Patrick Lawrence: Against Chutzpah

“Israel proposes to live and act in the community of nations, I mean to say, not according to law or what we know as morality or common forms of decency but according to what amounts to a biblically authorized project of subjugation and domination in the name of a righteous presumption of superiority.” From Patrick Lawrence at scheerpost.com:

I have been reading a lot these past days about how the Israelis treated those they detained when they illegally boarded the vessels that comprised the now-famous aid flotilla that never made it to Gaza’s shores. The Irish — naturally, given their bitter familiarity with imperial aggressions — gave fulsome accounts of the gratuitous brutality they endured while in Ktzi’ot Prison. Barry Heneghan, a member of the Dáil, the lower house of the Irish legislature, reported afterward that he was “treated like an animal.” Liam Cunningham and Tadhg Hickey, actors and activists, described how they were kicked, spat upon, slapped, zip-tied and left in the beating Negev Desert sun.

Nothing comes close to the account of her detention Greta Thunberg gave on Oct. 15 to Lisa Röstlund, a reporter for Aftonbladet, a Stockholm daily. This comes to me via Caitlin Johnstone, that Australian force of nature, who published machine-translated extracts in her newsletter the same day Röstlund’s interview with the courageous Swedish activist came out. I had already read of the dehydration, the purposely foul prison food, the bedbugs, the refusal of medical care. Now Thunberg gives the world a long list of “monstrous abuses” —  Johnstone’s summarizing phrase — that is beyond infra dig. 

Dragged by her hair, incessantly punched and kicked, stripped naked, wrapped in an Israeli flag, sexually humiliated in her own language (lilla hora, “little whore;” hora Greta, “Greta whore”), threatened with gassing (revealing detail, this), uniformed guards all the while taking “selfie” photographs as they stand next to her laughing and jeering: What is this about, what the purpose here?  

“They’re like five-year-olds!” Thunberg exclaimed to Röstlund as she recounted all this. No, that’s not it, Greta. They’re like Zionists. 

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