It is easy for Tel Avivians to file the attempted lynch in Zion Square, in which dozens of Jewish youths attacked three Palestinians in broad daylight, almost killing one, under the category of “that will never happen here." That filing tag has become worn out from overuse, but it is still there, trying to do its job. And what is its job? Autosuggestion.
The very attempt at self-assurance by the people of Tel Aviv is despicable. It is the unsuppressed desire to tell yourself that it is not you, but the other person, who is not okay. You are just fine. You are as fine as can be, as far as that goes. In Jerusalem, Be’er Sheva and Bat Ayin – that is where “they are not okay.” They are not okay in Jerusalem and Bat Ayin to the exact same extent that they are not okay in Eilat, Kiryat Shmona, Acre, Tiberias and Shfaram (incidentally, just to be clear, they are not okay in Ramallah, Jenin and Nablus either, but nobody expects them to be. After all, they are Arabs).
In Tel Aviv, everyone is “good people.” Every day, our children hear the same Israeli racist incitement against everyone and everything foreign, other or different, but here among us, our children are so okay that they do not even go out and lynch people in the streets. Among us in Tel Aviv, teenagers are being swept away by the same massive wave of racism and ultra-nationalism that is washing over the entire country. They are exposed to the same violent ideas, the same industry of media and culture that has obvious marks of fascism, but among us, as I said, at least they do not become the actual thing.
The problem is that it did happen in Tel Aviv. It is happening there, and it will likely keep on happening. And we will see that it only gets worse. Last year, Tel Aviv saw no fewer incidents of violent hate crimes, almost inconceivable, against African refugees and foreign workers: In the south of city, where a huge proportion of the residents are African, we have seen firebombings in the Shapira neighborhood, a firecracker in the nearby Hatikva quarter and physical attacks – most of them perpetrated by groups – against Africans (including Ethiopian Jews), during racist demonstrations. Last week, Ynet, one of the country's leading online news sites, published the story of several young Palestinians from East Jerusalem who got lost in Tel Aviv and were attacked by three Jewish men who called them “stinking Arabs.” Those Palestinians ended up in the hospital with facial and head injuries.
Tel Aviv, it is clear to see, is no different, not at all, from other cities in Israel or the illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.
But the assumed difference between Tel Aviv and other places in Israel and the occupied territories goes both ways. Israeli autosuggestion works overtime everywhere else, too. Even outside Tel Aviv, Israelis love to talk about “wild weeds” or “hooligans.” Even outside Tel Aviv, Israelis try to convince themselves that they are good people and it is only the other guys who are not.
The problem with autosuggestion is that it usually leads to a twisted grasp on reality. Tel Avivians and other Israelis have a very distorted picture of what is real. For some reason, this puzzle just does not come together in their minds to form one big picture: a government of the far-right wing with dozens upon dozens of racist, anti-democratic laws; racist statements constantly repeated by high-ranking officials and public figures at various levels (“the infiltrators are a cancer in the body of the state”); rabbis who collect the signatures of other rabbis for racist religious rulings. Hatred of the other simply because he is the other. Israel for Israelis. A discourse of “Israel for Israelis” is a breeding ground for political parties such as the Golden Dawn in Greece and Jobbik in Hungary. It is a breeding ground for sporadic acts of thuggery and lynching by the common people.
I am not personally acquainted with the Jewish teenagers who almost killed the Palestinian teenager in Zion Square. I never met them face to face. I do not even know what they look like. But I do know those Jewish teenagers from Jerusalem very well. I know them and others like them. You will find the Jewish teenagers who perpetrate lynch attacks against Arabs in Jerusalem or pogroms against African immigrants in south Tel Aviv any time you leaf through the files of the internal security offices of Russia, Germany, the Czech Republic, France and Northern Ireland. These teenagers are the Israeli version of the neo-Nazi skinheads of Europe and America.
We have fulfilled our heart’s desire: We have become like all the other nations. We, too, have skinheads, even they do have some hair (or at least curly sidelocks as mandated by Jewish religious law). But while Western Europe and the United States are fighting this phenomenon, Israel is ignoring it, saying that it is just a mob, not the actual people of Israel.
This lie, this act of make-believe, is the worst hate crime in all of Israel’s history. In Tel Aviv, the trend is gathering strength. Tel Avivians are so fed up with having a mirror held up to their faces that they are taking their anger out on the mirror. More and more, I am hearing and reading (in competing newspapers) people who are fed up, for example, with the opinion page of Haaretz (“Enough of this hysteria”). Why?
Because on a daily basis, the opinion page of Haaretz continues to call attention to this terrible malady that has spread throughout the entire body of Israel. So the Tel Avivians, the “important people,” would rather think less about the occupation, racism and the anti-democratic process. They would rather have a lie than the truth.
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