Israelis May Fool Themselves Into Thinking They are Fighting Nazis But What They Are Really Fighting is the Victims of Today’s Nazis
Nothing was more obscene than the
declaration of Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s London Ambassador, that ‘we are fighting the Nazis’. She declared
that 600,000 Germans died when Britain bombed Dresden and Hamburg implying that
Israel would commit a similar atrocity.
It clearly escaped
Hotovely’s notice that bombing civilians was a Nazi speciality starting with
the bombing of Guernica
in Spain in 1937. Although she didn’t realise it what she was in effect saying
was that the Nazis were the victims in WW2.
Rabbi Dov Lior, an out and out fascist, along with 80 other rabbis urge the bombing of Gaza's main hospital Al Shifa
Hotoveli is a racist religious
nut who when Chair of the Knesset Women’s Committee invited
the fascist, anti-miscegenation group Lehava to speak to the Knesset, explaining, “It is
important to me to check systems to prevent mixed marriages, and Lehava are the
most suitable for this.” Lehava’s methods mainly involve attacking Arab men
who are thought to be after Jewish women.
Hotovely is not the
only genocider. When Yoav Gallant, Israel’s War Minister, announced the
beginning of Israel’s genocidal bombing, with its food, water and fuel
blockade, he declared
that “We are fighting human animals and
we are acting accordingly.”
Hitler was also fond
of talking about human animals. In Mein Kampf he described Jews as ‘human cattle’. Heinrich Himmler, who
was in charge of the SS and the implementation the Final Solution, declared in
a speech in Poznań on 4 October 1943, that the Nazis were ‘the only people in the world’ to have taken a ‘decent attitude’ toward animals. They would be equally decent
towards ‘human animals’. This was
recorded and played at the Nuremberg trials. This can be found on p.131 of
Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader.
What we are seeing is
Israel’s inversion of the holocaust whereby Israel is the victim and the
Palestinians are the Nazis. Israel has long claimed to represent the memory of
the Jewish holocaust victims despite the fact that during the holocaust the
Zionist movement was indifferent to the fate of Europe’s Jews.
Destruction in Gaza
By identifying itself
with Europe’s dead Jews Israel, even as it subjugates and ethnically cleanses
the Palestinians, imagines that it is the victim. Not only Israel. The German
state, despite its own post-war record of reintegrating Nazis into top
positions, has adopted the claim that Israel is the successor to those that it
murdered.
There is nothing
unusual in this. The American settlers believed they were the victim of the
Indians and South Africa Whites similarly believed they were victims, a
victimhood nournished by their experience in British concentration camps in the
Boer War.
As
Yehuda Elkana pointed out, when a false memory of the past participates in the
political process, democracy itself is endangered. The weaponisation of the
Holocaust has led to the marginalisation and dispossession of the Palestinians.
It has made the oppressor into the oppressed.
The BBC in particular has ignored Palestinian child deaths in favour of White Israeli Children despite the disparity in numbers of those killed
Elkana, a child survivor of Auschwitz
and former President and rector of the Central European University in Budapest,
(before Israel’s friend, the anti-Semitic Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor
Orban forced it out as part of his campaign against George Soros) wrote
a profound article The Need to Forget in
Ha'aretz on 2 March 1988. Elkana argued that what happened in Germany could happen anywhere, and to any
people, describing how the ‘majority of
Israelis are consumed by a profound hatred of the Arabs’. Elkana described:
a profound existential “Angst” fed by a particular interpretation of
the lessons of the holocaust … that we are the eternal victim. In this ancient
belief… I see the tragic and paradoxical victory of Hitler. Two nations,
metaphorically speaking, emerged from the ashes of Auschwitz: a minority who
assert, “this must never happen
again,” and a frightened and haunted
majority who assert, “this must never
happen to us again.”
Today we are seeing this angst play out
in Israel. To most people the idea that Gaza’s refugees, ethnically cleansed by
Israel once already, are the Nazis and their killers are anti-fascists would
seem absurd yet Zionists, so consumed as
they are by their own righteous arrogance sincerely believe they are the
victim.
When I described
Israel as Hitler’s Bastard Offspring four years ago the Zionists went crazy but
that is exactly what has happened. Israel has imbibed the values of Hitler’s
Germany but inverted them. Now they are the herrenvolk and the Palestinians are
the untermenschen.
It is no wonder that people like
neo-Nazis like Tommy
Robinson and Richard Spencer find
so much in common with the Israeli ethno-nationalist state. Israel is their
ideal state.
Israeli Doctors for Genocide
Palestinian doctors in Gaza in a message to Israeli doctors:
— Younis Tirawi | يونس (@ytirawi) November 6, 2023
“We as doctors are ambassadors of peace. We save lives. Israeli doctors who signed a letter promoting bombing of hospitals with patients inside have committed a betrayal to their noble profession & bear responsibility” pic.twitter.com/1Q43IynTc7
When I
put a petition up asking members of Unite to sign calling for the union to
support an immediate ceasefire Doctors in Unite were particularly well
represented. Yet in Israel the exact opposite is the case. Doctors are war mongers and genociders.
Blood on an ambulance that Israel bombed - Israeli doctors would have approved
Over 90 Israeli doctors calling
themselves “Doctors for the Rights of IDF Soldiers” urged
the bombing of any and every hospital in Gaza. They argued
that due to suspicion of “terrorist activity,” the hospitals are “a legitimate target for annihilation.”
They claim that “ambulances that are
evacuating patients to the south in order to be treated elsewhere are at their
disposal.”
What kind of doctor you might ask urges
that hospitals of a people without an airforce or capability of striking back
be bombed? Even if Hamas militants were in the ambulances it is still a war
crime to bomb them. These Israeli doctors are not one jot different from the SS
doctors who presided over the selection of who should live and who should die
at Auschwitz, such as Dr
Mengele. See Israeli
doctors urge the bombing of Gaza hospitals
But the chief war criminal in Israel is Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In a speech on 28 October he declared that the
enemy that Israel was fighting was Amalek, the mythical tribe that attacked the
Israelites as they made their way from Egypt to the Sinai desert.
Netanyahu Evokes Amalek
Netanyahu read
his Letter to Soldiers and Commanders exorting his listners to
understand that
The current fight against the murderers of 'Hamas'
is another chapter in the generations-long story of our national resilience.
'Remember what Amalek did to you.'
We will always remember the horrific scenes of the
massacre on Shabbat Simchat Torah, 7 October 2023. We see our murdered brothers
and sisters, the wounded, the hostages, and the fallen of the IDF and the
security services.
In their name and on their
behalf, we have gone to war, the purpose of which is to destroy the brutal and
murderous Hamas-ISIS enemy, bring back our hostages and restore the security to
our country, our citizens and our children.
In the first Book of Samuel God commands King Saul in the to
kill every person in Amalek. The prophet Samuel tells
Saul to
‘attack
the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them;
put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels
and donkeys.’ (Deuteronomy 25:17, Book of Samuel I 15:2).
It has been the
standard interpretation of Amalek by those in Israel who advocate the
extermination of the Palestinians to equate the Palestinians with Amalek. Now Netanyahu
has just confirmed that.
Dr
MengeleAmalek,Craig Mokhiber, Director of the New York Office of the UN
High Commissioner of Human Rights, in his letter
of resignation stripped away any pretence that what was happening in Gaza
was not genocide when he wrote to Volker Turk, the High Commissioner for Human
Rights about what is happening in Gaza that:
This is a
text-book case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial
project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited
destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine.
What’s more, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and much
of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault. Not only are these
governments refusing to meet their treaty obligations “to ensure respect” for
the Geneva Conventions, but they are in fact actively arming the assault,
providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and
diplomatic cover for Israel’s atrocities.
But amid the death and destruction and the murder of 5,000+
children in Gaza we should take hope that Israel is, despite the best efforts
of groups like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, who,
alongside Britain’s racist Home Secretary Cruella Braverman, are becoming
hysterical in their desperation to prevent the massive demonstrations each
Saturday against genocide in Gaza.
They say they are concerned that Jews in London will feel
afraid to come into London! Well given the thousands of Jews who took part in
the half million march on October 28th it is clear that anti-racist
Jews have no problem joining in. There has been no hostility whatsoever to Jews
marching alongside their Muslim brothers and sisters.
Of course racist Jews and non-Jews may not wish to encounter
an anti-racist demonstration but it’s not because their physical safety is at
risk but because the sight of Jews and non-Jews marching side by side is an
alien sight to those who believe that humanity is divided into competing races.
The kind of ideas that Cruella Braverman believes in with her repetitive use of
the anti-Semitic term ‘cultural Marxism.’
New York’s Grand Central Station was completely taken over by
thousands of Jewish human rights defenders standing in solidarity with the
Palestinian people and demanding an end to Israeli tyranny. In doing so, they
stripped away in an instant the Israeli hasbara propaganda point (and
antisemitic trope) that Israel somehow represents the Jewish people. It does
not. See Israeli
War on Gaza Sparks ‘Largest Mass Mobilization of Jews in American History’
Israel is solely responsible for its crimes. It bears
repeating, in spite of Israel lobby smears to the contrary, that criticism of
Israel’s human rights violations is not antisemitic, any more than criticism of
Saudi violations is Islamophobic, criticism of Myanmar violations is
anti-Buddhist, or criticism of Indian violations is anti-Hindu.
In an article,
Israel's Settlement Enterprise Celebrates a Great Victory, Israeli journalist
Amira Hass describes the reign of terror in the West Bank as the settlers,
under the racist Gauleiter of the West Bank, Bezalel Smotrich, seek to
‘cleanse’ Area C of Palestinians. In much the same way the Nazis sought to
‘cleanse’ the Warthegau, the annexed part of Poland of Jews and Poles.
That is why I compare Israel to Nazi Germany. Not only their
goals but even their methods bear comparison. Never has it been clearer as to what
Zionism is about. Yet the leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer, is
determined to stay in lockstep with the United States in his fulsome backing of Israel’s genocide in
real time.
This has resulted in 330 councillors writing to Starmer demanding
that he call for an immediate ceasefire. According to Starmer, if Israel stops
its bombing that might lead to more violence whereas continued bombing of
hospitals, schools, ambulances and homes is the way to peace. 250 Muslim
councillors have also written to Labour’s toxic leader demanding that he change
his position.
Meanwhile
in Israel itself there has been a wave of intimidation against Israel’s
Palestinian citizens who are considered a fifth column. Samah Salaime wrote in +972 Magazine that
Last Saturday evening, the
scenario that every Palestinian citizen of Israel has spent the past three
weeks fearing began to materialize: a mob of hundreds of belligerent Jewish
Israelis attempted to break
into the dormitories at Netanya Academic College, where some 50 Arab
students were trapped inside, fearing for their lives. For a while, the Israeli
police did not intervene as the mob shouted “Death to Arabs” and “Go back to
Gaza,” and tried to force their way in. Eventually, the students were rescued
with the help of volunteers and under police protection.
In the wake of
these scenes, I am confident that every Arab mother who, like me, has a child
studying in Israeli academic institutions, will be having trouble sleeping at
night out of fear that her son or daughter will be the victim of a
lynching.
Ha’aretz described
how
Videos of the
riot showed the angry crowd storming the campus, waving Israeli flags, chanting
“Death to Arabs” and attempting to break down the gates. The rioting crowd
even attempted to break in and remove them forcibly.
There has
been a wave of incitement against Israel’s Palestinian citizens yet not one
Israeli Jew has been detained. Social media has been swamped with anti-Arab
rhetoric and hate yet all those arrested have been Arabs such as Abd
Elhadi. Best known for her role in the 2013 film “World War Z,” as well as
several Israeli TV shows, the actor was detained after sharing images on
Instagram of Yaffa Adar, 85, being taken hostage by Hamas, along with laughing
emojis.
Abd Elhadi
shared an image of Hamas forces breaching Israel’s security border, with a
caption reading “Let’s go, Berlin style,” in an apparent reference to the fall
of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It is of course understandable that after all the
propaganda about the invincibility of Israel’s finest and the humiliations they
have had to suffer that Israel’s Palestinian citizens should have felt elation
at how easily Hamas fighters breached the security fence surrounding Gaza.
Amira Hass refers to the Hamas
attack being a pogrom. It wasn’t. It was the breakout from an open air prison
of people who had suffered from a 17 year siege. We still don’t know the full
story of what happened on 7 October. Undoubtedly there were atrocities
committed by Hamas, in particular the firing on unarmed young people at the
rave. But it is also clear that the Israeli military deliberately killed
Israelis in order to prevent them being taken captive.
Given the
alternative of swapping the 5,000 Palestinian hostages in Israel’s prisons or
murdering their own citizens, the army preferred the latter option. It’s called
the Hannibal
Directive in which, faced with the possibility of an Israeli being taken
hostage, the military should simply kill them and anything else in the
vicinity.
Watch the video about 7 October YouTube would rather you didn't see
This Friday 6.30 the SLN will be
holding a Zoom meeting with 5 speakers including a Jewish Holocaust Survivor,
Stephen Kapos and noted journalist Asa Winstanley, author of weaponising
anti-Semitism, and three other speakers including myself.
Please register and come alone.
I strongly feel that if, in1948 or 1967, those Zionists who argued to share the country on the basis of one person, one vote as a single democratic country had prevailed, we would not be facing the violence and division of today. As a long term advocate of one democratic country from the River to the Sea, I wonder whether this solution could be re-raised today, as an answer to the murderous paranoia represented by Netanyahu and his henchmen against the excluded and dispossessed Palestinians.
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