The liberation of Tel al-Rabia

Sarah Honig
Another Tack
07 October '10

Israelis have come to take the delegitimization of their national rights and hard-won sovereignty in stride. Partly it’s the overwhelming global tide of vilification. There is just so much one can rebut. After a while, apathy takes over.

We grow inured to smears – be they from glory-craving statesmen, populist politicians, British or Norwegian trade unions, supermarket shelf-stackers, sanctimonious church groups, human rights promoters, campus organizers, professors foisting intolerant agendas on impressionable students or artsy self-appointed thought-molders worldwide.

But it’s one thing not to pay heed anymore or care about what they say about us out there. It’s quite another to imbibe the slander and take it for granted as a given fact. It’s one thing to ignore the lie, but once we begin believing it, we accept that our very existence is sinful.

Once our villainy is established, we invariably become the side that’s always required to build the confidence of sworn foes, make concessions, give rather than receive, weaken itself and expose its anyway ultra-vulnerable soft underbelly to genocidal predations. The onus is forever on us.

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