Photo: Flickr / tony709

New Israel Fund’s Executive Director in Israel Rachel Liel in Haaretz:

In the history classes of our school days, when our teachers taught us about modern Jewish settlement in Israel, they recounted that Arab rioters setting out to wreak havoc among Jews in pre-State days used to work themselves up with the cry A-dawlah maana! — meaning “The state is with us.” The authorities (back then, the British) are turning a blind eye to us, so we can do whatever we please. No harm will come to us. Why? A-dawla maana.

Now, new rioters have sprung up here. Jews this time. [...] Last week they threw firebombs at a Palestinian taxi and just a few days later we saw a lynching. In the heart of Jerusalem, a gang of Jewish youth pounced on a few Arab youth and thrashed them. They almost killed one of their victims. The only crime of those they targeted, and of those in the taxi that was firebombed, was simply that they were not Jewish. [...]

This entire evil horde has one common denominator, distinct and prominent: the carefree, comfortable belief that the government is with them. That the regime is on their side. That with the legal authorities and their enforcement arms turning a blind eye, they can give free rein to their impulses. Because a-dawlah maana.

Liel also asks, given how the Knesset acts at time, protecting price taggers, and/or egging them on, “is it any wonder that all the pogromists feel like patriots?” This is an example of the effects of the occupation bleeding into Israel proper (the kind of thing Breaking the Silence talks about), and is one of the main crises facing Israel today.