A non-religous israeli Jewish friend just shared this in the wake of the massacres against Charlie Hebdo:
Germany –Israel: The roles have reversedJ. Ofir
Forward note: I am an Israeli citizen.
I am being despised by some, ignored by others, and some of my closest contcts ‘want to kill me’, so I am directly told - as a euphemism, fortunately for me, but still a disturbing one. All this is due to my posting of views in fully transparent English on Facebook, views concerning the state of Israel today, views which make these people and the state they personally identify with look bad. Well, it is bad. And it’s getting worse.
So I will continue unabated, for it is way too late, and I will not be a Martin Niemöller ‘who did not speak out’.
This writing may thus be the most provoking for those who don’t like my views – yet probably the most serious and outspoken for me.
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70 years after the biggest genocide that has befallen mankind, Germany now stands out as an overwhelmingly liberal and tolerant country. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo and anti-Jewish attacks in Paris last week, Germany’s leadership stands at the front line in a demonstration not against terror, but against nationalist and xenophobic extremism and intolerance which showed its face once again in the racist ultra-nationalist demonstrations that had taken place earlier in various German cities. Despite these forces of darkness that loom and have most always loomed in Germany, Germany today is an overwhelmingly liberal and tolerant country, which could and should serve as an example for any country today who seeks the same.
And yet the state which has been historically portraying itself as the bastion of the ‘Jewish nation’, which has built its moral fiber on the admonishment of the evil it faced over 70 years ago, has now become an example of the same nationalist xenophobia which brought to its near annihilation then.
When the Israeli Prime-Minister Netanyahu marched in the front line of the ‘march against terror’ in Paris, waving to the crowd as if it was a ‘je suis Bibi’ march, he was not marching for tolerance, he was marching against terror – and he tried to garner support for the Israeli cause, in the inclusion of Hamas as part of ‘global jihad’, although Hamas is a local resistance movement, which is no longer viewed as a terror organization by the EU – Hamas hasn’t got a global jihad outlook.
Netanyahu tried to win cheap points on the event, and even attempted to strengthen the sense of the ‘fortress Israel’ by suggesting to the Jews of France that their home is Israel, which became a way of saying that if it gets bad, there’s a way out. That part was not well taken by the Jewish community leaders, who realized that expressions of this kind only support those who wish to get Jews out – these Jews don’t necessarily see Israel as their home. And this is regardless of the fact that many more Jewish civilians get killed in Israel from terror than in Europe – Israel is overall a much more dangerous place. Israeli commentators on leading television networks commented on how the crowd at the Paris synagogue burst into a song of the national anthem after Netanyahu’s speech – and for an Israeli that would naturally mean the Israeli national anthem – but no, they sang the French one. This was the mark of their allegiance to France and enlightenment.
At the same time that Netanyahu tries to portray Israel as a part of the western world, facing a threat of global jihad which puts everyone in the same boat so-to-speak, Palestinian journalists are jailed for many months on prolonged administrative detention for posting far less provocative drawings than Charlie Hebdo’s. A publication at Haaretz recently of a cartoon juxtaposing the death of ten journalists in France against thirteen killed in the recent Gaza incursion, drew a mass of death threats from people who found no reason to hide their names:
“We must do what the terrorists did to them in France, but at Haaretz,” wrote Facebook user Chai Aloni. “Why is there no terror attack at Haaretz?” wrote Moni Ponte. “Let the terrorists eliminate them,” wrote Daniella Peretz. “With God’s help, the journalists at Haaretz will be murdered just like in France,” wrote Miki Dahan. As Danit Hajaj put it, “They should die.” “Haaretz is where the terrorists should have gone,” wrote Riki Michael. “Death to traitors,” added Moshe Mehager. “I hope that terrorism reaches Haaretz as well,” wrote Tuval Shalom. “With God’s help, [there will be] a Hamas operation that kills all of you, like the journalists in France,” wrote Ruti Hevroni.
See more at:
http://mondoweiss.net/…/…/journalists-publication-newspaper… Euphemisms, empty threats? Possibly, but history has shown us just how real such vile rhetoric can become. These are expressions which would befit any global-jihadist were they aimed at Jews – but wait a minute, they are aimed at Jews, aren’t they? Yes, the violent xenophobic and self-protectionist spirit in Israel has now become a widespread fascism – a one nation, us against them – and death to the traitors.
Just imagine if those names of Jewish Israelis were Palestinians – instead of Chai Aloni, Ahmed Faraj. Do you think Ahmed Faraj would now be in trouble? I think he would be in administrative detention right now. Chai Aloni will probably not even speak to any authority, they would dismiss it as harmless rhetoric.
80 years after Germany’s 1930’s, Israel has come to resemble it in alarming ways. Israeli right wing politicians are competing on getting a Nation-State bill through. Israeli legislation has been raining with discriminatory and anti-democratic legislation in the past years.
“There are Judeo-Nazis!” shouted the late professor Yeshayahu Leibovitch, an orthodox Israeli Jew who spoke his mind when most were silent. In the incident I witnessed where he said this, he was referring to the president of the Suprem Court, who had just effectively legalized torture. He noted that the ‘enlightened world’ has abolished such practices already two centuries ago. Not that it did not occur in other places – but it was illegal. Indeed, Israel had become the only country in the world to have legalized torture in our times.
Naturally, Americans made use of this ‘legal precedence’ in attempt to justify illegal torture practices, which poses the question as to exactly what kind of ‘light’ Israel is ‘unto the nations’…
Indeed, the Supreme Court of Israel, despite often being mocked as a leftist institution in nationalist Israeli discourse, has become a rubber stamp of the massive occupation-industry which has been working its cogwheels relentlessly for nearly half a century. Despite occasional rulings in the favor of this person or that locality, the Supreme Court has not managed to deem the occupation itself illegal, nor the separation wall as a whole (it’s two times longer than the ‘Green-line’ itself due to its massive annexations of Palestinian land), and this despite ICJ rulings to the opposite – whenever Israel is faced with international legal scrutiny, which is completely online with international law, the Supreme Court makes a ruling that manages to override it. This happens because it relies on an alliance with the Israeli security forces, which provide it with recommendations and assessments based upon ‘classified information’ which the court is not privy to. The courts allegiance thus rests with Israel’s so called ‘security needs’, and thus the court is in the pocket of politics.
Israel boasts its stature as a law abiding state, and many liberals take pride in the Supreme Court, because it supposedly imposes scrutiny upon the state and its security forces. But that is not really the case. After the example of the Nürnberg Laws, no country can use that argument anymore, that it is enlightened in its being a law-abiding nation. The question after Nürnberg will always have to be – which laws?
Israel often boasts with the ‘only democracy in the region’ card. What democracy?– one that holds a population that would otherwise constitute one-third of its citizenship as stand-by humans with no citizenship rights whilst it effectively annexes their land bit by bit? A democracy that depends upon ethnic majority of its Jewish constituency to uphold its other allegiance – the Jewish Nation State (bill or no bill)? A democracy where at exactly the same spot, one person throwing a stone can be shot or administratively detained for an effectively unlimited period of time (with ad lib extensions), whilst the other will not even be dealt with?
It has become clear for many, that Israel has become an Apartheid state. When that is said, especially by non-Jews, they get the classic anti-Semitic-persona-smear, like in the case of former USA democrat president Jimmy Carter. I say it, and it becomes a bit more difficult to take the ‘anti-Semitic’ card out, but one could always use the self-hating Jew card or, even better, if one lives abroad, an anti-Israeli traitor.
But in the end we have to face reality, and no matter how much Netanyahu tries to portray himself and Israel as an enlightened nation amongst a darkness of growing global jihad, a little David-fortress of good protecting enlightenment in a region of primitivism, it is becoming ever more clear for the world, that this is but a cover-up, a smokescreen for a criminal practice. In fact, one could say, and I do, that these aforementioned practices are a major factor in the creation of ‘Islamist-extremism’ that Netanyahu lashes at.
No person and no people are immune to moral corruption, and no person or people should be judged as incapable of improving. Germany has proven this better than anyone. For Israeli Jews to consider themselves unable to reach the same darkness as Germany did in its 1930’s and 1940’s would be to consider ones ethnic origin (real or imagined) genetically superior. And as we may recall, it was this view that sat at the core of the Nazi ideology.
Copenhagen,
15. January 2015
Poll
Topic: Pro Israel or Pro Palestine?