Settlers Revive Der Stürmer to Smear Left

The Israeli far-right is in the throes of full-blown psychosis with the upcoming Israeli election.  The Likud has released a series of increasingly preposterous campaign videos.  In the first, Bibi presented himself at a young couple’s door and told them they were in luck because he would be their “Bibi-sitter” for the evening.  The message: only Bibi could be trusted to care for the nation’s children.

Even more preposterous, Robert Mackey in the NYT promoted the video with a series of mindless encomiums from rightist sources, among them Laura Ingraham and The National Review, saying the video was wonderful entertainment.  This isn’t surprising coming from the same NYT “journalist” who brought us the hilarious ‘comedy stylings’ of  Caroline Glick’s troupe, Latma.

The latest video is a ‘stirring’ appeal to patriotism called “The Left–ISIS variation.”  In it, a pick-up truck full of dour, bearded ISIS fighters waving a black Islamist flat barrel westward across the Judean desert till they reach the highway.  They flag down an ordinary Israeli driver and in Arabized Hebrew ask which way to Jerusalem.  The Israeli driver tells them: “Turn left.”

Across the image this message displays: “The Left will submit to terror.” That’s it.  That’s the entire message; the entire Likud campaign. They support terror. We support you.  And it will win.  Because well, that’s just the way contemporary Israel is.  A nation of frightened ciphers; robots who’ve given over their freedom and lives to a bunch of not-so-crypto-fascists.

The most deeply disturbing video was produced by the Shomron Settler Council, an official government entity.  It’s an attack on the BDS movement and the Israeli Left called, in a deliberate echo of Der Stürmer, The Eternal Jew.  It begins with a nasty unseen European reading the house organ of the “Leftist Global Conspiracy” (cf. Islamic Global Jihad).  The video likens the Israeli Left to Nazi collaborators and claims that it takes funding from “Europe” to betray Jews.  The video also conveniently conflates Jews and Israelis as if there’s no distinction.  At the conclusion, the video displays the same leftist who betrayed Jews for the sake of European lucre hanging from a tree, where he was hung by those same ‘genocidal’ Europeans.

The blurb accompanying the video says:

Dozens of radical leftist organizations receive millions of Euros from Europe.  In the best case scenario, they believe that they are leading us into becoming a more enlightened, polite and cleaner country. Europe.

Well, for the Europeans, for the past hundreds of years you have been good for only one thing.  The money that seems to you so shiny when it slanders settlements and soldiers will at the end be revealed to you as a unique self-destruction budget.

It would be one thing if such propaganda was produced by a bunch of Jewish outlier extremists who were disowned by their fellow settlers and nation.  But in fact, this is an official production of a regional settler council founded and funded by the Israeli government.

Labor MK, Stav Shaffir, who called it a “hate video,” said this:

If you [Israelis] ask yourselves who funded this video incitement, the answer, to my sorrow, is YOU.  To the tune of $400,000 in public funding each year transferred to this disgusting organization…Could anyone imagine such a possibility as you pay your taxes each month?

Regular readers will remember that I’ve argued here that there is no disconnect between the most radical and violent settlers and the State itself.  This production is further proof that, as Issac says when Jacob succeeds in tricking Esau out of his birthright for a mess of porridge: the arms may be those of the settlers but the voice is the voice of Bibi.

The video is personification of incitement and should be illegal under Israeli law.  But would the authorities take any action against it?  Only if pressured by overseas media.  For those who claim that is harmless, remember it was just such incitement goaded on by Bibi Netanyahu in 1995 which led directly to the murder of Yitzhak Rabin (and yes, I blame Bibi for this crime).  In the psychotic place called Israel, such communications spur violence and death.  People die because of such spewed hate.

The European Union should take note of this incitement since it is viciously attacked and labelled genocidal and anti-Semitic.  Also, the Israeli courts should take notice.  Incitement of this sort and likening Jews to Nazis using the terms of the Holocaust is illegal under Israeli law.

H/t Ofer Neiman.