Deepening Fascism in Israel: The Evidence

Like I said earlier.

From the always great Jonathon Cook (a bit long at 30 pages, but if I can read it, so can you), an American living in and writing from Nazareth, you know, the birthplace of, you know, that religion called, you know, Christianity? Except now Nazareth is part of something called a Jewish state, of the Jews, by the Jews and for the Jews.

The Christians are relegated to the background, to a footnote, and that’s at best. At worst, they are an oppressed minority like the Blacks under apartheid South Africa. But this is all necessary, you know, to give the Jews their safe haven from Holocaust 2 you know, because as Herzl and Hitler remind us from beyond the grave, everyone hates the Jews, with good reason.

Cook has the advantage of being neither Arab nor Muslim nor Jewish traitor, so no one quite knows what to do with these folks.

Yet I wonder for how much longer Mr. Cook can keep penning his prose from inside the heart of the beast amidst the deepening gloom. It’s no longer daytime in Israel, ever, anymore. Nor is it the darkest night. There’s still light, just enough to see by, but that’s it.

It’s dusk. The dusk of a settling fascist dark.

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7 thoughts on “Deepening Fascism in Israel: The Evidence”

  1. Where did you get the idea that Jewish capitalists were better than Gentile ones? Ever heard of Lloyd Blankfein?

  2. he he I flagged this up for you. My feeling is that Jonathan Cook risks his life remaining there…

  3. Yer know what’s it with pseudonyms Lafayette? Are they fun? Have people got something to hide? I have lol. Yeah I had a good year. Palestine developed into a major obsession, I lost my job indirectly a year ago because of it (I got so fucking knackered liberating the Palestininas in cyberspace that I was shit at work and made mistakes lol), referred to the trick cyclist for mental health problems, recommended quetiapin (major antipsychotic which I wouldn’t take), plunged into a winter long depression, on medication (mirtazapine), put on weight because of it, lost interest in politics (a very serious symptom) and even sex eventually (far more serious!). Now I’m kind of ok, but broke and in debt, but that’s no longer a problem for my state of mind. It just is, like this shit summer we’re having. Just had my final demand for my water bill he he.
    Find me on Facebook if you want to make contact, you twisted old Scotsman with the vicious sense of humour, you’ll recognise me by my interests, see yah

  4. A quick read, and very informative. It looks alot like Germany in the 30’s.
    This event just tipped the scales for me, I really despise Israel now. The few principled actors there just leave me cold. Screw ’em all. Iran might challenge this blockade soon, and I’m hoping for violence..it’s the only language the Israelis speak.
    You have to talk to people in their own language.
    Diplomacy and reason are Greek to the Israelis.
    This incident is beyond the pale. There are the usual Israel-first defenders and excuse-makers…it’s all bizarre insanity. Really. It’s like coming upon a guy in an alley brutally raping a crying, bloodied woman and as you grab him up by his collar to pound his face he sputters “Wait! It’s not what it seems!”
    Beyond the pale.
    I’m waiting for the shoe to drop.
    I’m also pissed at Obama for reacting to this like such a damn politician.

  5. So you know what to do, dano. You don’t touch goods from such a regime and you encourage others to do likewise. You do like the Dixie Chicks: you pronounce Israel off limits for civilised intercourse. Ironically Israel, a country founded largely by people – some of them persecuted – from an area known as the Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe, is now, more clearly than ever, beyond the pale….

    Here’s an article (below) by an Israeli who argues for the boycott. I know that Americans feel uneasy about taking this step, but Israel presents itself as one thing, a democracy and a friend to America, while it is clearly something else, with its own agendas and prerogatives. We’re no longer in the nineteenth century. Genocide and expulsion of the natives to the region is no longer acceptable. We no longer live in the Western democracies by the racist narratives of that era. The Nuremburg tribunal is evidence of trying to live by a higher code.

    It’s time to tear off the mask. I get emails from Yesh Gvul, an anti-Occupation Israeli Jewish group who say the boycotts are starting to hurt. Nothing Obama can say to Netanyahu will make the slightest difference, not that Obama will say anything (as a black man he’s a hate figure in Israel by the way) but hitting the purse of Israeli businesses sends home a clear message: stop what you’re doing, or watch your country fail, watch the whole enterprise crumble. You’ll see how fast the Israeli leadership changes its tune, just as De Clerk did in South Africa a couple of decades ago.

    If you are Jewish and take this step, you are joining thousands of progressive Jews across the US who feel the same ( 80% of US Jews voted for Obama). A vocal minority wants nothing to do with this lethal and reactionary garrison state that speaks in their name. This article below is from The Huffington Post today, so go and add your comments…

    Rela Mazali, Israeli activist
    Posted: June 24, 2010 11:02 PM

    What to do when the country I live in totally loses its compass? Totally loses its shame? What to do when the regime that collects my taxes uses them to deploy its high-tech military, armed to the teeth, against activists sailing to oppose a criminal siege? When this country’s politicians authorize soldiers to shoot-to-kill into a deck-bound crowd? And then tell me they are protecting me? What to do when the governments of the world are too deeply implicated to hold this regime, this country accountable?

    I have watched government after government in Israel present itself as a respectable, normal member of the club of developed countries; open, democratic, cultured and liberal. Israel recently launched a major “re-branding” campaign, emphasizing diversity, richness, creativeness, to divert attention away from its warring belligerence. Israel’s leaders are deeply committed to keeping up their positive self-image.

    I have noted the special privileges granted time and again on the pretext of this image. The US awards Israel billions every year for “defense” in the form of planes, missiles, guns and ammunition. Just this May, the organization of so-called developed countries (OECD) granted Israel full membership, after years of Israeli lobbying. Israel bases its equal footing in such clubs on its claim to democracy.

    It is time for us all to hold it to that claim. Accountable. Not only privilege-able. Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) to end the occupation, reject, and actively remove, Israel’s mask of “business as usual.”

    Each of us, each of you, can draw the line through BDS and act as a caring, responsible citizen of the world. To end Israel’s 43-year-old occupation. To end the unacceptable, criminal siege of Gaza. To end racist laws and policies inside Israel, openly targeting the Palestinian citizens of Israel. To end more than sixty years of ongoing dispossession of the Palestinian people.

    Inside Israel, BDS has already started to work. It is working where years of other civil society strategies have achieved far too little. For the first time in a very long while, many Israelis around me are sitting up and taking notice: Notice that there is still an occupation in place 43 years down the line, an occupation “out there” beyond their “normal” lives and beyond the self-perpetuated “existential threat.” Notice that millions the world over believe “ordinary” Israelis — both personally and collectively — have something to do with this occupation. Notice that it just may turn out to be too costly.

    For weeks now, dozens of items in Israeli media have reported on BDS developments, speculating on its chances and consequences. Israel’s cabinet recently addressed the boycott of settlement goods by the Palestinian Authority. In May, a Harvard professor warned a Tel Aviv University conference of the grave strategic threat of Israel’s crumbling legitimacy. Ignoring the country’s record, he chalked up waning legitimacy to BDS, blaming individual activists who, he actually implied, were traitors. BDS activists in Israel regularly receive veiled and less veiled threats, including one recent death threat, in the media, through employers’ reprimands, in the form of (so far) threatened legal suits, through university email lists and colleagues’ petitions. A new bill making its way through Israel’s legislature would criminalize support for BDS, past or present — turning this op-ed into incriminating evidence against its author. Israel’s minister of education has preempted legislation, already pledging punishment for academics who support BDS. All this is clear evidence that BDS has started to make its mark on society here in Israel.

    Meanwhile, internationally, civil society organizations are passing resolutions in support of BDS — trade unions, student bodies, municipalities, football teams, even one government — in Norway, South Africa, Britain, New Hampshire, California, Sweden, France.

    In 2005, Palestinian civil society groups came together to voice a powerful joint call for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions. Activist groups all over the world and inside Israel have subscribed to this call and declared their support. BDS is a political tool claimed and operated by international civil society where other tools seem ineffective; When international institutions and governments are failing; When a long overdue need to end severe oppression is not being met. Today BDS may be the only non-violent tool capable of moving Israel beyond its patterns of militarized brutality.

    Courageously and creatively, BDS faces violence with a firm commitment to non-violence. It stands in solidarity first and foremost with Palestinians, and then with humanity — with the thousands of internationals and Israelis who have chosen nonviolent resistance as their means to oppose and end the oppression of Palestine.

    A tool, a strategy, not an end in itself, BDS is meant to work. As it did in the past when a 1953 boycott of segregated buses jump-started the crucial years of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States; when the African American community of Baton Rouge boycotted and faced down a Louisiana court ruling; when, two years later, Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of a Montgomery bus and initiated the Montgomery bus boycott; when the massive school boycott in 1965 galvanized the movement again in Cook County, as more than 100,000 African American students stayed home from disgraceful schools despite a court injunction; when the world movement to resist South African apartheid gradually gained ground throughout the sixties to the dismay of successive US and British governments; when this movement kept growing, refusing to go away.

    Today, BDS can make it increasingly difficult for Israel’s government to keep up the occupation and the internal repression. Hiking up costs, it can make occupying unprofitable and racism disgraceful. Meanwhile, and no less important, it is already allowing Israeli society a clear reality check, reflecting what it looks like to international civil society, and capturing what it has become.

    BDS is a means to justice for those to whom it has been denied. Not against, but rather for, both Israel and Palestine, it aims to end the policies destroying the lives of Palestinians and devouring the humanity of Israelis. BDS supports the livable, viable futures of all the people of this land.

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