We’re becoming political cannon fodder, greasing the skids to fascism
This is not my flag — Image Adobe Stock
On December 11, President Joe Biden told a Hanukah party in the White House, “Were there no Israel, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the world who was safe.” He was repeating Israel’s #1 talking point — their claim to be a safe haven for Jews in a hostile world. He was also denying his ability to keep people safe in his own country, certainly a troubling thought.
Unlike Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, I don’t claim to speak for all Jews, but Israel’s actions, and statements like Biden’s don’t make me feel safe. The whole world is watching the most brutal war crimes of the century, carried out by a government that calls itself “the Jewish state.” Millions of people are rising up in anger against these massacres. Israel advocates (“Zionists”) and their US allies are exposing Jews, Arabs, and Muslims to terrible danger.
If you live in the US or Western Europe, you have probably read about a massive rise in incidents of Jew hatred (antisemitism) on campuses and beyond. This “rising tide of antisemitism” meme has been all over corporate media. The state of Israel and its supporters condemn as antisemitic any speech or action that supports Palestinians or opposes Israeli and US violence. As they tell it, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza is antisemitic. Saying ‘Free Palestine’ means ‘Kill the Jews.’
Israel’s allies have made these claims for 50 years, but now there is darker purpose behind them. They are not only protecting Israel’s flow of American arms and money; they are setting up Jews and Muslims as the fall guys for America’s coming collapse into fascism.
As the neoliberal economy drives more people into poverty, while the 1% get richer, people on the right and left are becoming angrier and more rebellious. Our sham democracy with its choice of corporate candidates fools fewer and fewer people. The collapse of neoliberalism is why we see the rise of fascism in Israel, the US, Europe, and elsewhere.
Fascism needs an enemy. Historically, Jews have been the enemy of choice many times, with horrible results, but antisemitism is not a big thing in 21st Century America. For its own reasons, Israel is busily building up antisemitism in the west to push us under the right wing bus. They use it to deflect people’s anger away from the super-rich who are causing the problems, and from Israel’s dragging the US into trillion dollar wars against their enemies.
There are plenty of white supremacists around who will do the actual pushing when the time comes, and Israel will delight as Jewish refugees from fascism flock there.
Zionist practice is to commit horrible crimes against Arabs, then scream antisemitism when people protest. They are normalizing antisemitism, making it seem a thing any peace-loving person would have to believe. How long can that go on before real, violent right-wing antisemitism is unleashed on Jews and Muslims?
Is there really a surge in antisemitism?
Media and politicians talk about a “tsunami of antisemitism,” nearly all of which is actually criticism of Israel. The Maine Wire wrote of a law office in Portland, ”defaced with antisemitic graffiti.” An accompanying picture clearly shows an office with a large Israeli flag displayed in its window, and “free Palestine” painted on the outside. They claimed these slogans were antisemitic.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which used to defend Jews from discrimination but now stands full time with the state of Israel, reported an unprecedented rise in antisemitic Incidents since October 7: “A total of 2,031 antisemitic incidents, representing a 337-percent increase year-over-year. This includes 40 incidents of physical assault, 337 incidents of vandalism, 749 incidents of verbal or written harassment and 905 rallies including antisemitic rhetoric, expressions of support for terrorism against the state of Israel and/or anti-Zionism.”
Sounds scary, but look at those claims for a minute. “Incidents of vandalism” mostly means people scrawling ‘Free Palestine’ on walls. “Verbal or written harassment” could be saying or writing anything critical of Israel. “905 rallies” speaks for itself, with the rallies condemned for “anti-Zionism,” which is a political position, not anti-Jewish prejudice.
ADL claims widespread “vandalism of Jewish-owned businesses,” but I wonder, are the owners targeted for who they are, or are they, like the Maine law firm with an Israeli flag displayed in the window, deliberately antagonizing people who want peace? From what I’ve seen, as in this story from Florida, it’s more the latter.
Chants of “Netanyahu, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide” were misunderstood or deliberately misrepresented as “We want Jewish genocide.” Another chant: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is interpreted as a call to kill or drive out all the Jews, when the words — also used by the Likud Party to mean, ‘Expel the Arabs’ — quite clearly are a call for freedom, which Palestinians haven’t had for 75 years.
Zionists on social media and papers like the New York Post like to cite a chant of “Gas the Jews” supposedly heard at a Sydney Opera House demonstration for Palestine. The chant was reported by the Australian Jewish Association, a far-right, Israel-identified group. The words don’t show up on any audio recording, but some protest organizers told police that a tiny group of youth who showed up at the rally with anti-Jewish chants, were ushered away and warned not to return.
Such stories terrorize Jews, demonize pro-Palestinians, and provide a shield for Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza. They also act as powerful growth promotion for real antisemitism. As I wrote here, Israel likes it that way.
What Israel is doing in Gaza Image: The Guardian
How Israel creates antisemitism
Israel identifies itself as representing all Jews and then commits atrocities in our name. How should people of the world think about Jews’ relationship to Israel’s crimes? As Professor Steven Salaita wrote, “If it’s antisemitic to oppose land theft and child murder,, what choice does a person of conscience have?”
● Israeli leaders and supporters engage in nonstop gaslighting. If someone accuses them of ethnic cleansing in Gaza, Israel apologists will call them antisemitic conspiracy theorists. Meanwhile, their own leaders like Likud Party’s Ariel Kellet say things like, “There is only one goal: a Nakba in Gaza that will dwarf the Nakba of 1948.”
The Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) was the forced removal of 750,000 Palestinians from the new state of Israel; the literal definition of ethnic cleansing. PM Netanyahu keeps saying things like, “We will turn Gaza into an island of ruins” while he bombs them. It certainly sounds like people are being forcibly removed.
● When people call the Gaza massacres ‘genocide,’ Israel apologists say their critics don’t know what genocide means, or that they are antisemitic liars. Meanwhile, experts like Israeli holocaust scholar Raz Segal called Israel’s assault a “textbook case of genocide”, while leaders such as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant say “There will be no food, no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting animal people, and we are acting accordingly.”
What do you think happens to people with no food, water, fuel, sewage, or shelter? They die, as they are dying now. This is the definition of genocide, but the gaslighting never stops.
Israeli President Herzog said in October, “There are no civilians in Gaza.” An Israeli spokesperson recently said on TV that “Every baby, every first grader in Gaza is an enemy.” Does that sound genocidal enough to you? It does to me. But say so in public and you will be called a Jew-hater.
● The contempt Israel’s leaders and supporters show for the rest of us also turn people against Jews. They do anything they want in Palestine with US weapons, and say the US has no control over the ways our weapons are used.
● They are cry-bullies (the perfect word,) pushing people around and then crying ‘antisemite’ at anyone who pushes back. Republican congress people grilled three Presidents of elite universities over their alleged failure to protect Jews from students’ advocating Jewish genocide. The fact that nobody is making such threats or advocacy didn’t keep them from hounding one to resign and others to apologize profusely.
There are videos available of extremely privileged-looking Jewish students standing with Republican leaders and moaning that they “don’t feel safe” on campuses with pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Well, if you interpret chants of “intifada” or “From the river to the sea” as calls for genocide of Jews, you won’t feel safe, but you’re doing it to yourself. “Intifada” is Arabic for “shaking off,” not killing anyone.
Their loudly voiced fears, backed by powerful Zionist donors, have gotten student groups like Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) suspended at Columbia University, with SJP chapters banned at dozens of American universities.
All this entitled behavior rightly provokes hostility. People’s anger often gets directed at all Jews, as Israel apologists say anti-Zionism and antisemitism are the same thing. This is not making Jews any safer.
What fascism means in the 21st century
I say that Israel’s program of promoting antisemitism does harm beyond protecting Israel’s special status as America’s attack dog in Southwest Asia. It is leading the Western world into a very dark place, which I will call fascism, but could also be called authoritarianism or totalitarianism.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR,) fascism is a ”mass political movement that emphasizes extreme nationalism, militarism, the supremacy of both the nation and the single, powerful leader over the individual citizen, social hierarchy, and obedience to authority.” Is this what’s coming here? It certainly describes Netanyahu’s Israel, Modi’s India, Trump’s MAGA movement, and rising right wing movements in most of Europe.
US fascism
The neoliberal economy is collapsing. Massive inequality and debt, poverty, crime and homelessness, drive anxiety and anger. People look for someone to blame. Many blame immigrants, but Jews are also likely targets. They are doing much better on average than the average American, and a lot of Jews are big in the neoliberal economy. As employers do, many liberal Jews encourage immigration from the global South, which threatens workers and the middle class with competition.
It was Jewish promotion of immigration that drove the fascist killer Robert Gregory Bowers to massacre 11 Jews and wound six others on October 27, 2018 at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. He posted online that he killed Jews because, as member of HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), “They bring invaders in (meaning Central American immigrants) that kill our people.”
Fears of job loss and economic displacement drive anti-immigrants sentiment, and Jews, at least wealthy Jews, generally support immigration. This is why the white supremacists in Charlottesville were chanting “Jews will not replace us.”
So, anti-immigration and anti-Jewish extremism go together. Supporters of Palestine, on the other hand, tend to be supportive of Jews, have Jewish friends, or be Jewish themselves. Attacking them as antisemites protects Israel from criticism but exposes Jew and Muslims to danger.
Meanwhile Israel’s partnership with the US government and military industrial complex has never been closer. When people start to realize that the partnership has not been good for the American people, what will be the effect on Jews? Or on Muslims? Will people start saying, ‘The Jews dragged us down?’ Will it bring fascism to our shores?
It happened that way in Weimar Germany. We need to break the US/Israel military connection before it’s too late for Palestine and too late for American Jews.
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Published here: https://aninjusticemag.com/zionists-pushing-jews-under-their-bus-a9073c83390f
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