Israel the Self-Delegitimiser

Zeev Sternhell pins down Israel’s descent into fascism, self-delegitimisation and subsequent denial:

The settlement colonialism is the main reason today, usually the only one, for the opposition, sometimes bordering on hatred, that Israel arouses among much of the Western intelligentsia. It’s not the enemies of Zionism and the anti-Semites who are delegitimizing Israel, but Israel itself, with its own two hands.

The disgraceful flight from a confrontation with the right in the Knesset will not soon be forgotten, and the center’s moral bankruptcy will be recorded as a disgrace. The greatest enemies of democracy and the sources of fascism’s strength have always been not the radical right’s independent power, but the opportunism, conformism and cowardice of the center.

JPost goes into full swing and denial of Israeli fascism, in unwitting hypocrisy:

“Fascist” was a title infamously hard-earned by Brown Shirts in places like Germany, Italy and Bosnia, where racial laws were passed and genocides were carried out.

Passing racial laws and genocide are precisely what Israel has done and is doing.

And here’s more confirmation that the apartheid Israeli regime doesn’t want two (viable) states:

Isaac Molho, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s senior adviser and top negotiator on the Palestinian channel, made a secret trip to Moscow on Wednesday and met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The purpose of the visit was to dissuade Russia from supporting the European Union’s intention to present in two weeks’ time a plan for the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.

@phbarratt There will be one state in Mandate Palestine and Israel’s grandchildren will wonder why they are a minority in an Arab state. #

@Jinjirrie Racist Australians support Israeli crimes against Palestinians as they do Australia’s crimes against Aboriginals .#

Winner of the first Israeli Apartheid Video Contest offers a comparison of South African Apartheid To Israeli Apartheid. Read the full story about the contest at Electronic Intifada.

Global BDS Day of Action 2011 – Chicago

Palestine / Israel Links

Global BDS Day of Action 2011
Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (24-30 March 2011)
This is how many cops Max Brenner needs to prevent their customers hearing how they support occupation #BDS
Israeli activists call for a ‘no fly zone’ over Gaza
Netanyahu under probe for graft
Glenn Milne expresses his hatred for Palestinians and their rights

My published (corrected as I must have still been waking up when I wrote it) comment:

‘Learn more about the non-violent call from Palestinian people for justice and rights at bdsmovement.net before casting aspersions at those who support human rights against oppression, please, Glenn.

Leading anti-apartheidists like Bishop Desmond Tutu say Israeli apartheid is far worse than that perpetrated by white South Africa. The South African Human Sciences Research Commission has identified Israel practising colonialism and the three pillars of apartheid.

While Israel continues its land theft and settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, inflicts apartheid on Palestinians and denies Palestinian Israelis full equal rights, those Australians who are in tune with Martin Luther King’s example who see injustice anywhere as a threat to justice everywhere won’t stop highlighting Israeli crimes against humanity. Australia was at the forefront of the anti-apartheid movement against white South Africa – it’s time we Australians stood up again to insist our government acts to support the principled boycott against Israel.’

Murdock smears again
Sonja Karkar’s story on the smears: The Greens and BDS caught up in Israel’s theatre of the absurd

There is absolutely nothing in the BDS Call by Palestinian Civil Society of 2005 that says “Israel should be just a one-state country”. In fact, the statement merely says that BDS “should be maintained until Israel meets its obligations to recognise the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination”. It also clearly states that there is no alternative but to call for such non-violent punitive measures since “all forms or international intervention and peace-making have until now failed to convince or force Israel to comply” with its obligations under international law.

How that could be considered an “extreme” policy or one that goes against reconciliation, peace or justice, makes the mind boggle. But that’s precisely the theatre of the absurd into which Australia has fallen.

The inspiration for that initial call came from the South African struggle against apartheid, a struggle against injustice and oppression. And in case Australians have not heard what eminent South Africans have had to say about Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians through all the fog of misinformation and hysteria, it bears repeating that Archbishop Tutu, Nelson Mandela, former government minister Ronnie Kasrils, former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Professor John Dugard, former head of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), Willie Madisha, and also the current one, Sidumo Diamini have all said that what Israel is doing to the Palestinians is worse than anything that was done in South Africa. It is apartheid.

BDS then is neither extreme nor likely to “strengthen the hand of extremists”. It is Israel’s and its apologists reactions to BDS that are extreme. When two women have already been subjected to virulent attacks for their support of BDS, one has to wonder how much of this smear campaign is to neutralise the Greens and how much to quash the BDS campaign for good in Australia.

The Marrickville smear just shows their Green fear

There was a de facto anti-Green alliance of both major parties, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, The Daily Telegraph and the Australian Jewish New, a powerful alliance that ran a slanderous campaign asserting that the Greens are anti-Israel (or anti-Semitic) because they support BDS and Palestinian rights.

The anti-BDS and anti-Greens campaign in Marrickville – which reached fever pitch in the last two weeks of the election campaign – included the outrageous accusation that the Greens are “fascists” and “Nazis”. Greens billboards in the Marrickville electorate were plastered with swastikas, as well as racist and sexist abuse.

The attempt to slur those who criticise Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as fascists – or supporters of the Nazi’s attempts to wipe out the Jewish population in Eastern and Central Europe during the World War II – is a crude and desperate attempt to silence critics.

The argument that any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic is ridiculous but it is routinely used by supporters of Israel to try and silence its critics. The accusation that critics of Israel’s policy towards Palestinians ignore other human rights abuses around the world and just pick on Israel is also wrong. Anti-racists are just as outspoken about Western justifications for imperial wars, the treatment of refugees, and the treatment of Indigenous people in this country.

On the other hand, most of the people doing the smear job on the BDS campaign are not noted for speaking out against these injustices.

Andrew Robb labels Greens’ Israel boycott calls ‘anti-semitic’
Bob Brown can’t run away from his support for the NSW Greens BDS policy.
Business slaps down boycott talk – these zionist shills are not aware that BDS selectively targets institutions which support Israeli apartheid and occupation – seems as though the Australian is using green tech to wedge the greens.
NSW Greens Israel boycott damaging: Brown
Lonely, but pampered, at the top – Nutanyahoo plagiarises Gough Whitlam
Hamas: “Israel Is Deluding Its People, Obstructing Swap Deal”
Moyle in Northern Ireland twinned with Gaza
Our brothers, ourselves : Will American Jews be able to continue to support Israel if it maintains its current political, social and religious orientations? Yes – and no – it depends on whom you ask
JPost in denial of Israeli fascism
The extreme right turned Israel into an anachronism
Yet another racist Israeli law on the way – The Palestinian Prisoners’ Forum warns against Israeli law preventing Palestinian detainees from meeting with lawyers
We must stop the nationalist and racist Lieberman

It is true half the nation is afraid of missiles on Ben-Gurion International Airport but the other half is even more from afraid of having Lieberman as prime minister.

In Palestine, curse anything but the land
Incitement and Racism in Israeli Media

Commenting on the racial laws recently enacted in Israel, Dror Edar wrote an article which was published in ‘Israel Today’ newspaper under the title “The priority is for Jews”. He said that the first priority is to preserve Jews’ rights, and not the rights of the Arab minority in Israel.

“The repeated claim that the Arabs are a minority in Israel, thus we need to preserve their right is a false one. The Jews are the majority in Israel, thankfully, but they are the minority in a threatening unstable Arabic and Islamic environment”, he said.

He added “Reserving the rights of the Arab minority in Israel can’t be at the expense of preserving the rights of the Jewish minority in the region.”

Activists: Settlers burn storefront in Al-Khalil
Hamas: Knesset’s citizenship revocation law targets the Palestinian presence
How to friend an Israeli soldier
Adalah, ‘The Inequality Report: The Palestinian Arab Minority in Israel’ (pdf) – important document
If you are Palestinian you were born with a goal, a goal to fight for justice.
Joe Klein and the Palestinian Gandhi – another pundidiot discovers the Palestinian tradition of non-violence

Libya Links

Noam Chomsky: On Libya and the Unfolding Crises
The price of Dignity in Libya

Wikileaks Links

@Anony_Ops hacks Nuclear Launch Codes

Australia Links

Most white Australians I know are vacuously unaware of their privilege and racism. Michael Anderson nails it:
Australia as “last bastion for the Aryan race”

Michael Anderson: ‘the New Way Sovereignty Summit in Canberra will challenge Australia’s application for a seat on the United Nations Security Council.

“Australia does not have the right to be nominated, let alone have a seat there. How can a colonial state of England have such a right? We will make every effort to lobby against Australia getting nominated.”’

Does the Australian working class have the power to change society?