Israeli schizophrenia

I heard a report on the radio yesterday that former Israeli Chief Justice (of the Supreme Court) Aharon Barak said at a conference in Tel Aviv yesterday “If you would ask Israelis if they want equality for Arabs in Israel, they would say yes. If you would ask them if they want to throw the Arabs into the sea, they would also say yes. And they don’t see any contradiction between the two”.

 

Strong stuff. Even somewhat extreme, I would say.  This is a very senior guy (although semi-retired) in the Israeli establishment and he’s presumably using strong language in order to get attention. Which he did – see http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/132074   (from a very right-wing Israeli news site) and http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3737416,00.html