Let us call Israel’s destruction of the Bedouin village of Humsa al-Baqai’a for what it is – a Nazi-like act

Three times Israel soldiers using JCB bulldozers have destroyed water tanks, toys and homes using the pretext that it is a military firing range

Herschel Grynszpan - who assassinated German Embassy official vom Rath

From 1933 to 1941 the Nazi policy towards the Jews was not extermination but expulsion. Today that is the unwritten but official policy of the Israeli state towards the Palestinians. According to the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism such a comparison is anti-Semitic, even though it is true. That is one of the unique accomplishments of Zionism and its McCarthyist supporters. Something can be anti-Semitic even though it is true.

It was the expulsion of Jewish refugees from Germany to Poland, leaving them stranded in no mans land, cold and hungry, that caused the 17 year old Herschel Grynszpan to assassinate Ernst vom Rath at the German Embassy in Paris on 7^th November 1938. Herschel’s parents had been amongst those stranded Jews.

Israeli soldiers and workmen get to work destroying Palestinian homes

The death of vom Rath on 9^th November was used by Hitler and Goebbels to launch Kristallnacht, a massive Nazi directed SA pogrom against Germany’s Jews. Hundreds of synagogues were burnt to the ground, nearly a hundred Jews were murdered and over 30,000 were placed in concentration camps.

Israel’s eviction of the Palestinian village of Humsa al-Baqai’a in the Jordan Valley is part of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from Area C of the West Bank. It is no different in principle to the Nazis’ expulsion of Germany's Jews who were also not considered nationals of Germany. 

Indeed it is worse in many ways. Hitler never pretended that Nazi Germany was a democracy.  He reviled democracy whereas Israel claims that it’s the ‘only democracy in the  Middle East’.

British and European Union supplies of equipment destroyed

Full marks therefore to Jon Snow of Channel 4, the only news journalist who has any ethics for the recent coverage of the demolition of Humsa.

Israel's military last week took delight in their third destruction of Humsa. Not content with bulldozing the tents that the European Union had given to the Palestinians you can see on the video how one soldier empties the water tanks of the Palestinians. What kind of bestial mentality is it that would pour the water of communities who are water thirsty onto the ground?

A few of the belongings that have been saved from destruction

Jon Snow’s interview with a representative of the Israeli embassy, Ohad Zemet, was an uncomfortable one.  The number of lies that Zemet told is illustrative.

The first lie is that Israel acts in accordance with international law. That is such an egregious lie.  The Fourth Geneva Convention specifically forbids moving settlers into occupied territory. The occupier is also forbidden to transfer that population out of the  territories. Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled that the Geneva Convention does not apply to Israel’s occupation.

The second lie is that Israel possesses an ‘independent judiciary’ the envy of the world.  It doesn’t.  Israel’s judicial system is an integral part of the Zionist system of control. It has consistently enforced laws designed to segregate and subdue Israel's Palestinians. It has consistently turned a blind eye to for example the 1950 Absentee Property Law which has been used and is still being used to confiscate land from Israeli Palestinians. It has never been used to confiscate land from Jews. The Supreme Court has also accepted the explicitly racist Jewish Nation State Law.

A view of the wreckage

The third lie is that the Bedouin had broken Israeli law and were squatters. The fact that these villagers have lived on this land for longer than the existence of the Israeli state gives the lie to this claim. Israeli law simply acts to legalise what is naked theft.  That is what Zionism is - land theft and ethnic cleansing.

In any case in a democratic society, civilians elect a government to pass the laws which govern them. The Palestinians have no vote and no say in the Israeli military law that governs them.  To therefore talk of breaking Israeli law is like talking of breaking the laws of the Nazi occupation. These laws have no democratic validity.

The fourth lie is that the Palestinians have defied zoning law and planning permission. In Area C virtually no Palestinians are granted planning permission and Israel has repeatedly demolished COVID isolation tents of the Palestinians to add to their racist crime of refusing to vaccinate Palestinians living under occupation, contrary to Article 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The fifth lie is a more subtle racist lie.  The Palestinians are being moved for their own safety because they are living on a firing range!  Unfortunately Jon Snow didn’t pick up on this. It is a regular device of the Israeli military to declare closed military zones on Palestinian, never Jewish settler, land precisely in order to have a pretext to evict them.  Usually, once the Palestinians have been evicted, the firing range becomes safe for the settlers.

A variation of this use of military firing zones is when the Israeli authorities forbid access to the said land.  After a year the Cultivation of Waste Land law kicks in. Uncultivated land reverts to the state after one year. And that just happens to be the Israeli state, Israeli state land is ‘Jewish national’ land, access to which is barred to Palestinians.

The tents, water tanks and equipment that the Israel’s Nazi-like troops destroyed with with a JCB bulldozer, were paid for by Britain and the European Union. Although it’s good to see Britain’s Consul General in Jerusalem protesting this act of destruction it would carry more weight if Britain and the EU were to impose penalties on Israel such as the withdrawal of Israel’s special trading status.  Coupled with an arms embargo.

Until Britain and the EU impose penalties on Israel then all their words of protest are meaningless hot air. The Zionist state listens to nothing except force because ethnic cleansers do not have any morality that civilised human beings recognise.

Of course Keir Starmer, the ‘Zionist without qualification’ has kept his mouth shut.  He neither sees, hears nor speaks any criticism of Israel. That the ‘left’ in the Labour Party – from the Campaign Group to Momentum – is too cowardly to call for the removal of this reactionary stiff is testimony to their uselessness.

Tony Greenstein