Gantz' fairytale: West Bank is 'second best place' to be Arab in Middle East - behind Israel

Middle East Monitor
Wed, 11 Sep 2019 17:05 UTC

© Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images

Benny Gantz, former Israeli military chief of staff and presidential candidate in Tel Aviv on 29 January 2019

Israeli opposition politician Benny Gantz declared yesterday that the occupied West Bank is the "second best place" to be an Arab in the Middle East behind Israel, reported Haaretz.

Speaking at an English-language event in Tel Aviv "attended by several hundred immigrants and visitors", the former military chief and Blue and White (Kahol Lavan) list leader said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu erred in barring US politicians Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar from entering.

According to Gantz, the two congresswomen would then be "seeing with their own eyes" that "the best place to be an Arab in the Middle East is in Israel...and the second best place to be an Arab in the Middle East is the West Bank".

Comment: Only if they were taken on one of Israel's carefully-scripted Birthright sort of tours.

Israel's Birthright study abroad program: Perpetuating Israeli myths while erasing Palestinian life and history

The leading rival to replace Netanyahu as premier also denounced the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, telling the audience that "everybody who cooperates with BDS is operating against the state of Israel", and adding that BDS constitutes "a form of anti-Semitism".

Comment: Of course. Isn't that the point of supporting BDS? Starving out a vicious, murderous regime? Gantz continues by trying to conflate political action against a political entity with bigotry against a religion. Guess Israel really is a theocracy.

Addressing reports of internal tensions within the Blue and White alliance - an amalgamation of three different parties - Gantz reiterated his commitment to respecting the rotation agreement for prime minister with Blue and White's number two, and Yesh Atid leader, Yair Lapid.

Implicitly acknowledging disagreements with colleagues, Gantz argue that Blue and White is in a better place than Likud, in which "Netanyahu has a totalitarian regime in his own party".

Gantz told attendees that his goal is to "form a government of the majority that serves everybody, instead of a government of minorities that take care of one man."

Comment: Everybody who is a Jewish citizen of Israel that is: A look at Israel and the A-word

Ideally, he added, his coalition would include Blue and White, Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu, Likud, and "maybe Labor".

Comment: A bit more from RT on Gantz' delusions:

Former IDF chief and Netanyahu challenger Benny Gantz bragged that Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank are actually better off than their counterparts in Arab countries, echoing apartheid South Africa.

Journalist Ben White pointed out that Gantz was using the exact same arguments that South African politicians used to justify their apartheid regime during the 1980s, as the original Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign became a powerful force against the institutionalized racism of that nation's government. South African blacks, then-PM John Vorster claimed, enjoyed a standard of living "two to five times higher than that of any black country in Africa."

Electronic Intifada dug up a few other recent comparisons between apartheid South Africa and Israel, which emphatically denies it is an apartheid state and claims such comparisons are motivated by anti-Semitism.

Palestinians in the West Bank have seen their territory increasingly riddled with Jewish-only settlements that are illegal under international law and guarded by aggressive and intrusive checkpoints, and have been cut off from their families, farms, and workplaces by a long and winding wall that has claimed the best land in the territory for Israel. Arabs are barred from using the same schools, facilities, and even roads as their Jewish neighbors, who are seldom punished for committing crimes ranging from property damage to assault against what Netanyahu's government has declared second-class citizens.

Gantz presents himself as more moderate than Netanyahu, who has promised to annex the Jordan Valley if elected. However, the former IDF commander launched his campaign with ads boasting of the number of Palestinians killed under his leadership during Israel's 2014 assault on Gaza - and the subsequent "3.5 years of quiet." A Dutch citizen suing him for war crimes allegedly committed during that campaign - including a bombing that killed seven members of his family - will have his case discussed in The Hague next Tuesday - the same day as the Israeli elections.