Remove the blinkers and see the truth

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Written by Seth Freedman Seth Freedman

Published: 19 December 2008 19 December 2008

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For two years on Cif, I've detailed the miscarriages of justice I've witnessed. But many are still convinced Israel can do no wrong

I find people over here who keep harping on about 'human rights' violations by Israel conveniently forget or ignore that if Seth were to live in any, yes, ANY Arab or Iranian country in the neighbourhood, he would have been jailed, abused and then deported, if not accused of being a 'zionist' spy and then condemned to capital punishment.

Two years after penning my first piece for Cif, there is still no getting away from the kind of criticism seen in the comment above. No matter that the thrust of georgeindia's rant had nothing to do with the subject of my article, anyone perusing the thread is encouraged to believe that the fact that the Israeli regime has not beheaded me for my dissent is ample proof that all is well in our little corner of the Middle East. Which, of course, it isn't, despite the best efforts of Israel's squadron of cheerleaders to convince the world otherwise.

Although I am a relative newcomer to Israel's Mediterranean shores, the amount of exposure I have had during my four-year sojourn in the Holy Land to the daily humiliation and oppression being meted out to the Palestinians is more than most armchair critics will see in a lifetime. I should know – I was one of them myself for my first 24 years on the planet, and am all too aware how easy it is to be duped by second- or third-hand reporting from the front lines, whether through the media or via friends and family giving their skewed take from inside Israel's borders.

If you believe the official hype, it's a dolce vita in the Occupied Territories, one for which all right-minded Palestinians should be eternally grateful to their benevolent Israeli masters. If you believe the official hype, Palestinians have never had it so good, thanks to the milk of Israeli kindness which flows in rivulets alongside the honey in the Eretz Halav u'Dvash. And, if you believe the official hype, if only the Palestinians would finally give up their struggle for basic human rights, they too could eat from the tree of life in Israel's very own Garden of Eden.

Those are the lines so eagerly swallowed by the blinkered masses for whom Israel can do no wrong, for whom the mere existence of a Jewish state trumps all other, harsher truths, and which deafen them to the cries of those trampled beneath the wheels of the Zionist bandwagon. "We're here to stay," they cry triumphantly, as though the conflict really is as binary as that: 1 = Jews exert unilateral control over every last inch of Biblical Israel; 0 = Jews are instead driven into the sea by the monster that continually lurks under Israel's bed.

The reason behind the creation of the state in 1948 is the very reason the state (in its current form) is doomed to fail. Giving a severely traumatised people a land on which to go through the throes of rebirth and recovery, with no therapeutic or palliative care alongside, meant the experiment was always going to turn out for the worst. Those given the keys to the new state would always see, and fear, the worst in those around them. They were left to come to terms with their pain and fear in the midst of another battleground.

Thanks to the cyclical nature of the tit-for-tat conflict, for every punitive measure taken by the IDF in the name of Israel's so-called search for peace, reprisal attacks by Palestinians and their agents endanger thousands of Jewish lives in return, prompting ever-stronger countermeasures by the Israelis. And so it goes on. Until the fear-fuelled monkey can be got off Israel's collective back, it doesn't matter how much evidence is put in front of them about the state's crimes, since they will always turn a blind eye in favour of believing that there is no other way ensure their security.

The Palestinians are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Rise up and try to smash the chains that bind them, and what was previously a tonne of bricks will be multiplied by 10 in terms of the Israeli response. Lie back and do nothing and the authorities will walk all over them, since there is no reason for the Israelis to apply the brakes themselves.

For two years I have detailed the abuses and miscarriages of justice I witness on every foray I make into the West Bank, and for two years I've been buried under an avalanche of hate in response. It was, is, and will continue to be water off a duck's back, regardless of the outraged responses on the threads, since I'm convinced that the only way to effect change is for the truth to be brought to light. And if I can play a small part in helping that to occur, then nothing and no one is strong enough to act as a deterrent.