DAVID EHRENFELD - The Red Diamond Merchant - The Strange Case of the Socialist Who Was Israel’s Biggest Diamond Merchant

 Watch Eran Torbiner’s Film About the Man who Helped Fund the anti-Zionist Left and Stood in the Forefront of the Fight for the Rights of Israeli Palestinians

DAVID EHRENFELD - THE RED DIAMOND MERCHANT

It’s not often that a rich capitalist or member of the ruling class crosses class lines to support the left. Of course there are exceptions such as Friedrich Engel, Tony Benn and the Countess Markievicz and one would expect, if capitalism was in danger of being overthrown, for others to join the side of the revolutionaries. However it is very much the exception.

Class traitors usually come from the ranks of the oppressed not the oppressor because that is, after all, the way rich and powerful minorities maintain their grip on society. David Ehrenfeld was one such exception to the norm.

David Ehrenfeld  was the majority shareholder and head of the Israeli diamond company Keren Or. By all accounts he was a brilliant businessman and as such he was very rich.

However unlike most of his class he used this money to support a variety of organisations on the Israeli left, including Matzpen, the Socialist Organisation in Israel, an anti-Zionist political group.

Matzpen, Anti Zionist Israelis

This would sometimes cause difficulties on a personal level. One such friend, Gideon Freudenthal, spoke about how when David went out he took him to an expensive restaurant which Gideon could not afford to reciprocate, so they reached a deal. David would take him to an expensive restaurant and Gideon would in turn take him to a workers’ cafe!

The film deals primarily with the 1950s and 1960s and includes footage of the struggles of Israeli Palestinians against land confiscations, police repression and the Zionist state as well as Israel’s Black Panthers who were from Israel’s Arab or Oriental Jewish community. David was always on hand to help fund an activity and take part.

David was placed number 3 on the elections slate of Haolem Hazeh, an anti-establishment magazine edited by Uri Avneri which came repeatedly into conflict with the governments of David Ben Gurion. Since Haolem Hazeh secured 2 seats in the Knesset David must have been in with a chance of becoming a member of the Knesset.

We also see plenty of evidence of the hostility of other diamond merchants in Tel Aviv to David’s activities.  They expected him to act and behave like a capitalist not a socialist.

David paid the deposit for an openly revolutionary socialist party which was standing for the Knesset and which was supported by members and supporters of Matzpen (though it did not stand officially on behalf of Matzpen). He helped to fund many other activities, demonstrations, leaflets etc. by which the Israeli left spread its propaganda.

The film covers Israel during the period of the Israeli Labor Party governments. We can see how these governments behaved in the same way to the Likud governments that succeeded it. This is important because it shows that contrary to those who believe Israel was corrupted by the post-1967 occupation, Israel was always an apartheid and settler colonial society where different laws, rules and regulations applied to its Arab population.

Interviewed is his friend and Matzpen member, Giyora Neumann, who was gaoled for 6 months as a result of his refusal to serve in the Israeli army.  Giyora must have been amongst the first, if not the very first, refusenik in Israel.

The film handles very skilfully David’s character and the difficulties experienced by someone who mixed with the wealthy and powerful as well as those struggling against the society those people represented. His sister, Mira Eran described how, when he was dying, David could not handle the interest shown in his welfare by others. Mira quotes him as saying that: ‘I’ve been alone my entire life all of the sudden I have 50 visitors.’

David died in December 1975 aged 47. His funeral was a strange mixture of diamond merchants and ‘long-bearded friends’, ‘wealthy diamond dealers and members of Rakah (Israeli Communist Party) and Matzpen. The rich and powerful meeting, probably for the first and last time, his friends on the Israeli left and Arabs. The Committee of Arab Students brought a huge bouquet of flowers.

His friend Ahmad Massarwa, who lived in the Arab village of Ar'ara, said that people thought it was an Arab funeral!

The impression that I got coming across was that David was a thoughtful but lonely individual, extremely empathetic and understanding, who saw the ugliness in Israeli society and the way it treated its ‘minority problem.’ He was someone who could be called a beautiful soul who hated injustice and yet had found himself at the pinnacle of society with riches he could find little use for.

His niece, Orly Eran, told of their shared family history, through a variety of press clippings, photographic archive materials and interviews with his family and comrades.

David made a strange political journey from the vehemently anti-Arab Revisionist Etzel (Irgun) to the far-left of Israeli politics. David was an unobtrusive person, rarely putting himself forward and yet he consistently attended socialist and left-wing protests.

This film is well worth seeing just for the archival footage and its periodisation. It shows the build up to and aftermath of the 6 Day War when Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai and Golan Heights and how some supporters and members of Matzpen put an advert into Ha’aretz, opposing the occupation and predicting that it would lead to resistance, counter-resistance and what is called ‘terrorism’ i.e. resistance. All of this was inevitable and yet the Israeli Labour government was determined to ensure that its conquests would not be returned to the people who lived there.

Mira describes him as someone who was never truly happy despite his business success. Although he was surrounded by many friends, he was fundamentally lonely.

Director Eran Torbiner has also produced the film Bunda’im about the remnants of the Bund in Israel and a film on Matzpen. The film was shot in Israel, Palestine, Jordan, U.K and Germany between 1999 – 2003.

Bunda'im  בונדאים

Tony Greenstein

Picket of the BBC– End the Bias Against Jeremy Corbyn – If You’re Concerned About ‘Anti-Semitism’ Stop Giving a Platform to Tommy Robinson’s Fascist Supporters

A Simple Message to Jeremy Corbyn – Stop Apologising for non-existent anti-Semitism You have nothing to apologise for

Picket of the BBC by JVL and LAW

Called at short notice by Jewish Voice for Labour and supported by Labour Against the Witchhunt, Brent Momentum and at least two union branches, we had an excellent picket of the Biased Broadcasting Corporation today otherwise known as the Voice of Israel.

Tony Greenstein speaking at the BBC picket

The BBC has been one of the main proponents of the fake anti-Semitism campaign, picking up on every neo-con allegation it can find against Corbyn. It has portrayed the execrable Margaret Hodge as a latter day saint, despite her despicable role as Council leader in Islington in covering up child abuse (not a word of which passes the BBC’s corporate lips).

I spoke almost as soon as I arrived on behalf of LAW and my message was that if the BBC wanted to focus on genuine anti-Semitism then why has it refused to cover the alliance between the Conservative Party and anti-Semitic parties in the European Parliament?  Since 2009 the Tories have been part of the European Conservative and Reform group which contains the anti-Semitic Polish Law & Justice Party, which has just passed a Holocaust law making it an offence to refer to Polish complicity in the Holocaust. 

Events such as the burning alive of up to 1600 Jews in Jedwabne in 1941 by nationalist Poles were made a criminal offence, despite the fact that in 2001 Poland’s President Aleksander Kwasniewski  apologised on behalf of the Polish nation for this massacre. A statue erected in Jedwabne in memory of those who died has been repeatedly daubed with swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans.

Today's picket of the BBC

None of this prevented the far-Right Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard from defending Michal Kaminski, MEP for the L&J party and member of the Polish Sejm for Jedwabne, who defended and exonerated those who committed this crime. Poland's Kaminski is not an antisemite: he's a friend to Jews As Pollard noted Kaminski was ‘one of the greatest friends to the Jews in a town where antisemitism and a visceral loathing of Israel are rife.’ Support for Israel and Zionism meant he couldn’t be an anti-Semite. Which exonerates nearly all the world’s anti-Semites! More recently Pollard has been accused by David Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialist Group of endangering his family under threat from fascists.  This is the level of hypocrisy we are dealing with.

Also members of the ECR Group are the Latvian National Alliance (LNNK/Freedom and Fatherland) party with one MEP Robert Zile.  Zile spends a Saturday every March demonstrating in Riga with veterans of the Latvian Waffen SS.  Not a word of any of this passes the lying lips of the BBC and their tame reporters. For more details of Tory Party tolerance of anti-Semitism in Latvia and Eastern Europe see Monkia Lowenberg’s Riga, Capital of European Culture: Waffen SS, Stags and Silence? None of this, genuine anti-Semitism, has ever been reported by the BBC or our yellow press.  They are far more interested in fake anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.  Thus we are in an Orwellian situation where Black = White and anti-racism = anti-Semitism. I also had a message to Jeremy Corbyn.

For f*** sake stop apologising for your past.  Do you really think that apologising will stop the attacks on you?  The more you apologise the more they will step up the bogus allegations.  Is Seamus Milne’s head filled with sawdust these days?

Your enemies are going to dig up all sorts of stuff.  Stand your ground.  If they attack you for speaking with Hamas/Hezbollah say what you used to say. They are not terrorists, they are representatives of the oppressed.  Hamas and Hezbollah were both elected and you had the right to speak alongside them.  Indeed but for Israel neither organisation would even exist.

Yes their military wings are designated as terrorists but so is the Kurdish PKK.  That is an outrageous political decision which has no regard to their actual activities.  It is the Israeli army who are the real terrorists. Israel helped create Hamas and if they hadn’t murdered 20,000 people and injured about 100,000 in their invasion of Lebanon in 1982 there would have been no Hezbollah.  Hezbollah’s main offence was being the only Arab army to stand up to Israel and win in 2006.

Thatcher shakes hands with the man she called a terrorist

Hamas and Hezbollah don’t drop bombs on or shoot guided missiles at peoples’ homes, schools or hospitals.  The ANC too were designated terrorists by Reagan and Thatcher and until recently the US had them on a terrorist watch list.

Stop apologising for the fact that a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. Hajo Mayer, at a meeting you chaired, compared Israel to the Nazis.  It was the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army, General Yair Golan, who said three years ago that:

“If there is something that frightens me about the memories of the Holocaust, it is the knowledge of the awful processes which happened in Europe in general, and in Germany in particular, 70, 80, 90 years ago, and finding traces of them here in our midst, today, in 2016

This is what veteran peacenick, Uri Avnery, himself a Zionist wrote:

‘The discrimination against the Palestinians in practically all spheres of life can be compared to the treatment of the Jews in the first phase of Nazi Germany. (The oppression of the Palestinians in the occupied territories resembles more the treatment of the Czechs in the “protectorate” after the Munich betrayal.)

The rain of racist Bills in the Knesset, those already adopted and those in the works, strongly resembles the laws adopted by the Reichstag in the early days of the Nazi regime. Some rabbis call for a boycott of Arab shops. Like then. The call “Death to the Arabs” (“Judah verrecke”?) is regularly heard at soccer matches.

A member of parliament has called for the separation between Jewish and Arab newborns in hospital. A chief rabbi has declared that Goyim (non-Jews) were created by God to serve the Jews.

Our ministers for education and culture are busy subduing the schools, theatre and arts to the extreme rightist line, something known in German as Gleichschaltung. The supreme court, the pride of Israel, is being relentlessly attacked by the minister of justice. The Gaza Strip is a huge ghetto.

Of course, no one in their right mind would even remotely compare Netanyahu to Hitler, but there are political parties here which do emit a strong fascist smell. The political riffraff peopling the present Netanyahu government could easily have found their place in the first Nazi government.

One of the main slogans of our present government is to replace the “old elite”, considered too liberal, with a new one. One of the main Nazi slogans was to replace “das System”.

Army rule

By the way, when the Nazis came to power, almost all high-ranking officers of the German army were staunch anti-Nazis. They were even considering a putsch against Hitler. Their political leader was summarily executed a year later, when Hitler liquidated his opponents in his own party.

We are told that Golan is now protected by a personal bodyguard, something that has never happened to a general in the annals of Israel.  I strongly recommend people read the whole article. Uri Avnery: Israeli politics bears comparison with end of Weimar Germany and rise of fascism, Irish Times, 25.5.16.

This relates to one of the ‘illustrations’ in the IHRA ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism.  Corbyn made yet another rod for his own back by following meekly in the footsteps of Theresa May and adopting this dishonest and disingenuous script whose only purpose is to equate supporters of the Palestinians and opponents of Zionism with the Nazis. Corbyn is an ‘anti-Semite’ to those the BBC regularly interviews because he is reluctant to adopt the whole of the IHRA.

Today we had a lively demonstration and made our views clear to the BBC, which John Pilger described as the most effective propaganda organisation in the world.

We live in times which are Orwellian.  Anti-racists are racists and anti-Semites whereas Tories, whose party was founded on racism and Empire are now anti-racists!  A party which fought against the admission of Jewish refugees to Britain and under Lord Balfour introduced the anti-Semitic 1905 Aliens Bill is now apparently opposed to anti-Semitism. 

There is no more eloquent opponent of ‘anti-Semitism’ than Boris Johnson.  The same man who described Black people as ‘picanninies’ with ‘watermelon smiles’ and who only yesterday described Muslim women as looking like letter boxes.  This piece of filth is also a sincere opponent of ‘anti-Semitism’.

The reality is that ‘anti-Semitism’ is the false anti-racism of the Right.  It is a cover for real racism Islamaphobia.  It is no wonder that one of the main proponents of the false anti-Semitism campaign, John Mann MP, is a bigoted racist when it comes to the Roma who he considers a social pest, much as the Nazis did.

We need to turn the heat up on the BBC and all the other liars in the mainstream press.  When we can have the racist press, the Sun and Mail, being in the forefront of the campaign against ‘anti-Semitism’ we can be sure that the ‘problem’ in the Labour Party is utterly contrived.  That is why Corbyn has to be saved from his own stupidity. If he doesn’t start fighting back he is doomed.  And the person who bears most responsibility is the scab leader of Momentum, Jon Lansman, a Zionist for whom defence of Israel is more important than a socialist Labour Party.  Already there are reports of secret meetings of his MPs.  CORBYN'S CURTAIN CALL: Furious MPs vow to 'COLLAPSE’ leadership at SECRET MEETINGS

We know who these MPs are and in the event Corbyn manages to win a working majority at the next election we can expect these scabs to refuse to support him as Prime Minister. 

We have to deselect Labour’s Tory MPs now.  If their bluff isn’t called then they will, when the time is ripe, act as a Tory/Liberal 5^th column.

MPs such as Joan Ryan, Chris Leslie, Hilary Benn, John Mann, Wes Streeting, Louise Ellman, Luciana Berger, Ruth Smeeth, Ian Austin, Margaret Hodge et al should be ‘encouraged’ to join a more suitable party. 

Today’s picket should be the first of many such actions and well done to Jewish Voice for Labour for calling it.

Tony Greenstein 

See Tariq Ali's  NEW ATTEMPT TO UNSEAT JEREMY CORBYN

Inminds Demonstration Last Friday Outside the BBC

Inminds Demonstration Last Friday Outside the BBC

Inminds Demonstration Last Friday Outside the BBC

The ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ Suspends 3 Palestinian members of the Knesset and takes steps to expel them

Israel is, as every Zionist propagandist tells you, a democracy.  Of course they define a democracy quite narrowly.  Basically the chance to vote every few years for a new parliament (Knesset) counts as democracy.

The systematic discrimination, the denial of land rights to Israeli Palestinians, the denial of any civil or political rights to the 4.5 million Palestinians under occupation, the demolition of ‘unrecognised’ Arab villages (Jewish villages/towns are always recognised), the overt discrimination in terms of jobs, welfare benefits, education etc. is of course ignored. 

Uri Avneri attends a Hadash (Communist Party) demonstration

In a society based on a situation where one ethnic group (Israeli Jews) dominates another ethnic group (Arabs/Palestinians) then what exists is not so much democracy as the dictatorship of the majority.  A similar situation could have been said to exist in Nazi Germany. 

Balad MKs

Now however even the right to vote is being taken away, or rather the democratically elected representatives of Israeli Palestinians are being taken away.  The 3 members of Balad, an Arab nationalist party, have been suspended for between 2 and 4 months.  Their crime?  They visited the relatives of dead Palestinians to offer their condolences and to give their support to their demand for the return of the bodies of the children.

Haneen Zoabi - MK for Balad has been demonised by Israeli Right (& Israel's left-Zionist Meretz and Israeli Labour Party/Zionist Union after going on Marvi Marmara

Only a State which specialises in cruelty and barbarities would even think of kidnapping dead bodies and refusing the right of the parents to bury their children as they see fit.  Children who, out of desperation at their plight,  took a knife or scissors and attempted to kill and Israeli soldier or settler or just an Israeli who they hold responsible for their plight.  If there was no racism and discrimination in Israel, if there wasn’t a Prime Minister who complained about ‘hordes’ of Arabs going to the polls, or a Deputy Defence Minister, Eli Dahan, who speaks of Palestinians as not being humans, ‘beasts’ or a ‘Justice’ Minister Ayelet Shaked who has called for the murder of Palestinian mothers to stop them breeding ‘little Palestinian snakes’ then there would be no stabbings.

Zoabi is physically removed from the Knesset again

Not only has the Knesset voted to suspend the 3 Balad MKs, having previously tried to ban the Balad party outright, but there is now a bill going through the Knesset which will allow the majority of the Knesset, i.e. its Jewish members, to vote by a 75% majority to expel the elected members of the Arab minority altogether.  A situation where a majority of members of a parliament can expel a minority is not democracy but dictatorship.  It says to the Arab minority in Israel that you can only vote for parties that we approve of.  This is Israeli democracy.

The article below by Uri Avnery, a veteran peacenik and someone who is on the outer fringes of Zionism, explains the background to what is happening and in particular the witch-hunt of Haneen Zoabi, a secular Arab woman who most Israelis hate.

It is also of note that the ‘left-wing’ Meretz party, the old Civil Rights Party and Mapam, also voted for the suspension of Balad MKs and also supports the new law.  Once a Zionist always a Zionist.  I doubt though that the late leader of Meretz, Shulamit Aloni, who had effectively become a non-Zionist, would have approved though.

Tony Greenstein

Uri  Avnery on Knesset Attempts to Expel an Arab Faction

A Lady With A Smile

February 13, 2015

by Uri Avnery

IT IS not easy to be an Arab in Israel.

It is not easy to be a woman in Arab society.

It is not easy to be an Arab in Israeli politics.

And even less easy to be an Arab woman in the Knesset.

Israeli Right hate demonstration against Haneen Zoabi

Haneen Zuabi is all these together. Perhaps because of this she wears a perpetual smile – the smile of somebody who has won, after all.

It can be very annoying, this smile. Annoying and provocative.

These days, Zuabi has achieved something no Arab woman in Israel ever dreamed of: the whole country is talking about her. Not for an hour, nor for a day, but for weeks on end.

The vast majority of Jewish Israelis hate her guts. Zuabi's smile is triumphant.

Haneen Zoabi speaking in the Knesset

HANEEN BELONGS to a large Hamula (extended family) that dominates several villages near Nazareth. Two Zuabis were members of the Knesset in its early days – one was a vassal of the (then) ruling Zionist Labor Party, the other a member of the left-wing Zionist Mapam party. It was he who coined the memorable phrase: "My country is at war with my people!"  

Haneen Zuabi is a member of the Balad ("homeland") party, an Arab nationalist party founded by Azmi Bishara, an Israeli-Palestinian intellectual. Bishara was an admirer of Gamal Abd-al-Nasser and his pan-Arab vision. When the Shin-Bet was about to arrest him on some pretext or other, he fled the country, asserting that because of a severe kidney disease, prison would endanger his life.

He left behind a three-man Knesset faction, one of three Arab factions of similar size. All of them were a constant irritation to their Jewish colleagues, so they invented a remedy. A new law was enacted denying Knesset membership to any party that did not gain enough votes for a four-member faction. (A larger minimum could have endangered the Orthodox Jewish party.)

Haneen Zoabi after having been attacked at election debate

The logic was simple: the three small Arab factions hated each other's guts. One was Communist (with one Jewish member), one Islamist and one nationalist (Balad).

But lo and behold, under threat of annihilation even Arabs can unite. They formed a "Joint List" ("Joint", not "United") and together gained 13 seats – three more than before. They are now the third largest faction in the Knesset, right after Likud and Labor, an eyesore to many of their colleagues.

THIS IS the background of the latest outrage.

For months now, Israel has been in the throes of a mini-intifada. In the two  former intifadas, "terrorists" acted in groups under the orders of organizations, which were easily infiltrated. This time, individuals act alone, or together with cousins who could be trusted, without any prior signs. The Israeli forces (army, police, Shin Bet) have no information whatsoever and are therefore unable to prevent these acts.

Moreover, many of today's "terrorists" are children – boys and girls who just pick up a knife in their mother's kitchen and, on the spur of the moment, run out and attack the nearest Israeli. Some of them are 13, 14 years old. Some of the girls wield scissors. All of them know that in all probability they will be shot dead on the spot by soldiers or passing armed civilians.

The preferred victims are soldiers or settlers. Lacking these, they attack any Israeli, man or woman, in sight.

The mighty Israeli security forces are admittedly helpless against this kind of "infantifada" (as my friend Reuven Wimmer calls it). In their distress, the security forces do what they always do in such situations: use methods that have already failed many times.

Apart from summary executions on the spot (justified or unjustified, these methods include the demolition of the family's home, to deter others, as well as the arrest of parents and other family members.

Frankly, I detest these measures. They remind me of a Nazi term I remember from my youth: "Sippenhaft" ("kin liability”. It is barbaric. It is also highly ineffective. A boy who has decided to sacrifice his life for his people is not deterred by such things. Not a single piece of contrary evidence has ever been produced.  On the contrary, it stands to reason that such barbaric acts increase hatred and provide motivation for more attacks.

BUT THE most atrocious and stupid measure is the withholding of dead bodies. I am almost too ashamed to bring this up.

After almost any "terrorist" act, the body of the perpetrator – adult or child – is picked up by the security forces. Under Muslim law and usage, dead bodies must be buried the same day or the next one. Withholding them is a supreme act of cruelty. Our security services believe that this contributes to prevention. For Muslims, this is a supreme act of sacrilege.   

This is the background of the latest scandal. The three Balad members of the Arab faction visited the families of the perpetrators of a "terrorist outrage", whose bodies had been withheld. Their version is that they came to discuss how to retrieve the bodies. The security forces insist that they also expressed their condolences and even stood in silence for a minute.

The Knesset, "from wall to wall", was outraged. How dare they? Extolling murderers? Showing sympathy for their families?

The Balad members of the Joint Faction are, apart from Zuabi and her smile, Bassal Gatas, and Jamal Zahalka. I have never met Gatas personally. He is 60 years old, a Christian Arab, a doctor of engineering and a businessman. He was for a long time a member of the Communist Party but was thrown out when he insisted on his right to criticize the Soviet Union. Azmi Bishara is his cousin. On TV, he makes a very sensible impression.

I consider Gamal Zahalka a personal friend. Once we both attended a conference in Italy and undertook some hikes together with our wives. I like him very much.   

The three Balad members were banned from the Knesset for several months, except for the right to participate in Knesset votes (a right that cannot be denied). Now a new bill proposes that the Knesset can, by a majority of three fourths, expel members from the Knesset altogether.

This means that – unless the Supreme Court declares this bill unconstitutional - the Knesset will soon be Araber-rein, free from Arabs. A purely Jewish Knesset for a purely Jewish state.

THIS WOULD be a disaster for Israel.

Every fifth Israeli is an Arab. The Arab minority in Israel is one of the largest national minorities, per capita, in the world. Pushing such a minority out of the political process will weaken the very structure of the state.

When the state came into being, we believed that after a generation or two the gulf between the two communities would close, or nearly so. The opposite has happened.

In the early years, political cooperation between Jews and Arabs in a joint peace-camp was strong and getting stronger. These days are long past. The gulf has widened.

There was – and is – an opposite trend, too. Many Arabs are integrated in important professions, such as medicine. The last time I was hospitalized, I could not guess if the chief doctor of my department was Jewish or Arab. I had to ask my (Arab) male nurse, who confirmed that the very gentle doctor was Arab. I have found that Arab medical personnel are generally gentler than Jewish ones.  

In several professions, Arabs are more or less integrated. But the general trend is the opposite. Where once there were cordial relations between neighborhoods, or between political organizations, contacts have loosened or disappeared altogether.

There were times when my friends and I visited Arab towns and villages almost every week. Not anymore.

This is not altogether an one-sided process. Insulted and rejected for so long, Arab citizens have lost the appetite for cooperation. Some of them have become more Islamist. The happenings in the Occupied Territories affect them deeply. A third and fourth generation of Israeli Arab citizens  is becoming more proud and self-reliant. They are very disappointed by the failures of the Jewish peace movements.

To throw the Arab members out of the Knesset is, as a French politician once famously said, "This is worse than a crime – it is a mistake!"

It would cut the ties between the Israeli state and more than 20% of its citizens. Some Israelis may dream of evicting the Arabs altogether from the historical country – all six million of them in Israel proper, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip -  but that is a pipedream. The world in which this was once possible does not exist any more.

What is possible, and indeed already exists, is a creeping apartheid. It is already the reality in the West bank and East Jerusalem, and – as this episode shows – it is becoming the reality in Israel proper, too.

The hysteria that has engulfed the country after the "visit to the 'terrorists' families" has touched the Labor party, and even Meretz, too.

I am putting "terrorists" in quotation marks because they are terrorists only to the Jews. For Arabs they are heroes, shaheeds, Muslims who sacrifice their lives to "testify" to the greatness of Allah.

The question is, of course, what is the job of an Arab MK? To upset the Jews? Or to narrow the gap and convince Israelis that Israeli-Palestinian peace is both possible and worthwhile.

I am afraid that Zuabi's smile does not help with the second aim.

IF ANYTHING, this affair has reinforced the arguments for the Two State.  Let each of the two states have a parliament of its own, where they can commit all the stupidities they want, and a serious joint Coordination Council, where serious decisions can be taken.