While the Israeli army continues to pummel the Gaza Strip and its residents for a second month, the upsurge in anti-Palestinian sentiment in Israeli society shows no signs of abating. As even mainstream Israeli politicians threaten the Palestinians of Gaza with ethnic cleansing and genocide, Israel’s far-right figures take to the street to rile up racist supporters and to chase Palestinians out of public spaces and enforce racial-religious separation.
On August 17, 2014, the Israeli anti-miscegenation group Lehava protested a party in central Israel city of Rishon Letzion celebrating the union of a son of Muslim Palestinian citizens of Israel and the daughter of Jewish citizens of Israel. A bus brought activists from Jerusalem to the venue, so that they could harass wedding guests as they arrive, chant “Death to Arabs!” and hear speeches from followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane extolling the virtues of racial-religious purity.
Since the state only permits weddings within faith-based communities, mixed Jewish-Gentile married couples are exceedingly rare in Israel. Regardless, the far right has made fighting the phenomenon a centerpiece of its political platform. The Kahanist Knesset representative Michael Ben-Ari was denied re-election in 2013 by a narrow margin, as center-right lawmakers adopted his rhetoric and vacuumed up his votes. The Kahanists continue to organize on the ground and push the Zionist consensus even further to the right.
It is important to note that the vigilante vanguards of Lehava have received funding from the Israeli government, via its sister organization Hemla. Lehava has also testified to the Knesset that 1,000 Jewish Israeli woman have been kidnapped and forced to marry Palestinians. While the Israeli police deny that any such cases exist, it also works in tandem with anti-miscegenation patrols throughout the country that try to deter young Israelis and Palestinians from socializing.
Clearly, the most precious Palestinian rights to be violated in recent weeks have been the rights of Gazans to life and health, to safety and security, to food and shelter. But while the Israeli government seems intent on destroying any possibility of peace with Palestinians for the foreseeable future, ultra-nationalists are trying to snuff out what little hope there is of coexistence by vilifying those few Jews and Palestinians who are, against all odds, living examples of the possibility that we can all get along in the land as equals.
Zionism has this habit of being led by extremists- Levinger in 68 in Hebron, for example. Sharon in 2000. The moderates follow the outliers and facts are created. The right wing runs rings around the left.
It’s very unstable now and it’s very like the process that happens in the head of an abuser who goes on to commit despicable crimes.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/nov/29/research-action-accountability-child-abuse
“I never met anyone who I believed to be beyond understanding. However reprehensible the behaviour, it usually makes some sort of sense when examined in the context of the individual’s history. The problem with the bad or evil judgments is that they offer no strategy for intervention, other than detection and punishment. We need to understand much better what drives these people, usually men, who use children to gratify their distorted needs. Then possibly such tendencies could be detected early enough to offer useful interventions before the behaviour has become consolidated into its final destructive form.”
Zionism is well advanced on the road to its final destructive form . This wedding scene is an important step on that journey.
So this is what it looks like when a self-proclaimed “moral beacon” state:
– functions under the impression that morality is merely “goal + methods”;
– scorns justice, accountability and equality; and
– strives to be just a little bit better than Saudi Arabia, Mali and African “hell-holes”.
What’s also despicable about this affair, is that ” Israel’s high court refused their application to ban demonstrations outside their wedding reception.” And, “He said that hiring the security guards had cost over $4,000 (£2,400), half of which was being paid for by the wedding hall, but the remainder the couple had to find themselves. The court decided that protesters would be allowed to picket the wedding, but only at a distance of 200m.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/17/israeli-court-protesters-picket-palestinian-jewish-wedding
And this:
“Lehava spokesman and former lawmaker Michael Ben-Ari denounced Jews intermarrying with non-Jews of any denomination as “worse than what Hitler did,” alluding to the murder of 6 million Jews across Europe in World War Two. ”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/17/us-mideast-israel-wedding-idUSKBN0GH0UB20140817
State- sanctioned racism. And yet Israel is not comfortable with the Apartheid label that they’ve earned in spades. Thank for highlighting this, David.
(I apologize if any of this is repetitive– not all of your links are opening for me right now!)
I have to wonder how many of these protestors are americans? How can any american not be reminded of the demonstrations in the 50s and 60s against civil rights? The biggest fear was “race mixing” as they put it. This is so very disturbing on so many levels but really, nobody outside the bride and groom has anything to say about their marrying. Who are they hurting? Most, if not all of the people in that crowd of twits don’t know the couple, aren’t their neighbors, aren’t in any danger by this marriage and aren’t contributing materially to this marriage or this couple’s lives so why not keep the comments unspoken? And I’d bet money that the big concern is the “chosen” piece and “racial purity” piece which sounds so friendly and third-reichish! However, the third reich types got plenty of good advise and suggestions from the american terrorist organization known as the kkk. It would have been nice if their permission to protest had been denied, but then we wouldn’t be talking about israel.
“Since the state only permits weddings within faith-based communities, mixed Jewish-Gentile married couples are exceedingly rare in Israel.”
Uh, excuse me, but how on earth did they ever get away with calling Israel a Democracy? A democracy where the State controls marriage?
A democracy which has State-supported purity squads? Sure, okay.