Like every regime marching toward fascism, the knights of the new Israeli order must first deal with the existing dominant values, and appropriate them to the new reality they wish to create.

In Italy under Mussolini, for example, one of the first goals of the “national revolution” was the education system and teachers. Recently the Israeli Ministry of Education ordered the rewriting of parts of “To Be Citizens in Israel,” which for years has served as a fundamental textbook in the teaching of citizenship.

The Chairperson of the Pedagogical Secretariat, Zvi Tsameret, contends that the book “deals too much with criticism of the state.” In one of the professional meetings he held with the staff of his office, he criticized amongst other things the following sentence, which appears in the aforementioned book: “since its establishment the state of Israel has employed a policy of discrimination toward the Arab citizens.”

In response Dr. Rikki Tesler, Chairperson of the Academic Forum for Citizenship Instruction, noted that “the top is attempting to alter the emphases in citizenship studies from democracy to Judaism and Zionism. He is attempting to enforce his opinions…and in the absence of a constitution, learning citizenship is the sole remaining place to argue about the character of the state – to what extent it will be Jewish, democratic and Zionist.”

Here also we can find the blunt fingerprint of the neo-conservative Institute for Zionist Strategies. A year ago it published a report criticizing the study of citizenship in the education system. The report notes that “the current format for teaching citizenship harms the patriotic Zionist education (and that the defects found in it) have ideological, moral and social implications that are liable to harm our existence as a Jewish and democratic state.”

The neo-Zionist attack actually began a year ago, when in October 2009 the Ministry of Education ordered a return of all copies of the book “Building a State in the Middle East,” which included the narrative of the Naqba and the ethnic cleansing that took place in 1948. Of course, even then the Palestinian narrative was “balanced” with the Israeli narrative that justified the crimes of the Naqba.

Nuclear Ambiguity

“Israel received tacit consent for its nuclear program from the Western world because it appeared to be a small, just state surrounded by enemies, and the memory of the Holocaust was still fresh. Israel’s image was different then.

“In the long term, the more Israel appears to reject peace and to be the one that opposes a two-state solution, the more it will be perceived as a regional bully that possesses nuclear weapons. So the world will be a lot less forgiving on the nuclear issue. The situation of ambiguity, in which you don’t have real legitimacy, is not a good place to be.”

When the United States and Israel put pressure on the Iranian (civilian) nuclear development, when they demand closer inspection of the Iranian nuclear research and development, it is good to recall that behind the policy of ambiguity there is something that Israel is interested to continue hiding from the world.

Satirical Column: Freezing the Settlements

We’ve been here before: Israel is prepared to meet the American demand for freezing settlement construction, expect for…

Just as in all the other cheating games of Israel in the past decades, “except for” is a game invented by the honourable President Shimon Peres. It was during the presidency of Bush (the father) when the United States was interested in hitching the “moderate” Arab states to the war cart against Saddam Hussein. In order to please his new Arab allies, President Bush asked Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, to declare a settlement freeze. Shamir is not Netanyahu, and on his principles he was not prepared to compromise. Washington then caused Shamir’s government to fall, and thus there were elections that brought the Rabin-Peres pair to power. The latter was then requested to cash the cheque and declare a freeze.

Not telling the truth has never proved a difficulty for the “flea who climbed upwards”, as Peres is known in Israel: he immediately set to work and issued the “guarantee letter” for freezing the settlements, while adding “except for…” Except for building in existing settlements for the needs of natural growth. What the Palestinians, and perhaps not the Americans, didn’t know, was that the municipal territory of the settlements spread over 40% of the West Bank. In other words, the freezing was limited to half of the occupied Palestinian Territory.

He saw that it was good, and twenty years later, the government of Israel is repeating this same trick: yes to a freeze except for…except for the settlement blocs, except for Jerusalem, except for settlements alongside the Green Line, except for the Syrian Golan and who knows what else. It is possible that back then the state of Israel managed to fool the Americans. A second time it will be difficult to contend in Washington that they were cheated by the Israelis. If there will be a selective freezing, this time the White House will be a knowing and active partner.

Translated to English by the Alternative Information Center (AIC).