For young Palestinians, Nakba Day is dedicated to remembering the catastrophes that our grandparents went through. But with every passing year, we realize how much the day belongs to our catastrophes too.

My maternal grandfather was born in 1929. Although Alzheimer’s disease eroded his memory during the later years of his life, he had a surprising knack for recalling his experiences growing up in Haifa under the British mandate of Palestine. He described the open plains he crossed with friends to swim at the beach; the diplomats and missionaries who traveled through Haifa’s German Colony; and the port and railway that linked Palestine to other Arab cities and the Mediterranean region. Although he couldn’t remember that he had repeated these stories countless times before, I never grew tired of hearing them; they breathed life into a world I could only read about in books and gaze at through black-and-white photographs.

Like all Palestinians of his generation, my grandfather lost that world in 1948. At the time he was living in Tira and studying at a British school in Tulkarem, but when the war broke out he joined a local resistance group to fend off Zionist forces from the village. The armistice agreement made Tulkarem part of the Jordanian-ruled West Bank, while my grandfather was made an Israeli citizen in Tira. For 18 years he lived under Israeli military rule, watching the village’s lands being confiscated and used to build new Jewish settlements. When he wanted to leave the village, he had to get a permit. When he wanted to walk to a neighboring field, he had to be searched at a checkpoint.

Military rule ended in 1966, and my grandfather – by then a historian and a teacher – was able to explore the land again. But the country he remembered had changed. Hundreds of villages and their inhabitants had disappeared. The main road going up Haifa’s Carmel mountain was no longer known by the Arabic “Shere’ al-Jabal” but by its new Hebrew name “Derech Hatziyonut.” When Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza the following year, the soldiers who once guarded the entrance of Tira were now stationed near his old school in Tulkarem. The occupation was both a gift and a curse: it allowed my grandfather to reconnect with his Palestinian brethren, but at the cost of their subjugation under the same regime he had endured.

For young...

An anti-torture law currently being drafted by the Justice Ministry is not enough to fix an entire legal system that allows the practice to be used against an occupied population.

During its review session at the UN Committee Against Torture in Geneva on Wednesday, Israel’s representatives informed the committee that the Justice Ministry is drafting a bill that, for the first time, would explicitly enshrine torture as a crime under Israeli law. This appears to be a very positive development in a years-long battle to end Israel’s use of torture, championed by torture victims, human rights groups, and UN bodies.

Past experience, however, warns us not to be optimistic about this news. Israel ratified the Convention Against Torture in 1991, and many Israelis argue that the country’s domestic legal system already offers safeguards that ban torture – with some exceptions. A 1999 Supreme Court ruling supposedly regulated the practice, but the ruling actually provides loopholes for security agencies to employ torture methods under vaguely defined circumstances. Contrary to the wanton actions taken by sadistic regimes like in Syria, torture in Israel (both psychological and physical) is often carried out in a highly controlled and methodical manner, sugar-coated by terms like “moderate physical pressure” and justified by “necessity” and cases of “ticking bombs.”

Along with the court’s ruling, Israel has an array of legal and administrative tools that enable the use of torture. For example, a temporary order which has been repeatedly renewed since 2002 exempts the Shin Bet from making any kind of recordings during interrogations of “security” suspects; in other words, the security service has a carte blanche to torture detainees with no evidence to hold them to account. Knesset members have introduced further legislation, like the Anti-Terrorism Bill, which would enshrine various emergency regulations into official law and, by broadening the definition of what constitutes a “terrorist,” would grant the state more draconian powers. All the while, not a single criminal investigation has been opened into the use of torture by Israeli officers and interrogators, despite over 850 complaints filed since 2001.

So why, after 25 years of ignoring its obligation under the torture convention, is the Justice Ministry finally initiating an anti-torture law? Several factors are at play, but a major one has to do with recent domestic developments. Last December, Israel’s right wing was outraged by reports that the Jewish citizens...

Abu Saleh, a 73-year-old farmer, speaks with a raspy but strong voice as he points to his crops. “Everything you see around you is food grown from my own land. These carrots, this zucchini, these olives…they are all part of my survival.” He lifts his head, his voice starting to shake with anger. “Now they want to tear down my home and remove me from my livelihood. They want to rip my heart from my land – just to put the heart of someone else.”

Abu Saleh is a resident of Ramiya, an Arab community of 50 families nestled within the Jewish city of Karmiel in northern Israel. The vast majority of visitors to Karmiel will never know that Ramiya exists at all: it is hidden behind a wall of clustered bushes, making it easily mistakable for forestation that was waiting to be cleared. From the main road, the only sign of the village’s existence is a wooden shack with a banner reading “Remaining in Ramiya” in Arabic and Hebrew next to an image of the Palestinian cartoon Handala stopping a bulldozer in its tracks.

Ramiya, which has been continuously populated since the Ottoman Empire, once encompassed nearly 600 dunams, or 150 acres, of agricultural land. But in 1976, the Israeli government seized most of the village’s property along with those of many other Arab villages across the Galilee. On March 30th of that year, thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel protested the sweeping confiscations in what became the first “Land Day,” a day of protest and commemoration marked every year since. The 1976 demonstrations, some of which were held not far from Ramiya, were brutally suppressed by Israeli police, who killed six Palestinian protesters and wounded scores more.

The confiscated land was used to build hundreds of new Jewish towns and cities in line with a national development plan called “the Judaization” of northern Israel. Karmiel, the city that surrounds Ramiya today, was established on land belonging to several Palestinian villages, including Ramiya. Today luxury apartments belonging to wealthy Jewish Israelis cover the area, with construction sites nearby breaking ground in preparation to build even more. “Israelis forget that we were not dropped onto Karmiel,” says Abu Saleh. “Karmiel was dropped onto us.”

For years the Karmiel Municipality has pressured its Palestinian residents to yield the remainder of their property and to relocate to another area...

Regardless of one’s views of BDS, it is ridiculous that one should have to tell self-proclaimed ‘democracies’ that the right to boycott is a basic civil right, not a punishable crime. 

Last week, over 120 people attended a conference in Nazareth on the subject of “BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) and ‘48 Palestinians (citizens living inside Israel’s 1948 borders).” Although the discussions were lively, many participants were cautious with their choice of words: Israel’s Anti-Boycott Law – which allows groups and citizens to be sued for calling for a boycott of Israeli institutions, including settlements – cast a heavy shadow over the event.

The anxiety of discussing the subject of boycott would have seemed an implausible scenario a decade ago. Boycotts, we always learned, are a legitimate method of political expression, praised in our history books and modern politics as an example of how nonviolence can be more powerful, moral, and strategic in advancing human rights struggles around the world.

Now, in a corrupt twist, the very countries that purport to uphold civil rights have become the main forces undermining them. In recent months (and years), governments and local authorities in the USA, France, the UK, and others have advanced new laws, administrative decisions, and behind-the-scenes pressures to stem the rising tide of BDS activities – simply because they are being applied against Israel. This transnational counter-movement, as Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Fishman recently detailed in the Intercept, is part of a “very coordinated and well-financed campaign” to censor BDS – and “it is succeeding.”

The political backlash to BDS was always expected; similar attacks by state authorities had targeted the boycott movements in the Jim Crow south and against apartheid South Africa. What is shocking, however, is not only the extent to which authorities are working to crush today’s BDS movement, but the use of legal measures to restrict or fully silence boycott activities against Israel. These include criminal convictions of BDS activists in France; the threat of penalties against local councils in the UK that boycott Israeli goods; and new regulations that will fully incorporate West Bank settlements into the US’s trade with Israel, among others.

The authorities’ manipulation of legal tactics against BDS has severely compromised citizens’ rights. When the Israeli Supreme Court upheld the Anti-Boycott Law last year in a 5-4 ruling, the majority of justices departed from technical arguments and Read More

The government’s latest attempts to oust Balad from the Knesset are part of an intensifying campaign against Arab political movements, regardless of their different stripes.

Three months ago, when the Israeli government outlawed the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, Palestinian citizens of Israel feared that they were witnessing the beginning of an intensified campaign against Arab political groups. Many suspected at the time that the government’s next target would be the Balad party, the nationalist faction of the Joint List, which has been in the crosshairs of consecutive Israeli governments since the 1990s.

Those suspicions were confirmed last week when the Knesset Ethics Committee banned all three of Balad’s Knesset members from attending parliamentary sessions for 2 to 4 months (they can still vote on legislation). The unusual decision was made after the MKs met with families of Palestinians from Jerusalem who had killed or attacked Israelis in recent months. Israeli authorities are refusing to release the attackers’ bodies, and the families were seeking help in arranging their return for burial.

Palestinian citizens of Israel had mixed views of the Balad MKs’ meeting with the attackers’ families. Many argued that the MKs were fulfilling their parliamentary roles in a humanitarian case, particularly one in which families were being collectively punished. Others argued that the MKs should have been more mindful of the scrutiny they were under, particularly regarding an issue most Israelis saw as morally and politically abhorrent.

Despite these debates, Palestinian citizens were nonetheless startled by how Jewish politicians spun the MKs’ meeting to justify the Knesset suspension. The media, and most Israelis, took little interest in the meeting’s purpose, and instead focused on a “minute of silence” in which the MKs stood for the recital of the fatiha (the Quran’s opening verse), as is customary at gatherings for deceased persons. The political storm framed the incident as an endorsement of violence on the part of the Balad MKs. Also not lost on Palestinian citizens was the government’s clear double standard: punishment was being vetted out against Arab MKs for meeting with families of “terrorists,” while Jewish MKs who did the same were condoned.

The Ethics Committee’s decision, however, was just the beginning: the prime minister himself ordered that a new law be drafted to drastically expand the Knesset’s powers to remove representatives from the parliament. The new amendment would allow a...

Two taxi rides gave a small glimpse into some of the daily realities of Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents — ordinary people forced to live in unordinary circumstances.

“These houses were once neighbors,” says Naseem, a Palestinian taxi driver, as we drive through the neighborhood of Beit Hanina in East Jerusalem. He points to the separation wall to our right, jammed between homes that were mere meters away from each other. “These people are even from the same families. Now they have to walk or drive around the wall and through a checkpoint, just so they can visit one another.”

Naseem, who is in his early 50’s, speaks with a soft voice and a relaxed demeanor as he drives me from Jerusalem’s central bus station to Ramallah. I would normally use the regular public buses, but an attack on Qalandiya checkpoint just a few days before has me wary of running into trouble or going through more tedious security checks.

I give Naseem the name of the street where my meeting was located, but he has never heard of it. I call my colleague in Ramallah to ask for directions, she tells us the hotel nearest to the building. “Ah of course!” laughs Naseem. Palestinians generally don’t navigate their towns by street names (if they had any); instead we ask for the closest neighborhoods, landmarks, or family homes. “These street names in Ramallah are all new,” he says. “They name them after this country or that donor or that historical person. I don’t know if anyone even uses them to get around.”

Naseem lives in the Old City of Jerusalem with his wife and six children. His family is poor, and with a high rent and daily expenses, he says it is hard to make ends meet. He doesn’t mind his job – “I like having a simple life,” he says – so long as he can support his kids and help them enter higher professions. His eldest daughter just began her pharmacy studies at university.

I ask Naseem how life has been for him in the city during the past few months. Since October, Jerusalem has been the epicenter of violence both from Palestinian knife and car attacks against Israelis, and from the Israeli security forces’ crackdowns and closures on Palestinian residents and neighborhoods. Naseem gives me the same answer I always hear from Palestinians in the city: “Hiya se’ib (it’s...

Israel’s housing system is not ‘failing’ its Palestinian citizens. It is working exactly as it was intended: to minimize Arab lands in order to maximize Jewish communities.

Half an hour north of Tel Aviv stand several hills offering a natural panoramic view of the bustling Arab towns of Taibeh and Tira, their congested neighborhoods, and their narrow roads and alleys. Surrounding the towns are the smaller and orderly Jewish villages and farming communities of Sha’ar Efraim, Sde Warburg, Ramat Hakovesh, and others. The hilltops used to be empty; now they are home to high-rise apartments of the new Jewish town of Tzur Yitzhak, along with Tzur Natan, Kokhav Yair and Tzur Yigal.

The view from those hills encapsulates Israel’s land policy toward the Palestinian communities in the state that survived after 1948. Although Taibeh and Tira are among the largest localities in the area (about 40,000 and 24,000 residents respectively), they are physically constrained by the sparse Jewish communities around them, whose populations are at most in the few hundreds or thousands. Many of the surrounding lands once belonged to Palestinians but were transferred to Jewish owners during the state’s formative years. The roads and highways around Taibeh and Tira further serve as barriers that prevent the towns from expanding.

This man-made landscape is not only the result of decades-old policies – it is an active process that continues to this day. Just last week, Israeli authorities demolished a home near Taibeh that belonged to a family of 11, which was built without a construction permit on land that was zoned for agricultural use. The Israeli tractors were accompanied by masked police forces that used stun grenades and “skunk” water to disperse and arrest protesting residents.

The following day, Haaretz reported that the attorney general approved recommendations to “increase enforcement of planning and construction laws,” which includes carrying out demolitions against illegal buildings and issuing fines against their inhabitants. Members of the Palestinian leadership in Israel connected these developments to Netanyahu’s call to enhance law enforcement in the Palestinian sector, a message he championed after last month’s shooting in Tel Aviv. The new plan amounts to harassment of the Palestinian community, the Palestinian leadership maintains.

Israeli authorities claim the demolitions are about applying the rule of law, saying that thousands of Palestinian citizens are refusing to follow planning procedures and abide by their local and regional...

The government is exploiting the shooting attack in Tel Aviv to disguise discriminatory policies against Palestinian citizens as an effort to bring the rule of law to an ‘unruly’ society.

Prime Minister Netanyahu directed a range of comments at Israel’s Palestinian community Saturday night, speaking at the scene of a deadly shooting attack in Tel Aviv. A day earlier, a Palestinian citizen from northern Israel opened fire at a bar, killing two and wounding eight.

Netanyahu denounced what he called “lawless enclaves” in the Arab sector; condemned the “wild incitement of radical Islam”; encouraged Arab integration through the IDF; and declared that police presence will ramp up in Palestinian towns and villages. “Whoever wants to be Israeli must be Israeli all the way,” he said, adding that he “will not accept two states within Israel.”

Netanyahu’s comments have been widely criticized as amounting to racist incitement, with commentators accusing the prime minister of blaming the Palestinian community in Israel for the actions of a man with a personal history of crime and mental health problems. Local and national Palestinian leaders in Israel publicly condemned the attack in Tel Aviv, while some Jewish politicians joined in blasting Netanyahu for “lashing out” at Palestinian citizens.

There is, however, another concerning element of Netanyahu’s comments that is not being given enough scrutiny: his call to increase law enforcement in the Palestinian communities in Israel.

On the surface, it would seem that this measure is actually a positive move. Not only do Palestinian communities face high levels of crime and violence, but Palestinian citizens themselves have long demanded that police become more involved in addressing these problems, with many initiatives for trust-building and cooperation being pursued by local Palestinian leaders, civil society groups, and certain police branches.

Netanyahu’s “solution” in the wake of the Tel Aviv attack, however, is deliberately misleading. As Palestinian citizens have long criticized, Israeli law enforcement authorities have historically taken little interest in the Arab sector unless they related to security matters, excessively belligerent mob activities, or political and anti-war demonstrations.

The reason for this, as the Abraham Fund’s Co-Director Thabet Abu Rass told +972 Magazine in October, is that the Israeli police “are not operating as a civic service for the [Arab] community, but as a security-oriented institution for the state.” This is reflected in Israel’s...

University students from Tira are proving they can be a force for change in the Palestinian community in Israel. The key: taking the fate of their hometown’s youth into their own hands.

Three weeks ago, the building of the municipality of Tira, a Palestinian Arab town in the Muthalath (“Triangle”) area of Israel, was bustling with over two hundred people gathering in its auditorium.

Five speakers took the stage and delivered captivating talks on five different topics, all of which were nothing short of inspiring. Fadi Matar, the 24-year-old founder of the organization behind the event, described the process of making it happen in a community not used to such initiatives. A professor and scientist then spoke about how his own experience could be an example for youths to build a successful and fulfilling career. An activist made the case for why youths should visit Palestinian villages destroyed and depopulated during the Nakba. A fashion designer showcased how to create modern women’s clothing out of their grandmothers’ traditional Palestinian gowns. And a man told the story of how he channeled difficult moments in his life into a passion for Arabic calligraphy.

The “Tira Talks” were organized by the Academiyu al-Tira (“the students/educated of Tira”), a local collective of Arab university and college students from the town. Inspired by the TED talks format, the Academiyu initiated the event as a creative way to invigorate new social interests and ideas among the town’s residents.

“We wanted to give members of our community a stage to speak about their lives, experiences, and special pursuits,” said one of the organizers. “We want our town to know the diverse kinds of people we have in our midst.”

Tira, a largely conservative Muslim town, has for years garnered a negative image among both Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel as a place of crime, reckless driving, and gun violence – problems that indeed affect the town to this day. However, local initiatives like the Academiyu are showing that there is much more to the town than these stereotypes, with many even seeing their work as playing an important role in countering Tira’s social troubles.

+972 Magazine spoke with two members of the Academiyu: Mais Jondia, 21, an accounting student at Tel Aviv University; and Aseel Bishara, 21, a medical student at Ben-Gurion University. The two spoke about the beginnings and purpose of the collective and...

Despite their difficult circumstances, Palestinians in Bethlehem find ways to remind the world that Israel’s occupation cannot exist forever.

The organizers of the Palestine Marathon, held annually in the West Bank city of Bethlehem since 2013, recently announced that its next run will take place on Friday 1st April, 2016.

The event – one my most memorable highlights of 2015 – is a thrilling experience. The thousands that gathered in Manger Square, where the run kicks off, included Muslim and Christian Palestinians, internationals from dozens of foreign countries, and even some Israeli Jews. Some came to support the marathon’s motto of “the right to movement;” some just came for the exercise. A few joked that they were practicing running away from soldiers for the next time they went to a demonstration.

As the runners passed through the streets, we were watched by children cheering and waving Palestinian flags from their windows, with the occasional men teasing from the sidewalks: “Forget this crap habibi, yalla come have coffee with us!” Among the crowds were groups wearing T-shirts promoting various causes, while artists walked by showcasing their work. This year one artist, Rana Bishara, carried a large wooden cross covered with empty tear gas shells used by the Israeli security forces.

The most notable feature of the Palestine Marathon, however, is the route itself. Starting from the Church of the Nativity (said to be the site of Jesus Christ’s birth), runners are taken through the streets of the city and into the Aida and Dheisheh refugee camps – the entrance to the former marked by an arch with a giant key representing the Palestinian right of return. The route then goes along Israel’s separation wall, where runners witness firsthand the concrete barrier enclosing the town, the security towers and cameras leering down at them, and the graffiti displaying political images and defiant slogans.

Bethlehem is in many ways an exceptional place in the West Bank due to the mix of its religious significance, cultural vibrancy, international presence, and relative autonomy as an urban center in the PA-governed Area A. But even with its stature, the historic city cannot escape the fate of the other Palestinian communities in the West Bank.

Friday marked the 49th Christmas which Bethlehem has celebrated under Israeli military occupation. While thousands gathered around the massive lighted tree in Manger Square to the sounds...

Ayman Odeh’s visit to the U.S. demonstrates that the Joint List needs to take a more central role in the global discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Ayman Odeh’s recent visit to the United States garnered much attention among American audiences. But back home, within his own community, the scant attention given to his visit was mostly critical. Various circles among Palestinian citizens of Israel had characterized Odeh’s visit as a politically futile and undermining exercise, while others made personal attacks claiming that he did not represent Palestinian public opinion and was only doing it for self-promotion.

Some of these criticisms were understandable, primarily because Odeh has garnered an international persona which has not yet been granted to him domestically. Contrary to how Foreign Policy magazine portrayed him in its list of 100 Global Thinkers, Odeh was not the architect of the Joint List. In the face of a raised electoral threshold, the Joint List was formed (and is arduously maintained) by a collective effort of parliamentary representatives, organizational members of the four different parties, civil society figures and activists, and of course, the Palestinian public that voted for them. As Jackie Khoury rightly wrote in Haaretz, “Foreign Policy magazine would have been more accurate if it had awarded the honor to the list headed by Ayman, rather than to Ayman.”

However, despite these criticisms, Odeh’s visit to the U.S. was arguably one of his most important acts since entering the Knesset this year. In the span of the last two weeks, Odeh managed to do what the Palestinian leadership in Israel failed to achieve in years: raising his community’s experiences and aspirations onto the international stage, and specifically the American political arena, in a highly visible and influential manner.

This was partly due to Odeh’s communication style and his passionate articulation of building a shared future and ending the occupation, which received a warm reception from left-wing American audiences. But this success was also due in large part to the platform of his Joint List, the self-proclaimed “democratic camp” of Israel’s political spectrum.

In fact, more than anything, Odeh’s visit revealed the need for the Joint List to conduct much more strident advocacy abroad. As American discussions on Israel and Palestine slowly open up to more divergent opinions, particularly within the American Jewish community, the Joint List...

Did a Palestinian activist see justice only because the soldier who shot him was an Arab?

In a rare piece of positive news, Haaretz reported Saturday that the Jerusalem Magistrates’ Court decided that 155,000 shekels ($40,200) should be paid in compensation to Rateb Abu Rahmeh, a Palestinian activist and university lecturer from the West Bank village of Bil’in.

The decision was made after Abu Rahmeh filed a lawsuit against a Border Policeman who, in 2005, shot him in the leg with a sponge-tipped bullet during a weekly demonstration in Bil’in. The court found that the policeman had given a false account of the events when he claimed that Abu Rahmeh threw stones during the demonstration; a video of the incident showed that the protesters “were not unruly,” and that the officer fired the bullet while his unit used stun grenades to disperse the demonstration.

The officer was sentenced to seven months in prison (reduced to six months community service), and the judge ruled that he — rather than the state or the security forces unit — was personally liable for the compensation payment.

The case marks a modicum of justice for Rateb Abu Rahmeh. Although it has been 10 years since the incident, the fact that the court acknowledged the truth of the shooting, and ruled that monetary compensation should be paid, is a rare accomplishment for any Palestinian demanding accountability for abuses committed by members of the Israeli security forces.

However, there is one detail that doesn’t sit quite right: the Border Policeman was Arab.

The oddity is not that there are Arabs serving in the Israeli forces; Druze and Bedouin citizens have long served in the military and Border Police units — the former being conscripted and the latter being encouraged to volunteer. What is strange is that out of the countless violent incidents that occur every year (let alone every week) in the occupied territories, one of the few to actually result in an admittance of guilt by the authorities (with a decision to provide compensation for an offense) is a case where the perpetrator was Arab and not Jewish.

This statement may very well be invoking an assumption without hard evidence. But Israel’s track record when it comes to accountability — even when extensive and undisputed evidence is available — leaves nothing but suspicion any time a...

Using the Emergency Regulations to outlaw Palestinian political movements is a preview of what’s coming.

In June 1951, member of Knesset and future prime minister Menachem Begin participated in a meeting of the Knesset’s Constitutional, Law, and Justice Committee on whether Israel should adopt administrative detentions as a legitimate security practice. During the discussions, Begin gave a scathing criticism of the Emergency Regulations of 1945, the British law that permitted detentions without charges or trial during its colonial administration of Mandate Palestine:

Despite Begin’s criticisms in the forum, the Knesset decided to keep the Emergency Regulations as a part of Israel’s legal system, under the pretext that the newly-formed country was still in a state of war and should therefore hold on to the extensive security powers that the law provided.

As Begin predicted, the law was routinely used for non-security purposes, though perhaps not as he had conceived. During Israel’s formative years, the law was one of the key mechanisms that allowed the state to impose military rule on its Palestinian citizens until 1966; seize Palestinian lands and properties under the guise of “military necessity;” and prevent Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons from returning to the homes they lost during the 1948 war. After the beginning of the 1967 occupation, Israel expanded the Emergency Regulations into the West Bank and Gaza Strip, making it the legal basis for the military rule we see today. Israel’s Supreme Court, far from questioning the law’s existence, continually upheld its legitimacy and the military occupation that derived from it.

Begin, though renowned as a hawk and a nationalist, had both personal and political reasons for opposing the Emergency Regulations. During the British Mandate in Palestine, the law granted Britain extensive military powers as a means to suppress local Arab resistance and Zionist insurgents fighting against foreign rule. Begin and his underground militia, the Irgun, were among the primary targets of the ensuing crackdown. Having experienced the brutal power of the law — and believing it to be a severe threat to the freedoms of Israel’s citizens — Begin asserted that “this law is bad from its very foundation and…does not become good because it is practiced by Jews.”

It seems Begin’s warnings were not only ignored by the Knesset committee in 1951, but also by the leaders of his own Likud party decades later. Two weeks ago, Defense Minister...