"A menacing convoy of bulldozers was heading back to Be'er Sheva as I drove towards al-Arakib, a Bedouin village located not more than ten minutes from the city. Once I entered the dirt road leading to the village I saw scores of vans with heavily armed policemen getting ready to leave. Their mission, it seems, had been accomplished."
Ethnic Cleansing in the Negev
I like the Guardian. Apparently it's the second most read online English-language newspaper in the world, behind the New York Times. The Guardian is a bit more open on the topic of Israel, though. I read through most of the comments below the article, and there were interesting and valid points made by fans and non-fans alike. Ethnic cleansing is strong terminology, indeed. The village was "unrecognized" by Israel, they had been been notified of their "illegal" settlement several times, and residences set up by nomadic peoples are razed by governments all over the world. Why the focus on Israel?
Because Israel can't tell anyone not to settle on land that isn't theirs!! That's a lot of negatives!!!
Rephrase. The Israeli government has a rather skewed view of who is allowed to settle on land that isn't theirs.
Anyways, back to Neve Gordon. I took this from his Wiki page.
"Gordon wrote in a Los Angeles Times editorial on August 20, 2009 that he had decided to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel movement. He stated that Israel had become so right wing and 'an apartheid state' that he felt he had so choice but to support this course of action. This lead to threats by some US donors to withhold funds from Ben-Gurion University, and to a heated debate within Israel over the rights of academics to freedom of expression.
The Ben-Gurion University responded by denouncing Gordon's views. The President of the University, Professor Rivka Carmi, said, "We are appalled by Dr. Neve Gordon's irresponsible remarks, that morally deserve to be completely and utterly condemned." "We disapprove of Gordon's disastrous views and reject his cynical exploitation of the freedom of speech in Israel and the university." Israeli Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar called Gordon's article "repugnant and deplorable. Religious Affairs Minister Ya'akov Margi called on the university to immediately suspend Gordon from his job and to publicly condemn the article."
It's almost hilarious. Call an intellectual a traitor and assume he'll shut up and fall in line? Seriously?! It's like when Noam Chomsky (yes, THE Noam Chomsky) was denied entrance into the West Bank because his lecture tour didn't include Israeli universities. He didn't shut up. He came back to the land of the free, talked to the press, and likened Israel to a "Stalinist regime." Ouch.
The end of Neve's LA Times article: "Putting massive international pressure on Israel is the only way to guarantee that the next generation of Israelis and Palestinians -- my two boys included -- does not grow up in an apartheid regime."
I think history will remember this traitor well. What a badass.
