‘They only understand force’: treason, trauma, racism in Israel

Published: 23 October 2024

Last updated: 23 October 2024

'They only understand force': The deadly racism behind Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians (Dahlia Scheindlin, Haaretz)

The Israeli conviction that the other side only understands military force, making diplomacy and de-escalation irrelevant, isn't just because the Middle East is a tough neighbourhood. It's also partly due to straight-up, old-world racism.

Racism, of course, is immoral and wrong – a primitive sentiment in its own right. But it turns out to be irrational, and deadly too. For a start, the racist underpinnings to "they only understand force" contributed to the October 7 attack. The idea that the Middle East is more primitive and responds to brute force led Israel to bask in the "success" of Operation Protective Edge.… What left Israelis' heads spinning was not just the crushing failure of their military and intelligence systems on that day; it was the realization that over years of planning, Palestinians had outsmarted them in all possible ways.

The racism-tainted tropes about force being the only currency is foolish because so much evidence weighs in favor of diplomacy. It is becoming inexplicable that Israel rejects a perfectly good option of normalisation with Saudi Arabia as the basis for a regional agreement and Palestinian self-determination.

A path to Palestinian statehood and a cease-fire could facilitate renewed diplomacy between the United States, the great powers, the Gulf and Iran. Iran in turn might curb its nuclear program through diplomacy – the evidence is that it did so once – instead of threatening to build nuclear weapons in light of the war. That's good for Israel.

What's also good for Israel is acknowledging that racism is not just wrong, it's dangerous and blew up in its face. Not all Israelis are racist, of course; but all Israelis can do better.

Who leaked US intelligence on Israel's secret preparations for a strike on Iran? And why?(Alon Pinkas, Haaretz)

Last Thursday, two U.S. intelligence documents detailing Israel's apparent preparations for a retaliatory attack on Iran leaked on a Telegram channel called Middle East Spectator.

On Sunday, the Pentagon confirmed that the documents attributed to two U.S. agencies – the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency – were real.

As opposed to an unintentional leak, a deliberate leak of national security information is a criminal offense. Sometimes, depending on the subject matter, the circumstances, the sensitivity of the information, the methodology of how it was obtained and the intended (even if indirectly) recipient, it can constitute treason.

Such leaks are obviously a matter of access, opportunity and motivation. A leak is rarely a singular isolated event, whether it relates to national security, to politics or to corporate insider-information on securities.

University of Washington scholar Richard Kielbowicz identified the major types of leak: those intended to influence policy; those intended to shape personal image; those intended to implicate someone else; or those intended to improve relations with the media.

Then there are leaks as a form of organizational communication: leaks as upward communication; leaks as downward communication; leaks as horizontal communication within and between governments.

This latest leak could be any of the above, or a combination.

One thing seems clear: the platform chosen indicates that this was probably not a deliberate U.S. leak to pressure Israel or alert Iran. There are other, more sophisticated ways and better outlets to do that. The pro-Iranian Middle East Spectator Telegram channel describes itself as "independent, but not unbiased, striving for a multipolar world. Mainly focused on Iran & Resistance Axis" – referring to the likes of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.

Israeli Jews very rarely agreed to spy on behalf of Israel’s worst enemies. What's changed? (Yossi Melman, Haaretz)

In the last six months more than 20 Israelis were arrested by the Shin Bet and charged with espionage for Iran's ministry of intelligence.

There's a lot more where these cases came from. In the last two years hundreds of Israelis were approached by Iranian intelligence recruiters, mostly via social media. Some ignored the requests. Others had their suspicions and tipped off the Shin Bet, while others who agreed to an initial contact were uncovered by the Shin Bet and invited in for a brief inquiry. Most of them explained that they were not aware and didn't understand the severity of their encounters. They were warned to break off contact with the Iranian agents and were released.

Iranian intelligence's modes of operations are based on the old KGB pattern of recruiting as many people as possible, hoping that some will agree to cooperate and eventually a few will become high-quality assets.

In most cases, recruiting nowadays is done via social media, at times in the classic way of meeting face-to-face.

Due to the cohesion and sense of solidarity in Israeli society, Iran faced difficulties infiltrating it. Iran had to settle for attempts to recruit Israeli Arabs, hoping they would be easy prey, but they were not. Very few Israeli Arabs agreed to work with Iran – this week's case was rare – or its proxy Hezbollah.

The Iranian efforts focused mostly on social media, creating fake profiles, or posing as foreign nationals. Those who agreed to cooperate were fooled.

But in recent years, Iranian agents became more daring and ready to take bigger risks by directly approaching potential subjects for recruitment. They know that Israeli society is divided as never before, and through the cracks in the fragile fabric they try and, as we have seen, succeed in getting their foot in the Israeli door.

Shirel Golan survived the Nova massacre but died by suicide. Online denial may be to blame(Meredith Jacobs, Forward)

This weekend, we witnessed the tragic toll that can result from these survivors having to relive the most horrible day of their lives over and over again, from them being stuck in an endless loop of trauma.

Shirel Golan, who was rescued by a police car as she fled the Nova site, died by suicide on her 22nd birthday, after twice being hospitalized with acute symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder including disassociation and withdrawal.

Adding to the trauma of witnessing their friends hunted down, tortured, raped and murdered by terrorists, survivors are also facing a world that refuses to believe their accounts.

Online, female hostages who have shared how they were sexually assaulted when in Hamas captivity have faced denial and mockery. “She is lying through her teeth and reading through a script,” read one of the more charitable replies to Amit Soussana’s testimony of being groped and forced to perform a sexual act on her captor.

Other survivors like Golan see this. It makes healing — let alone sharing what happened — feel impossible.

Campaigns to deny systematic, conflict-related sexual violence are as old as the use of rape as a weapon of war. But social media’s ability, today, to spread these messages of denial to millions compounds the spread of terror and trauma. Even more insidious is the use of campaigns to reshape the narrative; to justify “rape as resistance,” claiming it was therefore deserved, to blame the survivor for what happened to her.

Is this denial why Golan died by suicide? Was it the agony of knowing that 11 people she’d left the festival in a car with were murdered? A lack of adequate mental health support? We will never know for sure.

‘Taking territory’ from Palestinians is what ‘hurts them most,’ says Likud minister Golan, while far-right police minister Ben Gvir says Gazans should be ‘encouraged’ to emigrate

Australian-Israeli former diplomat Mark Regev under trial for genocide advocacy (Haaretz)

After defending Israel's decision to lay a complete siege over Gaza in October 2023, former Netanyahu adviser and U.K. ambassador Mark Regev is being charged with 'advocacy for genocide' by Aboriginal activists in his native Australia