Today I got in the mail an expensive brochure (which included an interactive CD-ROM) from something called “The Israel Democracy Institute.” The fund-raising letter for this institution begins as follows:
“I trust that you, as American Jews, must be very proud of Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East.”
Apparently, Uri Dromi, director of the Institute, did not read this article in yesterday’s Independent:
“Israeli security forces in Hebron have allegedly forced Palestinians to submit to a macabre ‘lottery’, in which the victim had to choose their own ‘punishment’ by picking a slip of paper out of a pile. On the pieces of paper were written various acts of violence, including having a hand or leg broken, and, Palestinians say, being beaten to death.”
The dictionary definition of totalitarian is: “Of, relating to, being, or imposing a form of government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control over all aspects of life, the individual is subordinated to the state, and opposing political and cultural expression is suppressed: ‘A totalitarian regime crushes all autonomous institutions in its drive to seize the human soul’”
This is an apt description of Israeli rule over the Palestinians.