Israel has declared itself a Jewish nation-state belonging to Jews around the world but not its own citizens, who awkwardly happen to include over 1.5 million Palestinians.
Abbey Zimet
Like a rat caught in a trap, Israel improbably, harrowingly continues to plummet ever further into a frenzied de facto holy war against its own Arab population, evidently unaware that more of the same – racism, injustice, suffering – will not bring peace. In the last few weeks, it has instead brought this:
- A bill declaring Israel a Jewish nation-state belonging to Jews around the world but not its own citizens, who awkwardly happen to include over 1.5 million Palestinians, thus officially making Israel’s much-touted “democracy” into what is in fact an ethnocracy;
- A proposal to pay Israeli Arabs to leave Israel in order to help resolve the “duality and divided loyalties from which they are suffering”;
- A Netanyahu-inspired, eight-part crackdown on “terrorism” – deport, disenfranchise, demolish homes, revoke citizenships, ban the Palestinian flag as an “enemy flag” – aimed at fostering “real deterrence”;
- A resurgence of home demolitions as punishment for violence, despite numerous studies finding they act not to deter but to provoke;
- A broad campaign to silence Palestinian political dissent that has often targeted Knesset member Haneen Zoabi – she has been suspended, threatened, branded a terrorist and charged with “incitement” – for daring to criticize the assault on Gaza, or as she puts it, for “cross(ing) the lines of consensus — a warlike, aggressive, racist, populist, chauvinist, arrogant consensus.”
The “leaders” lead, the people follow. Even as officials codify the country’s oppression, right-wing hooliganism rages out of control:
- A suspected arson attack on Jerusalem’s thriving Arab-Jewish schoolburned books, destroyed most of the school, and left walls defaced with graffiti reading “End Assimilation” and “There Is No Coexistence With a Cancer”;
- Racist thugs regularly protest progressive or Arab-Jewish events by targeting human-rights advocates they liken to anti-Semites and Nazis and threatening, “We will make soap out of you”;
- Officials are investigating a recent Facebook post that depicted top politicians as Nazis – there is a recurring theme here – for questioning the highly questionable Israel-Is-Only-For-Jews bill;
- Israeli president Reuven Rivlin, Likud member, longtime conservative, critic of racist rhetoric and “Israel’s most unlikely moralist,” has been excoriated for declaring that Israel is “sick”, having forgotten not just how to be Jews, but how to be human.
Meanwhile, the U.S. just announced it will be sending Israel 3,000 more smart bombs like those used in the Gaza assault, at a cost of $82 million. Because this – offering succor and guns to those standing on the wrong side of history – is what we do. None of it will end well.
Source: Common Dreams
