Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel
Max Blumenthal
Nation Books, 116 East 16th Street,
8th Floor, New York, NE 10003
Pages: 512
Price: $20.19 (Hardcover)
2013
Reviewed by K. ASHRAF
‘The book of hatred’. That’s how Zionist media, including Jerusalem Post introduced the book Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, by Max Blumenthal. Each chapter of this 512-page book discusses the identity crisis being experienced by Israel. Through its 73 chapters, Blumenthal explains how Israel transformed itself into Goliath and proves that the modern Israel, as they proclaim themselves, is not the descendants of the oppressed Dawid mentioned in holy scripts.
Blumenthal, a senior contributor to famous web portal “Alternate”, reveals characteristics of the ethnic/ military/ imperial institution named Israel in his book. Through careful research, he presents how the Zionist politics suppresses the oppositional voices inside Israel. The dynamic narration and blatant revelations on Israel’s internal secrets have made this book to be the most hunted one by the Zionist media in recent Palestinian reading history.
The question why Israel hunts books which criticise them is relevant here. In the background of Israel’s current attack on Gaza, starting this July 29, New York Times published an article about Gaza by Palestinian writer Rashid Khalidi. Activists like Hamid Dabashi sees the article as the beginning of change in perception of the highly Zionist funded American media. The challenge faced by Israel, the 4th military power in the world, as pro-Israel media say, is not in terms of weapon power or strength. Israel’s biggest challenge lies in diplomacy and global opinion formation. Those who observe recent global civic movements say Israel has pathetically failed in justifying themselves on these fronts. This is why the book by Blumenthal attracted this much opposition, as it is capable of destroying the pro-Israel constructions that control the global civic society.
The book starts with Ben Gurion Airport International Airport of Tel Aviv – the miniature of modern Israel as it is described by Blumenthal. It must be read carefully. You will get a test dose of apartheid logic in Israel’s existence from the Airport itself. Israeli security staff will group you racially. Everyone is grouped on the basis of religion, race, and colour and is subjected to security checks. This is beyond security reasons and is a part of the racial discriminatory policy followed by Israel.
What’s happening at that airport? If you are a Palestinian who was expelled in 1948 or 1967, you will be sent back in the next flight. If you are a Jew, you will get special reception – naturally. If your parents are Jews, the reception will be more generous. If your grandparents also are Jews, priority graph in the airport will go even higher. And if you are going to Israel for meeting your girlfriend, and if there is possibility to have a baby from that relationship, you can expect a 5-Star reception. Because your journey will be increasing population! It simply shows Israel is that much desperate to overcome Palestinians in population.
Blumenthal collected the data for this book by travelling across Israel for four years. His first book titled Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party published in 2009, had attacked the lack of ethics in political life of right wing Republican lobby in the United States. It exposed the political psychology of pro-Zionist Republican block including Mat Romney. In the same year Likud party led by the most perfect racist in the history of Zionists – Benjamin Netanyahu – resumed power in Israel. Blumenthal deeply followed not only their political agendas, but their daily political moves also and made preparations for this book by interviewing and talking with people in Israel.
As an individual born and brought up in a Jewish-American family in Washington D.C., Blumenthal took up this project for personal reasons also. Like any other American Jewish boy, he got free entry pass to Israel by birth and in his American life he witnessed how the Zionist political agendas engulf the diverse interpretations of Jewishness. He also realised the injustice filled in the formula by which his classmates who were Palestinian refugees studying in America were expelled from and denied access to their motherland, and how he was allowed free access to that land and how it was said to be his ‘own’, even though he doesn’t have any connection with the Palestinian land.
“Writing this book was possible only because I was an American Jew,” explains Blumenthal, “many Palestinian-American journalists who are more capable and eligible than me to write this book will never get entry to Israel through the airport.” Here, Blumenthal shares a crucial lesson: the widespread movement of solidarity against the injustice can only be built up when each and everyone realises the concessions enjoyed by them as part of their respective social statuses.
The main argument put forward by Blumenthal is that Israel state, which came into existence in 1948 through the military and political invasion over Palestine, has never been a democratic state. As citizens, what Israelis experience today is a State of emergency. He aims the proclamation of Israel as the only democratic state in West Asia. From the first day of its existence, Israel is under emergency law. The Zionist government justifies this emergency rule saying that the anti-social forces that challenge national security is strong inside Israel. Thus Israel exists denying all civilian freedom and legal rights in the name of national security. Through this Israel can easily target the Human Rights activists and can deny even the basic human rights for them. Many Human Rights activists in Israel are being imprisoned and tortured this way.
Blumenthal proves with many examples that spying over the private telephonic/ internet chats of citizens in an endless search for any kind of opposition from anywhere and arresting and torturing anyone who is suspected are not exceptions in Israel, but is a national culture which everybody shall accept.
Holocaust and the cruelties suffered by Jews in Nazi Germany are the moral justifications which Israel presents as the reasons for their existence. Blumenthal studies in detail the present practices of these moral roots. He explains how Israel, which came to existence making capital out of the Holocaust, follows the racial/ administrative violence of Nazi Germany. The Israeli Ethnocratic State exists suppressing all the minority voices inside it. The discrimination and tortures experienced by Arab Muslims, Arab Christians, and Arab Jews, etc. are not unknown to readers. So let’s read about the apartheid faced by two other communities – the black Jews who came to Israel from Africa and the Arab Bedouin Tribes in Israel itself.
The African Jew migrants from Ethiopia now say, they only want to get back to their motherland in any way. After working like slaves they are imprisoned in concentration camps near Sinai Desert. In weekends the White Israeli young men who want to get rid of the boredom of weeklong work come to these camps and jump upon these Ethiopians and find joy in cruelly torturing them.
Blumenthal also exposes the racial discrimination and tortures faced by the African Jews who remain in Tel Aviv through first hand vignettes. The Euro-American Jews in Tel Aviv are pressuring the government to expel the African Jews from Israel. Whenever a burglary happens anywhere, the African Jews are subjected to street trials and Blumenthal explains that this is a common sight. The majority of Israeli prisoners are African Jews as a result of the influence racists have in police.
The Arab Bedouin tribes in Negev Desert are part another torture story. They are kept from the Israeli public sphere, except that they can join Israeli military as “Suicide Bombers”. Never provided with citizenship, they are being exploited for military purposes. The remaining Bedouins are imprisoned in specially prepared concentration camps in Deserts denying even the basic human rights like water, electricity and shelter, etc. Blumenthal explains these tribes are victims of an organised genocide and only less than eighty thousands of them are left now.
This book has many vignettes on how Israel, which came into existence by making Palestinians the ‘External Other’, creates new ‘Internal Others’. Blumenthal exposes the similarities in the apartheid faced by the ethnic minorities in Israel and the apartheid faced by Jews in Nazi Germany. We can read many studies and investigative reports on how Israel behaves with Palestinians. But, the description on the Holocaust model of administration which Israel imposes upon its own citizens after racially grouping them can be only read in this book.
What about the Jews with justice who had come to Israel with lots of hope and had to witness all these injustices? We can read it in the end of this book. They had gathered in an Apartment in New York. They are not interested in returning to Israel. The statistics says 1 out of 13 Israelis is always staying in foreign countries. They do everything they can to stay away from the mind numbing realities in Israel. They say Israel has become a concentration camp that we don’t like to see and experience, where injustice is ruling and which reminds them of the Nazi period.
In short, the challenges faced by Israel are not from outside only. Blumenthal proves that the ethnic logic upon which Israel is built up itself will destroy Israel. Even though the book is written aiming the Jews who are trapped in the propaganda of American Zionist Lobby, it is a must read for those who are interested to know how Israel, as an Ethnic State, behaves with its own citizens.
[First published in Prabodhanam Weekly. Translated from Malayalam by HABEEB K AYIROOR]