International Jewish anti-Zionist Network

October 13, 2008 at 12:39 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

With the launch of the network, we are hoping anti-Zionist Jews will take up the Charter and Call-to-Action in ways that are relevant to their location and in partnership with existing Palestine solidarity work. Share your current work and support the building of international campaigns and strategies to collectively confront Zionism.

For the past two years, we have been building an international network of anti-Zionist Jews to support existing and seed new Jewish anti-Zionist organizing in solidarity with Palestinian resistance. The enemy we face is international, and what we can do is limited unless we find ways to work together across boundaries and regions.

We are building an international voice which challenges Zionism and its claim to speak on behalf of Jews worldwide. As an international force, we can contribute to the movement to defeat Israeli colonialism. Click here to read more about the history of IJAN.

Charter of the International Jewish anti-Zionist Network

We are an international network of Jews who are uncompromisingly committed to struggles for human emancipation, of which the liberation of the Palestinian people and land is an indispensable part. Our commitment is to the dismantling of Israeli apartheid, the return of Palestinian refugees, and the ending of the Israeli colonization of historic Palestine.

From Poland to Iraq, from Argentina to South Africa, from Brooklyn to Mississippi, Jews have taken up their quest for justice, and their desire for a more just world, by joining with others in collective struggles. Jews participated prominently in the workers’ struggle of the depression era, in the civil rights movement, in the struggle against South African Apartheid, in the struggle against fascism in Europe, and in many other movements for social and political change. The State of Israel’s historic and ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from their land contradicts and betrays these long histories of Jewish participation in collective liberation struggles.

Zionism-the founding and current ideology that manifested in the State of Israel-took root in the era of European colonialism and was spread in the aftermath of the Nazi genocide. Zionism has been nourished by the most violent and oppressive histories of the nineteenth Century, at the expense of the many strains of Jewish commitment to liberation. To reclaim them, and a place in the vibrant popular movements of our time, Zionism, in all its forms, must be stopped.

This is crucial, first and foremost, because of Zionism’s impact on the people of Palestine and the broader region. It also dishonors the persecution and genocide of European Jews by using their memory to justify and perpetuate European racism and colonialism. It is responsible for the extensive displacement and alienation of Mizrahi Jews (Jews of African and Asian descent) from their diverse histories, languages, traditions and cultures. Mizrahi Jews have a history in this region of over 2,000 years. As Zionism took root, these Jewish histories were forced from their own course in service of the segregation of Jews imposed by the State of Israel.

As such, Zionism implicates us in the oppression of the Palestinian people and in the debasement of our own heritages, struggles for justice and alliances with our fellow human beings. (Read more)

Call-to-Action

Our pledge in the Charter will be carried out through our commitments to: 1) solidarity with Palestinian self-determination, 2) participation in global movements to end imperialism, and 3) the extrication of Jewish history, politics, community, and culture from the grip of Zionism.

To these ends, in this historical moment, the IJAZ Network will be a clear anti-Zionist Jewish point of reference to set an ideological pole, open space for non-Jewish anti-Zionist voices, and broaden support for Palestinian liberation.

Towards fulfilling this strategic role, we are calling anti-Zionist Jews to take up the following actions in the world. (Read more)

http://www.ijsn.net

Advertisement

Leave a Comment

Why McCain and Obama Won’t Talk about Race

September 21, 2008 at 7:19 am (Uncategorized)
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Obama and Mccain

Obama and Mccain

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama made one speech in March to damp down the furor over his relationship with his controversial former pastor Jeremiah Wright. He made another speech at the NAACP convention in July. Other than those two speeches, he has not uttered another word about racial issues since.

Republican rival John McCain spoke at the same NAACP convention. Shortly after that, he issued a terse statement backing the Ward Connerly concocted anti-affirmative action initiative on the November ballot in Arizona and two other states. Other than that, he has not uttered a single word about racial issues since.

The audience for McCain and Obama’s speeches at the NAACP convention were mostly blacks. That reinforced the notion that racial issues are by, and for, blacks, with no broad policy implications for all Americans as issues such as health care, jobs and the economy, terrorism and Iraq.

About the only talk about race during the campaign has been the interminable Hydra headed question of: Can Obama make history by being the first African-American president? And if he doesn’t will race sink him? That’s hardly the candid, free-wheeling, in-depth talk about the problems that impact the lives of millions of black, Latino, Asian, and American Indian voters. Minority voters make up about one quarter of American voters, and they deserve to hear what the candidates have to say about racial matters and, more importantly, what their administration plans to do about them.

Obama and McCain’s racial blind spot has been ritual blindness in all candidates in recent America presidential races. Racial issues have seeped into presidential debates only when they ignite public anger and division. In a 1988 debate, Bush Sr. hammered Democratic contender Michael Dukakis as being a card carrying ACLU’er, a milksop on crime, and tossed in the Willie Horton hit to drive home the point. In one of their debates in 2000, Bush and Democratic challenger Al Gore clashed over affirmative action

Race has been a taboo subject for presidents and their challengers on the campaign trail for the past two decades for a simple reason. No president or presidential challenger, especially a Democratic challenger, will risk being tarred as pandering to minorities for the mere mention of racial problems. In stark contrast, Obama, let alone McCain, would never worry about being accused of pandering to Christian Evangelicals by talking incessantly about gay marriage and abortion.

Full article: www.insight-info.com

1 Comment

The Crisis of Zionism

September 16, 2008 at 5:09 am (Uncategorized)
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Nazi Star of David

Nazi Star of David

A lot was written about the evils of Zionism as a colonialist movement and Israel as a racist regime, but the role of Zionism in the Imperialist Hegemony over the Arab East is much less known and understood. Still the main role of Zionism is not the exploitation of the Palestinian people, of which they prefer to get rid by continuing ethnic cleansing, neither the building of a Jewish society in Palestine (and the subsequent exploitation of the Jewish working class). The main role of Israel is as an advanced military outpost in the middle of the Arab East to prevent Arab independence, Arab unity and the building of a national economy and democratic society.

The military character of the Israeli project is enshrined in many strategic agreements between Israel and the imperialist powers, guaranteeing the “strategic superiority” of Israel in the region.
The current imperialist hysteria against Iran’s nuclear program has only one meaning – imperialist determination to keep Israel as the only power with nuclear weapon in the area, so as to enable it to use it on need. In many recent writings by Zionist leaders they tell openly how close they were to using nuclear weapons in some of their past conflicts…

For their role in keeping imperialist hegemony over this strategically important region, the Zionist military-capitalist elites receive a wide range of economic and political privileges, which are a small fraction of the imperialists’ profits from the subjection of the Arab nation and the robbery of its natural and human resources.

Colonialism and Class

In order to be able to expel and oppress the Palestinian people, and in order to be able to militarily terrorize the whole region, the Zionists need the best of all imperialist weaponry, but they also need soldiers to fight their wars. The state of Israel uses those Jewish masses it succeeded to tempt to come to Palestine as its base of support and as the foot soldiers for its colonization, oppression and aggressive wars. It needs this immigrant community to be satisfied, to prevent it from re-immigrating to safer places, and to keep its loyalty as a fighting force.

Fear is one major force behind the intense control of Zionism over the Jews in Palestine. In this sense, Zionism is the main beneficiary of anti-Semitism and it shares its conviction that Jews can’t assimilate in the societies where they live. It also benefits, to some degree, from terrifying Jews in Palestine from the possible consequences in case Israel will loose it military dominance.

In order to provide replacement to the expelled Palestinians, the Zionist movement is bringing in Jews from all over the world. At a process of internal colonization, Jews from Arab and other third world countries are deprived of their culture and social structure, which are declared by the state as “inferior”, and their society is crashed to provide defenseless “human raw material” for the Zionist manipulation and exploitation.

But the main mean used by Israel to keep the loyalty of the Jewish masses is to make their daily way of living depend of a complex system of privileges as against the native Palestinians. This system of privileges includes every aspect of daily lives in Israel: Health and Education, Housing, Welfare, Acceptance and promotion at work, just everything. Much effort is done to involve as many Jews (from all classes) as possible in actively expropriating Arab land, in the ’48 occupied territories as well as in the West Bank and the Syrian Golan heights.

This system allows only one way for effective struggle for sections of the Jewish masses that aspire to improve their daily lives: To struggle to enhance their privileges and distance themselves from the much more oppressed and exploited Arab masses. It is not a coincidence that the most successful struggle of Oriental Jews in the last years was a campaign for more equal distribution of expropriated Arab land, waged under the slogan “this land is also mine”.

The Alternative can’t come from within the Jewish Community

Capitalist exploitation in Israel, like anywhere else, creates its contradictions and class struggle. But the acute polarization of society under colonialism prevents the class struggle from naturally evolving to a political conflict over power. Arab workers are marginalized by systematic discrimination, many of them working in unofficial or semi-official sectors of the economy where class organization is almost impossible. The most organized and combative workers are those in the more privileged, almost fully segregated, sectors. As much as struggle and local organization develops, it is put to vain by the Histadrut, the all powerful tool of the Zionist movement that is responsible to assure that trade unionist struggle is subjected to the interest of the colonialist system.

The so-called “Israeli Left” is not left at all. Sometimes it is taken to include the Israeli Labor Party, which was the central instrument of Zionist colonialism, directly responsible for both the ethnic cleansing of 1948 and the occupation of 1967. “The Labor” is till this day a full partner in all of Israel’s aggressive and racist policies and is a partner in most of its governments’ coalitions. Economically the Israeli Labor Party is as tightly connected to big business as its openly Right wing twins and it promotes neo liberal policies like privatization.

Labor’s shadow in the Zionist “left”, the small “Merez” party, which is now in opposition, is only a shade more moderate, and don’t hesitate to take part in Zionist governments of occupation and war when it gets a chance to do so. It claims to be more moderate in negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, but its main political activity is to try to engage the Palestinians in virtual negotiations and to blackmail them to give up the right of return of the refugees in order to make them more acceptable to Israeli public opinion… Merez is also well known to rely on the well to do elite, which might be a bit less aggressive than other flanks of Zionism as it sees its interest well defended in any possible settlement.

There are anti war movements, of which Peace Now was the most famous and numerous. While it expressed some popular tendency to distrust the military-political leadership and pressed the government to be less aggressive, it mostly remained under the political wings of Labor and Merez. Its logic was that Israel might allow itself some concession from a point of strength, thus denying the Palestinian refugees right of return and clinging to Jewish domination.

For a long period, the Israeli communist party tried to build an Israeli Patriotic non-Zionist left. They thought this left could cooperate with the mainstream Zionist “left” and influence it toward peace with the “external” Palestinians and to reduce discrimination against “internal” Palestinians. For this purpose they tried to limit the Palestinian struggle inside the 48 occupied territories to an agenda of civil rights, equality and peace. While they tried to heal some of the symptoms of Zionism, they accepted its main proposition of the establishment of a Jewish state. This experiment came to its futile climax when the Communist (and other Arab) votes in the Knesset were crucial to sustain the Labor government led by Rabin at the time of the Oslo agreement. Even than, Labor refused to include the Israeli Communist Party, or any other party representing Arab voters, in its governing coalition, thus stressing the exclusive Jewish character of the Zionist state and the de-legitimization of those Palestinian Arabs who are formally citizens of Israel.

As an echo of the international radicalism of the sixties of the previous century, several radical movements were formed between Jewish youth, best known by the name “Matzpen” – Compass in Hebrew. In spite of some important principled positions against Israeli colonialism and the dedicated struggle and sacrifices of some militants, those groups failed to integrate as a significant component in the Palestinian Liberation movement even while it was at its leftist radical heights. Finally those groups dried and died out within the walls of the reactionary Jewish Ghetto.

full article: www.insight-info.com

Leave a Comment

Racial Problems amongst Shia in the West

July 3, 2008 at 5:10 am (Uncategorized)
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This is an e-mail that was circulated between a person and a few scholars. I think this issue is important and needs to be discussed further. Please take a minute and read it and lets think of way that we can combat this issue.

InshaAllah this reaches everyone in good health. By the grace of Allah (swt) many active and sincerely devoted youth have begun to connect with each other from all across the country. Through mediums such as email list servs, conferences, face book, and online forums these youth have demonstrated incredible understanding of Islam’s revolutionary ideology. Often times because of their unadulterated view of Islamic tradition, they end up feeling isolated within their own communities and resort to finding young adults through other means. In the last couple of years we have begun to exchange ideas about the future of Islam in America and the necessary steps that need to be taken by communities and their respective leaders. After noticing that many of our communities are facing the same problems, and feeling that the majority have neglected to address them properly, we have decided to take our issues directly to our scholars across the board.

One of these preeminent issues is regarding race relations, and ethnocentricity. The reality of the matter is that racism exists down to the roots of many Islamic centers, pervading even up to the mouths of some religious leaders. The Caucasian, Black and African American, and Latino growing Shia communities are feeling more and more isolated as they continue to search for avenues to practice their new found faith. The masjids are increasingly becoming deficient for our new converts and reverts by failing to provide adequate resources. Often times they naturally bring with them their old styles of dress, hair, and slang. Unfortunately out of lack of insight and patience, many centers stuck in their own cultural ignorance tend to shun and look down upon such ‘foreign’ behaviors. Countless numbers of reverts have turned back from Islam because of this type of attitude.

Full article: www.insight-info.com

Leave a Comment

Cultural Arrogance and Ethnic Pride

July 1, 2008 at 5:18 am (Uncategorized)
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The followers of Prophet Musa (peace be upon him), like the followers of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his progeny), were Divinely-guided Muslims. Today, however, Prophet Musa’s followers aren’t known as Muslims. Instead, they’re remembered exclusively by their clan affiliation: the Children of Israel or, by the name of their clan’s politically dominant tribe, Jews. God guided the Children of Israel through the efforts of Prophet Moses and The Torah. Most followers of Moses, however, had no physical access to the Torah. It was locked up and guarded in the Ark of the Covenant. Only the high priests had access.

We Muslims of the Muhammadan dispensation of Islam are privileged. We have infallible Divine Guidance sitting on our bookshelves. Nearly every Muslim has key parts of the Qur’an locked in his/her memory, and whoever can remember it can guard the entire Holy Scroll in his breast’s treasure chest (74:55). Yet, like our ancient religious brethren, too many of us still manage to do the exact opposite of what’s best for us. We’re even known by our ethnocentric identities. We’re Arabs. We’re Persians. We’re Pakistanis. We’re African-Americans. We’re known by who we are, not what we are. We’re just like the Muslims of old, who still to this day are known as either Israelis or Jews, instead of Muslims.

Why? Because we tend to fear not and forget Allah (87:9) and de-prioritize God’s guidance in preference to the gadgetry of the world (2:102). Thus, we tend to allow our lower nature to be influenced by the Nefarious Stoned Satan, who’s dedicated to our ultimate ruin. This ancient, alien adversary isn’t alone in his mission. Shaitan is constantly trying to recruit others to the Dark Side, spreading ignorance, negligence, disobedience, and oppression. The methods have not changed throughout the ages. He invents ways to incite, seduce, beguile, and corrupt. Then he uses these inventions to turn what is closest to us into his trusted and charismatic agent provocateur, which then infiltrates into our very core, the most susceptible aspect of our humanity, the easily inflated human ego. Thus, many believe that it’s more important to be who our parents were than it is to be what our Prophet was. So we adopt our parent’s errors rather than our Prophet’s righteousness. It is our ego’s fierce fiery sense of exaggerated self-worth that stinks to high heaven and can anger God to no end.

Call it arrogance, pride, racial pride, family pride, ethnic pride, national pride, cultural pride. That accursed sin of pride: that’s what got our enemy into a hell of a lot of trouble, and that’s the weapon he uses to take us with him. All that egotistical fool had to do was bow towards a fellow creature. The command to bow was given by the recognizable voice of God. He’d been okay if he’d obeyed. But he didn’t. He thought so highly of himself that he didn’t fear His Creator. He waxed proud in his opinion of himself, rebelled, then waned in God’s Grace, and suffered an irreparable loss of spiritual face. He became morally bankrupted. No spiritual currency, condemned without hope of Allah’s Mercy, destined to dwell forever in hell, a bad place with bad feelings and even worse smell, without vision of God’s Merciful Ever Presence, cursed to his essence, existing only on hatred for those born to humanity, ultimate peace lost to eternal insanity.

Full article: www.insight-info.com

Leave a Comment

Western Muslims are Racist

June 14, 2008 at 7:10 am (Uncategorized)
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

We have many people struggling to get married but even beyond that we have people trying to justify their skin colour, heritage, race and nationality with the overwhelming immigrant muslim community’s perception of them- especially those who are Muslims born in America to non-Middle Eastern families.

racism protest

There is a serious problem and I believe it must be addressed soon and head on. The communities as a whole must be told that racism and prejudice based on class, nationality or any other prejudice is incorrect. Telling people that they should not marry converts is not correct. Telling people that they should only marry within their culture is not correct as a general statement. These issues must be dealt with on an individual basis but the larger picture- the overwhelming prejudice in some communities is a large backward step for the Ummah.

I wanted to share a brief comment from an African American brother who is very close to me. He was born sunni and converted to shi’ism at 15 years old. He has been trying to get married for 6+ years and is now 25 and in dental school with an industrial engineering degree. He has memorized much of the Qur’an and is extremely intelligent. However he has been rejected time and time again for marriage from parents because, and only because, of his skin colour- even when the sister agreed and was hoping to marry him. Here are his feelings he shared with me:

In all honestly, I’m tired of this game…Immigrant Muslims come here enjoy this country while bashing it all the time and (insert explicit word for defecation here) on us, the Muslims here…They treat us like we are criminals or kafirs even…I’m through…This isn’t an ummah…Its not a brotherhood…Loyalty to family, tribe, and ethnicity is paramount to these people…I honestly feel like the immigrants should go back to their home countries and focus on fixing the problems there instead of coming here and being hypocrites…Other Shaykhs have said racist things on calls…I’m done with all of it…And I will be a witness against them on the day of Judgment Insha Allah…

I believe if we all banded together and decided to confront these poisonous issues together, head on, with CLARITY and PERSISTENCE then Allah will change the believer’s hearts and help us stay away from hypocrisy in our deen. I think this should also been done on individual bases too where we talk with individuals about these issues and exalt the righteous and forbid the evil and satanic. There must be a pro-active way to bring communities together, just as the Prophet (may Allah bless him and his progeny) brought tribes together. We should realize that most of the children of immigrants do not hold extremely traditional outlooks and even are very happy to marry cross-culturally. It is often the parents and elders who forbid these actions- and often with terrible excuses, sometimes racist and nationalist in nature. Every day my brothers and sisters are getting hurt because of backward mindsets…

The Holy Prophet (p.b.u.h.) said: “He who hurts a Muslim believer, surely he has hurt me.”

Bihar-ul-Anwar, vol. 67, p. 72

Be part of the solution, inshaAllah….

Imam Amir-ul-Mu’mineen Ali (a.s.) said: “May Allah have mercy upon the person who services a right and removes a wrong, or refutes an injustice and establishes justice.”

Qurar-ul-Hikam, p. 181

With Peace, Hope, and Blessings,
Your brother in Islam,

TC

Leave a Comment

Cheerleading Genocide

May 14, 2008 at 10:07 am (Uncategorized)
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

With spectacular fanfare and a plethora of highlighted events, Israel celebrated its 60th birthday on 18 May 2008.

israel 60

According to an Israeli government website called Israelfestival.com, the festival included “non-stop entertainment, [a] fashion show, a variety of ethnic food for sale, Israeli folk dancing, arts and
crafts, Israeli and Jewish cultural and heritage pavilions and art exhibits”.

The centrepiece ceremony takes place in West Jerusalem and be attended by Israel’s political and military leaders as well as foreign dignitaries. Among those expected are US President George W Bush,
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Israeli media and non-governmental organisations have already begun celebrations in earnest. For example, Israeli television has begun airing a new series called Shishim (meaning “60”), which looks back at the six decades since Israel was created in May 1948. The series, which began 31 March, is divided into six episodes, each devoted to one of the decades following the founding of the state.

Israel hopes that the high-pitched celebrations will serve as an opportunity to promote Israel and enhance its questionable standing abroad. “It is an opportunity to celebrate our achievements, our
successes, our national being,” boasted Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who was not yet born in 1948.

From the Zionist viewpoint, Israel is a story of success. Today, Israel is a political and military force to be reckoned with, even if its power is based on the patronage of foreign entities. A country of
no more than seven million people, including nearly 1.5 million non-Jews (mainly Palestinians), Israel more or less directs the politics and policies of world’s only superpower, the United States, thanks mainly to powerful Jewish lobbies in Washington.

The power of the Jewish lobby largely explains how massive American financial and military support is to Israel, which is measured in hundreds of billions of dollars. Were it not for this nearly unlimited
financial, economic, technological, political and military backing, Israel would never have been able to survive, especially given its predator tactics.

Israel, which has been mounting a vitriolic incitement campaign against Iran for its acquisition of nuclear technology, is a nuclear power on par with other established nuclear powers, and its military
supremacy — at least until summer of 2006 — has covered the vast bulk of the Middle East from Turkey to Iran and from North Africa to east and central Africa.

Economically, Israel is also a regional economic superpower, with a GNP bordering on $0.5 trillion. In fact, Israel is among a few pioneering states in the field of electronics and the development of
new generations of medicine, with Israeli pharmaceutical firms’ share of the world market reaching billions of dollars.

Notwithstanding all its success and achievements, Israel remains a state based on racism, apartheid and criminality against the Palestinian people whose homeland it seized and whom it is trying to
obliterate to this day. To be sure, Israel has failed. Palestinians remain, both as a human entity and as a national entity.

Israel, in order to achieve its goals, always sought to acquire, by hook or by crook, as much Palestinian land as possible while taking in as few Palestinian people as possible. The policies and tactics employed by Israel to achieve this goal are both blunt and insidious and amount to ethnic cleansing and the international crime of genocide. Israel has institutionalised racism, bulldozed hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages, shamelessly confiscated Palestinian land and property, including private homes, and recently built the so-called “Separation Wall” in the West Bank, aimed first and foremost at annexing to Israel as much Palestinian land as possible.

On top of all of this, Israel has perfected the practice of state-sponsored mass terror; a deliberate policy aimed at making Palestinian life as unbearable as possible with the ultimate goal of forcing Palestinians to leave their homes and land altogether. This is done in broad daylight; in full view of key world powers, such as the US, EU, Russia and China, which either keep silent or issue a few terse and innocuous words about the need to stick to a peace process that has form but very little substance.

Today, as Israel is getting ready to celebrate its 60th birthday, the massive theft of Palestinian land in the West Bank, especially in East Jerusalem and its surroundings, continues unabated. Against all odds, the Palestinian people have survived. Indeed, Palestinian resilience to Israeli oppression is legendary — a trait that continues to baffle and frustrate Israeli strategists. Perhaps it is this resilience that is encouraging influential Israeli political, military and religious leaders to openly call for genocide of the Palestinians.

Recently, Israel’s Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai threatened to “inflict a greater holocaust” on Palestinians. Similarly, a growing number of rabbis associated with the two largest religious camps in
Israel, the Haredi ultra-Orthodox religious sector and the national Zionist religious sector, issuing one edict after the other, permitting soldiers to murder at will Palestinian civilians, including children, on the grounds that in war all among the enemy population ought to be treated as combatants, including children.

One might imagine that this is exaggerated, but it is not. Recently Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, director of the Tsomet Institute, a religious seminary attended by Israeli settlers in the West Bank, declared: “All
of the Palestinians must be killed; men, women, infants, and even their beasts.” And the chief rabbi of the City of Safad, Shmuel Eliyahu, urged the state and the army recently to hang the children of
a Palestinian fighter who last month attacked the Merkaz Haarav Centre, run for Jewish settlers in West Jerusalem, killing eight pre-military Talmudic students in retaliation for the killing by the Israeli army of more than 130 Palestinians, most of them innocent civilians, in the Gaza Strip.

The mushrooming of fascist impulses is not confined to the religious sector. In March, the Israeli media quoted Knesset members and former cabinet ministers as threatening to extend discriminatory laws against non-Jews in ways reminiscent of Nuremberg Laws passed in Nazi Germany. One Israeli Knesset member reportedly told his Arab colleague: “the day will come when we will kick you out of this house.”

Such instances raise no eyebrows in a country where some rabbis, like David Batsri, openly teach that non-Jews are animals and donkeys. A recent opinion survey published this week showed that as many as 75 per cent of Israeli Jews support ethnic cleansing of Arabs from mandate Palestine — Israel proper and the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
Understandably, the poll drew angry reactions from the Israeli Arab community. Jamal Zahalqa, an Israeli Arab Knesset member, suggested that Arabs are being treated in ways similar to the way Jews were treated in the Third Reich ahead of World War II.

“The hateful smell of racism and fascism is wafting everywhere in this country. You must know that we didn’t come to Israel from abroad… On the contrary; it was Israel that invaded us. We are the indigenous people of the land, and we receive our legitimacy from our belonging to this land, not from having Israeli citizenship,” he said.

Zahalqa described the poll as “additional evidence underscoring the growing rampancy of racism and fascism in Israel as a result of the ongoing waves of hate against everything and anything Arab.”

The fears of Zahalqa and other Israeli Arabs are real. Recently, hundreds of Arab residents from Jaffa, Lod and Ramleh took to the streets to protest against the planned eviction by the state of thousands of Arab residents from Jaffa. Authorities had issued warrants for the evacuation and destruction of hundreds of homes, claiming infringements on building regulations. The state also claimed that, “the families [had] lost the right to continue living in their homes, since these homes belonged to their parents … ”

“We are here and we won’t leave. We will either live on this land or die on this land. We will not let you touch our lands or our holy places,” said Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the Arab movement in Israel. “All your rulings belong in the trashcan. We are not afraid of you. We will continue to live in our homeland,” he added.

Last year, Richard Falk, a renowned American Jewish professor of international law and practice, wrote an article entitled “Slouching toward a Palestinian holocaust,” in which he warned that Israel was moving towards the perpetration of a holocaust against the Palestinians. “Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalised Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not,” said Falk.

Justifying the Israel-equals-Nazi analogy, Falk argued that developments in Gaza (the blockade against its estimated 1.5 million inhabitants), were especially disturbing because they expressed
vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Israel and its backers to subject an entire human community to life- endangering conditions of maximal cruelty. “The suggestion that this pattern of conduct is a holocaust-in-the-making represents a rather desperate appeal to the governments of the world and to international public opinion to act urgently to prevent these current genocidal tendencies from culminating into a collective tragedy,” Falk wrote.

In sum, from the standpoint of fascism, Israel has much to celebrate in terms of political and military achievements. But in terms of justice, morality and humanity, one struggles to name a country on
earth that so openly practices oppression and racism. As such Israel, on its 60th birthday, remains what it was when born six decades ago: a state built on blood, murder, theft and lies.

Is Israel about to change its ways? Don’t hold your breath, Israeli leaders might say. Unless, that is, you’re Palestinian.

in Ramallah

Source

Leave a Comment