t see Israel as ‘civilized’ or a ‘democracy”: pro-Israel polster appeared first on SabrangIndia.