Israel, um país racista?

(...) An absolute majority of the MKs in the 17th Knesset will hold a position based on a lie: that Israel does not have a partner for peace. An absolute majority of MKs in the next Knesset do not believe in peace, nor do they even want it - just like their voters - and worse than that, don't regard Palestinians as equal human beings. Racism has never had so many open supporters. It's the real hit of this election campaign.

One does not have to be Avigdor Lieberman to be a racist. The "peace" proposed by Ehud Olmert is no less racist. Lieberman wants to distance them from our borders, Olmert and his ilk want to distance them from out consciousness. Nobody is speaking about peace with them, nobody really wants it. Only one ambition unites everyone - to get rid of them, one way or another. Transfer or wall, "disengagement" or "convergence" - the point is that they should get out of our sight. The only game in town, the 'unilateral arrangement," is not only based on the lie that there is no partner, is not only based exclusively on our "needs" because of a sense of superiority, but also leads to a dangerous pattern of behavior that totally ignores the existence of the other nation.

(...)

Who would have believed that in Israel of 2006, the killing of an 8-year-old girl at short range, as happened last week in Yamoun, would barely be mentioned; that the ruthless attempt to expel an Ethiopian with AIDS who is married to an Israeli, just because he is not Jewish, would not raise hue and cry; and that the results of a poll showing that a majority of Israelis - 68 percent - don't want to live next to an Arab, did not raise a stink. If in 1981, tomatoes were being thrown at Shimon Peres and in 1995, there was incitement against Yitzhak Rabin, now there are no tomatoes, no incitement and not even any election rallies.

(...)

Morality has become a dirty work, and the worst corruption in the country's history, the occupation, was never mentioned. Only one-sided maps, similar to one another, all including the humongous "settlement blocs," a withdrawal based on "our needs," with a separation wall and the frightening air of indifference hovering above it all.

Opinião de Gideon Levy no Haaretz