What's The Big Deal About A Knesset Member Acknowledging The Occupation?

[Purveyor]

A Facebook post expressing shock and dismay about the occupation by new MK Adi Koll of the ‘centrist’ Yesh Atid party went viral over the weekend. Has segregation between Israelis and Palestinians become so entrenched in Israeli society that expressing empathy for Palestinians is a shocking aberration?

By Mairav Zonszein |Published April 22, 2013

After reading MK Adi Koll’s Facebook status that Noam Sheizaf translated and posted, which has gone viral in both Hebrew and English since it came out Sunday, I paused and thought to myself: Why is this getting so much attention? What’s the big deal? Okay, a Knesset member posted a comment about how awful the situation is for a Palestinian friend of hers whom she visited in Ramallah, and how no photograph she posted could relay the dismal reality. But what’s so special about that? After all, isn’t it obvious there is an occupation here?
Obviously, the fact that Adi Koll is a member of Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party, which, despite being considered centrist, is essentially a pro-settlement, anti-two-state solution party, is significant. When MK Dov Khenin from the left-wing Arab-Jewish party Hadash points out the occupation, no one really cares. When Amira Hass repeatedly reports on atrocities against Palestinians, she, along with Haaretz, is written off as spewing pro-Palestinian propaganda.

So my first instinct was that this MK is young and naive (she is 37), exposing on her official Facebook page that only now, after nearly a century of occupation and 65 years of institutionalized colonialism, is she realizing what the Israeli government is capable of. That she sounds like someone who just read David Grossman’s Yellow Wind for the first time (His 1988 Israeli best seller chronicling his travels in the West Bank every day for 40 days during the First Intifada). But I don’t know Adi Koll, have no idea what her experiences are, how long she has known her friend Amjad from Ramallah, or really anything about beyond this one Facebook status. And besides, the fact that her Facebook status got so much attention reflects less on her than the current atmosphere in Israeli society.

--CLIP
This outpouring of reactions struck me as amazingly sad in its sheer candor. Have we really gotten to a point where this basic assessment of reality in Israel and Palestine is what is being highlighted, sharply venerated and condemned? The answer is yes. MK Koll’s status, which even mentions the complex issue of stone throwing and shows a tinge of the understanding that Amira Hass expressed in her controversial op-ed earlier this month, is emblematic of the deeply ingrained segregation between Israelis and Palestinians since the Oslo Accords, and specifically in the last decade, since the second Intifada and erection of the separation wall.

MORE...

http://972mag.com/whats-the-big-deal-about-acknowledging-the-occupation/69789/

[oberliner]

1. Viral Facebook Statuses

Do they get paid by the article over there or what?

[holdencaufield]

2. They're very prolific writers

[Purveyor]

3. What...the israeli internet 'army' can't keep up? lol eom