When reality becomes hate speech: President of EU Parliament visits Israel
http://972mag.com/when-reality-becomes-hate-speech-president-of-eu-parliament-visits-israel/87169/
During his visit to Israel, President Schulz did just about everything to ingratiate himself with his right-wing hosts, tirelessly reiterating his commitment to the country and promising that a boycott of Israel will never take place. Yet he did make the mistake of mentioning the occupation on the Knesset floor, referring to the fact that Palestinians in the West Bank don’t have the same access to water as Israelis. Schulz was immediately accused of expressing anti-Israeli bias, hate speech, anti-Semitism and just about every imaginable type of crime against the Jewish people. Prime Minister Netanyahu was slightly more nuanced than his coalition partners, stating, “the chairman, like many Europeans suffers from selective hearing.”
The Israeli right was quick to come up with talking points blaming Schulz for his faulty data – it turns out that the gap between Israeli and Palestinian water consumption is smaller than he stated – and the usual political drama followed, with the European official trying in vain to prove that he is pro-Israeli enough. Yet nobody actually denies that Palestinians get less water than Israelis (and less than what the World Health Organization recommends); that Israel is using the West Bank’s main water aquifer for its own needs; that illegal settlements are connected to the Israeli water grid while Palestinians who live nearby need to buy their water in tanks at much higher prices; and that Palestinians get arrested if they try to “illegally” connect to the Israeli grid. These issues are not argued about in the local political discourse; they are facts.
The problem for the Israeli government and its supporters abroad is that reality in the West Bank is biased, so the political war is now aimed at calling things out for what they are. It’s almost impossible to get official Israelis speakers to talk about reality these days. If you do point out some of the most gruesome features of reality, you are accused of leaving out “context” – at best – and at worst, you are a self-hating Jew, traitor or anti-Semite (depending on your ethnicity or nationality). In this debate, reality itself becomes hate-speech.
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This is why my advice to most visitors in Israel/Palestine is to drive to the West Bank and simply trust their own eyes and ears. Don’t talk to Israelis – don’t even talk to Palestinians – just have a look around and try to make sense of what you see. In the end, I must believe that reality will prevail.