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berniesrevolution · 6 years

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IN THESE TIMES

For the past week, Jordan, a country frequently touted by the West as a haven of stability in a chaotic region, found itself amid an uncharacteristic tumult. Protests erupted on May 30 with the announcement of International Monetary Fund-backed austerity measures, including a steep hike on taxes for Jordan’s cash-strapped, underemployed populace. After five days of widespread strikes and marches, Jordan’s King Abdullah II dismissed Prime Minister Hani Mulki on Monday. In the past, such symbolic moves have been enough to placate dissent, but this time, Jordanian protesters appear determined to hold out for more systemic change.

Hours after Mulki’s dismissal, thousands of demonstrators returned to the streets, calling for a full rollback of the proposed austerity measures. Among them was Mustafa al-Khalili, a 29-year-old engineer living in Amman. This week, as a first-time protester, al-Khalili has found common cause with Jordanians across socio-economic, tribal, and geographic divides. “People from every part of society are out together,” he told The Intercept in a phone interview. “We are united by one thing: We love our country and we are fed up with corruption.”

Last Wednesday, al-Khalili and his co-workers received an email from union leaders alerting them that their government was considering a new bill to raise taxes. Al-Khalili was outraged. As a young father in Amman, one of the Middle East’s most expensive cities, he was already struggling to make ends meet. The new law — which would raise income taxes on individuals by at least 5 percent and on companies by 20 to 40 percent — would surely push him, and many of his fellow citizens, over the brink. “So many of us are working full-time jobs and still just trying to meet our basic needs,” he said. “And many of us are were getting desperate even before this new bill.”

“It was actually a beautiful moment, because there were Jordanians from all different classes, all different professions, and women as well as men.”

News of the proposed tax increase spread swiftly, igniting outcry on social media across socio-economic classes. Many protesters accused the government of corruption and failing to protect Jordanians from the interest of foreign bodies like the IMF, which is seeking to reform Jordan’s deeply indebted economy. Within hours, over 30 labor unions had called for a strike, and thousands of workers walked off the job in protest. Al-Khalili joined the hundreds who took to Amman’s busy streets to demonstrate. “It was actually a beautiful moment,” said al-Khalili, “because there were Jordanians from all different classes, all different professions, and women as well as men. It was the love of Jordan that brought us out to the streets.”

The initial strike gave way to a campaign of nightly protests, centered in Amman’s Fourth Circle neighborhood, calling for a reversal of the austerity measures and the resignation of Mulki, who was widely seen as corrupt. Yet the problem runs deeper than any one person, said al-Khalili, who has continued to protest night after night. “The Parliament does not reflect the needs of the people,” he said. “They are more interested in enriching themselves than innovating and trying to fix our economy. And we make the mistake of electing these people again and again. Well, now we are saying: Enough!”

So far, security forces have generally shown restraint while containing the crowds, Hiba Zayadin, acting researcher for Human Rights Watch in Jordan, told The Intercept. Scattered arrests are usually followed by quick releases. “There have been a few shows of force here and there, and a few people have lost consciousness due to lack of oxygen in the crowd, but so far, the demonstrations have been largely peaceful,” she said.

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#politics #the left #the intercept #jordan #foreign policy #middle east #protest

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michaelfallcon · 5 years

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Amman, Jordan: The Sprudge Coffee Guide

Amman, Jordan’s capital and largest city, has gone by many names—‘Ain Ghazal in 7200 BCE, Ammon during the Ammonite Kingdom, and Philadelphia under the Roman Empire. Despite its long history, at the end of the 20th century the city consisted primarily of a small community of Circassian immigrants. However, after it became the capital in 1921, internal migration and waves of refugees from Palestine, Iraq, and Syria led to a population boom. These communities have left their mark on Amman, and today the city has a population of more than four million. Despite its size, Amman has been treated by many visitors as a city that lacks the “authenticity” of other regional capitals like Jerusalem and Damascus. But since its modern founding, Amman has been a religiously and ethnically diverse capital that has served as a space of refuge for migrants fleeing other parts of the Middle East.

Amman’s diversity is also reflected in its expanding coffee scene. Ammanis love coffee, but it was only recently that specialty coffee gained traction in Jordan. A significant part of this growth can be attributed to younger Jordanians traveling around the world, cultivating a desire to bring the coffee experiences that they’ve had abroad back home. The result is that coffee in Amman is no longer defined exclusively by roadside coffee stalls and late-night cafes. This guide is intended as a first foray into Amman’s coffee community, highlighting a selection of the cafes that can be found throughout the hills defining the cityscape. (And besides these featured, I’d also recommend checking out Bunni Coffee Roasters, which just opened in Weibdeh, as well as Kava Roasters in Abdoun.)

The Coffee Room

If you ask Ammanis to tell you about the most historic areas of their city, Jabal al-Lweibdeh (Weibdeh) will inevitably be mentioned. As people expanded out of downtown in the 1920s, Weibdeh was one of the first places they went. Since then it has been home to prominent Jordanian writers, poets, and politicians. Over the last five years, Weibdeh has also become one of the most popular areas of the city. Located on Paris Square—the neighborhood’s central traffic circle—is The Coffee Room. Its small size and unassuming exterior are deceiving. The Coffee Room serves some of the best coffee that Amman has to offer.

Opened in 2016 and serving the United Kingdom’s Artisan Roast Coffee Roasters, The Coffee Room’s menu offers a full selection of espresso-based drinks, along with multiple manual- and cold-brew options. Its cozy size and brick interior oozes warmth and provides a welcoming spot to grab breakfast or a pastry, all of which are made in-house, while you enjoy your morning coffee. In the evening, seating spills onto the sidewalk outside and provides a chance to watch Weibdeh come alive.

The Coffee Room is located on Paris Square, Jabal al-Lweibdeh, Amman. Follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

The Coffee Lab

Tucked away in the Jabal Amman neighborhood near the French Embassy, The Coffee Lab, which opened in 2018, is a recent addition to the city’s coffee community. The shop is located near Rainbow Street, a popular destination among visitors. However, it is far enough away from Rainbow that it isn’t affected by the area’s congestion and noise, which is particularly bad on weekend evenings. Ample seating also makes it a prime place for work, but in the middle of the day you might be hard pressed to find a spot, as doctors and lawyers from the surrounding neighborhood regularly make The Coffee Lab a destination for lunch and meetings.

The cafe’s sleek interior draws inspiration from coffee’s molecular structure, and also includes a tweaked periodic table of the elements that adorns the wall above their couch. The Coffee Lab takes what they do seriously, pairing a full menu of espresso and brewed drinks from illy with a robust food menu. All of their food is made in-house, including multiple pastries, sandwiches, and fresh fruit drinks. The Coffee Lab also sells most of the necessary tools to step up your home-brewing game, which can be hard to come by in Amman.

The Coffee Lab is located at Abu Feras Al-Hamadani Street. 24, Jabal Amman, Amman. Follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

Dimitri’s Coffee Roasters

Dimitri’s Coffee Roasters has in many ways become the face of specialty coffee in Jordan. Founded by three brothers in 2014, there are currently four locations around Amman, including the newest location on al-Baouneyah Street in the Weibdeh neighborhood. Their locations also include a shop on The Boulevard, a massive pedestrian thoroughfare housed inside Amman’s $5-billion-dollar Abdali mega-development. Dimitri’s was also one of Jordan’s first specialty roasters, using a roaster that was designed by one of the brothers and built by local engineers in Jordan.

The Boulevard location features comfortable seating, including a large communal wood table. The shop also boasts a large outdoor patio area that provides a great spot to people-watch. Dimitri’s offers a number of single-origin roasts and blends that can be ordered on multiple manual brew methods. Their extensive manual brew options couple with their espresso menu, which offers everything from straight espresso to blended drinks. No matter what you’re looking for, you can find it at Dimitri’s. If you’re not planning on staying, they also offer retail beans and all of the home-brew equipment you could possibly need.

Dimitri’s is located on The Boulevard in the Abdali Project, Abdali, Amman. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

Melange

Established in 2017, Melange is another new addition to Amman’s coffee scene. Situated on Fawzi Al Qaweqji Street in the affluent West Amman neighborhood of Abdoun, Melange is located around the corner from another well-known Ammani coffee destination—Kava Roasters. Their close proximity makes it easy to sample multiple shops in a single visit, but if you’re looking for a place to get some work done, Melange is a perfect spot.

When you enter Melange, you are greeted by a high bar and a menu of their daily single-origin offerings from Vienna’s CoffeePirates. In addition to their multiple pour-over offerings, Melange offers a full menu of espresso and cold brew. Melange is somewhat unique among Amman’s cafes, which are often defined by their small interior footprints, because of its comparatively vast seating area. The downstairs includes a collection of tables both inside and outside, as well as stool space at the bar. Upstairs, a large communal table is surrounded with additional seating. Both floors rely heavily on natural wood decor, which makes Melange particularly inviting during Amman’s short, but exceedingly wet, winters.

Melange is located at Fawzi Al Qaweqji Street 12, Abdoun, Amman. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

Rumi Cafe

At the corner of Kulliyat Al-Sharee’ah and Jarir Streets in Weibdeh is one of Amman’s more well-known cafe destinations: Rumi Cafe. Sitting across the street from Patisserie Fayruz, Rumi’s interior is styled with white tile and natural wood elements. Floor-to-ceiling windows encase the shop, opening during warmer months to seamlessly connect Rumi’s interior to its large outdoor patio. Additional seating lines the sidewalk, stretching across the next door in the evenings when the neighboring post office closes its doors for the day. Rumi has become one of Amman’s most popular cafes, particularly among younger residents, artists, designers, and visitors.

Rumi serves illy coffees from early in the morning and late into the night. Their drink menu focuses on espresso-based beverages, cold brew, and an extensive tea selection with limited manual brew options. Rumi also offers house-made sweets and pastries, including a rotating selection of cakes, multiple different sandwiches, and a number of breakfast items. Seating is always pretty tight at Rumi because of how popular it is. That’s especially true on summer evenings when the patio and sidewalk fill up quickly. If you’re not up for a crowd, visiting in the morning means you can usually grab a seat.

Rumi Cafe is located at Kulliyat Al-Sharee’ah Street 14, Jabal al-Lweibdeh, Amman. Follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

William Cotter (@cotterw) is a freelance journalist based in Amman, Jordan. This is William Cotter’s first feature for Sprudge.

The post Amman, Jordan: The Sprudge Coffee Guide appeared first on Sprudge.

Amman, Jordan: The Sprudge Coffee Guide published first on https://medium.com/@LinLinCoffee

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shebreathesslowly · 5 years

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Amman, Jordan: The Sprudge Coffee Guide

The Coffee Room

The Coffee Room is located on Paris Square, Jabal al-Lweibdeh, Amman. Follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

The Coffee Lab

The Coffee Lab is located at Abu Feras Al-Hamadani Street. 24, Jabal Amman, Amman. Follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

Dimitri’s Coffee Roasters

Dimitri’s is located on The Boulevard in the Abdali Project, Abdali, Amman. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

Melange

Melange is located at Fawzi Al Qaweqji Street 12, Abdoun, Amman. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

Rumi Cafe

Rumi Cafe is located at Kulliyat Al-Sharee’ah Street 14, Jabal al-Lweibdeh, Amman. Follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

William Cotter (@cotterw) is a freelance journalist based in Amman, Jordan. This is William Cotter’s first feature for Sprudge.

The post Amman, Jordan: The Sprudge Coffee Guide appeared first on Sprudge.

from Sprudge http://bit.ly/2ZIE3ss

#Sprudge

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connorrenwick · 7 years

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The Naqsh Collective Dazzles at Amman Design Week

Navigating Amman Design Week presents the challenge of navigating an event spread across the sprawl of a riotous and rich metropolis, all complicated by the dense labyrinth of cobblestone, half-disintegrated walkways, and maniacally navigated motorways connecting the city’s numerous neighborhoods. Attendance requires comfortable shoes, the will to climb an endless gauntlet of stairways, and ideally, a local guide to untangle opportunities from deadends, for nothing in Amman is direct or straightforward.

A moment of solace and clarity was to be found in-between the 4th & 5th circle of the peaceful, tree-lined neighborhood of Jabal Amman, harbored within the shaded oasis of the Tiraz Centre.

The Tiraz Centre hosts a small but richly concentrated permanent collection of Palestinian, Jordanian and other Arab costumes from the 19th and 20th centuries, with over 2,000 costumes and weavings gracing the halls of its contemporary space. The center’s critical purpose is preservation, one represented by the Widad Kawar collection – a lifetime’s accumulation of costumes capturing the ethnographic textile language of Jordanian, Syrian, Bedouin and other Arab cultures captured in exquisite embroidered detail. Inside its walls the vibrant cultural heritage and Arab living traditions are illuminated to a blinding degree, just as it is fades in the growing shadow of modernity outside its walls.

Currently the Tiraz Centre hosts The Naqsh Collective’s “Thirst for Solidarity”, an exhibition of modern sculptural works by sisters Nisreen and Nermeen Abu-Dail awaiting contemplation and appreciation, symbolic of a region quietly deserving the attention of a world not always aware of its past, nor receptive of its present.

The Naqsh Collective’s exploration of contemporary manifestations of traditional Arabic aesthetics are represented richly through a tapestry of materials, technique, and landscape, intersecting the sisters’ historical wisdom with an acumen of modern technologies. The resulting forms are architectural, executed with jeweler’s precision: Palestinian embroidery patterns based upon traditional motifs of native flora engraved onto solid brass monoliths top Karak stone, embellished with brass shives – a miniature golden skyline at once evoking both pixel artwork of the digital age with the ancient ruins pockmarking the region. Sharing a space with the traditional embroidered garb nearby, comparisons across the ages is an integral part of the experience of the exhibition.

In the garden courtyard, a black floral motif of Palestinian embroidery sits atop a bed of sunlit brass filings.

Miles away at the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts another piece emblematic of Nisreen and Nermeen Abu-Dail’s vision of modern Jordanian art and design sits, “All in the stitch chair” a crumbling memory of a seat constructed of local stone and brass – one of many amongst a pantheon of other traditional and contemporary seats included in the exhibit, “A Chair’s Tale”. Again, an intersection of modernity, memory, and material resonates Jordan’s geography in the hands of the Abu-Dail sisters.

“Design Moves Life Moves Design” – this was the slogan chosen by Amman Design Week to represent both the challenges and aspirations of a region constrained by both political and geographical borders. But even in our short and concentrated stay in Amman, The Naqsh Collective made a convincing argument Jordanian culture flourishes forward, awakening to its future, fully aware of the challenges looming where scarcity and creativity work both at odds and in collaboration.

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from WordPress https://connorrenwickblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/18/the-naqsh-collective-dazzles-at-amman-design-week/

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nedsecondline · 7 years

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The craziest things Netanyahu has said this summer, so far

From outlawing foreign funding for human rights NGOs to reviving the death penalty (for Palestinians), to population transfer and more, Benjamin Netanyahu is going a little wild. It probably isn’t unrelated to the multiple police investigations into him and his friends.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the weekly cabinet meeting, Jerusalem, June 25, 2017. (Marc Israel Sellem/Pool/Flash90)

Benjamin Netanyahu has a few things in common with Donald Trump. The two men are known to obsess over loyalty, which invariably leads to nepotism and empowering immediate family members. They both are convinced there is constantly some sort of media conspiracy to topple them from their positions of power — and that they deserve that power. And the more embroiled they and their tight circles become in investigations of alleged improprieties, the crazier and more rash their behavior gets.

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Netanyahu and his closest cronies are currently at the center of at least three major scandals being seriously investigated by the fraud and corruption unit of the Israeli police. The investigations range from corruption in the purchase of nuclear-capable submarines, demanding and receiving extravagant gifts from various billionaires who may or may not have received political favors in return, trading legislation to all but guarantee the failure of a major newspaper in exchange for favorable coverage from its main competitor, and more.

In addition to denying all wrongdoing, the Israeli prime minister’s response has been to play to his base with more and more nationalist and radical propositions, statements and stunts, hoping to preempt anyone in his government flanking him from the right while he is vulnerable. To the rest of the world, Netanyahu’s behavior makes him out to be an increasingly unreliable populist politician who doesn’t care what anybody outside Israel thinks about him.

Part of that attitude, of course, comes from the cover he believes he gets from the even-wilder circus camped out on the shores of the Potomac at the moment, and the absence of anybody in Washington who is interested or capable of keeping him in line.

So here’s an incomplete list of the craziest things Benjamin Netanyahu has said and done so far this summer, in no particular order:

Ban foreign funding of left-wing and human rights NGOs in Israel

Anti-occupation and human rights organizations in Israel have been under attack for years, be it via smear campaigns and incitement or abusive legislation that manipulates existing transparency regulations to paint those organizations as foreign agents. Many of those legislative attempts were restrained in recent years by the Obama Administration, which put considerable pressure on the Israeli government over its anti-NGO legislation.

But all previous iterations of anti-NGO laws pale in comparison to what Netanyahu proposed last month: to ban all funding of Israeli NGOs from sources connected to foreign governments. The majority of human rights groups in Israel receive major parts of their budgets from European countries and even the United States. Banning that funding outright, as Netanyahu is proposing, could shut down — or shrivel down to unrecognizable levels — the entire community of human rights groups in Israel overnight.

Israel’s second execution? The last one was Adolf Eichmann

Adolf Eichmann takes notes during his trial in Jerusalem. (GPO)

Technically the death penalty exists in Israeli law, but only for crimes against humanity and treason during wartime. Practically, there is no death penalty in Israel. Only one person has ever been handed a death sentence in the history of the country — Adolf Eichmann, one of the Nazi masterminds of the Holocaust. A pretty high bar, if there ever was one.

Of course, under Israeli military law, which is the law of the land for the millions of Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank, capital punishment is on the books for far lesser crimes than, say, planning and carrying out the genocide of millions of people. Over the years, a number of populist Israeli politicians have called for the death penalty to be used against Palestinians in the West Bank, usually after particularly gruesome acts of violence. The political leadership, however, usually ignores or shelves such calls until they die down. Not this time.

Following the gruesome murder of three members of an Israeli settler family several weeks ago, Netanyahu unequivocally advocated that Israel carry out its second-ever execution. “[I]f you want to know the government’s position and my position as prime minister –- in a case like this, of a [lowly] murderer like this -– he should be executed,” the prime minister said in a tweet. “He should simply not smile anymore.”

While rarely said explicitly, calls to utilize the death penalty under Israeli military law are almost universally understood to mean a death penalty for Palestinians only. Israeli citizens who live in the West Bank (settlers) are subject to a separate, civilian legal system, which means they face different punishments for the exact same crimes.

Population transfer for Arab citizens of Israel

Finding ways to reduce the number of Palestinians in Israel is far from a revolutionary endeavor. In order to maintain democratic cover for Israel’s self-definition as a Jewish state the country’s Jewish leaders have always approached demographic dominance as a matter of national survival, thereby legitimizing almost any means to achieve it. The same idea led a succession of Israeli leaders, including right-wing hawks like Ariel Sharon, to support the two-state solution.

The idea of getting rid of Israel’s Palestinian-Arab citizens, one in five of all Israelis, is also not that novel in the contemporary Israeli political zeitgeist. Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman has for years advocated redrawing the borders in any two-state solution so that Arab-majority areas such as Wadi Ara become part of a future Palestinian state — not to equitably compensate Palestine for the land usurped by settlements, but rather to rid Israel of the demographic/democratic burden posed by its undesirable, non-Jewish citizens.

Yet while we have heard talk about mass population transfer in the past, hearing it from the Israeli prime minister is a whole different ball game. When the prime minister — who decides the country’s actual policy and positions in negotiations — declares his willingness to disenfranchise and strip the citizenship of hundreds of thousands of Israelis, we have to take it far more seriously than a savvy but ultimately marginal politician like Liberman’s campaign slogan.

A ‘third Nakba’

Speaking of population transfer and crazy things coming out of the Netanyahu camp, it would be remiss to ignore something the prime minister didn’t say. When senior government minister and Netanyahu ally Tzachi Hanegbi threatened the Palestinians with a “third Nakba,” an implicit threat to carry out mass expulsion and ethnic cleansing as a response to Palestinian protests and violence, one might have expected Netanyahu to make a statement.

Hanegbi has been known to be a Netanyahu proxy on a range of other issues, which makes the lack of a public rebuke or rejection all the more troubling. The prime minister’s silence speaks volumes, especially considering his obsession with Palestinian incitement.

The new Jerusalem: Palestinians out, Jews in

A Palestinian man descends into the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina after climbing over the wall from the West Bank village of a-Ram, July 3, 2015. (File photo by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

A recent Netanyahu-endorsed plan to exclude certain Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem (those on the Palestinian side of Israel’s separation wall) from Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries is a bold step toward removing Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents from the city, and the country. Most Palestinian Jerusalemites are not Israeli citizens but rather hold permanent residency, which is easily and regularly revoked. They are stateless. Israel annexed East Jerusalem but not the people who lived there, and now it wants to get rid of the parts of the city that it views as a threat to Jewish political dominance. The plan is part gerrymandering, part micro-two-state solution, and part mini-ethnic cleansing on a municipal level.

The second part of the plan would see those Israeli West Bank settlements that envelop Jerusalem brought into the municipality, which would effectively — although not officially — annex them to the area Israel already annexed after the 1967 war. The purpose of those settlement-suburbs, some of which like Ma’ale Adumim are full-on cities, has always been to stymie the north-south contiguity of any future Palestinian state. Once upon a time the White House would have thrown a fit over a plan like this. These days — nothing.

A hero’s welcome for a guard who killed his landlord

Compounding the tensions in late July between Israel and the entire Arab and Muslim world over changes to Al-Aqsa Mosque’s delicate “status quo” was a bizarre incident at the Israeli Embassy in Amman, which concluded with an even more bizarre media event back in Jerusalem a couple days later. The story, as far as we’ve been told, goes something like this: a Palestinian-Jordanian furniture delivery guy stabbed an Israeli security guard inside the Israeli embassy compound in Amman. The Israeli security guard shot him to death, also killing the owner of the apartment, a Jordanian doctor, in the process.

Israel insisted that because the guard enjoyed full diplomatic immunity, that he did not need to submit to questioning by the Jordanian police. Jordan refused to let him leave the country until he did. After a not-so-secret visit by the head of Israel’s Shin Bet, the Jordanian police were allowed to listen to the guard’s testimony without questioning him, and everyone was allowed to come home. The whole thing lasted about a day.

All was good and well until Netanyahu held an official reception for the guard in Jerusalem, treating him like a national hero released from the captivity of a vicious enemy. There was no mention of an Israeli investigation into what really transpired, not even with regards to the dead landlord, whom nobody has accused of taking part in any violence. Instead, an Israeli who killed his landlord on foreign soil was celebrated by the prime minister without any semblance of remorse for death of an innocent man.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds a media event receiving an Israeli security guard who killed his landlord and an alleged attacker at the Israeli embassy in Amman, in Jerusalem, July 25, 2017. (Haim Zach/GPO)

Only days later, after Jordan publicly rebuked Netanyahu for his disrespect and demanded a proper investigation did the Israeli Foreign Ministry announce that it would look into the shooting. The idea that the Foreign Ministry does not automatically launch a full-blown investigation any time one of its employees kills a foreign national, or more likely that it wasn’t politically expedient to mention that automatic investigation, shows the absurdity of Netanyahu’s behavior. Of course, the entire incident gave Netanyahu brilliant political cover to implicitly suggest that his hand was forced by Jordan to make a concession on Al-Aqsa in order to get the embassy guard back.

Depriving the natives of hope

At the height of the violence and tensions surrounding Al-Aqsa Mosque, shortly after the gruesome murder of three members of the Solomon family in the Halamish settlement, Netanyahu made a reference that probably went unnoticed by most people. Noting the anniversary of the passing of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the man behind the brand of Revisionist Zionism to which Netanyahu subscribes, the prime minister said: “The Cabinet will make an important decision regarding the preservation of [Jabotinsky’s] heritage, one of the principles of which – as is well-known – is ‘The Iron Wall’.”

The Iron Wall is an idea drawn from several essays by Jabotinsky that start with the premise that: “The native populations, civilised or uncivilised, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, irrespective of whether they were civilised or savage.” Because the native population will never accept a Jewish state on its land, there can be no “voluntary” agreement with the Palestinians, and the only way to get them to accept a Jewish presence is to “teach” them that they have no hope of expelling the colonizers. It is a worldview that sees systematic violence as the only means of achieving peace, and even equality.

It was not a message intended to calm what felt like one of the most potentially explosive moments between Israelis and Palestinians in years.

Like almost every other entry in this list, the Iron Wall statement was meant for internal consumption among Netanyahu’s constantly rightward-drifting base of political support. The more vulnerable the prime minister feels, be it from criminal investigations or the fear of looking weak vis-à-vis the Palestinians, the further and further off the deep end he goes, taking positions usually considered off-limits for somebody in any position of authority.

#anti-war

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