Did some Israeli intellectual, while jet-setting around the world, and maybe living on the ruins of some Palestinian village, call Israel a “savage, unrepairable society” at an American newspaper?
No longer “villa in the jungle”…the savages have taken over the villa? We’re so sorry, I guess the sweet non-savage people will have to go back to Europe. Israel became “savage and unrepairable”…but at least its not denuded of color, soulless, dead inside and boring. By calling Israel “savage”, this Israeli joins a long pedigree of those who came to Israel from Europe and called the Middle East “primitive” and “savage” and sought to re-fashion it into a modern European state.
But I have an idea of what is really savage in Israel, and that’s the savage attempt of racial segregation carried out by a tiny minority in the name of guarding themselves from the “primitive” people in Israel who they expect to do all the construction and work security and do everything for them while they live behind fences and call everyone “savages”. Civilized enough to build your building, or stand all day guarding your kindergarten, but otherwise “savage”?
Which is more savage? Segregation by the upper classes or some racism among the lower classes? Which is more savage: The turning of millions into second class citizens or some crowds shouting racist slogans at a football game? Which is more unrepairable, the cleansing of 700,000 people and bulldozing of 1,000 mosques, or the price tagging of a mosque? Which is more primitive, the lining up of people at Kfar Kassem to massacre them when they were on the way home from work, or the killing of Mohammed Abu Khdeir? Which is more savage, the placing of an entire minority under military government and calling it “egalitarian”, or the “nation-state” law?
Let’s really remove the face of who are the savages? Those called savage in Israel are probably the least savage, when one considers the real savagery is the institutionalized racism that turns one against the other, that creates segregation from year 0.
If it’s a savage society, it’s because of the way it was set up, by those who called themselves European, progressive and modern. When I drive around Israel I see a savage landscape of ruined villages, or segregation, of “development towns” of each community for each group. But that’s called “civilized”; whereas the savagery, they tell me, is over the green line, it’s the crowds of racists, the brutal parts of society. And while I agree, those things must be stopped, I don’t think the real savage unrepairable damage will be addressed.
So when you think Israel is “savage”…ask, really, where the savagery came from? Who are the puppet-masters who pulls the strings and then shout “savage! savage!”
Seth J. Frantzman - author - analyst 