If you want to check on the pulse of Israeli fashion–that is the “fashion” of Israeli racism–you can do no better than study MK Danny Danon’s legislative agenda. I don’t usually write about individual bills since there are so many far-right imbeciles who must have their say and they come up with more nonsense than you can shake a stick at. But for MK Danon, for whom Matan Lurey has developed an apt moniker, ‘MKKK,’ I make an exception.
His new bill would demand that any Israeli seeking any sort of government ID whether a driver’s license, passport, graduation certificate, would have to sign a loyalty oath (Hebrew). The provision is designed to disenfranchise Palestinian Israelis who, Danon presumes, would not do so. One of the many lunatic aspects of this bill is that non-Jewish Israelis would have no problem signing a statement expressing loyalty to Israel. Because they are loyal to Israel. An Israel, that is, that is democratic and offers them rights as citizens. This fact, that his bill would not achieve his aim, undoes all the venom Danon is attempting to inject into the social discourse with this harkening back to Nuremberg-type laws. For Palestinian Israelis to refuse to sign, it would have to include a provision demanding loyalty to “the Jewish state, that is Israel.” Even if such a bill with such language did pass, I doubt it could pass muster in the Supreme Court. That is, unless new legal provisions permit a politicization of the nomination process allowing the Court to swing toward the settler outlook.
As if he hadn’t done enough to raise the volume of Jewish racism in Israel, Danon also added this zinger:
Israeli Arabs disrespect the laws of the nation having far higher rates of criminality than any other ethnic group.
Among his claims is that these Israeli citizens have voiced support for those “calling for the destruction of the State of Israel.” Of course, he doesn’t say which Israelis did this, what they said, which group they allegedly supported, nor did he offer any support for the claim that the group mentioned supported the destruction of Israel. Danny has a wee small problem with evidence. He’s much better at the smear than at offering facts.
Another Likud ‘solon,’ Ofir Akunis, made the brilliant observation, in defending the Knesset’s draconian set of anti-democracy bills, that Joe McCarthy “was right in every word, the fact is -there were Soviet agents.” This is the same distinguished advocate for free speech and democratic values who co-sponsored the bill which would outlaw foreign funding for Israeli NGOs. In fact, in this interview he was arguing that Israeli NGOs. by accepting foreign money, are agents of foreign powers. That makes the United Nations and European Union the equivalent of 1950s-era Communist subversives. If you follow this argument to its proper insane conclusion you could argue that any American Jewish group that received any funding from Israel or an Israeli organization was an agent of a foreign power (i.e. Israel). Is that really where you want to take this argument??
You have to wonder what planet these people are living on. Akunis attempted to dig himself out of the hole he was in by claiming after the fact that McCarthy was only right in the sense that he pointed out Communists in the U.S. government. You see, there’s a problem with idiots like this attempting to expound on subjects they know nothing about. I’d rather him blather on about Israeli history. At least he’d have half a chance of being accurate once in a while. About U.S. history he’s hopeless. McCarthy didn’t uncover a single Communist, though he sure as hell tried hard enough and ruined enough careers in the process.
H/t @OriNir_APN.
Randy — if the number of ex-pats is not unusual for a country like Israel, stuffed with professionals, then why ever is the government taking big risks to lure them home?
And, while I’m at it, why don’t American Zionists return to the homeland and help build the demographics for Israel instead of allowing Israel to fix the demographics by expelling Arabs.
What big risks is Israel taking on for trying to bring Israelis back? Some dumb ad that slights “mixed” Israeli-American relationships. C’mon.
Israel’s marketplace, especially academia, has always been too small for its educated population. Lots of good studies on that. It’s not guilt over the Palestinians, I can tell you that.
I would prefer that American Jews move to Israel than expelling Arabs any day.
Many Israelis leave not because the marketplace is too small, but rather because the government’s policies permit no progress, development or advancement in their fields. Look at the shambles it has made of education. In some fields, you literally cannot receive proper training unless you go abroad.
In fact, Israel is adept at taking advantage of this as well. Its children go abroad, learn advanced skills, then Israel recruits them back home. They bring what they learned and exploit it for Israel. Many of the ex pats won’t return. But some do. And this cynical process takes advantage of that.
As for the term “gangster”, it is precisely the term I was looking for in another post here. The Soviets were good at some things, including space travel and characterizing unsavory aspects of capitalism. “Gangster” denotes a person involved in certain types of illegal behaviors, behaviors which caricaturize and mimic capitalism at the marginal. “It’s just business” says one of the Corleones and the gangster is just a businessman, selling however false goods like “protection”, creating monopolies, defrauding trusting marks left and right. I think the term is aptly applied to frauds perpetrated systematically, including the grotesque fraud at the heart of Zionism, the selling of phony baloney “rights” to sentimental Jews and governments worldwide. So much of the Israel story is tainted by outrageous illegal actions. Deceptive practices in the record can only be described as astonishing in scope, frequency and persistence. The “gangster leadership” is a correct description because the leadership would stop at nothing, at no moral or legal barrier, to get what it wanted. This self-justifying view is characteristic of Israel’s history from the start. It is also a characteristic of criminals everywhere, i.e. “They made me do it!” And so it comes to pass that the Arabs forced Israel to militarize, to expand, to curtail democratic institutions, and to steal its neighbors land (“for defense”). And Arabs have forced Israel into a racist dead-end as a society, a society asking for oaths of loyalty at every turn. In my view, it is not happenstance that Israel is a center for international criminal activity connecting and enabling criminals worldwide. It may be an altogether too comfortable crossroads.
Zionism is not a good idea gone wrong, but a very bad idea reaching its full expression in continued Israel’s gangsterism on the world stage, and the appearance now of a controlling moneyed elite making laws.. It is revealing that the program to indoctrinate young American Jews is “Birthright” not “Birth Obligation”: Israel simply doesn’t care about the rights of others or at least Adelson doesn’t. All the clamor about “de-legitimizing” Israel is a fear that Israel’s “rights” will be universally judged to be unfounded, it is the fear then of being found out at last.
Israel has a policy of striking ‘far and wide at her enemies’, regardless of any International Law. This I assume they feel is justified because of the Holocaust. So in the name of the victims of the Shoah Israel can don the mantle of ‘bad cop’ and still feel she’s righteous in the eyes of her blind adorers and enablers.
That actually goes beyond mere gangsterism.
I think it is characteristically gangster in style. As the Italians said “It is our affair” or something like that in “Cosa Nostra”. Things are judged within the “family” not by the larger society. Likewise, Israeli transgressions of law, again and again, are not transgressions judged from the perspective of Zionists. That’s precisely wrong. It is precisely criminal by definition. The larger law, the international norms etc. are the relevant guidelines not the needs of Jews (interpreted by Zionists!).
The Jews could use less sentimental, befuddled American Zionism, to be perfectly frank. The world would be a different place once Israel is constrained. I truly believe that. The exception, the exemption, of Israel by the West is a major cause of alienation and terror in the world. I mean here — it really p’s me off and I haven’t lost a country, a home, a people, or a culture at the hands of Zionists. I can barely imagine what a displaced Arab must feel.
You can believe whatever you want—because nobody with any common sense will agree. Constraining Israel wouldn’t have helped in Darfur, or stopping the Russians from clusterbombing Chechnya into oblivion, or the Yugoslavs from devouring each other, or the US destroying the environment. But go ahead, it’s the International Jew syndrome–stop him and the world will come up roses.
Gert,
You get into problems with the analogy to European colonialism. It is apt, but only in part. Zionism is readily distinguishable from European projects by the absence of a motherland. French colonialism had France, Bristish had that “plot of earth” and so on. I don’t think you mean that Zionism can be seen as an extension of French colonialism by French Jews or Germany imperialism undertaken by German Jews. It was Jewish colonialism, if anything and that too is a troubled terminology. Sure, it has ideological components of the Blood and Guts facisms but it is unique and I think Tony Jundt got it wrong with his brushoff. Furthermore, Jews were dispersed unlike Germans or French. Zionism presented a political lingua franca for Jews everywhere, a way to come together. (The joke here is that, once together, they can’t stand one another! The Diaspora owes something to this likes repelling just as Zionism is a sort of anti-Diaspora. )
Zionism is perhaps intellectually laugheable but it is very serious indeed today because of its power. It will be universally ridiculous with more defections from its ranks and more defeats. Until then, it is real poison enshrined by many well-intended if uninformed people worldwide. A Jew in America who is a Zionist is necessarily a spy because Zionism requires him/her to recognize allegiance to Israel first. A German who owes allegiance to Germany first would not be a good American. This contradiction should embarrass AIPAC, Stand with Us and other yahoo organizations in America but it doesn’t. Why not? Suspended judgment perhaps?
But these observations are way off topic.
Ok, I know this is going off the rails of the stated topic but these smug assertions about zionism just cannot go unchallenged.
“A Jew in America who is a Zionist is necessarily a spy” is an idiotic canard, to be nice about it. Zionism, as it is lived and breathed in the US is about supporting the state of Israel, defending it–even when it is behaving indefensively–I have never heard any Zionist proponent say that American Jews’ first loyalty is to provide intelligence to Israeli secret services. There is an irony in that statement being made on this website.
What defeats are you talking about for zionism? Seems to me that zionism is one of the strongest success stories of the 20th century. The unparalleled revival of Hebrew, the rehabilitation of hundreds of thousands of refugees, the creation of the state–regardless of the largess shown it by Jewish communities and the US all suggest that it is not “laugheable.” Given Israel’s vastly increased reach, largely unchallenged, into the territories since Oslo point to a growing success not a failure–even if that there are aspects of self-destruction in that success.
David, only you know whether you are actually Jewish, or just posing to make a point but the language that Herzl and Jabotinksy used to describe zionism to western policy makers do not reflect what zionism was to the home team and its role in removing hundreds of thousands of Jews from the reach of the Nazis.
.I am sensitive to your remarks. I have never formulated anything like the “spy” thought before but it does seem to me that dual loyalties of any kind are not workable in fact. Maybe it is too extreme a statement, but it is very troubling that if you criticize Israel you are an anti-semite and if you support Israel, you are just another good American. In fact, Zionism in America pursues Israel’s policies shamelessly and Zionism is the heart of AIPAC and the others, not liberal political theory. So, I will say simply that Zionism breeds dual loyalties that are impossible in practice. Draw your own conclusion. Zionism is not the defense of Israel right or wrong, it is a body of ideas chief of which is the rectitude of a Jewish claim to land abandoned by Jews for 2 millennia, inhabited by Arabs for 13 centuries.
If you are a Jewish Zionist you are saying you belong in Israel even when you do not live in Israel. In its hour of “demographic” need, Israel should want all its children home and accounted for, yet resettlement doesn’t really happen. Land is appropriated and “cleansed” repeatedly but the American Zionists do not resettle in any significant numbers. Why not? If not treason, Zionism is surely hypocrisy.
As to “laugheable”, I do think that the idea of reconstituting an ancient kingdom, after 2 thousand years of exile and mixing it up, and laying claim to a land on the basis of the bible is laugheable. Political Zionism is not laugheable as I tried to indicate. Yes, it is extraordinarily “successful” and that success plays out aa first historically carrying forward the “white man’s burden”, that is, colonialism, then in creating a democracy of freedom for all, then repeated “defensive” wars for the purpose of expansion, further theft of land and expulsion of people, and now a country for the elect only. Successful? By its own terms. Unsuccessful is being that light unto the nations, unsuccessful in demonstrating that it was even a good idea in the first place. From where I sit, it is a disaster of the first order for Jews everywhere, for Israelis and Arabs in the region, for the US and for people of conscience everywhere. Zionism may have saved some European Jews but not “hundreds of thousands”, not even close. From what I’ve read, Zionism was pretty cool on the needs of European Jews in crisis and focused only on its needs. I don’t know what “irony” you are pointing to.
My Jewish credentials are not up for discussion.
”From what I’ve read, Zionism was pretty cool on the needs of European Jews in crisis and focused only on its needs. I don’t know what “irony” you are pointing to.”
Shocking as it may sound to the ‘Randys’ of this world, this is of course entirely correct and is well documented and understood by those who’ve bothered to read a few half-decent books on the subject of the creation of Israel.
It’s also worth noting that prior to the Holocaust most Jews were in fact quite emphatically opposed to the creation of a Jewish homeland. Pre-Holocaust Diaspora Judaism was largely turned on its head by the Holocaust.
David:
Both the colonial and Apartheid analogies are of course flawed, I’ll easily concede that. But even in the absence of a metropolis, Project Israel shares enough features with a classical colonial enterprise for the analogy to more or less hold.
Reform Jews were opposed. Bundists and Yiddishists were opposed. But they weren’t the entire community. I’d say views were split.
”David, only you know whether you are actually Jewish, or just posing to make a point but the language that Herzl and Jabotinksy used to describe zionism to western policy makers do not reflect what zionism was to the home team and its role in removing hundreds of thousands of Jews from the reach of the Nazis.”
What on Earth are you cackling on about???
By the time Jewish refugees and Holocaust survivors reached Palestine (quite a few against their will BTW; the US was a favoured destination for many but not all were allowed by the Zionist gangster leadership to go there), Nazi Germany lay in tatters.
Perhaps you should also ask yourself why only about a third of world Jewry actually lives there and why Israel has such a disproportionate number of expats (about 600,000 actually) that its government had to get embroiled in a controversial ad campaign to try and entice these Israelis back ‘home’?
For Ben-Gurion the Holocaust was an unmitigated disaster because half of the pool the New Israel would draw its contingent of New Jews from lay murdered in the death camps. That is why the Russian wave of Alyahs was such a g-d sent to Israel, even if later on it turned out that by Israel’s Nuremberg Laws many weren’t Jewish enough!
As so many pro-Israel Americans you have an exalted view of something you know diddlysquat about…
While I don’t agree with much else Randy has to say, I also agree that the comment about American Jewish Zionists being spies is insulting.
I think that some American Jews like Jonathan Pollard see their primary loyalty to Israel rather than America. And Israel has exploited this sense of dual loyalty to its advantage at times. But to say that they are spies simply by being Zionists, even allegorically or symbolically, is offensive.
It would be interesting to see how the Haredim react. Many of them are non-Zionist. If tens of thousands, if not much more, cannot get a driver’s license Danon will create a situation of massive civil disobedience. Instead of shoring up Israel’s shaky self-confidence of the state, this project will undermine its very existence,
I recall Mr. Danon was in New York back in September appearing at a Rick Perry press conference. It would seem Mr. Danon has given himself permission to personally meddle in American politics.
He’s also the darling of Glenn Beck. He was featured prominently at Beck’s “Apocalypse Now” Israel event.
Moreover, he badly wants to out Bibi Bibi. Anybody who has spent time in Washington (or, one step down, in a high school) knows the type–young, dumb etc.
Watching Danon for a couple of years now, especially with the Young Likud types, I see him as nothing more than sheer ego and very little influence.
Danon is protecting the democracy in israel and he is a man of truth and morality.
Democracy means to protect rights of your devoted citizens not your enemies rights and those that wish to destroy you
No he isn’t. He is a shallow-minded political hack. He is exploiting fear among these devoted citizens, the decent citizens like you, for the purpose of serving ever more military and moneyed interests who can make big bucks out of racism, interests which are perhaps way different from your own.
Israel is more at risk from the settler movement, its bizarre magical thinking and its supremacist self-image, than from those you would call “enemies.” And yet you vote for these guys because you are afraid, perhaps of retribution. Why not start making justice in the region so there is less to fear in the future? Israel has much to answer for already, in my opinion, but a good place to start anew would be to dump the fear-mongers who use you.
Israel’s democracy is many notches down from even American democracy which is, itself, also in a crisis. How democratic is it when the same interests are served no matter how many elections are held?
Let me ask you, a reasonable person perhaps: What makes you think Iran would nuke Israel given a chance? Remember, were this to happen, Iran would face total obliteration at the hands of the West and China. Why would Iran do this? Your fears are stirred and catered to on a daily basis. Your fears allow the militarization of Israel, the many lies of Zionism, and have made Israel the most outcast of nations. It is painful to see someone so utterly opposed to their own best interests. No matter what you think, as an historical fact, Israel has never ever faced the threat of extinction.
And today, Israel still doesn’t have fixed borders. Curious thing, no? What do you think that means? Could it mean that Israel is unwilling to fix a border it intends to dispense with at some point? Could it mean that? Could there be a clearer declaration of its true intentions with respect to its neighbors? Is there any better proof of Israel’s unwillingness to make concessions and peace? Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s an administrative oversight of some kind. Sure, they just haven’t gotten to it yet. So many things to do after unpacking! It could be. And maybe Danny is a hero and not an obvious opportunist? It could be.
All of which lead me to ask — are you Danny’s mother?
Unfortunately you don’t know ‘Leah’ very well. Over at the Britziobot blog ‘Richard Millett’, Leah is the most blowhard Zionist of them all. She supports the English Defense League because of the ‘Islamification of Britain’. She’s also stated that: “You don’t understand anything, that’s clear enough. A Jewish family is indigenous to the Jewish homeland. That is a fact despite airheads like you failing to understand it. There is no such thing as ‘historic Palestine’.
And under another moniker she declared that ‘Islam isn’t a religion’.
Leah’s single-handedly trying to break the record for ‘Zionist giving Zionism a bad name’.
Keep going grrrlll!
Gert — No fool like an old fool. Thanks for the information.
“no historic Palestine” — somebody lived in the area before Jew started trudging ashore in the late 19th century. Somebody lived there. Call them anything, even “Martians”, they lived there. The Brits used the term “Palestine”, not me. The Brits themselves. Even Jews used the term in the 19th century. Who’s the “airhead?”
Judaism is more questionable as a modern religion than Islam. It is centered on a local deity running end to end of the area believers settled, i.e. ancient Canaan. The deity was, before then, portable and tribal. The religion has been either the organizing principle, or fundmental cause, for racisms of many types in modern times, which, more than anything, accounts for modern anti-Semitism. Jewish exclusivity always bothered me as a Jewish kid and now I understand how easily it translates to Jewish supremacy which was implied anyway. And now this Jewish racism is formal political doctrine in Israel, something like the Nuremberg laws, but for Jews. The argument can be easily made that Judaism should have disappeared with the idolatry of ancient Babylon, but didn’t.
If Jews are “indigenous” to the area, wherever are the Arabs “indigenous?” Philistines are “indigenous” to the area as much as Jews. Let’s restore Philistia.
David:
My point’s always been that whatever you want to call Palestine, whatever you want to call the Palestinians and whether they were or are a ‘real People’ or not, matters not one iota: people lived there and their rights were clearly violated to this day.
I think you are attributing too much ‘Jewishness’ to Zionism though (don’t go the Gilad Atzmon way!) From my understanding, Ben-Gurion and many others of Zionism’s luminaries were non-observant Jews who were steeped in the kind of Blood and Soil nationalism that was so rife in Europe at that time (and still today in some parts of it). Of course Judaism was co-opted into that venture but it was hardly a determining strain. I see modern Zionism as a perfect continuation of that Zionist Blood and Soil type of nationalism, providing to this day a ‘justification’ for further ‘liberation’ of ‘Arab occupied’ land. Danon for instance, for all his bluster about ‘loyalty’ and ‘fifth column’ is of course primarily interested in a continuation of the colonial side of Zionism and for that reason the ‘Arabs’ need to be taken down a few more pegs. Any old legislation that would help achieve that is koshered by him.
I’m convinced separating between Jewishness and Zionism is the rational thing to do, even though according to Zionism it’s verboten to do this (where would they be if they couldn’t equate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, huh?) As Tony Karon wrote: ‘Who made Netanyahu King of the Jews?’
I stand by the many Jews who don’t want what is happening in that country to be done in their name or in the name of Judaism.
It would comforting to think that Zionism is just a very peculiar “take” on Judaism but this would not account for the implied Jewish supremacy that I learned as a Jewish kid growing up in middle America. Was this implied racism just a reflection of Zionist propaganda at that particular time and Judaism was really more universal and tolerant, or was it mainstream gospel of Judaism? I don’t know.
But Gert seems to suggest that Zionism could possibly exist without Jews and that seems utterly impossible. Gert is right, in my opinion, that Zionism incorporated Blood and Land and other racial concepts existing in Europe in the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s, but it is not a simple historical movement as such. If it were, Zionists would be as laugheable today as Prohibitionists in America and that is hardly the case. I mean it is anarchronistic but it is still developing within history and can’t be simply laughed off-stage (I wish.) It has to be defeated politically and, probably, militarily before it becomes another quaint historical idea among many.
David:
”But Gert seems to suggest that Zionism could possibly exist without Jews and that seems utterly impossible.”
For the most part, Zionism isn’t distinguishable from several other colonialist nation building efforts. Many differences between Zionism and those previous movements are trivial, not essential, IMHO.
”Gert is right, in my opinion, that Zionism incorporated Blood and Land and other racial concepts existing in Europe in the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s, but it is not a simple historical movement as such. If it were, Zionists would be as laugheable today as Prohibitionists in America and that is hardly the case.”
It is a laughable, outdated model. I believe Tony Judt wrote that Zionism was an “idea that came too late”, in the sense that when the more established nation states were already starting to move away from the ‘ethnostate’ model (adopting more inclusive modes of citizenship), enter the Zionists with an extreme interpretation of the ‘biological nation state’ (if it hadn’t been for relatively few Palestinians hanging in there for dear life during 1948, Israel would now be ‘ethnically pure’)
So why does it still exist today? Zionist Exceptionalism, relying mostly on European collective guilt over the Holocaust. One could be tempted to call this ‘Jewish Exceptionalism’ but I really don’t think it is.
It’s the one difference that isn’t trivial IMHO and it’s no small wonder they are clinging to this weapon of last resort like there’s no tomorrow: to call anyone who isn’t so enamored with Zionist ethnic cleansing a Jew-hater. See also the latest kerfuffle involving remarks by Panetta, Howard Gutman (who??) and Hillary Clintooon.
I see on the European Left still a few hangers-on who would denounce any such ethnostate in no uncertain terms but for the Jewish state an exception has to be made, apparently.