June 5, 2012

EDITOR: Yes, it it 45 years today to the 1967 War…

How time flies… to think that I have spent 45 years of my life demonstrating against this occupation it sobering all right. It is also 45 years to the international lack of action on this occupation, and 45 years of brutal inhumanities by Israel. How long can it go on like this? apparently, for over 3 centuries, like in Northern Ireland. It is a terrible thought.

In the meantime, there are more problems for the Zionist, white and racist entity called Israel, that Jewish democracy for white Jews. As we know, it is difficult to be racist only against the Palestinians, of course. So now the Jewish Ku Klux Klan is all fired up and ready yo go, with Netanyahu preparing to expel 25,000 migrants to Africa any day now, with minister Yisahi saying Israel is for the whites only, with Ethiopian Falashas being attacked ‘by mistake’ as migrants, and with pogroms and arson spreading like wildfire. Hurray to Jewish white democrats in the only democracy in the Middle East.

Israel: It’s called fascism: ALTERNATIVE INFORMATION CENTER (AIC)

TUESDAY, 29 MAY 2012    MICHAEL WARSCHAWSKI,
Our elders used to say that if something looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck – then it’s a duck. Similarly, it is possible to say that if a state acts like a fascist state, legislates fascist laws, its spokespersons speak using fascist terms and some of the population responds in a fascist manner – then such a state is fascist.

Miri Regev (above), former Israeli army spokeswoman and current Knesset member, called African asylum seekers in Israel "cancer" (Photo: Moshe Milner, Israeli Government Press Office)

For numerous years I warned against use of the word “fascist” in defining the state of Israel. The Israeli regime is first and foremost a colonial regime, moved by colonial considerations of excluding the indigenous population and taking over their country and lands. The use of the term fascism served to soften the colonial character of the Zionist project and of the state of Israel.

There exists no doubt, of course, that the Zionist state did not lose its colonial essence but on the contrary, deepened even further the character traits it shares with states such as Rhodesia, Australia of the 18th and 19th century and the United States in its conquest of the west. However, Israel underwent processes which today justify also defining it as a fascist state. Seemingly, the grandchildren of the victims of German fascism and the project to destroy Jews who lived under its rule were supposed to know how to identify the fascist characteristics which developed as a terminal illness during the last decade.

The use of the word “cancer” in relation to a group of human beings, for example. Knesset Member Miri Regev (Likud) recently used this word to define the African refugees seeking asylum in Israel. Our ancestors were defined as “cancer” by the Nazis, and even today this word stands at the centre of the international fascist discourse when speaking about foreigners…and Jews. Another characteristic is the increase in pogroms: a mob incited by right-wing politicians, but also by the official discourse and the media, which violently attacks a minority group under the slogan “death to…!” So familiar to those who listened to stories of our grandparents! An additional example from the fascist modus operandi: the incitement of one disempowered group against another.

A pogrom always leads to murder and this is just a matter of time. The clock has begun to tick. MK Michael Ben Ari began his path with pogroms in East Jerusalem under the slogan “death to Arabs”, and today he is inciting in south Tel Aviv under the slogan “death to Sudanese”…most of whom, by the way, are not Sudanese but Eritrean.

However, the fascist attack on asylum seekers has an additional aspect related to most of our national and personal histories: the state of Israel was founded as an asylum state for hundreds of thousands of refugees who fled persecution or who survived the genocide of Eastern Europe. This position as asylum state is what led to the 1947 United Nations decision, and it is doubtful whether the international community would have given its support to the establishment of the state of Israel without the hundreds of thousands of displaced persons and survivors of the Nazi project of destruction. Who like us, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those same refugees and survivors, is supposed to feel empathy toward the refugees, whether they are escaping persecution or escaping hunger.

However, the asylum state has become a fascist state in which the discourse of power has completely replaced that of rights, and empathy has given way to hatred of foreigners. Here we have additional proof that the experience of persecution does not necessarily lead to empathy toward other persecuted persons. Last Thursday, on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, we were less than fifty people demonstrating outside the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem, reminding everyone that the Jewish tradition is full of commandments concerning love of the foreigner. Not just to treat someone with dignity, but with actual love! However, for a society built on the dispossession of the indigenous population and its expulsion, it is doubtful whether it possesses the capacity to feel empathy toward a refugee from Africa, and Miri Regev is an example. Regev, more than any other Knesset member, incited against MK Hanin Zoabi and called for her deportation from the country following the May 2010 slaughter conducted by Israel’s navy against the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara. Today the same woman stands and incites using fascist language against asylum seekers from Africa. Indeed, the face of a generation is as the face of its leaders, and these days it is best not to look in the mirror.

Israel turns on its refugees: Guardian

Tel Aviv residents protesting against the African migrants living in their neighbourhood last week. Photograph: Baz Ratner/Reuters

Firebombing of house containing 10 Eritreans is latest example of growing racism stoked by politicians and media
Harriet Sherwood
guardian.co.uk, Monday 4 June 2012
Behind the metal door and up a narrow, blackened stairwell, fear hung in the air along with the smell of smoke. No one wanted to talk. A young woman scrubbing clothes in a plastic basin mutely shook her head. A man sweeping the floor with a toddler clinging to his legs said one word: “No.” Another, bringing bags of food from the nearby market, brushed past without making eye contact.

As for the 10 Eritreans who had been trapped in a ground-floor apartment when the blaze began at 3am, they had gone. Four were in hospital suffering from burns and smoke inhalation; the rest had fled.

The overnight firebombing of a downtown Jerusalem building which houses refugees from sub-Saharan Africa was the latest in a string of attacks set against the backdrop of rising anti-migrant sentiment in Israel, fuelled by inflammatory comments by prominent politicians. Often described as infiltrators by ministers, the media, the army and government officials, migrants have also had labels such as “cancer”, “garbage”, “plague” and “rapists” applied to them by Israeli politicians.

The arsonists who struck the Jerusalem apartment, located in a religious neighbourhood of the city, scrawled “get out of our neighbourhood” on its outside wall. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said: “This was a targeted attack which we believe was racially motivated.” The foreign ministry condemned the “heinous crime”.

But on the street outside the building, the official response had little resonance with a man who arrived in Israel from Eritrea 14 years ago but was too scared to give his name. “People look at you, they curse you. They say, ‘Go back to your country.’ We are very afraid,” he said.

Tensions were inevitable, according to Moshe Cohen, the owner of a nearby jeweller’s shop. “They drink, they fight among themselves, they play African music on shabbat [the Jewish sabbath] when people want to pray. What started in Tel Aviv happens here now.”

He was referring to a series of firebombings of apartments and a nursery over the past month in southern Tel Aviv, an area in which African migrants are concentrated. Shops run by or serving migrants were smashed up and looted in a violent demonstration last month in which Africans were attacked. Many Israelis were shocked at the display of aggressive racism in their most liberal city.

Political leaders did not allow the violence to temper their verbal onslaught against the migrants. Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Israel’s national identity was at risk from the flood of “illegal infiltrators”. Interior minister Eli Yishai suggested that Aids-infected migrants were raping Israeli women, and all, “without exception”, should be locked up pending deportation. They do not believe “this country belongs to us, to the white man”, he said in an interview.

And, while touring the fence that Israel is building along its border with Egypt to deter migrants, MP Aryeh Eldad said: “Anyone that penetrates Israel’s border should be shot – a Swedish tourist, Sudanese from Eritrea, Eritreans from Sudan, Asians from Sinai. Whoever touches Israel’s border – shot.” He later conceded that such a policy may not be feasible “because bleeding hearts groups will immediately begin to shriek and turn to the courts”.

According to the immigration authority, there are 62,000 migrants in Israel, where the population is 7.8m. Over 2,000 migrants entered Israel via Egypt last month, compared with 637 last May. The construction of the 150-mile (240km) southern border fence, due to be completed later this year, is thought to be increasing in the short term the numbers attempting to cross into Israel .

Nearly all are given temporary permits to stay in Israel which must be renewed every three or four months and specifically exclude permission to work. Many end up being employed on a casual basis for a pittance, living in overcrowded, rundown apartments and confined to the fringes of society. In desperation, some turn to petty crime.

On Sunday, a law came into effect allowing the Israeli authorities to jail migrants for up to three years. People helping or sheltering migrants could face prison sentences of between five and 15 years.

Netanyahu also ordered ministers to accelerate efforts to deport 25,000 migrants from countries with which Israel has diplomatic relations, principally South Sudan, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Ethiopia.

He conceded it was not possible to deport around 35,000 migrants from Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia. Eritreans and Sudanese make up more than 90% of those who have illegally crossed the Israel-Egypt border in recent months.

One out of 4,603 applicants was granted asylum status last year.

Although some commentators and community activists have said that Israel, a state founded by and for refugees from persecution, should be sympathetic and welcoming to those fleeing violence and oppression, the prevailing mood is one of intolerance.

“This phenomenon is getting bigger and bigger,” said Poriya Gets of the Hotline for Migrant Workers, based in Tel Aviv. It was being stoked by politicians and rightwing organisations, she added. “We now see hotspots of tension between refugees and local people in many towns.”

Her organisation had also been targeted. “We’ve had phone calls, people cursing and saying ugly things, like, ‘We hope you will be raped and we are coming to burn you.’ The politicians must take responsibility. They are trying to make the fire bigger.”

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