Take, for instance, the Moroccan Jews in Kiryat Shemona, members of Menachem Begin's voting base about whom I wrote for The VILLAGE VOICE in 1982 and who most commonly told me, "The only good Arab is a dead Arab."
Throughout Israel's 34 years of occupation, collective punishment for the alleged acts of individuals have been the order of the day – for example, 23-hour-a-day curfews lasting for weeks on end; the bulldozing of homes.
(During the time I was reporting, stone-throwing and street demonstrations were what brought collective punishment. Suicide bombing is a post-Oslo phenomenon triggered by the doubling of settlement population after the accords were signed and by the dawning realization that Oslo consolidated a South African-style plan for permanent Bantustanization of the West Bank.)
On the political front while I was writing, in 1980 a group of mayors elected democratically (Israel allowed this process a single time) was targeted for assassination by ultra-right-wing Israeli-Jewish thugs. Two were permanently maimed when their booby-trapped cars exploded under them. The perpetrators were found but not punished. Israel's alarm that the mayors all proved to be PLO supporters rather than docile pawns meant, of course, that there was never again another such election.
Throughout Israel's 34 years of occupation, collective punishment for the alleged acts of individuals have been the order of the day – for example, 23-hour-a-day curfews lasting for weeks on end; the bulldozing of homes.
(During the time I was reporting, stone-throwing and street demonstrations were what brought collective punishment. Suicide bombing is a post-Oslo phenomenon triggered by the doubling of settlement population after the accords were signed and by the dawning realization that Oslo consolidated a South African-style plan for permanent Bantustanization of the West Bank.)
On the political front while I was writing, in 1980 a group of mayors elected democratically (Israel allowed this process a single time) was targeted for assassination by ultra-right-wing Israeli-Jewish thugs. Two were permanently maimed when their booby-trapped cars exploded under them. The perpetrators were found but not punished. Israel's alarm that the mayors all proved to be PLO supporters rather than docile pawns meant, of course, that there was never again another such election.