"Israel and its collaborators from right-wing organizations have drummed it into the public that all Palestinian resistance is terrorism and every means of resistance is an illegitimate, actually antisemitic, weapon. It's not just bombs and rocks that constitute terror, but also diplomacy and popular protests, lawsuits in international courts, agriculture, hooking up a water line, building a tent, expanding a school, adding a balcony, speeches and mere words."
Opinion | The Oslo Accords Are Alive and Well and Perpetuating the Israeli Occupation, Haaretz
Fantastic quote except that it's not just right wingers. All Israelis and all Zionists talk this way. And so do nearly all Orthodox Jews. Why? Because that's what they were taught as kids, so it must be true. They never question it. The assumption is built in part on notions of Jewish superiority in all matters. But it's not just an assumption of superiority, it's absolutism. We are good; they are bad. It's self-worship. Nationalism allows for that. Nationalism, as Yaakov Shapiro explains, was a European invention that first replaced the Pope with the King and then the King with the people. We don't obey a religious figure anymore. We rule. Identity went from being a Catholic to being a Frenchman, which is laden with all kinds of mythology. It's all a kind of self-worship. So while the Tanach talks about how low Jews can go, Zionism uses the Tanach to say the opposite, that we are always wonderful. Even after a two-year onslaught in Gaza, we still are wonderful. Evidence doesn't matter. Facts don't matter. Even reports from soldiers don't matter. We are always right, always good, no matter what. The notion is taken as a kind of religious faith. So what nationalism did to Europeans - secularize them - Zionism has done to us. We now worship ourselves. We are infallible. Or so we think.
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