Israel is not only the world’s most racist state it is a nation of murderers

What is it about Israel that makes it so attractive to anti-Semites, fascists and racists such as Trump, Bolsonaro and Duterte? 

Israel is proof that any group of people, including Jews, can, given the right set of circumstances become racists and fascists.

Racism is not biologically inherited. It is a product of society not genetics. Just as Germans today have not inherited a Hitler gene, so the same is true of Israeli Jews. They have no inherited the mantle of the oppressed Jews of Europe but what Israel has done is to transform the traditional image of Jews from the oppressed to the oppressor.

Professor Ze'ev Sternhell, a child survivor of a Nazi Ghetto sees in Israel the signs of pre-Holocaust Germany

Norman Finkelstein, in a recent interview, quoted Ze’ev Sternhell, a former professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a childhood survivor of the Nazi ghetto of Przemyśl in Poland and a world authority on fascism.

According to Sternhell fascists and anti-Semites, amongst whom I include Trump, don’t see Israel as Jewish. The Zionist dream was always to create a nation like all other nations.  They succeeded only too well.  The settler nation that they created is the most right-wing and racist of any nation on Earth.  

Woody Allen - the archetypal Jew of the diaspora

Israel is the only state, bar Liberia, where Donald Trump is more popular than unpopular. Whereas Jews were historically seen as weak, intellectuals, cosmopolitan, erudite, artists, seditious and on the Left, Israel is seen as a warrior state, a military fortress. The archetypal Jew was a Woody Allen, Franz Kafka, Einstein and Marc Chagall. To Hitler the archetypal Jew was Karl Marx. The archetypal Israeli Jew is a racist bigot who revels in murder.

Geert Wilders, the Dutch Fascist leader speaking in Tel Aviv in 2010. Unlike Rashid  Tlaib and Ilhan Omar he was not banned from Israel

Israel according to Dutch fascist leader Geert Wilders is the front-line in the battle to defend Western civilisation. It is admired by every fascist or far-Right leader on the planet – from Brazil’s Bolsonaro to the Philipine’s Hitler loving President Duterte.

In Britain it is the English Defence League and Tommy Robinson’s Football Lads Alliance who parade with Israeli flags. Tommy Robinson and Katie Hopkins both admire Israel and the way it combats ‘Islam’.  Katie Hopkins understands this when she justifies the bomb attack against refugee supporting Jews at Pittsburgh whilst at the same time proclaiming her undying devotion to the Israeli state.

Netanyahu with his friend, Viktor Orban, the anti-Semitic ruler of Hungary

Don’t blame Trump, Hopkins wrote in respect of the Pittsburgh shooting. Rather, “Look to the Chief Rabbi and his support for mass migration across the Med[iterranean],” she wrote. “There you will find your truths.”

As Finkelstein says Israel isn’t merely an alt-Right state but an alt-Right country. It isn’t simply a question of a far-Right government but a far-Right citizenry. ‘Israel has no left.  Israel has no centre’.  It has a Right, far-Right and further Right still.

Israel’s attractions to the alt-Right is that it is an ethno-nationalist state. Which is why the neo-Nazi founder of the alt-Right Richard Spencer described himself as a White Zionist and supported Israel’s Jewish Nation State Law.

Israel represents the kind of state, an ethno-nationalist state, that Spencer, Trump and Bannon are trying to build in the United States. Israel provides the model.  It is trying to deport thousands of refugees because they aren’t from the majority ethnic group in Israel and therefore threaten Israel’s Jewish identity.

Finkelstein described Israel as a nation of murderers and he’s not far wrong.  When you have a demonstration in Tel Aviv in the middle of the attack on Gaza in 2014 which chanted ‘there’s no school in Gaza tomorrow, there are no children left’ i.e. boasting about the number of children murdered by Israel, then you realise that this is not a normal nation but a settler colonial state with all that entails. See Far-right Israelis celebrate Gaza kids’ deaths

Efraim Zuroff

The article below is by a Zionist, Efraim Zuroff, from the Simon Wiesenthall Centre.  Even he finds it difficult to stomach the open alliance between Israel and the far-Right and anti-Semitic regimes in Europe today.

Israel’s shameful policy on Holocaust issues in Eastern Europe

Bibi, when you visit countries that no longer have Jews, maybe don't praise the first line they give you about how much they've fought anti-Semitism since the war

Times of Israel Aug 27, 2019,

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s trip to Ukraine early last week is yet another opportunity to assess Israel’s relations with the post-Communist new democracies of Eastern Europe, and especially those with a Holocaust past of participation in the systematic mass murder of Jews. In this respect, Ukraine in recent years has been one of the worst offenders in terms of distorting the history of the Holocaust, and glorifying individuals who collaborated with the Nazis in implementing the Final Solution. 

Thousands of Ukrainian nationalists hold a torchlight procession across Kiev in honor of Stepan Bandera, a World War II anti-Soviet insurgent, on January 1, 2015 (photo credit: AFP/Genya Savilov)

The deterioration of the situation is directly linked to local politics and the conflict with Russia over the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the ongoing insurgency in Eastern Ukraine. Thus, for example, in May 2015, the Ukrainian Parliament passed a package of laws, one of which outlaws criticism of those who fought for Ukrainian statehood in the 20th century, despite the fact that it is indisputable that militias established in 1941 by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), one of the most important movements that sought to achieve statehood, were active participants in the wave of anti-Jewish violence which swept Western Ukraine during the weeks following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. In fact, according to Swedish Holocaust historian Per Rudling, the most recent research on the involvement of the OUN in these actions, indicates that they participated in the murder of at least “thousands, perhaps even as many as tens of thousands, of Jews.” 

Netanhahu at Yad Vashem - Israel's Holocaust Propaganda Museum

This is only one small, but highly indicative, detail of the numerous steps taken by Ukrainian institutions and historians to whitewash the large-scale participation of their nationals in Holocaust crimes. The country is full of memorials and statues to Ukrainian Nazi collaborators and torchlight parades to honor the leaders of the OUN and UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which developed out of the OUN) are a common occurrence. Streets are named for OUN leader Stefan Bandera, whose birthday was recently declared a national holiday. In addition, quite a few Holocaust memorials have been defaced or vandalized in recent years, and not a single perpetrator of such crimes, or any other anti-Semitic acts, has ever been prosecuted, let alone convicted and punished, since Ukraine achieved independence with the fall of the Soviet Union.

The question is how should Israel respond, if at all, to these steps and to what extent should the rampant Holocaust distortion affect Israeli-Ukrainian relations? Unlike the situation in other post-Communist new democracies, where, for the most part, our ambassadors have refrained from getting involved in historical issues, our new ambassador in Kyiv, Joel Lion, has criticized initiatives to honor Holocaust perpetrators on at least three occasions, and has done so in at least one case with the Polish ambassador, since the “hero” in question was also involved in murdering Poles.

Netanyahu pays tribute to the Ukrainian regime which is rehabilitating Stefan Bandera and other Nazi collaborators

In retrospect, we are now in a position to assess current Israeli policy regarding Holocaust distortion, following Prime Minister Netanyahu’s state visit to Kyiv. Sad to say, but it strongly reminded me of his trip this past September to Lithuania, another prime offender when it comes to Holocaust-related issues. In fact, for many years, Lithuania was the country most active in initiating the cardinal tenets of Holocaust distortion, i.e., minimizing or hiding the participation of locals in Nazi crimes, promoting the canard of equivalency between Nazi and Communist crimes, glorifying anti-Soviet heroes despite their role in the Shoah, and lobbying for a joint memorial day for all the victims of totalitarian regimes, which would make International Holocaust Remembrance Day superfluous. Instead of drawing attention to these problematic policies, Netanyahu praised his hosts for the manner in which they sought to commemorate the Shoah, and, for good measure, he also lauded their (relatively nonexistent or at best minimal) efforts to fight anti-Semitism.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, right, stand at Babi Yar ravine where Nazi troops murdered tens of thousands of Jews during WWII, in Kyiv, Ukraine, August 19, 2019. (AP Photo/Zoya Shu)

This modus operandi was exactly replicated in Kyiv, which in recent years has by far surpassed Vilnius in its blatant Holocaust distortion and brazen systematic attempts to totally falsify the historical narrative of World War II and the Holocaust. Thus, for example, at Babi Yar, the site of the biggest Holocaust massacre, Netanyahu thanked the Ukrainian government for its efforts to preserve the memory of the Holocaust, and mentioned their (nonexistent) “efforts in the war against anti-Semitism.” The grotesque irony of these comments was noted by Israeli journalist Sam Sokol writing in The Times of Israel. In his analysis of the visit, he pointed out that Babi Yar can serve as an excellent illustration of Ukrainian Holocaust distortion, as the Ukrainians seek to commemorate OUN members there alongside Shoah victims.

If anyone is looking for a silver lining in this sad story, at least Netanyahu did not agree to recognize the Holodomor as a genocide (which it wasn’t) and he mentioned “Nazi collaborators,” several times, although the Ukrainians, like the Lithuanians, might attempt to claim that the term also includes members of the Judenrat and/or the Jewish police in local ghettos.

In short, Israeli policy on Holocaust-related issues in post-Communist Eastern Europe remains flawed and shameful, but it remains to be seen, exactly how it can be improved, a subject which I hope to address in a coming op-ed.

About the Author

Dr. Efraim Zuroff is the chief Nazi-hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the director of the Center's Israel Office and Eastern European Affairs.

See also

Netanyahu’s praise of Kyiv’s Holocaust remembrance only tells part of the story

Rights Groups Demand Israel Stop Arming neo-Nazis in Ukraine Ukraine demonstrates that given the choice between Jews and the Jewish state Zionism prefers the latter

There is nothing that Netanyahu has done that Labour Zionism didn’t do before him

The Contradiction at the heart of secular Zionism is the God given right to Palestine

A ceremony on an Israeli kibbutz in July 1951. Wikimedia Commons. These members of a Jewish only settlement carried red flags but lived and settled the land of the Palestinians who had been expelled

As the Israeli Labour Party heads for its worst election result ever in Israel’s General Election, Amira Hass has written an important article reminding us of the unbroken line that connects Likud and the settler movement to Labour Zionism and the Israeli Labour Party. Amira Hass, along with Gideon Levy is one of only two non-Zionist journalists in Israel. She lives in the West Bank and unlike other Jews there, she is not a settler.

The Israeli Labour Party, until 1977, continuously formed Israel’s governing coalitions. As late as 1969, the Israeli Labor Alignment, together with Mapam, a left-Zionist party, won 56 out of 120 Knesset seats. The latest opinion polls suggest it will gain just 10 seats (or 15 combined with Mapam's successor Meretz). A historic low. The ILP has been out of government since 2011 and it hasn’t formed a government since 1999.

It is always tempting to believe that the ILP represents an alternative to Netanyahu, even that it is a social democratic or left-wing party. That is the illusion that Zionist groups such as the Jewish Labour Movement and Labour Friends of Israel foster. However it is an act of deception.

As former leader Shelly Yacimovich declared it was a ‘historic injustice’ to characterise the ILP as a left-wing party. The ILP ‘"has always drawn its power from being a centrist party. There have been both hawks and doves within its ranks.’

This is true.  It would be a terrible injustice to paint the Israeli Labor Party in socialist colours. As Professor Ze’ev Sternhell showed in The Founding Myths of Israel the ILP and Mapai, which was formed in 1930 from two Labour Zionist parties – Ahdut Ha’avodah and Hapoel Hatzair – was never socialist.  Indeed it was not until Hapoel Hatzair was satisfied that the ‘socialist’ rhetoric of Ahdut was purely verbal and that its socialism meant nothing more than Jewish working class solidarity against the native Arabs that it agreed to a merger.

Labour Zionism and its institutions, in particular its ‘union’ Histadrut (which was also Israel’s second largest employer until the 1980’s) built the Israeli state and constructed its racist, Zionist and Jewish supremacist nature. All the institutions of Israeli apartheid, such as the Jewish National Fund and Jewish Agency, were made into partners of the Israeli state under Israeli Labour governments. 

What Labour's Shimon Peres dispensed with in 1985 was the pseudo-socialist, collectivised forms of colonialism. State capitalism gave way under the Stabilisation Pact to monetarism, a slashing of the government budget and food subsidies, a hike in interest rates and all the other remedies favoured by the Chicago economists. Zionism however did not change its settler colonial colours merely its internal social and economic forms.

It is often forgotten that it wasn’t Likud but the Israeli Labour Alignment which helped to launch the settler movement. The pioneers of the settler movement came from the Israeli Labour Party and in particular the militaristic Ahdut Ha'avodah party which reunited with Mapai (Israeli Labor Party) in 1965.  Sponsored by Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon, Labour Zionist stalwarts such as Yitzhak Tabenkin and Yisrael Galili made an effortless transition from the Israeli labour movement to the Greater Israel Movement, Gush Emmunim and the settler movement.

Gush Emunim settlers establishing the West Bank settlement of Elkana in 1979

The contradiction at the heart of Labour Zionism has always been that its secularism rested on a biblical foundation. That is why there can be neither a secular nor a socialist Zionism. Historically secularism in Israel, be it of the Zionist left or right, either foundered or gave way to religious Zionism and Jewish Orthodoxy. Even Zionism's atheists base their right to the Land of Israel on the god they deny! Even the most ardent non-believers quote the Bible as their foundational land deeds! 

This was the imagery of the Zionist labour movement until it ran out of excuses for its nepotism and corruption

Amira Hass, quite correctly, described the expansionism of Zionism as ‘lebensraum’. For those unfamiliar with the term, this was the Nazi term ‘living space’. It described Hitler's quest for territory in Russia and Eastern Europe and was an essential component of volkish ideology. ‘Living space’ was how the Nazis and German nationalists before them expressed their imperialist desires and it is appropriate to describe Israel’s thirst for land in similar terms.

Of course according to the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism this is ‘anti-Semitic’, which is but one demonstration of the attempt to close down debate today since Israelis themselves continually use Nazi metaphors to describe Israel’s behaviour.

Tony Greenstein

Racist Knesset Candidates Borrow Ideology From Labor's Occupation Pioneers

When Israeli governments in the 1960s and 1970s worked hard to steal Palestinian land while quoting God’s promises to atheists, they paved the way for parties promoting Jewish supremacy

Amira Hass Mar 11, 2019 11:28 PM

A twisted but single line stretches between Israel Galili and Bezalel Smotrich, between Yigal Allon and Levi Eshkol and Moshe Feiglin, and between Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin and Ayelet Shaked.

Israel Galili - one of the Labour militarists who after the 1967 war became supporters of the Greater Israel movement

We, the Arabs and the leftists, were right when we warned during the 1960s and 1970s that the settlement enterprise was a disaster. We erred in believing that the world would intervene in time and preempt the Lebensraum impulses, the urge to create “living space.” We thought that in the end, the heads of the Labor movement would learn from the expansionist impulses of other nations. After all, they were the sons and brothers of the victims of Lebensraum. But we were wrong. So now we’ll have Feiglin, the latest hot name in the gallery of those preaching to expel the Palestinians, sitting in the next Knesset.

Racism is an ideology that evolves in order to justify and protect the excessive material and social rights that a certain group of people has acquired, due to years of historical circumstances. Like men, conquering nations find it hard to give up their accumulated spoils and profits and will do anything to hold onto them.

Yitzhak Tabenkin - one of the most important figures in Labour Zionist history who became an ardent supporter of settling the West Bank

Immediately after June 1967, the Labor Alignment government cynically manipulated international law, ravaged the occupied Palestinian lands to Judaize them, and developed bureaucratic methods to reduce the number of Palestinians living in the country. One can trace the cynicism and the line that stretches from Galili to settler-leader-turned-minister Uri Ariel in a new study by the Kerem Navot organization, titled “Seize the Moral High Ground,” which researches the history of orders to seize land for “temporary military purposes.” Seizing Palestinian land for military purposes and then transferring it to the settlements was not invented by Likud, but by the Alignment. The Alignment holds the copyright on steadily gnawing at Palestinian land while abusing its owners to give an established settlement another road, another water pipe, another security buffer zone.

(l to r) Ben-Aharon, Yigal Allon and Yitzhak Tabenkin. Allon became Deputy Prime Minister and was an ardent militarist and expansionist formulating the Allon Plan which advocated keeping the Jordan valley.

When the Labor governments worked hard to steal land on the grounds of security while quoting God’s promises to atheists, they paved the way for the hundreds of thousands of Jews who are now going to vote for parties promoting the ideology of a superior Jewish race – and these are many and varied, praise God. Eshkol allowed the destruction of the Mughrabi Quarter and dispersed its Palestinian residents to the winds to make way for the Western Wall Plaza, and Allon was the first minister to move to Jerusalem’s Old City.

The occupation bureaucracy they developed prevented the return home of tens of thousands of Palestinians who found themselves outside the West Bank in the summer of 1967, and restricted Palestinian construction in Jerusalem with the help of planning laws. These governments laid the attitudinal foundations for the Third Temple, whose construction is being planned by some people with the utmost seriousness. The spirit of the mass expulsions of 1948, the desire to empty the land of Arabs, infused them.

Professor Ze'ev Sternhell, a childhood survivor of the Nazi occupation of Poland and a world expert in fascism was the target of a bomb from right-wing settlers a few years ago

The racist-messianic justifications have persuaded an increasing number of Jewish Israelis, because the spoils acquired have grown tremendously over the years. It’s hard to give them up, and they want more. That’s why Benjamin Netanyahu hastened to explain that the State of Israel is not a state of all its citizens. He fears that votes might go from him to Feiglin and Kahanist candidate Itamar Ben-Gvir.

When the world proved it could not block either the Alignment or Likud governments, the land gluttons proceeded to gorge themselves with redoubled enthusiasm. The armed, aggressive, murderous racism of the settlement messiahs and their servants is intensifying, because the inferior nation is not inferior. It is resisting. It is educated, eloquent and refuses to disappear. It is rooted in its land.

Emboldened, the Feiglins and the Smotriches will try to expel masses of Palestinians. They will fail only if all the descendents of the Alignment – not just Ta’ayush activists and a handful of anarchists – prevent it with their bodies.

Why is it hard for me to imagine the leaders of Kahol Lavan halting the trucks?