Gideon Levy, Israeli journalist for Haaretz, speaking to the National Press Club in Washington DC, 10 April 2015. Transcript available here, with the portion below beginning at 10:51. Lots of noteworthy stuff in this speech, but I've bolded the most stunning passage.
The Israeli society has surrounded itself with shields, with walls, not only physical walls but also mental walls. I don’t want to get into it because it’s another lecture. But I’ll just give the three principles which enable us Israelis to live so easily with this brutal reality. A) Most of the Israelis, if not all of them, deeply believe that we are the chosen people. And if we are the chosen people, we have the right to do whatever we want. B) There were more brutal occupations in history. There were even longer occupations in history, even though the Israeli occupation gets to quite a nice record. But there was never in history an occupation in which the occupier presented himself as the victim—not only the victim, but the only victim around. This also enables any Israeli to live in peace, because we are the victims.
In the other panel, Professor [Richard] Falk spoke about the dual strategy of Israel, of being a victim on one hand and manipulating on the other hand, after what happened in Paris and in Copenhagen with the terror attacks. Binyamin Netanyahu came with the notion, “All the Jews must come to Israel. It’s the safest place for the Jews in the world. It’s a shelter for the Jews in the world.” Which is wrong because Israel today is the most dangerous place on earth for Jews. But let’s put it aside. It was only 24 hours later when he said Israel is in existential threat under the Iranian bomb! And I asked myself, how can you dare call Jews to come and to join this suicidal project, when the Iranians are going to bomb us?
But in Israel everything goes, and both declarations were accepted as the only truth. And here, I get to the third set of values that enable us Israelis to live in peace with the occupation. This is maybe the most crucial one and the worst one. We say victimization, we say chosen people. When I say victimization, it goes without saying, we have to mention the Holocaust and the unforgettable Mrs. Golda Meir that the American Jewry had exported to Israel. She said once—this unforgettable woman—that after the Holocaust the Jews have the right to do whatever they want.
But the third set of values is the most dangerous one. This is the systematic de-humanization of the Palestinians, which enables us Israelis to live in peace with everything because if they are not human beings like us, then there is not really a question of human rights.
And if you scratch under the skin of almost every Israeli, you will find it there. Almost no one will treat the Palestinians as equal human beings like us. I once wrote that we treat the Palestinians like animals. I got so many protest letters from animal rights organizations—rightly so. But 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. I asked him a question which I try to ask on any occasion, “Mr. Barak, what would have happened if you would have been born Palestinian?” And Barak gave me then the only honest answer he could give me. He said, “I would have joined a terror organization.” What else would he have done? Would he become a poet? He doesn’t know how to write poems. Would he become a pianist? He’s quite a bad pianist, and I doubt if 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, during the second intifada, the city of Jenin, the most closed city in the West Bank, real total siege. I go out from Jenin. I come to the checkpoint. A Palestinian ambulance is parking there with the red lights. I stand after him, no cars can get out of Jenin in those days; no cars can get in. And I wait. The soldiers start playing backgammon in the tent. Usually, I know myself, it’s better that I don’t get into confrontations 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.
I went out from the car. I went first to the Palestinian ambulance driver. 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. 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 happen if your father was 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? 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, without losing any kind of humanity, values I heard today.
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