Those Who Think Israel is Becoming a Fascist State do Not Understand What Fascism is
To paraphrase Rudyard
Kipling, when all those around you are losing their heads, it’s a good idea to
keep a firm grip on your own head! Never has so much hysterical nonsense been
written by so many as in the past few weeks following Netanyahu’s unexpected triumph
in Israel’s elections.
The election of the
new coalition government, including the far-right messianic settler party
Religious Zionism, itself made up of 3 parties, does not herald the dawn of
Israeli fascism. Israeli democracy is not under dire threat if only because
such a beast never existed.
This pogrom against Palestinians in East Jerusalem was allowed to go ahead by Israeli Labor Party's Omar Bar-Lev
Of course liberal Zionists
find it difficult to defend the street thug and criminal Kahanist Ben Gvir as
Police and Security Minister. It would be far better for Israel’s image if the
Labor Party’s Omar Bar Lev was still in place. But let us remember, it was Bar
Lev who, last May, gave the
green light for Gvir and his settler mob to rampage through East Jerusalem
chanting ‘death to the Arabs’, ‘may their villages burn’ and other
delightful ditties from the settlers’ prayer book.
According
to Richard Silverstein, ‘Zionism
has finally embraced the fascist ideology that inspired major sections of the
movement… a century ago.’ It is true that fascism did indeed inspire the
Revisionist Zionist movement but it was untrue, even then, to say that the
Revisionists were fascists, despite the taunt
‘Vladimir Hitler’ that Ben Gurion regularly
hurled at its leader Vladimir Jabotinsky.
One thug inspects other thugs
If anything the
opposite was true. It was the ‘Socialist’ not the Revisionist Zionists who most
resembled the National Socialists. It was Labour not Revisionist Zionism that had
cordial relations with the Nazis and which negotiated a trade agreement
Ha'avara with the Nazis and whose agent, Feivel Polkes, offered
to spy for the Nazis.
Labour Zionism saw the
role of Labour as a national not a class force. The late Ze’ev Sternhell, a
Zionist and holocaust survivor, described Labor Zionism in The Founding Myths of Israel as ‘nationalist socialism’. He would have used the term ‘national
socialism’ but it ‘has been contaminated
by association with the Nazis.’
It was the Revisionist
movement which opposed Ha'avara and it was Revisionists Peter Bergson and
Shmuel Merlin who campaigned for the rescue of Jews, wherever their destination
and who led the campaign which led to the US setting up the War Refugee Board in
January 1944 against the bitter opposition of the Labour Zionists.
Palestinian demonstrator in Beit El near Ramallah 8.10.15
Let us put it another
way. Was the America of Andrew
Jackson and the Indian
Removal Act
a fascist state? Was it any less terrible for the Indians that it was not
fascist? Was South Africa a fascist state?
Fascism is a specific
political phenomenon that seeks the atomisation and destruction of working
class organisations. Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s Italy and Franco’s Spain are the
most obvious examples. In more recent times Chile under General Pinochet and
the military Junta in Argentina bore a close resemblance to fascism.
Israel on the other
hand, like South Africa and the United States before it is a settler colonial
state. The key difference between fascism and settler colonialism is that the latter
involves an alliance of the settler working class with its own ruling class.
Rather than the destruction of working class organisations, it is the settler
working class which is usually the most racist and chauvinist section of
settler society as for example in Northern Ireland.
Ben Gvir - a Genuine Jewish neo-Nazi
Ben
Gvir and Smotrich Do Not Represent a Break with Previous Zionist Governments
Gvir and Smotrich
represent the logical outcome of decades of rule, by Labour Zionism and Likud. They
do not represent a fascist break
from Zionism. The agreed
platform of the coalition was:
“The Jewish
people have an exclusive and unquestionable right to all areas of the Land of
Israel. The government will promote and develop settlement in all parts of the
Land of Israel – in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan, Judea and Samaria.”
How is this different
from previous governments? Support for ‘Jewish settlement’ has always been the
policy of both wings of the Zionist movement. It was not a Likud/Religious
Zionist government which began the policy of Judaisation of the Galilee.
The 1976 Koenig
Memorandum, named after Yisrael Koenig, a member
of the Israeli Labor Alignment and Director General of the Northern District
outlined the policy. It was a nakedly racist document which spoke of the
Israeli Arabs having a "Levantinistic
Arab character" whose "imagination
tends to exceed rationality."
Koenig advocated
denying work, educational opportunities and benefits to Israel’s Arab
population and the thinning out of the Arab population through Jewish
settlement. It took for granted that Israel’s Arab population were a threat to
Israel’s Jewish character.
The document put
forward a number of strategic goals and tactical steps aimed at reducing the
number and influence of Arab citizens of Israel in the Galilee region. The Memorandum
was the first publicly available document to outline some of the policies of
discrimination and containment that Palestinian citizens of Israel had been
subject to since 1948, reflecting “planning
and deliberations at the policy-making circles.” See The Koenig report and
Israeli policy towards the Palestinian minority, 1965-1976: old wine in new
bottles.
Judaisation
of the Galilee was the policy and practice of Israel even
before the conquest of East Jerusalem in June 1967. This began under a Labour
not a Likud or Religious Zionist government.
On 24 June 2013, the
Israeli Knesset approved the Prawer-Begin Plan
for the mass expulsion of the Arab Bedouin community in the Naqab. It proposed
the destruction of 35 ‘unrecognized’ Bedouin villages and the forced
displacement of up to 70,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel, and the confiscation
of their historical lands.
It is clear that the
new government in Israel represents a continuation
of the policies of previous Israeli governments not a break with them.
Those who talk of the destruction of democracy speak exclusively to Israel’s Jewish
society. As Ahmed Tibi MK once noted,
when Zionists talk of a Jewish Democratic state this is an oxymoron. Israel is
Jewish towards Arabs and Democratic towards Jews.
No-one doubts that the
accession to government of Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, two Jewish neo-Nazi
settlers, will result in an intensification of repression in the West Bank
although it is hard to see how much further the repression of the military
dictatorship in the West Bank can be intensified.
It was not under Gvir
and Smotrich that 6 Palestinian human rights groups were banned
as ‘terrorists’ but under the ‘Change Government’ that included the Labor Party
and Meretz. When Smotrich described
human rights organisations as an ‘existential
threat’ he was simply picking up from where Merav Michaeli of the ILP and
Nitzan Horowitz of Meretz left off.
The real threat of the
new government is two-fold. Like in South Africa we are going to see an erosion
of the democratic rights of Israeli Jews. It is this which has produced panic
in what is left of the Israeli left. The settlement of the West Bank is coming
home.
This will involve an
erosion of the difference between Palestinians in Israel and those on the West
Bank. In its eyes they are all ‘Arabs’.
Desecration
of Christian graveyard
Only a few days ago we
saw the open
desecration of a Christian graveyard in Jerusalem.
Imagine the howls of protest if this took place in Britain with the desecration
of a Jewish graveyard? Attacks on churches, mosques and graveyards are a
regular occurrence in Israel.
As the platform
of the Coalition outlines, the Golan Heights, the Negev, the Galilee and the
West Bank are considered the same. In all these areas the demographic threat of
the Arabs is a problem.
And not only in these
areas. Gvir led the way in May 2021, with the support of
the Israeli Police, in pogroms and attacks against Israel’s Arab
citizens in the mixed cities of Bat Yam, Lod etc. Their intention is to
recolonise these cities and drive their Arab inhabitants out.
It is Jewish
‘Democracy’ which is now under threat
At the weekend largely
Jewish demonstrations
of 20,000 in Tel Aviv reacted with alarm at the judicial reform proposals of
the present coalition because they saw that it was their rights which were now under attack. Former Defence Minister
Benny Gantz, who
took pride in bombing Gaza back to the stone age warned
of civil war in Israel.
Israeli Gays, who have
been complicit in pinkwashing
Israeli colonisation, have reacted with alarm to the inclusion of the anti-gay Noam party and
leader Avi Maoz in government. Those who were happy to collude in the
repression of Palestinians now realise that Messianic Zionists have no place for
alternative sexual lifestyles either. It is hard to work up much sympathy for
these pink racists.
Racist? Perish the thought!
The protestors in Tel
Aviv were divided on the question of Palestinian rights. A large section was
extremely unhappy about mixing up the threat to Jewish rights with the threat
to Palestinian rights. Assaf Agmon, a leader of one group, was particularly upset:
“The
protest on Saturday night is led by extreme leftist groups that are not
prepared to move one millimeter from the ‘stop the occupation’ and Arab rights,
which are super-important issues but they are on the agenda after we leave
ourselves a democracy to advance them in."
"People
may come and find themselves surrounded by Palestinian flags and stop the
occupation flags and that is how [Netanyahu’s supporters] will brand all of our
protests as pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist.”
Stav Shaffir, an ex-member of the Knesset was concerned that:
Netanyahu
and his mouthpieces will lie afterward and say the protest was organized by the
treasonous left and funded by foreign money and supports our enemies. Let them
say it.
This resulted in there being 2 separate marches.
The real fear of liberal Zionists is the coalition’s proposals for reform
of Israel’s judicial system. Israel’s Supreme Court is their pride and joy. It
is the symbol of Israeli Democracy. What is proposed is an override clause
whereby any legislation that is rendered unlawful by the Supreme Court can be
overridden by a majority in the Knesset. The Judicial Appointments Committee
will be stacked with government appointees. They fear the death of Jewish democracy.
This is a battle that liberal Zionism is going to lose. There is nothing
democratic about unelected judges not having the power to veto legislation. Of
course Israel, being an ethno-nationalist state, is not a democracy anyway.
Arabs have always been excluded from power and that includes the last ‘Change’
government in which an Arab party was nominally part of the coalition.
Israel’s
Supreme Court and Torture
The position of Israel’s Supreme Court on torture is instructive. It has ruled that
torture is allowed under the ‘ticking timebomb’ scenario.
In 1987 the Landau Commission into
the use of torture the use of torture, but it accepted
their argument that physical pressure was necessary for efficient
interrogation.
The Landau Report
recommended psychological pressure and "a moderate amount of physical pressure" i.e. torture against
Palestinian detainees. Israel was thus the only state in the world to legalise
torture. HaMoked, the Centre for Defence of the Individual, found
that 85% of Palestinians were tortured.
In 1994 the Public Committee Against
Torture in Israel petitioned the High Court to protest Shin Bet interrogation
tactics. The following year Association
for Civil Rights in Israel petitioned
the High Court demanding an end to vigorous shaking of prisoners.
In 1999 the High Court ruled that Shin
Bet can't use violence in interrogations, but interrogators could use the "necessary defense" argument if they
used torture in "ticking bomb"
situations. Thus the Court allowed Shin Bet to continue to use torture because
every case of torture and abuse uses the same ‘ticking bomb’ excuse.
It was the ‘liberal’ Supreme
Court President Aharon Barak who presided over this decision. Fast forward 23
years and we find Barak so enraged by the plans to reform the Supreme Court
that he has offered to go
before a firing squad if that would prevent the enactment of the new
legislation! If I was Netanyahu I would take Barak up on the offer! Barak
explained that:
he sought to be neither overly activist
nor overly conservative and to deliver verdicts that took heed of Israel’s
history, Zionism and the country’s security needs.
Barak claimed that ‘the rights of everybody — Jew, Arab,
ultra-Orthodox, not ultra-Orthodox — are in grave danger.” This is a lie.
Not once has the Supreme Court used its powers to overturn nakedly racist
anti-Arab legislation. Always it has bowed the knee to Zionism’s concern about
a Jewish demographic majority. In the West Bank /Gaza it has explicitly
disregarded international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The Supreme Court has refused to override the 1950 Absentee Property Law
which allowed the confiscation of thousands of dunums of Arab land for Jewish
settlement since the establishment of the Israeli state. Jewish land has never once
been confiscated for the benefit of Arabs but the Supreme Court had no problems
with its racist intent. The Supreme Court also approved the use of
this law to confiscate Arab homes in East Jerusalem in order that they could be
handed over to the right-wing Ateret Cohanim settler group.
In the West Bank the Supreme Court has openly
connived in the use of fraud and trickery in the theft of Palestinian land,
including private land that was stolen in ‘good faith’. A thousand Palestinians
are, at this very moment facing eviction from their homes in Yasafer Mata yet
the Supreme Court happily allowed the Israeli army to establish a firing range
on peoples’s land and next to their homes in order to facilitate yet more
ethnic cleansing.
In the process the Supreme Court dismissed
evidence proving that Palestinians had lived in these homes for generations.
They preferred the lies of the State that Palestinians had only lived in the
area recently. Not once did they ask why it was only in Arab villages, not Jewish
settlements, that the Israeli Army established firing zones.
Likewise in the Negev the Supreme Court approved the destruction
of the village of Umm Al-Hiram to make way for a Jewish only town of Hiram.
Never, not once, was it the other way round.
Not once were they asked to approve the confiscation of Jewish land for
the benefit of Arabs.
Israel detains hundreds of Palestinians, including Israeli citizens,
under Administrative Detention without any trial whatsoever. When used by the
British under the Emergency Regulations future Israeli Justice Minister Ya’acov
Shapira remarked
that ‘Even in Nazi
Germany, there were no laws like this.’
Not
once has the Supreme Court overturned such a detention, even though the
Defendant cannot challenge the ‘evidence’ because the Defendant and their
lawyer are unable to see it. Every scrap of rumour by Shin Bet is accepted in
good faith by the Supreme Court.
On 8 July 2021, the Supreme Court in a 10 to
1 decision, upheld the 2018 Jewish
Nation-State Basic Law, which enshrines Jewish supremacy and racial segregation
as a Basic Law with constitutional status in the State of Israel. The only
dissenting opinion was issued by the only Arab justice on the court, Justice
Kara.
As a matter of course the Supreme Court has failed over the
years to challenge or even scrutinise the openly anti-Arab evidence of the Shin
Bet secret police. The Supreme Court has colluded in the State’s refusal to
open the archives and release information concerning the Nakba. There can be no
possible national security reason for not releasing 70+ year old files other
than a refusal to countenance evidence of Zionist ethnic cleansing.
This deference to Shin Bet even extended to the Court’s refusal
to order the release of evidence concerning the State’s suspected involvement
in the murder of Nazi collaborator Rudolf Kasztner in 1957, 62 years previously.
The Supreme Court accepted Shin Bet’s rationale – ‘national security and lack of resources’. How could national
security possibly be damaged by the revelation that Shin Bet had murdered an
Israeli citizen over 60 years ago?
Far from the Supreme Court being the last ditch defender of
Israeli democracy, it is a supine
creature in all but one respect. It is the decisions of the Supreme Court to challenge
the monopoly of Orthodox Jewry, such as conversion by other strands of Jewry,
which has antagonised Religious Zionism and Orthodox Jewry. The current proposals
have nothing to do with Netanyahu’s legal problems.
The Supreme Court has rejected
every petition aimed at forcing the Israeli state to reveal which repressive
states it arms and equips. Arms to Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion? In a
ruling on 27 June 2021 the court ruled that no future appeals would be discussed in court. As lawyer
Eitay Mack commented:
“It’s
incredible that in a state which defines itself as Jewish and democratic, it
was decided that preventing aid to genocide, to crimes against humanity, to war
crimes and to severe violations of human rights is not a topic with which
courts should engage,”
Since
2007 the Israeli government has approved
every single arms deal brought to it. The Supreme Court was happy to allow
Israel to equip every mercenary, fascist and genocider. This is the figleaf for
Jewish supremacy that liberal Zionists fear will be stripped away.
If I was a member of the Knesset I would have no hesitation
in voting for the reforms proposed by the governing coalition. The Supreme
Court is a Zionist body complicit in the colonisation of Palestine.
Another proposal, which I would support, would be to remove
the ‘grandfather’ clause from the 1950 Law of Return which allows the partner
of someone whose grandparent was Jewish to obtain entry to and citizenship of
the State of Israel.
Given the racist nature of the Law of Return, in allowing
Jews who weren’t even born in Israel to claim citizenship as of right whereas
Palestinian refugees have no such rights, I can see no possible objection to
this proposed law. It is the logic of racial supremacy that the racists are
always seeking to redefine who is and who is not part of the ubermenschen. That is why the question Who is a Jew has for Israel been an
insoluble question ever since its inception.
In so far as this proposal furthers the already existing
breach between American Jewry, most of whom are not Orthodox Jews, and Israel, then
this legislation can only be welcomed.
Of course there is much reactionary legislation proposed by
the coalition such as a refusal to ratify the Istanbul Convention against
violence to women.
Budgets will be increased to strengthen “Jewish settlement in Arad,” a city in the Negev. The planning
procedures for the city of Kasif, a future planned ultra-Orthodox city in the
Negev region, will continue and approximately 14 settlements in the Negev will
be continued and accelerated and NIS 800 million ($227M) will be budgeted each
year.
In compliance with Smotrich’s demands regarding
human rights associations, the government will dissolve organizations financed
by external parties and international funds. This will severely harm
Palestinian Arab civil society and will further entrench human and civil rights
violations against minorities in the country.
This is a government of open racists. In a 2018 radio interview, Likud MK
Miki Zohar claimed that the Israeli public will never
believe that Netanyahu is guilty of corruption because he “belongs to the Jewish race, and the entire Jewish race is the highest
human capital, the smartest, the most comprehending.”
But how is this different from ‘centrist’ Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s declaration that “My principle says maximum Jews on maximum land with maximum security
and with minimum Palestinians”?
If I had any doubt about my position then arch-Zionist and Trump
supporter, Alan Dershowitz, laid them to rest when he said
that:
“It will make it much more
difficult for people like me who try to defend Israel in the
international court of public opinion to defend them effectively, It would be a
tragedy to see the Supreme Court weakened.”
But it is Aharon Barak, who has provided the definitive argument
in favour of the legal reforms. Barak said that
the
High Court has acted as a kind of legal “Iron Dome,”. Without a credible
independent court, deemed as ensuring Israel’s democratic functioning,
including in its treatment of the Palestinians, “our chief of staff and government ministers will immediately be
arrested when they travel overseas… The
leaders of the country will be put on trial in the International Criminal Court
in The Hague.”
Could there be any more persuasive argument for giving Justice Minister
Yariv Levin’s proposals our full support?
Tony Greenstein
