Stop Living in Denial, Israel Is an Evil State (Gideon Levy)

[shira]

22. HOWARD EPSTEIN – THE BANALITY OF THE EVIL PEN OF GIDEON LEVY

...In the July 31, 2016, edition of Haaretz, he wrote a piece entitled: Stop Living In Denial, Israel Is An Evil State. Let us examine from whom the evil emanates: The State of Israel or the state of mind of Levy.

“An Evil State.” These are powerful words to use about any country. One might safely apply them to North Korea, for example, where all but party members live and work in slavery, penury, hunger and darkness. Even those at the top of the political class can fall foul of the tubby tyrant, and find themselves being eaten alive by dogs.....Come on. Admit it. North Korea is an evil country, if ever we saw one.

On the other hand, one might with full justification refer to Iran as evil, given that it has been the greatest exporter of terrorism for the longest continuous period of time, in the light of the novelty of the Da’esh phenomenon, and the disappearance of utterly-unlamented Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. Iran, you will remember, breaks records with its rate of execution by hanging – not skilfully, but from the jibs of cranes, so that you need to read the Amnesty International website before and not after meals. The sorts of offenses that could see you strung up in Iran, such that one moment you are alive and kicking and the next kicking on your way to a slow and painful (and public) death, include being out-and-about-while-being-Sunni (Iran, you will recall is a piece of Shiite real estate), a homosexual, a juvenile delinquent (by the standards of the Ayatollocracy, at any rate), a listener to foreign broadcasts and other universally-acknowledged abhorrent crimes. (On August 5, 2016, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein , in a break from customary UNHCR Israel-bashing, condemned Iran for: “the application of overly broad and vague criminal charges, coupled with a disdain for the rights of the accused to due process and a fair trial [that had] led to a grave injustice”.) Evil-ish, at least, would you not say?

On the other hand, in Saudi Arabia you could be publicly beheaded in a town square for being Shia, a prostitute or an adulterer. Evil, pure and simple, no?

In Turkey, you might, whilst being an unapproved journalist, or a callow army conscript sent out of a Friday evening to stand guard on a bridge in Istanbul and for that condemned as a revolutionary traitor, survive, but you would then probably have to live (as it were) in prison until the new Sultan (Erdoghan) sees fit to release you – or not, until the day you are hanged, since he is threatening to bring back the death penalty (and to let the European Union also go hang). You would not even belong to a select group in Turkey, but be merely one of many thousands who have been rounded up in the few short weeks since the abortive coup inspired by who knows whom (or you know who). Not evil?

In dozens of countries across Africa and Asia, including the kleptocracy that is Russia, life is severely tenuous, by reason of the absence of the Rule of Law, or the non-existence of a free press able to express views however deprecatory they may be about the state. They, too, score significantly on the evil-ometer.

In the USA, you could be locked up longer than Nelson Mandela for being convicted as a spy for an allied country (Israel), if you were Jewish (and called Pollard), and the Separation of Powers (that should lie at the heart of every democracy) were trampled on by Secretary of State for Defence, Caspar W. Weinberger, in his wholly improper 46 page submission to the trial judge on March 3, 1987, the day before sentencing. Hellishly evil.

much more...
http://israelseen.com/2016/08/07/howard-epstein-the-banality-of-the-evil-pen-of-gideon-levy/