Israeli Views on How Fascism is Shifting into Nazism in Israel
Prof. As’ad Abdul Rahman
The Zionist state has a conviction at its depth that it has two choices, both are bitter. It stands between the threat of its Jewish character if it chooses to be a democratic entity where all (including its Arab Palestinian citizens) are equal, or to turn into a Fascist regime, perhaps a Nazi system which may incur condemnations threatening its existence. In the face of such an impasse, however, the Zionist state rejects any solution or political settlement with the Palestinians and prefers to maintain the status quo although some influential powers inside the Israeli government seek to change the current situation into a full occupation of the Palestinian homeland.
In the twenty-first century, where the world’s normal nations seek to teach their students to develop and enshrine the values of democracy and respect for the freedoms and rights of the other individuals and minorities, the Zionist state continues to treat the Palestinians of 1948 as enemies and a fifth column, seeking their fragmentation as a national minority into several sects while focusing on the Jewish identity of the state. This has been coupled with a further seizure of Palestinian lands to build Jewish colonies without a government authorization along with court rulings in a number of cases allowing for seizure of lands of Palestinians without their consent or any fair compensation. Such acts take place in the shadow of political plans that surface from time to time aimed to liquidate the Palestinian cause. An example is the plan with ethnic cleansing at its essence proposed by the Knesset member for the Jewish Home party Bezalel Smotritch. It proposes imposing Israeli sovereignty on the entire region of the occupied West Bank, intensifying Jewish colonial settlements, dissolving the Palestinian Authority and encouraging Palestinians to emigrate outside historical Palestine or face a strong military reaction if they stand up to its implementation. Here appears the real face of the Israeli occupation government and the extreme right wing, at the expense of the Palestinian right, establishing a fascist and perhaps a Nazi regime, just as in the law of “Jewish nationalism,” which defines Israel as a “Jewish state”, implying a preference for ‘Jewishness of the state’ over its democracy.
In line with the saying ‘your own mouth condemns you’, Israeli writer Zeev Sternhell says “we do not need any legal culture to understand that if a people has the right to self-determination, this right is reserved for every other people”. He goes on to say “if we the Israelis have human rights, we have no right to deprive the Palestinians of them just because we have a national struggle or in a war on the division of the land… Israeli democracy is already in an advanced stage of fading and disintegration. The colonial settlements explicitly deprives Palestinians of their rights.” Commenting on the minority that controls the Israeli right through its position and slogans opposed to democracy, secularism and freedom of expression, Israeli writer Haimi Shilo says “the right-wingers, whom we can call the new rightists, despise democracy, pluralism, freedom of expression and the rule of law.” He said “they seek to evade equal rights, humanity and compassion, they love the national extremist land of Israel which exists in their minds, despise what they see as the bad and old state of Israel and above all they have the audacity to call as ‘self-hating Jews’ the leftists, secularists and all Israelis who cling to what is left of the dream of a Jewish and democratic state!”
The Zionist regime has developed into a form of fascism/Nazism, and the features of this Nazi-like fascism strongly invade the Israeli society. It is forming an environment suitable for extremism and a wide field of activity for the right and the extreme right and a base for fascist/semi-Nazi movements. Dr. Ofer Kasif, a lecturer in political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, aroused great anger when he compared the Israeli national law to the Nazi laws of Hitler. In a lecture he said that “Israel’s racist laws prohibit Arabs from living in specific areas and they resemble laws in the days of Hitler.” Along the same theme, the leftist writer Gideon Levy wrote saying:”New Nazis? We have many of them, Israeli-produced, new Hebrew-speaking Nazis, an Israeli version. We have an occupier and a reality under occupation, a violent right and sometimes a murderer. Every settler attack on Palestinian farmers on their land is described as a confrontation, and every Palestinian protest against the violence of the occupier … resembles a confrontation between two peoples.” He added “the Israeli right-wing is not a new Nazism, but on its margins are growing thousands of new Nazi flowers that no one is thinking of removing”.
Fascism in Israel has existed for a long time, Levy said and “new Nazism is beginning to emerge: if Lehava (which opposes assimilation) is not a neo-Nazism, what is neo-Nazism? If La Familia (a Jewish organization supporting the Beitar Jerusalem football team that incites the killing and theft of Arabs and Muslims) is not a new Nazism, what is neo-Nazism? Not to mention the sign that says this area is under Jewish control and the Arabs’ entry into this area is forbidden because they pose a danger to our lives?”
So, with the Zionist state’s accelerated shift towards fascism/Nazism, prospects for reaching a comprehensive balanced political settlement of the Israeli Palestinian conflict appear shadowy (unless western leaders reach agreement with their eastern counterparts to impose such a settlement). Features of fascism/Nazim nowadays appear clearer than before in the Zionist state and a fact that no one but an ignorant or biased can deny.
