Mississippi then, State of Israel now

Listen to this song, Here's to the State of Mississipi, by the late Phil Ochs:

I was reminded of one its lines, "Here's to the people of Mississippi, who say the folks up north they just don't understand".  What it was the "folks up north" didn't understand was segregation and the appalling violence that maintained it.

Well The Guardian ran an article by a leading Israeli segregationist politician, Yair Lapid, with a similar message just yesterday.  It was Lapid's response, possibly the official State of Israel response, to the announcement in the letters page of The Guardian of a cultural boycott of Israel by hundreds of artists.

The headline of Lapid's article alone reminded me of the line from the Phil Ochs song and the article didn't disappoint being one long whinge about Israel's excuses for segregation, Jews only settlement, ethnic cleansing and relentless violence without mentioning any of those things.  Lapid only mentioned security, which he claimed was Israel's "only..demand".

Still he did give me the excuse to dig up Phil Ochs's song and prise it away from the annoying advert you see on Youtube when you access it.

The Meaning of Yair Lapid

My article on the elections in Israel in Jadaliyya:

The social protests, the shrinking of the traditional parties, the widespread sense of revulsion at the political class, the loss of faith in politics, and the very repetition of the seventies’ pattern raise the question: have we entered the twilight of the Great Likud Pact, that combination of neo-liberalism for the upper classes and rampant colonization in the occupied Palestinian Territories for the Israeli-Jewish masses that has defined hegemony in Israel for over thirty years?
Continue reading (actually, go to the beginning)...

Israeli elections: Rabin Sharon neck and neck while Lapid gets weird

Not much change there then over the years, a couple of party name changes maybe.  Still have a look at Tommy, I mean, Yair Lapid in YNET.