Why the Outrage? “Jewish Power” Party is the New Norm in Israeli Politics

by RAMZY BAROUDFacebook

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Logo for Otzma Yehudit

Immediately after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu forgedan alliance with the fringe political group, Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), a widespread outrage ensued.

The anger did not emanate only from the Center, Left and Arab parties, but from some in the Right as well. Even the pro-Israel lobby in the US, known for its hawkish political views, spoke out against the sinister union.

“The views of Otzma Yehudit”, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) tweeted, “are reprehensible. They do not reflect the core values that are the very foundation of the State of Israel.”

But what if they do? And what if “Otzma Yehudit” is but a different political articulation of mainstream Israeli views, reflecting the very “core values” that even AIPAC has been blindly defending since its inception in 1953?

Prior to the alliance between Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, Rafi Peretz’s far-right Jewish Home, and Otzma Yehudit, which was struck on February 20, Israel was hardly a liberal democracy that shunned racism and embraced political pluralism. Indeed, it must be understood that the inclusion of Otzma Yehudit in Israel’s mainstream political scene is consistent with the moral corruption of Israeli politics as a whole.

To protest the alliance between Netanyahu and the fanatical leaders of Otzma Yehudit is to suggest that mainstream Israeli politicians don’t represent the very chauvinistic, racist and violent ideals that the extremist party has championed since its formation in 2012.

Otzma Yehudit was resurrected by the followers of Brooklyn-born Rabbi Meir Kahane, who has advocated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and has led his followers in many violent incursions against Palestinian Arab communities, in Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories.

His Kach party, banned in Israel four years after its formation in 1984, was even then not rejected for its “racist policies” as many in the media are now suggesting. The party operated outside the confines of the Israeli government agenda, thus it was forced out, but its violent ideas persisted in the Knesset until this day. If racism against Palestinians was truly a Kach-championed political anomaly, how is one to explain the racist Nation-State law, which defines Israel as a “the nation-state of the Jewish people” – elevating everything Jewish and degrading everything Palestinian?

The law is hardly different from Otzma Yehudit’s own constitution, which defines Israel as a “Jewish state in its character, its national symbols and its legal values”, also defining Hebrew as Israel’s “only official language”.

In fact, a careful reading of the party’s constitution and the text of the Nation-State law  reveals astounding similarities. This suggests that since the days of Meir Kahane, it is Israeli society that has drawn closer to the views of Jewish extremists, not the other way around.

Indeed, Kahane was assassinated in 1990, but his ideas lived on, expanding along with Jewish settlements to finally capture mainstream imagination. The outrage against the Netanyahu-Otzma Yehudit alliance is likely motivated by a slight degree of fear that the ugly face of Zionism has been fully exposed to the world.

As for AIPAC, it is clear that no amount of carefully-worded diplomatic language will suffice to explain why the Israeli government is to be populated by members of a party that has beenlisted as a terrorist organization by the US State Department since 1994.

Netanyahu is desperate, and, as history has taught us, when the Israeli Prime Minister is in a political jam, he would stoop to any level to free himself. In the last general elections in 2015, Netanyahu made a final appeal to his supporters. “Arab voters are heading to the polling stations in droves,” he said, resorting to his typical style of fear-mongering. Unsurprisingly, he won.

Netanyahu is more desperate now than ever. His opponents in the Center are merging their parties in a new list, Kahol Lavan or “Blue and White”, which has the potential to unseat him on April 9.

Worse, the Israeli attorney general has resolved on February 28 toindict Netanyahu for “bribery and fraud”. A poll published the following day found that two-thirds of Israelis think that Netanyahu should resign if indicted.

Netanyahu’s own opportunistic legacy is more than enough to explain his decision to reach out to Otzma Yehudit, but what is truly mind-boggling is the outrage at a political move that seems perfectly fit for Israel’s mainstream politics.

Even if Israel’s Central Election Committee resolves to bar Otzma Yehudit from participating in the upcoming elections, little will change in terms of the values and ideals the party stands for, principles that, in one way or another, also define Jewish Home, the New Right, the Likud and others.

Otzma Yehudit’s platform calls for a war against the “enemies of Israel” that must “be total, without negotiations, without concessions and without compromises”.

But isn’t this essentially the same view of Ayelet Shaked, Minister of Justice in Netanyahu’s coalition, and now one of the leaders of the newly formed “New Right” party?

In 2014, just before Israel unleashed its most destructive war on the besieged Gaza Strip, Shaked declared the need for a total war. “Not an operation, not a slow-moving one, not low-intensity, not controlled escalation … This is a war … This is a war between two people. Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people …”

More than 2,139 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed in the Israeli war that followed her declaration, and over 11,000 were wounded.

Why the outrage, then, when the fringe party’s mission to “restore the sovereignty and ownership over the Temple Mount” – meaning, Al-Aqsa Mosque – is consistent with the views of most Israelis, religious and secular alike? Knesset members have made that call repeatedly, often from Al-Aqsa itself, while surrounded by scores of soldiers and armed Jewish settlers.

As for the confiscation of Palestinian land and the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements, as Otzma Yehudit advocates, that, too, is a common ideal that most Israeli political groups, spanning the Right and Left, brazenly champion.

AIPAC is not only being hypocritical to suggest that Otzma Yehudit violates the “core values that are the very foundation of the State of Israel”, it is being purposely deceptive as well.

In fact, Otzma Yehudit’s platform only reinforces the existing “core values” of Israel, the same values that AIPAC itself champions without the slightest regard for human rights, international law and the principles of true democratic values.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, London, 2018). He earned a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, UCSB.

‘Zionist Regime Concealing 300,000 Documents About Palestinian Massacres’

 
WEST BANK  – The Zionist regime has been hiding 300,000 documents about its massacres of Palestinians, thousands of them dating back to the 1800s, a report says.

The regime’s "State Archives” declassified secret documents last summer, but some 300,000 documents, which antedate the 1948 establishment of the regime, remained classified, according to the +972 Magazine.

"The very existence of the 300,000 classified files—their names, dates, and origin within the state bureaucracy—had been kept a secret, until now. One-fifth of the files, deemed too sensitive still by the regime, were excluded from the disclosure,” the report by Israeli Jewish journalist Asaf Shalev said.

"There were many people who were concerned about the opening of this catalog,” Israel’s "State Archivist” Yaacov Lozowick was quoted by the website as saying in a statement accompanying the release.

Some of the files, which were kept secret, reportedly date back to 1821, while 125 of them date back to the 19th century and nearly 2,000 papers predate the Nakba (Catastrophe Day).

Files on the two most notorious massacres of Deir Yassin and Kafr Qasim by the Zionist regime are among the hidden documents, the website said.

The Kafr Qasim massacre took place on October 29, 1956 -- the first day of the Suez war -- when Israeli forces killed residents of the village who returned from their nearby agricultural lands.

Deir Yassin has long remained a symbol of the regime’s violence against Palestinians due to the particularly gruesome nature of the 1948 slaughter, which targeted men, women, children, and the elderly in the tiny village.

The Deir Yassin massacre, which was carried out on April 9, 1948, was led by the Irgun militia group, whose head was future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, with support from fellow Zionist militiamen affiliated with Haganah and Lehi groups.

According to the report, the massacre was one of the first in what would become a long line of attacks in a number of Palestinian villages, part of a broader strategy called Plan Dalet by Zionist groups to scare Palestinians in the hope that the terror would lead to an Arab exodus.

Around 750,000 Palestinians took refuge abroad in the face of the massacres — most notorious among them the one in Deir Yassin.

THE FOURTH APE HAS ARRIVED AT LAST !!!

HARDtalk Speaks to Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe

STEPHEN SACKUR, the English journalist and presenter of BBC's HARDtalk, epitomizes it perfectly in this interview with the brave Israeli historian Ilan Pappé. A must-watch !

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is, at its heart, a story of two peoples and one land. Both see history as their justification. Which means a historian who appears to change sides inevitably becomes a figure of enormous controversy. HARDtalk speaks to Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe who says the record shows that the Jewish state is racist; born of a deliberate programme of ethnic cleansing. Not surprisingly he's widely reviled in his home country. His work has been both supported and criticized by other historians. Before he left Israel in 2008, he had been condemned in the Knesset, Israel's parliament; a minister of education had called for him to be sacked; his photograph had appeared in a newspaper at the centre of a target; and he had received several death threats.

PALESTINE: THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF APARTHEID

SHARIFAH AZZAHRA

The recent Al-Quds day had made the world shout again against the brutal undeniable injustice situation the people of Palestine has to suffer. However, besides war, what do we know about this oppressed nation? These days, the economic health of any country relies more or less on their ability – but the Palestinian Territories are exceptional. It is dependent on factors outside of them. Israeli occupation in Palestinian territories, the barrier and blockades it has constructed along and within the West Bank through the land, air, and sea have placed severe limitations on the success of Palestinian economic policies.

A complex web of checkpoints and roadblocks make it difficult for Palestinians to travel within the Palestinian Territories for jobs; to bank or to trade. Palestinian farmers whose land is now behind the barrier are required to apply for ‘visitor permits’ (which normally will be rejected by Israel). In 2013, World Bank reported that Israeli restrictions in the West Bank alone cost the Palestinian economy $3.4bn (£2.1bn) a year, or 35% of its GDP. Oxfam estimates that 800,000 olive trees have been uprooted by Israeli authorities since 1967. As a result, the 80,000 Palestinian families that the UN claims are economically reliant on the olive harvest lose $12.3m each year.

It was suggested that the economic outlook for the Palestinian territories is worrying, with GDP expected to further decrease this year compared to 2017 due to the persistence of the Israeli restrictions and the internal divide between the West Bank and Gaza. Real GDP growth of the Palestinian economy is projected to decline to 2.3% over the next two years. This modest growth implies a decline in real per capita income and an increase in unemployment.

Unemployment in the Palestinian territories continued to be high at 27% in 2017. In Gaza, it reached 44% compared to 18% in the West Bank. In 2017, only 41% of those aged between 15 and 29 were active in the labour market, reflecting high pessimism regarding employment prospects. Despite a low participation rate, unemployment amongst this category reached a staggering 60% in Gaza.

The latest poverty numbers for 2011 suggest that about 21% of the Palestinian population lives below the US $5.5 a day poverty line. Poverty is expected to have been volatile in the following years witnessing a strong increase after the war in 2014 before gradually declining to pre-crisis levels and then increasing again in 2017 due to the recent decline in incomes in Gaza.

Israel’s invasion in the Palestinian Territories means it can exercise enormous power over Palestinian livelihoods. Israel may have policies that hamper the Palestinian economy, but it is also a major source of Palestinian livelihoods. Unemployment is exceptionally high in the West Bank and the Gaza strip with almost 1 in 4 adults jobless. According to the latest report from the International Labour Office, some 87,000 Palestinians aged over 15 (around 10% of all those with jobs) are employed in Israel and its settlements.

The majority of these Palestinians are employed in the construction sector followed by manufacturing and agriculture – all of which tend to be characterised by insecurity. A survey by Palestine’s main trade union found that only 11% of workers in Israeli settlements said they had job security, over half received less than the minimum wage, and 65% had been exposed to toxic substances.

Photo/Shutterstock

The estimated one million Palestinians who have emigrated since 1948 (as well as their children) serve as a vital lifeline for Palestinians who remain in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. As a percentage of its GDP, the Palestinian territories are one of the most dependent economies in the world on remittances. The latest data from IMF in 2010 shows $431m being transferred by workers employed abroad.

The Palestinian economy is dependent on international aid and around 4 in 5 Gazans rely on donations for their survival. As a result, when aid falls short of expectations and stated commitments as it did in 2012 (the Palestinian Authority received 80% of the $1 billion it was expecting in direct budget support), the results are deeply felt. The decline in international aid is cited as one of the key reasons that the West Bank’s GDP shrank in early 2013, for the first time in a decade.

Palestine had continued to be a country which suffers from rising political uncertainty, declining aid flows, ongoing restrictions, and insufficient investment. The unstoppable war and tragic events of the past few days highlight the uncertainties overshadowing the economy and people’s lives.

Netanyahu Notorious for Fabricating False Evidence: Ex-US Adviser

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A former US government adviser dismissed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent claims about “Iran’s nuclear weapons program” and said the only time Netanyahu is not telling lies is “when he is asleep”.

“Netanyahu and his government are well known for disseminating lies and fabricating false evidence, as they did for the purpose of pushing the US and NATO to intervention, war and regime change in Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and other countries,” Paul Larudee from San Francisco said in an interview with the Tasnim News Agency.

“The only time we can be certain that Netanyahu is not lying is when he is asleep,” he added.

Larudee is an Iranian-born American political activist and human rights volunteer, who works with the International Solidarity Movement. He is a former contracted US government adviser to Saudi Arabia and a founder of the Free Gaza and Free Palestine Movements.

Following is the full text of the interview:

Tasnim: In a speech to the UN General Assembly on Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once again accused Iran of developing a nuclear weapons program. He claimed he was revealing the existence of a “secret atomic warehouse” in Tehran but offered no proof of the claim or details. In response, Iranian officials dismissed the claim as a despicable lie and said such lies are aimed at covering up the Tel Aviv regime’s heinous crimes against the defenseless people of Palestine. This is while Israel is the only possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, but its policy is to neither confirm nor deny that it has atomic bombs. The Tel Aviv regime is estimated to have 200 to 400 nuclear warheads in its arsenal. What do you think about Netanyahu’s comments?

Larudee: There are several principles that are applicable to Netanyahu's comments.  First, no one should ever accept the truth of a statement from even the most credible person we know unless they produce evidence. Netanyahu produced none, and he is far from credible. Second, Netanyahu is already in trouble for corruption in his own society and is happy to put fear into the minds of his constituents in order to deflect attention from his own deeds. Third, Netanyahu and his government are well known for disseminating lies and fabricating false evidence, as they did for the purpose of pushing the US and NATO to intervention, war and regime change in Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and other countries. These are more than enough reason to dismiss Netanyahu's claims about an Iranian nuclear weapons program, and if that is not enough, we have the reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency, that Iran has fully cooperated with inspections, that Iran has not violated any of the inspection requirements, and that they are certain that Iran has no atomic weapons program. The only time we can be certain that Netanyahu is not lying is when he is asleep.

Tasnim: As you know, Israeli troops on Friday killed seven other Palestinians, two of them children, and wounded dozens more in the deadliest day in recent weeks as Gazans stepped up protests along the border fence. Since March 30, Israeli forces have killed at least 191 Palestinians during the demonstrations dubbed the “Great March of Return” along the Gaza border. Most of the dead and the thousands wounded were unarmed civilians against whom Israel was using excessive force. What is your opinion about the developments and the Israeli regime’s crimes?

Larudee: For decades, public figures in the West have said that the Palestinians should use nonviolent resistance. Although it is not the business of the West to tell Palestinians how to liberate themselves, the people of Gaza and other parts of Palestine have tried popular nonviolent resistance for six months now. Is the West intervening in "Israel" in order to protect the population, the way they supposedly did in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria?  Why not?  Why are they not intervening in Yemen to defend Yemenis against Saudi Arabia and its allies?  Why are they not holding "Israel" accountable for its crimes? The simple answer is that the US is the biggest criminal of all, and has been repeatedly ranked the biggest danger to peace in all the world. It, therefore, loves criminals that are willing to work with them to destroy other countries.  Israel is just such a criminal state and therefore married to the US. Will Israel's crimes ever become big enough and outrageous enough to provoke action from the rest of the world?  It is hard to know what the threshold might be, or even if there is one.

Tasnim: Israel has rejected international calls for probes into recent deaths and insisted that its open-fire rules for Gaza will not change. Some Western states, particularly the US and Britain, who call themselves champions of human rights, have supported the Tel Aviv regime’s crimes against Palestinians. The UN has also failed to restore the rights of the people. What is your assessment?

Larudee: It is best to treat with great skepticism the claims of so-called champions of human rights, and especially those who are themselves the greatest violators of human rights, or receive most of their funding from such violators. Their deeds speak louder than their words. In the case of the crimes committed by "Israel", the sponsoring countries will condemn or criticize "excesses" while defending Israel's "right to defend itself" and continuing to shower Israel with weapons and money.  The deeds of these so-called "civilized" countries are clearly in support of the genocide of the Palestinians, and the destruction of countries and governments that do not accept US domination. It is best not to put much hope in Western "champions", but rather to be prepared to defend against them.