Britain’s Cointelpro – How the Israeli Embassy and Guido Fawkes destabilised the Labour Party

Ken Livingstone Must Be Reinstated & Corbyn Must Fight Back

Ken Livingstone - under suspension for speaking the truth

The coin that the Nazis struck in commemoration of the head of the Jewish desk at the Gestapo visit to Palestine courtesy of the Zionist labour movement

 The late Phil Agee revealed in his book Inside the Company how the CIA went around Latin America destabilising governments and parties it didn’t like.  In American domestic politics there was a similar programme aimed at dissident and radical organisations known as Cointelpro, a series of covert projects conducted by the FBI that infiltrated, surveilled and disrupted domestic political organizations.

For the past few months the Labour Party has been subject to a similar programme of destabilisation.  A programme in which the Zionist movement played and is still playing a major role.

Identity Politics have wrecked havoc with Jones' socialist politics - He supports the Palestinians and he supports their oppressors

From July 2015 onwards, when it became increasingly clear that Corbyn would win the leadership election, we had a campaign, initiated by the Daily Mail EXCLUSIVE: Jeremy Corbyn's 'long-standing links' with notorious Holocaust denier and his 'anti-Semitic' organisation revealed and fronted by the Jewish Chronicle under Stephen Pollard, its far-right editor and member of the Henry Jackson Society, The key questions Jeremy Corbyn must answer   The aim of the campaign was to paint Corbyn as a ‘friend’ of ‘terrorists’ – Hamas and Hezbollah and an associate of holocaust deniers.

When Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party, the campaign shifted to an attack on Gerald Kaufmann for having said at a meeting that it was ‘Jewish money’ that was responsible for the pro-Israel policy of the Conservative government.  Groups such as the misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, an overtly Zionist political organisation masquerading as a charity [see EXCLUSIVE - Lifting the Lid on the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism The Bogus Charity that Campaigns Against Corbyn, Muslims and Palestinians  waged a prolonged campaign against Kaufman as if he was the most notorious anti-Semite since  Adolf Eichmann.  

When I searched the Jewish Chronicle’s database for ‘Jewish money’ I turned up no less than 590 occurences of this phrase!  It is a phrase commonly used in the Jewish community.  As an example of Zionist hypocrisy, on May 1^st a former prominent Jewish funder of the Labour Party, Michael Foster, was given nearly 10 minutes of airtime on BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme to explain why Jewish people weren’t going to be funding the Labour Party whilst Corbyn was leader.  Of course ‘Jewish money’ is only anti-Semitic when used by opponents of the State of Israel. 

Jewish Chronicle columnist Geoffrey Alderman called for Kaufman’s excommunication from the Jewish community despite having used the very same term twice in the same article. A man who deserves banning Jewish Chronicle  Geoffrey Alderman and Gerald Kaufman –Jewish Chronicle Columnist’sExercise in Hypocrisy

Despite his outburst against Kaufman Alderman was remarkably tolerant in respect of David Whelan, the former owner of Wigan Athletic football club, who stated that ‘there is nothing like a Jew who sees money slipping through his fingers’ and when challenged by the Guardian responded that ‘I think they [Jews] are very shrewd people…. I think Jewish people do chase money more than everybody else.  I don’t think that’s offensive at all.’ To most people this would count as anti-Semitism.

See 'The Witchunt of Gerald Kaufman - Crucified for Supporting the Palestinians 

Lansman  holds talks with racist Zionist groups and supports Livingstone's expulsion whilst remaining Chair of Momentum

Alderman’s take was that ‘It was ‘a sad and miserable tale of political correctness taken to new depths of absurdity.’  This football fuss is a bit rich 5.12.14.    Despite ‘shrewd’ being used in the sense of canny or mean, i.e. a stereotypical comment about Jews and money, Alderman’s comment was ‘who reading this column could take umbrage at that?’  And as for Jews chasing money, Alderman believed that ‘as far as I’m aware no serious research has been done on this subject.  But it’s certainly true that the Jewish view of money differs considerably from that of Christianity.’  

Pollard himself was more than willing to excuse anti-Semites when they were pro-Israel.  Michal Kaminski, the Conservative’s new partner, in the European and Conservative Reform group in the European Parliament, was ‘the best friend of the Jews’ despite being anti-Semitic. [see ‘Poland’s Kaminski isnot an anti-Semite: he’s a friend to Jews’:  and Weapon of Choice   

Ben Gurion - 'it is in our interest to use Hitler' as they 'turn a disaster (the Holocaust) into a productive force

The reason why Kaminski could not possibly be anti-Semitic, despite being a member of a former neo-Nazi party and opposing a Polish apology for Jedwabne, when up to 900 Jews were burnt alive in a barn, was that ‘Far from being an antisemite, Mr Kaminski is about as pro-Israel an MEP as exists.'  David Miliband's insult to Michal Kaminski is contemptible Jewish Chronicle 1.10.09., 

Other incidents of ‘anti-Semitism’

In February there began the new phase in the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign.  It centred on Oxford University Labour Club whose co-chairman Alex Chalmers resigned claiming that his fellow Labour Club members were anti-Semitic .  The occasion of this resignation was the decision of the Club to support Oxford’s Israel Apartheid Week.  Oxford University Labour Club co-chair, Alex Chalmers, resigns amid anti-Semitism row

Since then we have had the case of Vicky Kirby,  an ex-Bradford Mayor who tweeted that 6 million Zionists died in the holocaust when complaining that even greater acts of genocide didn’t receive the same attention as the Jewish genocide and now of course Ken Livingstone’s reference to Hitler’s support for the Zionist solution to German anti-Semitism.

In what is the first comprehensive investigation of these allegations of anti-Semitism by Electronic Intifada researcher and journalist Asa Winstanley it becomes clear that these allegations are not what they seem. How Israel lobby manufactured UK Labour Party’santi-Semitism crisis

Alex Chalmers was an intern with BICOM the Britain Israel Communications & Research Centre, which despite describing itself as an ‘an independent research centre’  is an Israeli propaganda group. 

The case of Vicky Kirby which was one of the worst examples of ‘anti-Semitism’ presented turns out  to be a case of someone quite innocent fitted up.  Her ‘big noses’ comment was nothing more than quoting from a play  the 2010 comedy film The Infidel.  The information had been taken from the far-right Conservative web site Guido Fawkes which had cropped a screenshot of a tweet to make it appear that these were her own words.’  In other words the usual Tory dirty tricks.  The article 

analyses the role of New Labour MP and ex-NUS President Wes Streeting who attended a key anti-BDS Conference in Tel-Aviv.  Streeting, who le arnt the tricks of the trade in NUS, is almost certainly working with the Israeli embassy and no doubt has other intelligence links.

Ken Livingstone

On April 28^th in an interview with BBC Radio London’s Vanessa Feltz Ken Livingstone, in the course of defending suspended MP Naz Shah from accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ remarked that:

‘Let’s remember when Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism – this before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.’ Labour antisemitismrow: Ken Livingstone interview transcipts in full   These remarks can be best understood in the context of Hitler supporting the Zionist solution to German Jewry i.e. expulsion, though even this is not strictly accurate. Ken Livingstone says Labour should reinstate himbecause everything he said about Jewish people "was true" 

From the biography of David Ben Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister and Chairman of the Jewish Agency, by Shabtai Teveth - this is BG's reaction to Britain's Kindertransport plan to save 10,000 Jewish childen by bringing them to Britain in 1939 - saving half Germany's children in Palestine was better than saving all of them in England

There is no doubt that Ken made a number of minor mistakes.  Israel didn’t exist in 1933, the area was called Palestine, it was a British Mandate territory.  Secondly Hitler didn’t win any election in 1932, on the contrary his vote in the November election compared to July dropped by 2 million to 11.74 million (33.09%) compared to 13.,23 million (37.3%) for the KPD and SPD.  Hitler was put into power on January 30 1933 by reactionary political and military forces who sought the destruction of the German labour movement. Thirdly the final solution was not a product of Hitler’s madness. Even without Hitler the final solution would have taken place.  It was the product of war imperialism and the fanatical anti-Semitism of a section of the Nazi Party.  The final solution had a logic and momentum of its own.  When the expulsion of Jews was no longer an option after 1939 the countdown to the destruction of European Jewry had begun.  It began in June 1941 with Operation Barbarossa.

Ben Gurion's official biographer  Teveth concludes that for Ben Gurion and implicitly the whole Jewish Agency Executive, there was a very thin line separating him from seeing the Holocaust as a 'beneficial disaster' 

Livingstone’s comments weren’t the wisest thing to have made in the course of an ‘anti-Semitism’ witch hunt.  However  in essence they are correct.  The Nazi movement singled out the Zionist movement as their favourite Jews. 

For example on 28 January 1935 Heydrich, the ‘“real engineer of the final solution” [Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution, p.13.] issued a directive to the Bavarian Gestapo that ‘The activity of the Zionist-oriented youth organisations…. lies in the interests of the National Socialist state’s leadership…. (they) are not to be treated with that strictness that it is necessary to apply to the members of the so-called German-Jewish (assimilationists).’ Lucy Dawidowicz, War Against the Jews, p.118,  citing Hans Mommsen, ‘Der nationalsozialistische Polizeistaat’ pp. 78-9.

The Zionists were allowed to organise, hold meetings, fly flags, have a newspapers whereas the ‘assimilationists’ were repressed.  The Zionists used their patronage by the Nazis to encroach on the position of the majority of the Jewish community demanding parity in the Reichsvertretung, the Jewish communal organisation in 1935.  Indeed they took over all the positions on the Reichsvereinigung, which was established in 1939 after Krystalnacht.

The Zionist policy was that Jews should flee to Palestine or nowhere.  Their twisted logic was that if other countries could solve the crisis of anti-Semitism in Germany and Europe then Palestine would be made redundant.  In any case anti-Semitism, being a disease, would simply spread to other countries.  Only Palestine could provide a long-term solution to anti-Semitism.  It was a racial concept of humanity.   The Zionists therefore lobbied the Gestapo not to allow Jews to emigrate to countries other than Palestine.  It was a consistent Zionist policy to oppose the emigration of Jewish refugees to countries other than Palestine such as Santo Domingo which had offered to take 100,000 refugees as a result of the Evian Conference.

In a memo to the Jewish Agency Executive after Krystalnacht, Ben-Gurion wrote:

if the Jews are faced with a choice between the refugee problem and rescuing Jews from concentration camps on the one hand, and aid for the national museum in Palestine on the other, the Jewish sense of pity will prevail and our people's entire strength will be directed at aid for the refugees in the various countries. Zionism will vanish from the agenda and indeed not only world public opinion in England and America but also from Jewish public opinion. We are risking Zionism's very existence if we allow the refugee problem to be separated from the Palestine problem. [Y. Elam, Introduction to Zionist history, Tel Aviv 1972, pp.125-26. See also Ot, paper of youth cadre of Mapai, No.2, winter 1967 cited by Machover-Offenburg p. 58 and Brenner, p. 149. Memo of 17.12.38]

It is essential that socialists defend Livingstone.  The suspension of a National Executive member, a former MP and London Mayor and a figurehead of the Labour Left for the last 30 years marks a new stage in the witchhunt.  According to reports, Corbyn was extremely reluctant to suspend Ken but he was bullied into it.  After a staged confrontation with the boorish bully John Mann MP, Livingstone was suspended.  Popular opinion holds that it is Mann, not Livingstone, who should have been suspended.  Mann is Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on anti-Semitism which devotes its time to opposing BDS and support for Palestinians.

Tweets and comments made even before Naz Shah was an MP were dug up and she was dismissed as John McDonnell’s PPS.  Naz Shah suspended by Labour party amid antisemitism row  

One tweet, issued in the middle of Israel’s genocidal Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, when 2,200 people in Gaza were murdered by Israel, including 551 children, was to joke that Israel should be relocated inside the United States as this would save the US the trouble and expense of maintaining the Israeli state and preserve Palestinian life.  She displayed a map showing Israel as the 51^st state of the USA.  It turns out that this was produced by Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish American academic and anti-Zionist who is the son of two holocaust survivors.  There was nothing anti-Semitic about this map.  It was a twitter type fantasy solution to the problem of Israel’s barbarism. 

To the humourless and vindictive squad of Progress MPs such as Mann and Streeting, Naz Shah was the next worst thing to Eva Braun and she was forced to resign her position.  She was suspended from the Labour Party and forced to make a humiliating apology like a prisoner in a Stalinist re-education camp.  When Vanessa Feltz asked me why she would confess to anti-Semitism if she wasn’t  guilty I explained that there have been many false confessions in history, such as the defendants in Stalin’s purge trials.  It’s not difficult to persuade someone that they are guilty if you apply enough psychological pressure and you see your career disappearing before you.

The media, the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland in particular have played a despicable role in the witch hunt.  see for example Labour and the left have an antisemitism problem   Freedland, a ‘liberal’ Zionist berates the left in particular for not accepting the Israeli state.  My plea to the left: treat Jews the same way you’d treat any other minority 

What if, he asked, Israel were the only Black state in the world.  Would we oppose it then.  Professor Kamel Hawwesh of Birmingham University answered yes, Palestinians would reject any coloniser, whatever their colour. A Palestinian view on the antisemitism row   Freedland demonstrates both his ignorance and his malevolence when he compares a Jewish Israel to a Christian Britain.  In Britain Christianity is an adornment.  It doesn’t entitle you to special privileges.  It doesn’t mean that your planning application in the Jewish town of Afula will be rejected because you are Palestinian.  Israel's Virulent Housing Bias Runs Deep — and It's Not Only Aimed at Arabs

The BBC has also lived up to its reputation.  It has afforded the Labour Right every opportunity to air their allegations whilst denying anti-Zionists a platform.  There has been an almost one-sided media barrage.  One of the only exceptions was the BBC Big Questions programme on Sunday May 1^st at 10 am when there are relatively few viewers.  Moshe Machover, Daphne Baram and myself were widely considered, even by Zionists, to have trounced those who alleged that anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are one and the same thing.  I also did an interview with Vanessa Feltz, BBC London’s Zionist interviewer where I refused to be diverted from explaining why Israel is an apartheid society, but these are very much the exception.

One of the most egregious examples of BBC bias was that of Andrew Neil’s Sunday Politics show on March 18^th which gave MPs West Streeting and John Mann opportunity to wax at length about Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism’ problem.  Neil himself is a former Murdoch editor and Conservative Party research assistant.  James Schneider, a supporter of Corbyn was given just 25 seconds whereas Streeting had 45 seconds and Mann was allowed 6 minutes and 4 seconds. 

Andrew Neil, rather than subjecting his claims to cross-examination, urged Mann on to greater excesses.  Take for example this penetrating question:  ‘‘Why has it [anti-Semitism] come back?’  Note that Neil assumes the very thing he is asking. 

Corbyn has shown not only spinelessness throughout this affair but a culpable failure to understand what is at stake.  He has continuously rowed back from the positions he adopted in previous years.  Alongside MPs such as the late Joan Maynard he was a sponsor of the Labour Committee on Palestine and the Labour Movement Campaign on Palestine, both of which I chaired.  These organisations supported a democratic, secular state solution in Palestine.  We opposed a 2 state solution which at that time was supported by George Galloway’s Middle East Council!  George has now come round to our way of thinking!

If Livingstone is expelled from the Labour Party Corbyn will not last long as leader.  John McDonnell has taken an even worse position.  He backed off last September from his comments over Ireland.   Now he has added Palestine to his retreat from the Left.  Rather than sacking Naz Shah he should have backed her. Instead with his ‘out, out, out’ remarks about alleged anti-Semites he has encouraged those making false allegations to greater efforts.

Jon Lansman welcomed Livingstone's suspension and has effectively backed his expulsion

Momentum under Jon Lansman has been equally abysmal.  Lansman has held secret talks with Labour Friends of Israel and the so-called Jewish Labour Movement, the  British branch of the racist Israeli Labour Party in order to reach some form of agreement.  It’s like the chicken negotiating for a safe pass from a fox.  Lansman openly criticised Livingstone and supported his suspension.   

In Left Futures Why the Left must stop talking about ‘Zionism’  Lansman argues that we should drop all mention of Zionism.  The movement that founded the racist settler colonial state of Israel should not be mentioned even though the World Zionist Organisation is alive and kicking, funding the settlement of the Palestinian territories.  Netanyahu proclaims that in the name of Zionism he cannot admit refugees to Israel, because it would undermine the national identity of the Jewish state.  IsraelPM: illegal African immigrants threaten identity of Jewish state.  Binyamin Netanyahu reignites row over fate of thousands of African migrants in Israel Harriet Sharwood, The Guardian, 20.5.12.   Lansman argues that if we pretend there is no such thing as Zionism then all the cries about anti-Semitism will go away.  Such is the craven attitude of left social democrats when they come under any pressure.

The Sex Pistols wrote a song about Owen Jones - Pretty Vacant

Owen Jones, the Guardian’s token left commentator,  has demonstrated that he is both politically and intellectually a light weight.  For the last 3 years he has written an annual article deprecating ‘anti-Semitism’.  Two of them even begin with the same fatuous phrase ‘anti-Semitism is a menace.’  He is incapable of understanding that when Israel is killing Palestinians, Zionists cry ‘anti-Semitism’. 

Owen Jones scabs in the witchhunt against 'anti-Semites' and backs the Zionist 'concern' over 'anti-Semitism'

It is not necessary to defend everything that Ken Livingstone said in order to oppose his suspension.  Defending Livingstone goes hand in hand with opposing the new McCarthyist witch hunt.  Whereas Joe McCarthy was an anti-Semite, his disciples come in the guise of opponents of anti-Semitism.

Tony Greenstein 

“Sometimes I wonder why Hitler only did half the job”

“Sometimes I wonder why Hitler only did half the job,”

A sarcastic message I posted on Facebook

The wet dream of Israeli racists

 On Tuesday I went with my son to a Palestinian Solidarity meeting at which David Sheen, an anti-racist Israeli spoke on racism in Israel.  Although most members are pretty hardened when it comes to Israeli racism, there were visible gasps as David quoted a Lehava spokesman who was quoted in Israel’s right-wing daily Ma’ariv as saying that ‘Hitler was right, he just got the wrong nation.’  Lehava is a group that is led by a Benny Gopstein, a former supporter of Kach, a Jewish neo-Nazi group, led by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane.   It campaigns against miscegenation, ‘race-mixing’, sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews (especially Arabs).

Gal - the useful idiot who set up the Face Book 'death to Arabs' page

It was the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 which outlawed sexual relations between ‘Aryans’ and Jews in Nazi Germany.  All racist regimes are particularly motivated by the idea of women of the dominant racial/settler group having sex with men of the untermenschen – the lower racial group.  This was true in Southern Africa where such relations were outlawed and it was equally detested in India and other areas of the British Empire, even when it wasn’t formally outlawed.  Note that for women of the untermenschen to have sexual relations with a man of the dominant group isn’t such an offence, even when formally it is a crime.  For example Hitler stipulated that a Jewish woman shouldn’t be charged with rassenschande (racial defilement/pollution).

Children, holding up pro-death penalty notices, are indoctrinated young into anti-Arab racism

This is the context for the latest campaign to institute the death penalty for ‘terrorists’, sparked by the part of Israel’s fascist ex-Foreign Minister, Avigdor Liebermann, who has called for the murder and beheading of Israeli Arabs.  Of course it isn’t meant to apply to those who murdered 2,200+ Palestinians in Gaza including over 500 children or Jewish terrorists.  The death penalty would apply solely to Arabs.  In just the same way as ‘Jew’ and ‘Bandit’ were interchangeable when the Nazis invaded Russia, as a justification for the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews in Operation Barbarossa, so ‘Arab’ and ‘terrorist’ are synonymous.

'Hitler was right but got the wrong nation'

Israel, as most people know, has weaponised the holocaust and used it against the Palestinians, who are deemed to be the ‘new Nazis.’  But it goes deeper than that.  Zionism has drawn the lesson from the holocaust not that racism or genocide is wrong, but that racism or genocide against Jews is wrong.  ‘Never Again’ has been transformed into ‘Never Again to Jews’.  Far from drawing an anti-racist lesson from the holocaust, Israel has draw the opposite lesson.  That the  Jews have to be strong and racists in order to prevent a recurrence of anti-Jewish racism.  And even worse, that those who do draw anti-racist lessons, including Jewish anti-racists deserve to have been murdered by Hitler because only that would have taught them that non-Jews cannot be trusted

The medal that the Nazis struck after the visit for 6 months of Baron von Mildenstein, Head of the Jewish Desk of the Gestapo, to Palestine at the invitation of the Zionist labour movement

The reality is that ideology for the Israelis has caught up with the practice.  Israelis see themselves as oppressors, as holding the whip hand over the Arab and the African (& even the African Jew).  It is no surprise that Israelis therefore identify with other people, the Nazis included, who were also oppressors of other people.  So what we have, as even the perennial Israeli dove Amos Oz admits is a Hebrew Nazi movement within Israel.  Such are the ironies of life.

Tony Greenstein  

Israelis share photos of children demanding death to “terrorists”

Rania Khalek Rights and Accountability 15 July 2015

Photos of Israeli children posted to Facebook holding signs calling for the death penalty against “terrorists” (faces obscured by The Electronic Intifada).

A Facebook campaign demanding the execution of “terrorists” went viral in Israel last weekend, with Israelis posting photos of themselves, their children and their pets holding signs demanding the death penalty.

The campaign was launched by Sharon Gal, a former journalist and first-term lawmaker from the far right Yisrael Beiteinu party. 

Gal recently sponsored legislation that would have made it easier for judges to sentence ”convicted murderer[s] motivated by nationalism” to death both inside Israel and the occupied West Bank. 

Though Israel already has a death penalty option on the books, a death sentence hasn’t been carried out since the hanging of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in 1962. The true purpose of the bill was not the death penalty, it was racist incitement catering to the right-wing chauvinism surging through the Israeli Jewish public after reaching its peak during last summer’s brutal assault on Gaza.

Indeed, the bill is the partial fulfillment of one of many fanatical campaign promises by Yisrael Beiteinu chair Avigdor Lieberman, who rallied his right-wing base during election season by calling for the execution of Palestinian prisoners and the beheading of Palestinians disloyal to the state of Israel.  

Bezalel Smotrich, a freshman lawmaker from the ultra-nationalist Habeyit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) party and a deputy speaker in the Knesset, attempted to outdo Gal by offering to personally carry out the executions during an appearance on Israel’s Knesset Channel. 

“Death to terrorists”

On 8 July, in the lead up to the death penalty bill vote that was ultimately shelved by Netanyahu at the last minute, Gal initiated a Facebook campaign calling on Israelis to pressure the government to support the bill by sharing photos of themselves on social media holding signs that read ”I too am in favor of the death penalty for terrorists.”

“Terrorist” is a loose term in the Israeli lexicon that is interchangeable with “Arab” and applies exclusively to Palestinians. In effect, “death to terrorists” amounts to a thinly veiled version of the far more common Israeli slogan “death to Arabs.”  

The response to Gal’s Facebook post was overwhelming, garnering nearly 24,000 likes and more than 1,500 replies, with all but a handful of people pledging their support. 

While the unsettling incitement to violence from Israeli politicians is nothing new, this latest campaign highlighted a disturbing trend. Israelis posted photos not just of themselves but also small children agitating for executions. This comes in the aftermath of the Jerusalem Day march in April, when The Electronic Intifada documented the participation of children in “death to the Arabs” marches, suggesting an alarming pattern of ever younger children being steeped in Israel’s culture of supremacist violence. 

A commenter named Efrat Trister responded to Gal’s Facebook post with a photo of two little girls clutching the pro-death penalty message. Trister added ”They may be small but they are also smart.”

 “My 12-year-old niece also joins the campaign, representing the children,” wrote another commenter who shared a photo of a smiling girl posing with the sign.

Gal jubilantly responded, “More power to you and your niece. You have no idea how much this affects the ministers, who will decide on Sunday whether or not to give their support. We’ve got to continue this until Sunday — more and more Israelis — the more photos the better, here and around the Internet.” 

Shira Pahima posted a photo of a happy little girl and a man, possibly her father, holding the same sign, which reads, “Stop tying up the soldiers’ hands, if someone sets out to kill you — kill him first, long live the Jewish state of Israel, all respect to the IDF [Israeli army].”

Obviously these children cannot be held responsible for the views they are advertising, which is why The Electronic Intifada has chosen to pixelate their faces in all these photos (the originals were post to Facebook without any such protection). Many of the children are too small to even read the messages they are holding. This does however reflect how the violent extremism coursing through Israeli society travels from the top down, incited by government officials like Sharon Gal and Bezalel Smotrich. 

It also speaks to the normalization of Jewish extremism within Israel, which has become so casual and accepted that parents see no problem with posting photos of their children championing execution. 

Israelis similarly staged photos of their pets holding pro-death penalty signs:

Selection of photos posted to Facebook by Israelis of their pets with messages demanding the death penalty for ”terrorists.” 

Israelis are not ashamed to publicize their racism and bloodlust. 

A man by the name Oren Shtinberg was elated to see his photo featured on Israeli television.

“I’m honored to have had my photo appear today on Oded Ben Ami’s six o’clock news show. I’m crossing my fingers that this law will pass and be implemented without delay!!!” wrote Shtinberg in a Facebook post. Gal replied, “More power to you, Oren. Every photo brings us closer to the goal. The ministers in the committee will not be able to ignore 87 percent of support among the nation of Israel on Sunday.”  

A commenter by the name of Lana Letichevski seemed to view the scourge of police murders of US citizens as a source of inspiration, saying: ”This has got to be put into place. It’s not possible that in the US cops can shoot terrorists and here they can’t!!! Instead, they’re sent for a 5-star prison to study for a degree!!”  

Oz Maoz added, “I’m also for the death penalty for terrorists and stone-throwers!!!”

Shlomi Eliyahu remarked, “I hope it passes, they [Palestinians] should start to think twice before they pick up a rock even if it’s to play hopscotch.” 

Udishiri Ohayon, who identified as a US military veteran, said, “I too, as a former US soldier and a proud Israeli definitely death to terrorists, founders and supporters of terror. Add in various stone throwers, suicide-committers, and firebomb throwers. No excuse, no pity. I’m in!” 

The conflation of throwing of rocks at Israeli soldiers with terrorism is a common view among Israelis. Some have even agitated for executing stone throwers on sight, even if they are children. 

A commenter by the name Moshe Shecheter posted a photo of a gun with magazine clips full of ammo surrounding the message, “Bibi, unchain our hands.” 

Israelis often complain that occupying soldiers are unfairly restrained when dealing with Palestinians, despite reality being the complete opposite.

A commenter named Vered Ben Shitrit shared a photo of herself holding the pro-death penalty sign while wearing her military uniform.

Nir Balinco shared an image of the US flag with the comment, “All of us also want a death penalty for terrorists!!!! Including their family!!!”

While there was little pushback against Gal’s incitement campaign, the few who publicly opposed it were deluged with vitriolic threats. Social justice and human rights blogger Yossi Gurvitz was one of them.

Appalled by Gal’s Facebook campaign, Gurvitz replied with a photo of himself holding a sign that reads:

I also support the death penalty FOR SHARON GAL after a short but fair trial.

(Based on the precedent of JULIUS STREICHER at Nuremberg, who was executed for racist incitement, which was found to be a crime against humanity.)

(Google that, Gal. And try to think of better last words than his. You’re both “journalists.”)

Gurvitz was instantly deluged with an unprecedented volume of threats, some of which he posted to Twitter. 

“I wish everyone here painful death, you are haters of Israel, sharmutas [Arabic for whore] of Arabs, you are not Jews, you’re rabble,” cried one angry commenter. ”People like you should be stoned in the city square, you garbage can,” added another. “Sometimes I wonder why Hitler only did half the job,” another remarked.

“I wanted to remind people that incitement to racism may become, if people act on it, a crime against humanity, and that people have been punished for it,” Gurvitz told me over email. “I expected some hatred in return — I’m rather used to it — but I was frankly surprised by the volume of it,” he continued. “I received more death threats and rape threats in the last two days than I received in the last two years.” 

Racist incitement

Gurvitz attributed the lack of opposition to the incitement campaign to a weak Israeli left.  

“There was some push-back, aged leftists expressing their shock and dismay (which is a specialty of the species), but hardly any coherent action against it. The signs themselves are of course legal, but the Israeli left has little power in it to actually oppose it,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, the ritualistic incitement to violence by Israelis on social media, encouraged by top government officials, has proven deadly for Palestinians. 

A new report by a group called the Coalition Against Racism finds that a sharp rise in anti-Arab attacks since 2013 coincided with racist incitement by Israeli elected officials and decision makers. 

Netanyahu’s incitement to revenge for the killing of three Israeli teens last year led to the burning alive of Muhammad Abu Khudair by Jewish extremists who met at a right-wing “death to the Arabs” rally the day before that may have been organized online.

Emboldened by an Israeli public and its leaders cheering for executions, trigger-happy Israeli soldiers will more than likely crank up the violence. As for the vigilantes, there’s no predicting who or where they will target next, but when they do, they will not have acted alone.

With translation from Hebrew by Dena Shunra.