POLITICS, POETRY & SATIRE
Enabled by the US, Australia, UK and other western white supremacist colonialists, Israel’s genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity are ever-expanding, one year on from October 7. Boycott Israel today and every day until Palestinian people have all their rights which are guaranteed under international law, denied to them by land-thieving, white supremacist Israel and rest of the West for the past 76 years.
(AI art by Jinjirrie)
Deck the halls
with amputations
Israel is a fascist state
Tis the season
for mass slaughter
Crush zionism and celebrate
Turf it from
the United Nations
For Christmas
no more assassinations
Israel is a fascist state
Dismantle it
Boycott it
Don’t wait
Till it kills
More children
It calls “little snakes”
Stealing their land
because #GenocideJoe
Says it can
Strip away its tinsel wrapping
Israel is a fascist state.
December 2023
Because if we don’t see it or feel it
the blow didn’t happen
the wind is revealed as trees bend
and shuffle their leaves
when bodies lie like playing cards
strewn in shrouds along the ground
so much fallen fruit from a season
of harvest in the charnel house
see rotten farmers feeding the world pain
if we turn away the wind will still blow again
November 2023
Oh what a lovely familiar war
Nutolini wants so much more
Land for settlers, rewards for sacrifice
Annihilation of ‘animals’ a worthy price
Israel’s the nadir of colonial white pride
Wallowing in endless genocide.
December 2023
Decolonize the world of patriarchy
From the mountains to the forests
To the rivers to the sea
End the scourge of white supremacy
People should be free in every nation
From capitalism’s vile predation.
Apartheid Israel, you can’t hide,
you’re committing genocide,
The whole world knows you lie and lie
By your own foul acts, your end is nigh.
Time to bury US hegemony
for people want freedom
not capitalist tyranny
open up your weary eyes
find solidarity and decolonize.
November 2023
domesticated by washing machines and
other white lovely things
microwaving dreams
turning away from the savages
displaced by your invader parents
turning away because you can
busy with barbies and dresses
surfing and ebikes
beautiful minds don’t want to worry about wars
while long covid wreaks hell with
frontal lobotomies
whitey, whitey everywhere
turning away because they can
doing the ‘both sides’ tango
while they forget they live on stolen land.
December 2023
you don’t pause a beating
you end a beating
unless you’re a continuous beater
with a track record of wife beating
israel’s like a dedicated wife beater
allowed to get away with it
put the missus in her place
a little touch up now and then reminds her
to submit and make allowances
for the high and mighty lords
December 2023
the putridness of forced rhymes
typical of AI slime
with no musicality
and even less sensibility
AI’s the antithesis of revolutionary
Locking imaginations
in sanitized mediocrity
December 2023
every day i wake up
then once i check the media
stomach sickens
yet i cannot stop analysing
even while heart pounds
and bear trap mind recoils
still i analyse
taking the long view
from far away in the forest
i analyse and wish
i could return to the future now
mission to study the beginning of
the fall of the US empire complete
escaping inevitable collapse
extinctions and end play
of relentless human folly
still i analyse
unbearable anguish of oppression
bloody criminal wet dreams
of decadent old white men
prancing in celebrity boxes
relishing macabre spectacle
blooding eager young
ejaculating white phosphorus
still i analyse as tears fall
enough in which to drown
imperial wretches who starve
bomb and genocide
people who resist
for their simple wish to be free
from thieving oppressors
occupying them
still i analyse
there is no god
she was betrayed
banished and bamboozled
November 2023
I would like to build a house from landlords,
Stacked into rammed earth walls
Or turned into bricks
Or stuffed into bottles
Then they would serve some purpose
Other than making their underlings miserable.
They could be repurposed into doors that close shut
on cold callers and JWs, ground up and combined with
bamboo and packaging.
Enjoy my recycled ruling class door
Which opens to admit the poor.
December 2023
Guest Post by Yoav Litvin
Benjamin Netanyahu, in collaboration with Kahanist Itamar Ben-Gvir and a cohort of other fascists, has been executing a judicial coup which guts so-called Israeli democratic institutions and threatens liberal reforms.
Many Israelis are infuriated. They’ve always viewed Israel as either part of Europe or the United States’ 51st state. “The only democracy in the Middle East”, a “villa in the jungle” with its fancy boutiques, exquisite espresso bars, glitzy shopping malls, wild/sexy nightlife and world-class wineries and restaurants. Most liberal Zionists see themselves closer to “civilized” white Christian Europeans rather than their “primitive” Brown Muslim Arab neighbors.
Liberal Zionism promotes the notion of a left-to-right spectrum within Israel. Yet the differences between the extremes are merely tactical and cosmetic, maintaining an illusion of a humane society with a healthy democratic discourse. “Left-wing” and “Liberal” Zionist parties engage in civil liberties for members of the privileged class yet dare not address the nature of Zionism, whose adherents have terrorized Indigenous Palestinians for over seven decades.
For liberal Zionists, without LGBTQ rights and buses on Saturday, Israel would simply become another Middle Eastern theocracy in which women are rendered inferior and prayer is mandatory in schools. In contrast, they see themselves as trailblazing feminists who believe women should have every right men have, like the right to enlist into military combat units and kill Palestinians. And what about Palestinians, you ask? It’s complicated, they respond.
As with every fledgling Israeli regime, the current government seeks to market itself to the Israeli public, distracting from its own corruptions and inadequacies by massacring Palestinians and stealing their resources. However, in contrast to recent administrations, Netanyahu and his cabal now unapologetically incite vigilante and mass civilian settler violence in addition to advocating for military incursions, mass arrests, bombings of innocent civilians, sieges and assassinations.
On the night of February 26-27, supposedly in response to the shooting of two Israeli settlers, hundreds of settlers rampaged through the Palestinian town of Huwara, near Nablus in the occupied West Bank, killing, torching and wounding.
Israeli liberal society was outraged. Hagai El-Ad, Executive Director of B’Tselem, the Israeli Human Rights Organization said in response:
“As a Jewish person, we know what a pogrom is. Because Jews have been on the receiving end of pogroms for too many years. Now, after what happened here on Sunday night, there are hundreds of Jewish settlers that know what a pogrom is not from the side of suffering under it but from the side that has committed that atrocity.”
By comparing the events in Huwara to a “pogrom”, a word closely linked to massacres of Jewish people in Russia or eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, El-Ad continues B’Tselem’s unfortunate framing of Zionism as a Jewish project enforcing “Jewish supremacy”, rather than the correct identification of genocidal western settler colonialism and white supremacy.
It is common practice for Zionist propagandists to promote the anti-Semitic fallacy that Israel is a Jewish state which represents Judaism and thus all Jews. Spearheaded by Netanyahu in 2018, Israel’s The Nation State of the Jewish People law enshrines this canard as an addition to Israel’s Basic Laws, which operate as a stand-in for a non-existent Constitution, pursuant to Israel having never declared its borders thus enabling continuous theft of Palestinian land. The fallacy serves as the cornerstone of Zionist propaganda (aka Hasbara), galvanizing support for Israel’s settler colonialism and attack of anti-colonial resistance.
Clearly, Zionists would much rather engage with accusations of carrying out a “pogrom” than a “white supremacist settler rampage”, ironically despite the obvious white supremacist nature of the former. Deploying its police, military and settler brownshirts, Israel has always been engaged in settler violence aimed at expansionism and resource acquisition. In fact, Zionism is a racist and settler colonialist movement, which opportunistically coopts aspects of Judaism in an attempt to justify its criminal practices against the Palestinian people. Zionism is based on a distinctly secular outlook, which embraces aggression and expansion as an acceptable response to trauma and denounces the traditional Jewish pacifist approach of viewing hardship as divine punishment for sins. Zionist strategists manipulate the past traumas Jews have endured to gain support for aggressive criminal policies that disenfranchise and evict Palestinians.
Unfortunately, El-Ad’s comments are in line with this Zionist tradition. However, the framing of Zionism as “white”, not “Jewish” enables and strengthens the formation of coalitions between all those opposed to settler colonialism and white supremacy and hinders Zionist attempts at sabotage by hurling cynical accusations of “anti-Semitism”.
The ultimate propaganda goal of any nationalistic apparatus is to fuse the perception of “self” with that of “nation” into a cohesive identity that is loyal to the ruling class. Indeed, one symbol has reemerged in nearly every image and video from these liberal Zionist protests throughout Israel and the West Bank – the Israeli flag. These protests have become a nationalistic chest-beating contest in which protesters compete with Israeli police, and politicians – Netanyahu and his fascistic brethren – over loyalty to Israel and Zionism. Hence, it’s clear these protests are no real threat to the apartheid regime. Yet, they could pose a threat to Netanyahu’s solidification of the Nation-State law within the Basic Laws as he seeks to extinguish the power of courts to change or remove it, along with protecting him from corruption charges.
Meanwhile, millions of Indigenous Palestinians in Israel, the Occupied Territories and diaspora are excluded from this reactionary discourse. For them, the Israeli flag represents their catastrophe and can never symbolize justice.
Indeed, Zionist propagandists have recognized the immense propaganda potential in these protests. They can claim Zionism is indisputable within Israel, and is fundamentally liberal, even democratic, as it supposedly allows a range of opinions and tolerates opposition.
Not only have these protests failed to threaten the Israeli regime, Netanyahu and his government have unapologetically and confidently deployed police tactics against protesters normally reserved for Palestinians and occasionally ultra-orthodox Jews. These tactics, including flash grenades and skunk water are small potatoes for Palestinians who are murdered every day by Israeli occupation forces, including women, children, elderly folk and members of the press.
Further, amidst worldwide condemnations, including within Israel’s political spectrum, some Israeli politicians have maintained their emboldened inflammatory rhetoric. Betzalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister with sweeping civilian powers in the West Bank said the town of Huwara “should be erased”, yet not by civilians, but by the military.
The horrific oppression and dispossession of the Palestinian people will not cease as a result of actions by the Israeli/Zionist public unless Palestinian demands for justice are supported first and foremost. As with the 2011 social justice protests, these recent demonstrations reflect discontent from a class of Israeli society afraid to lose certain privileges. Inevitably, Palestinians will continue to suffer apartheid and genocide until the international community intervenes.
By contrast, the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement has wisely adopted a strict anti-Zionist, anti-racist platform grounded in human rights. Built on clear understanding of oppressive systems, intersectional resistance and the path to liberation, BDS incorporates lessons of past anti-colonial movements, dismantling fictitious, divisive political narratives of white supremacy, imperialism, racism and patriarchy. The recognition that various oppressed peoples have common enemies serves to reinforce solidarity and cooperation between them, enhancing the growth and success of principled grassroots movements worldwide.
Yoav Litvin is a Doctor of Psychology/ Behavioral Neuroscience. For more info, please visit yoavlitvin.com/about/
at the magic point of writing my own stories
again joy’s stolen by Israel and its settler cronies,
how many times have the bombs of the colonizer
fallen on its sitting duck prisoners in Gaza?
now more sleepless nights tweeting, posting
attacking the flatulent zionist boasting
to stop genocidal killing in desperation
for my mates oppressed by the West’s occupation,
and what am i, what’s the bloody use,
another fucking white saviour out in the bush,
through a torrent of tears never heard,
all i can fight with are coarse distant words,
may they be sharp and hard, accurate missiles
to pierce the iron colonial carapace
for as in Israel and US, here they are present
condemning refugees to eternal imprisonment
scumbag white supremacists strut and preen
with gruesome European colonial hubris.
Jinjirrie, May 2021
1 of the libraries that Israeli warplanes destroyed yesterday was my safe haven, my happy place, the 1st library to ever get English books into #Gaza. Going there would excite me & make me feel less lonely, met likeminded people there, made book club friends. #GazaUnderAttack
— Omar Gaza ?? (@Omar_Gaza) May 19, 2021
Liberal hasbaroids are snide
prancing the dance of ‘both sides’
not ‘clashes’, resistance to apartheid
this ‘conflict’ is 73 years of genocide
Jinjirrie, May 2021
On Thursday, in the hours before the budget reply speech, the government cut short debate on the floor of the Senate and brought the bill to a vote. There were critics on the floor of the parliament, notably Greens senator Nick McKim and independent MP Andrew Wilkie. But with bipartisan support, there was little room for dissenting voices. With Labor’s support, the bill passed quietly into law.”
Take action to end apartheid criminal Israel’s impunity – Strike for Palestine. “Silence and two-sides-ism are immoral, as they reinforce Israel’s criminal impunity.”
With the 2020 Presidential elections fast approaching, the progressive campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is gaining traction. Several interest groups have grown increasingly
anxious of Sanders’ Democratic Socialist agenda, including ruling class Republicans, corporate Democrats and their joint ally – Zionists, both Christian and Jewish.
The ongoing ‘anti-Semitism’ smear of Sanders and his grassroots following has been waged openly at least since last February, regardless of the Senator’s Jewishness and outspoken support for Israel.
The smear has included at its core an attack on his backers Congresswomen Ilhan Omar (MN), Rashida Tlaib (MI) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) as well as activist Linda Sarsour.
The fact these are all women of color, two of them Palestinian, is far from coincidental; Zionism is a white supremacist, settler colonialist project, which is threatened by intersectional alliances disrupting Israel’s divide and rule tactics.
In response to the escalating smear, Sanders penned an editorial outlining his stance on anti-Semitism, Israel and Judaism, which predictably failed to deter the smearers. However, his liberal Zionism and endorsement of the immoral and politically unfeasible apartheid two-state “solution” render him susceptible to ongoing assaults as he repeats Zionist propaganda talking points.
Yet these attacks on Sanders and his followers conceal a campaign in the making for some time; a Zionist strategy devoted to targeting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, as explicitly stated more than 10 years ago at the ‘Global Forum for combating Antisemitism’ and subsequently by ‘The Reut Institute’.
Although not a BDS supporter himself, Sanders has defended the right to engage in the movement and is clearly the best candidate on Palestine in 2020.
Thus, Sanders is targeted relentlessly by Zionist propaganda.
Also known as ‘hasbara’, Zionist propaganda relies on several fallacies.
First and foremost, a conflation of Zionism with Judaism serves to deflect criticism of Zionist expansionist apartheid policies by means of repeated cycles of aggression and trauma and the agency of imperial enablers, whilst obfuscating the Nakba and Palestinian demands for equality and justice for those living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, within Israel’s 1948 borders, and refugees in the diaspora, who are guaranteed full right of return under international law.
This anti-Semitic conflation is reactionary, promoting right wing politics within the left.
The deliberately concocted manifest destiny connection between Zionism and Judaism thwarts resistance by deeming critique of Zionism and Israeli policies towards Palestinians as an attack on all Jews, ie anti-Semitic. Further, it fragments anti-colonial resistance by reframing a political struggle over land and resources between an occupying force and an occupied people as a “conflict” between two relatively equal parties.
This conflation promotes further tactical, Zionist appropriation and exceptionalization of Jewish victimhood and suffering. Israeli hasbara frames the Nazi Holocaust as a particularly savage genocide in history, which entitles its primary targets – Jews – with a special status among victims. In line with this facade, as exceptional victims, Jews deserve privileges, discounts and allowances. As the constructed “Jewish state”, Israel has been and continues to be the beneficiary of these favors and special relationships, which regularly come at the expense of Indigenous Palestinians. Notably, Zionist revisionism often ignores and diminishes Nazi crimes against other oppressed groups, such as communists and socialists, Roma, disabled people, LGBTQI, and African-Germans.
Zionist hasbara attempts to tarnish anti-colonial anti-Zionism by duplicitously merging it with modern white supremacist anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish religious bigotry, recasting principled leftist resistance to Zionist criminality as part of an ancient and exceptional form of human racism, which supposedly afflicts both left and right political spheres. This essentially anti-Semitic maneuver serves to whitewash Israeli criminality and ongoing collaborations with far-right governments worldwide and attack those who call them out, such as Representative Ilhan Omar and Senator Bernie Sanders.
Moreover, Zionist historical revisionism facilitates an erroneous presentation of Israel as a ‘normal’ democracy facilitating a left-to-right political milieu, instead of accurately acknowledging the entirety of the Zionist movement, including its “liberal” variety, as inherently reactionary, settler colonialist and genocidal.
Settler colonial projects generally rely on presentation of the desired territory as ’empty land’, along with dehumanization of existing inhabitants as barbarians undeserving of their land, who can thus be dispossessed without qualms in favor of a ‘villa in the jungle’. There is nothing ‘exceptional’ about Israel’s posture which has been marketed by other western settler colonial endeavors to sanitize their own land grabs, slaughter and denial of rights to Indigenous peoples as well as rejection of non-white refugees.
The Liberal flank of Zionism functions to absolve the reactionary essence of the movement and obscure its motivations – expansionism and apartheid. Dishonestly, it presents Zionism as compatible with democratic and progressive values and human rights, fictitiously possessing a true desire for peace, justice and complete integration into the Middle East.
The manufactured ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign waged against Sanders’ progressive camp began with liberal Zionist instigators in American media and was enthusiastically picked up by corporate Democrats and far-right wingers in Israel and the US, including Donald Trump himself (see here from recent campaign rally).
Significantly, the smear of Rep. Omar and parts of the left as ‘anti-Semitic’ is facilitated by the approval of the flawed and controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which adopts Zionist talking points regarding Israel as a ‘Jewish state’ and which was presaged again as strategic ‘lawfare’ in the Global Policy Forum in 2009.
The scapegoating of Omar by some in the mainstream media and prominent members of her own party provided a convenient backdrop for Trump to sign an unconstitutional Executive Order following his vicious anti-Semitic tirade at the Israeli-American Council National Summit.
This ongoing campaign against Omar, involving a host of dubious sources and social media accounts, has been adopted by key representatives of the Israeli government, such as UN ambassador Danny Danon. Notably, the Zionist portrayal of Omar as an anti-Semite shields real anti-Semites from accountability.
Israel’s racist policies complement Trump’s own xenophobic ambitions, as expressed by his senior policy adviser arch-Zionist Islamophobe Stephen Miller. Consistently, Congresswoman Omar has vocally opposed Stephen Miller’s white supremacy, fomenting further duplicitous accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’.
The fallacious ‘anti-Semitism’ accusations lobbed at those criticizing Zionist policies can be attacked successfully by avoiding Zionist propaganda traps and embracing the Palestinian, anti-racist call for BDS, a call which melds co-resistance and anti-colonialism, rejecting political Zionism.
To achieve justice, the focus on Zionist criminality and Israel’s shared settler colonial values and racist behaviors with other western settler colonial projects must persist. And the only relevant choice remains – are you a Zionist or an anti-Zionist? As veteran Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote: “If you remain a Zionist, you can no longer be of the left; if you’re of the left, you can no longer be a Zionist.”
All those who claim to care about Palestinians, including liberal Jews and associated media outlets and organizations who avoid implicating Zionism or directly supporting BDS cannot continue to claim left-wing universalist values while simultaneously serving as the “liberal propaganda wing of the apartheid Zionist regime.
Recognizing Zionism as inherently reactionary is not a “purity test” aimed at excluding activists as recently claimed by Ran Greenstein in a piece for the liberal Zionist 972 Magazine. Rather, it is a necessary first step in attacking duplicitous ‘anti-Semitism’ smears by identifying their tactical origins and impact, rejecting rightwing sabotage of a principled struggle for rights and justice.
The onus of change and accountability is on the oppressor, not for the oppressed to endure. On the road to liberation, only a consistent and unapologetic anti-Zionist framework is effective and congruent with leftist, anti-racist values.
Analysis by Yoav Litvin – Source
