He writes:
The storm that was unleashed by Amira Hass’ important opinion piece, “The inner syntax of Palestinian stone-throwing," was a welcome one...[the piece] contains not incitement to murder, but rather a straight-on, fair and courageous apprehension of the Palestinian liberation struggle that is absent from the Israeli dialogue...
...the act of taking up the stone is justified only as an inevitable refuge...Generations of Jews read this text [of the Pesach Haggada story] in awe and wonder, telling it to their children. But they are not willing to apply the same basic rule − the same internal justice, according to which resistance, including violent resistance, is the birthright and duty of every vanquished nation, as Hass wrote...
...Who wants to see children killed by rocks, citizens torn apart by an improvised explosive device, or teenagers who have been shot? But resistance to violence must be direct, comprehensive and fair. It must include the resistance to the occupier’s violence...
...A stone can indeed be lethal. So can a rubber-tipped bullet, a tear gas grenade, live fire, bombs and shells. The fact that these latter weapons are used by Israel does not dull their violence. The claim that Israel uses them solely for self-defense is just as ridiculous as the claim, also voiced in the heat of emotion, that Israel is the victim of this entire bloody story...Such is the way of self-righteousness, distorted morals and lies, elements of the inner syntax of the Hass storm.
And that was the distorted version of Israel's reality brought to you by Gideon Levy.
When the term "liberation" was first connected to the idea that there are an Arab people who need be free, in 1964 (and prior even), those very Arabs were occupying Judea, Samaria and Gaza. It was Israel they intended - and intend - to liberate. They even have a Christian spin in addition to fundamentalist Islamic ideology.
Most Arabs calling themselves "Palestinians" still hold to that goal - the eradication of Israel. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, much of Fatah and all the so-called "refugees". The liberation concept has been studied, and as one researcher notes:
...it is possible to categorize Palestinian resistance as a revolutionar movement since its ultimate aim is to supplant Zionist values and institutions with values...designed to assure Arab dominance...
Another academic research team has presented that element so:
...we showed that the conventional wisdom that the two sides are locked in an endless cycle of violence, where actions by one side are always followed by retaliations from the other, followed by counter-retaliations ad infinitum, does not appropriately capture the dynamics of the conflict. Rather, Israel responds in a predictable and systematic way to Palestinian violence, while the Palestinians’ actions do not seem to be related to past levels of Israeli violence, either through revenge, deterrence or incapacitation. In that analysis, we treated the Palestinians as a unified entity, but to understand the dynamics of the relationship better, it may be necessary to take into account that a number of different Palestinian factions engage in violence against Israel, and that these factions may have different organizational structures and long-term objectives...
Gideon, that is the violence in its essence and nature since that is the primary idea: a doing-away.
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