Video Emerges of Netanyahu Praising Israeli Fascist Group Im Tirtzu

In this article from Electronic Intifada we learn of death threats to the Swedish Foreign Minister from Zvi Zameret, a former official of Israel’s education ministry.  In his article Zameret recounts the fate of Count Folke Bernadotte, a Swedish diplomat who was murdered by the Stern Gang/Lehi in Jerusalem in September 1948.  Bernadotte had been mediating on behalf of the United Nations over the question of the position of Jerusalem in a settlement.

Previous Im Tirtzu poster denouncing Naomi Hazan of the NIF, a Zionist group, for funding Israeli human rights groups

Margot Walstrom - Swedish Foreign Minister - Subject to Netanyahu's vitriolic outbursts and threats of death

Zameret in his article links what happened to Bernadotte to what might happen to Margot Walstrom, the Swedish Foreign Minister.  Walstrom had previously condemned Israel’s use of extra-judicial execution of Palestinians only to be denounced by Netanyahu. See In 2016 one doesn’thave to be Adolf Eichmann to be executed in Israel – it’s enough to be a teenage Palestinian girl with scissors  She was met by the normal hysterical denunciation by Netanyahu.  She was ‘stupid and outrageous’ for condemning Israel’s death squads even though it is advocated by Israeli government ministers that someone possessing a knife or even a pair of scissors, regardless of whether they pose a threat or not, should be killed.

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Walstrom

Contrast this with a certain Yishai Schlissel, a religious madmen who had already served 10 years for stabbing people at the 2005 Jerusalem Gay Pride march.  Ten years later, having only just been released 3 weeks before, he was allowed to wander into the Gay Pride march by the Police unhindered.  Given he was dressed as an ultra-orthodox Haredi Jew, who are uniformly hostile to gay rights, this was in itself a strange decision.  When he started going on a rampage with a knife Israeli police chased after him and wrestled him to the ground.  They did not shoot him in the back because he wasn’t a Palestinian.  The result was that several people were stabbed and one, Shira Banki was murdered.

Palestinian school girl with back pack executed by Israeli army

It is also interesting that a video has emerged of Benjamin Netanyahu approving of and urging support for a fascist organisation Im Tirzu.  In 2013 Im Tirzu brought a legal action against a group that called them fascist.  The Jerusalem District Court, which heard the petition, rejected the action because ‘‘certain lines of resemblance’ to fascism inthe ideology or activities of the right-wing movement can be seen as‘truthful.’ 

Im Tirtzu's McCarthyist Campaign Poster Against Israel's Cultural Figures 

Although the Supreme Court reversed this decision, on nakedly political grounds viz. sympathy for its politics, Im Tirtzu has just this past week been accused of being a fascist organisation.  This time even right-wing politicians denounced it.  Im Tirtzu decided to launch a campaign against ‘moles in culture’ demonising even left-Zionist poets, actresses and novellists like Amos Oz and David Grossman.  They were undermining the nationalist fabric by daring to criticise the Israeli Defence Forces.  There is a long and good pedigree for this.  The Nazis denounced 'degenerate art' and when they were in power they burned books and art they considered undermined the nationalist and Volkish spirit.

Even Benny Begin, a former Likud MK and son of the Likud Prime Minister Menachem Begin ‘accused Im Tirtzu of fascism and called the new campaign “a new level of ugly.”

Even the far-right racist, Education Minister Naftali Bennett denounced Im Tirtzu’s campaign as “embarrassing and unnecessary.”  Right-wing MKs flog ‘fascist’ group for ‘outing’ lefty artists 

None of this has stopped Netanyahu from praising the group.

Tony Greenstein

Sweden investigating Israeli death threats against its foreign minister

Ali Abunimah 29 January 2016

Palestinian children executed by Israeli military death squads

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström. Ryan Brown UN Women

Swedish security officials are investigating Israeli death threats directed at their foreign minister Margot Wallström.

Last week, Zvi Zameret, a former official of Israel’s education ministry, published an article in Hebrew implying that Wallström deserved the same fate as Count Folke Bernadotte, a Swedish UN diplomat murdered by a Zionist militia in 1948.

“There are security people looking at this issue and we have no more comment than that,” Wallström’s spokesperson Kristian Brangenfeldt told the Swedish publication Etc.

“But I know which article you mean,” Brangenfeldt added in reference to Zameret’s op-ed, “and it felt very strange.”

The Swedish foreign ministry did not respond to a request for additional comment from The Electronic Intifada.

Persona non grata

Wallström has raised the ire of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for suggesting that there should be an investigation into Israel’s frequent killings of Palestinian youths that human rights groups term extrajudicial executions.

The Israeli leader recently denounced Wallström’s comments as “outrageous and stupid.”

Wallström also angered the Israelis by connecting the kind of radicalization behind the November attacks in Paris that killed 130 people to the situation in the Middle East, “where not least, the Palestinians see that there is not a future.”

Sweden was already in Israel’s bad books for announcing in 2014 that it would recognize the “State of Palestine” (I strongly criticized this action, but for other reasons).

Earlier this month, Wallström cancelled a visit to Israel after officials said they would refuse to meet her.

“Inspiration”

The article by Zvi Zameret, headlined “Margot Wallström’s source of inspiration,” was published in Makor Rishon, a paper owned by US billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a major financier of the Republican Party and anti-Palestinian organizations.

Folke Bernadotte was a Swedish aristocrat and diplomat who helped rescue thousands of Jews and others from Nazi death camps during the Second World War.

Later, he became the UN mediator for Palestine. He was assassinated in Jerusalem on 17 September 1948 by the Stern Gang, the Zionist armed group among whose leaders was Yitzhak Shamir, a future prime minister of Israel.

In the article, translated for Mondoweiss by Jonathan Ofir, Zameret lists Bernadotte’s supposed transgressions in the eyes of the Zionist movement and then turns his fire on Wallström: “The Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström, with her characteristic covert anti-Semitism, with her arrogance, ignorance, and her interest-bound speculation regarding her future Muslim voters – she too seeks to fight the foundations of the State of Israel. I am convinced and certain that her intentions will smoulder, just as all of the undignified count’s [Bernadotte] intentions did.”

Zameret has denied that his article was an implicit endorsement of violence against Wallström, but Swedish officials will be concerned because of high profile assassinations of the country’s political leaders in recent decades.

In 2003, Wallström’s predecessor Anna Lindh was murdered while out shopping in Stockholm. Her killer, Swedish citizen Mijailo Mijailović, is serving a life sentence.

In February 1986, the country’s Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot dead while walking home with his wife from a cinema in the Swedish capital.

His murder has never been solved, but among the many theories pursued by investigators over the years is that it was linked to South Africa’s apartheid regime, of which Palme was an outspoken international critic at the time.

Incitement

Zameret’s article came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had turned his anger on Wallström.

It also comes amid an atmosphere of incitement against domestic and international critics of Israel’s violent repression against Palestinians.

Last month, the Israeli right-wing group Im Tirzu released a report calling on the Israeli government to shut down human rights organizations that receive foreign funding and criticize Israeli policies.

Im Tirzu also released a video that labels the heads of four major Israeli human rights groups as traitors who aid terrorists at the behest of their foreign bankrollers.

It should be recalled that rising incitement preceded the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by the Jewish militant Yigal Amir. This included Rabin frequently being called a traitor for signing the 1993 Oslo accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Many in Israel still feel Netanyahu himself played a direct role in this incitement.

Now, a 2012 video has come to light titled “PM Netanyahu’s message to ‘Im Tirtzu’ supporters.” It features the Israeli prime minister praising the group and urging donations to support it.

Chemi Shalev, the US editor of the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz, tweeted the video on Friday with this comment: “Making the rounds (and turning stomachs) 2012 Netanyahu appeal in English to support proto-fascist Im Tirzu.”

It is one more indicator that incitement and extremism in Israel are not marginal phenomena but are nurtured at the very top.

In 2016 one doesn’t have to be Adolf Eichmann to be executed in Israel – it’s enough to be a teenage Palestinian girl with scissors

An excellent article by Gideon Levy in Ha’aretz.  The Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom recently alleged that Israel was executing Palestinians. Sweden demands probe of Israeli ‘extrajudicial executions’ The response from Netanyahu was predictable.  He denounced her remarks as 'outrageous' 

Abdallah al-Shalalda was executed in Hebron hospital when an Israeli death squad came disguised in order to capture his cousin, whom he was visiting.  His crime?  Being in the wrong place at the wrong time

Netanyahu denounced Swedish FM's remarks on execution of Palestinians as 'outrageous and stupid'

It's a strange set of values in which the denunciation of extra-judicial executions is denounced as 'outrageous' but that is unfortunately the set of moral standards that guides the leaders of the Middle Easts 'only democracy'. 

Yes, Israel Is Executing Palestinians Without Trial

In 2016, one doesn’t have to be Adolf Eichmann to be executed in Israel – it’s enough to be a teenage Palestinian girl with scissors.

Gideon Levy Jan 17, 2016 5:18 AM

Two more victims of the death squads

 Two Palestinians, from different walks of life, brought together in death at a checkpoint

We should call it like it is: Israel executes people without trial nearly every day. Any other description is a lie. If there was once discussion here about the death penalty for terrorists, now they are executed even without trial (and without discussion). If once there was debate over the rules of engagement, today it’s clear: we shoot to kill – any suspicious Palestinian. 

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan outlined the situation clearly when he said, “Every terrorist should know he will not survive the attack he is about to commit” – and almost every politician joined him in nauseating unison, from Yair Lapid on up. Never have so many licenses to kill been handed out here, nor has the finger been so itchy on the trigger. 

The woman continued: “The school girl was walking alone and the soldiers asked her to stop, another soldier immediately aimed his rifle towards her and shot her.” -

In 2016, one doesn’t have to be Adolf Eichmann to be executed here – it’s enough to be a teenage Palestinian girl with scissors. The firing squads are active every day. Soldiers, police and civilians shoot those who stabbed Israelis, or tried to stab them or were suspected of doing so, and at those who run down Israelis in their cars or appear to have done so. 

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom

In most cases, there was no need to shoot – and certainly not to kill. In a good many of the cases, the shooters’ lives were not in danger. They shot people to death who were holding a knife or even scissors, or people who just put their hands in their pockets or lost control of their car. 

They shot them to death indiscriminately – women, men, teenage girls, teenage boys. They shot them when they were standing, and even after they were no longer a threat. They shot to kill, to punish, to release their anger, and to take revenge. There is such contempt here that these incidents are barely covered in the media. 

Last Saturday, soldiers at the Beka’ot checkpoint (called Hamra by the Palestinians) in the Jordan Valley killed businessman Said Abu al-Wafa, 35, a father of four, with 11 bullets. 

At the same time, they also killed Ali Abu Maryam, a 21-year-old farm labourer and student, with three bullets. 

The Israel Defense Forces did not explain the killing of the two men, except to say there was a suspicion that someone had drawn a knife. There are security cameras at the site, but the IDF has not released video footage of the incident. 

Last month, other IDF soldiers killed Nashat Asfur, a father of three who worked at an Israeli chicken slaughterhouse. They shot him in his village, Sinjil, from 150 meters away, while he was walking home from a wedding. 

Earlier this month, Mahdia Hammad – a 40-year-old mother of four – was driving home through her village, Silwad. Border Police officers sprayed her car with dozens of bullets after they suspected she intended to run them over. 

The soldiers didn’t even suspect cosmetology student Samah Abdallah, 18, of anything. Soldiers shot her father’s car “by mistake,” killing her. 

They had suspected a 16-year-old pedestrian, Alaa al-Hashash, of trying to stab them. They executed him as well, of course. 

They also killed Ashrakat Qattanani, 16, who was holding a knife and running after an Israeli woman. First a settler ran her over with his car, and when she was lying injured on the ground, soldiers and settlers shot her at least four times. Execution – what else? 

And when soldiers shot Lafi Awad, 20, in his back while he was fleeing after throwing stones, was that not an execution? 

These are only a few of the cases I have documented over the past few weeks in Haaretz. The website of the human rights group B’Tselem has a list of 12 more cases of executions. 

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström, one of the few ministers with a conscience left in the world, demanded that these killings be investigated. There is no demand more moral and just than this. It should have come from our own justice minister.

Israel responded with its usual howls. The prime minister said this was “outrageous, immoral and unjust.” And Benjamin Netanyahu understands those terms: That is exactly how to describe Israel’s campaign of criminal executions under his leadership.     

   

Gideon Levy

Haaretz Correspondent