AMMAN – Israeli writer, historian, and Beit Berl lecturer Yehiam Sorek documents the character of Israeli society in a study titled The Roots of Thuggery and Force in Israeli Society.

“The tendency toward force in Israeli society is not a product of yesterday; it reaches back into the dark corners of the past, before the Zionist idea was fully embodied,” Sorek observes.

He affirms that both textbooks and operational programs were mobilized to cultivate and enhance the “we” while destroying or demonizing the “they” — legitimizing the “we” and demonizing the “they” (the Palestinians and the Arabs).

Sorek closes his study by asking: “If this is so, why do we not recognize the seeds of thuggery that lie within and behind us?”

Add to this the intrusion of religious Zionism into politics, a force that sanctifies Zionist action. The consequence follows: land theft excused, workplace dispossession defended, and aggression toward Palestinians and Arabs rationalized. Is that not enough?