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The deep roots of vigilante violence in Israeli society

In less than eighteen hours from Thursday evening to Friday afternoon, Israeli racism and xenophobia exploded into three forms of extreme violence. I witnessed two of them.

Six people were stabbed by an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man named Yishai Schlissel at Jerusalem’s Gay Pride Parade. Yesterday, sixteen-year-old Shira Banki succumbed to her wounds. Only three weeks before, Schlissel was released from prison where he served a commuted ten-year sentence for stabbing three gay men at the 2005 parade. Despite a massive security presence, they were unable to prevent him from attacking again. After the parade, right-wing Israelis gathered in Jerusalem’s Zion Square to celebrate the stabbing rampage.

While this attack was condemned by Israeli political figures, their statements ring hollow – some of these politicians have incited against the LGBTQ community. During a 2006 Gay Pride Parade MK Belazel Smotrich organized a Beast Parade, marching through Jerusalem with goats and donkeys. Earlier this year, Smotrich said “I am a proud homophobe” while on a panel at a school.

At the Pride Parade, I spoke to a nineteen-year-old Israeli-American named Shmuel who would be enlisting in what he described as the “gay-friendly” Israeli Air Force. He acknowledged the Israeli military specifically targets gay Palestinians in order to coerce them to collaborate, but saw this homophobic tactic as unrelated to the acceptance of gay conscripts into the military. “It’s totally separate,” he told me. Shmuel’s allegiance to the Jewish State and its homophobic tactics deployed against Palestinians outweighed his commitment to LGBTQ rights – a clear display of the racism he professed to be against.

This anti-Palestinian racism and homophobia is so normalized in Israeli society that no one I spoke at the Pride Parade to seemed to be fazed by the simple fact that Palestinians trapped by Israeli apartheid behind the walls in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were not allowed to attend the march. If a supposed movement which demands equality, as so several marchers told me, cannot purge itself of racism, it should come as no surprise that they would be victimized by the same violence that they partake in.

Shmuel was not the only representative of the Israeli military. Several soldiers could be seen marching in uniform.

Late that night, the price-tag firebombing on a Palestinian home in the occupied West Bank village of Duma was carried out, burning 18-month-old Ali Dawabsha to death and severely burning his mother, father and four-year-old brother, who remain in critical condition. Like the stabbings, this attack was predictably condemned by Israeli political figures. But as Chaim Levinson wrote in Ha’aretz, numerous attempts of firebombing attacks on Palestinian homes have gone unpunished. It was only after the attack of the Dawabsha home that Israeli security forces arrested Moshe Orbach, a right-wing settler suspected of authoring a guide to carrying out price tag attacks, including a full chapter on how to firebomb houses and trap families inside.

Levinson writes:

“He recommends using a bottle filled with a gasoline-soaked rag (a firebomb), as was the case early Friday morning. He recommends placing burning tires outside the front door, to prevent anyone from escaping.”

While some supporters of Israel may criticize Israeli security forces for what they perceive as a failure to perform their duties, the bitter truth is that these security forces are part and parcel of the same colonial project that has been expelling, ghettoizing, and killing Palestinians since the inception of the state. This explains why Israel’s vaunted security apparatus and networks of collaborators have been unable – or perhaps unwilling – to apprehend the suspects in the firebombing. Given the Israeli government’s complicity with the movement that burned baby Ali, any investigation will ring hollow without prosecution of responsible officials at the highest levels.

Instead of heading to the village of Duma, I decided to join the Israeli/Canadian journalist David Sheen at an open forum for African asylum seekers in Levinsky Park in south Tel Aviv. As they told their harrowing accounts to a group including several liberal Israelis, right-wing Israelis wearing black t-shirts emblazoned with “South Tel Aviv Liberation Front” and flanked by police and Border Police came to disrupt the event and shout obscenities. As one woman spoke of the stabbing of her one-year-old (another vigilante racist attack on a non-Jewish baby), a young Israeli screamed at her, “You’re a liar! Don’t lie!”

Minutes later, the same Israeli accused two young African boys of throwing a piece of watermelon at him. As police approached the boys, the Israeli threw a piece of watermelon at the boys. Despite having witnessed the Israeli adult throw watermelon at the African children, the heavily-armed border police detained and interrogated the children.

 Israeli Black Panther Reuven Abergil (left) confronts a right-wing Israeli disruptor, photo by Dan Cohen
Israeli Black Panther Reuven Abergil (left) confronts a right-wing Israeli disruptor, photo by Dan Cohen

In addition to the African asylum speakers, Reuven Abergil, founding member of the Israeli Black Panthers – a radical Mizrahi movement founded in the 1970s – took the microphone and directed his fury towards the disruptors, asserting that they were now spewing the same anti-immigrant tropes that they were on the receiving end of when they were new immigrants. “Us from the neighborhoods, from the periphery, the state never belonged to us,” Abergil boomed. “In Ha’aretz there were racist articles against the Jews of Islamic lands. They used these words: These Jews are bringing diseases! They will rape your children! They will rape your women! They have no respect for society! They have no culture! They said this about my parents and your parents!”

For David Sheen, who covers anti-African racism in Israel, he was particularly disturbed by cheers that erupted from liberal Israelis when an African asylum seeker said that if conditions improved in his home country, he would leave.

“It’s sad, that after years of state-sponsored racist incitement and racist attacks, when African refugees say, ‘Don’t worry, we don’t want to be here either, as soon as things get better in our home countries, we will leave immediately’ – no Israelis respond by saying, ‘No! We don’t want you to feel that you have to leave right away!’” Sheen told me after the open forum. “Why shouldn’t some Africans choose to stay here and put down roots, even if things eventually do get better in their home countries? Why can’t Africans, Arabs and white folks, Jews, Christian, Muslims, animists, atheists all live in the same society? Because the consensus assumption among Zionists is that the country must have a permanent Jewish super-majority. Even liberal Zionists will only accept non-Jewish immigrants as a temporary exception that must be expelled at the earliest opportunity.”

The various forms of extreme violence that occurred over those eighteen hours – whether directed at Palestinians or African asylum seekers – are deeply rooted in a greater context of normalized racism, as Sheen articulated. The symptoms will continue as long as the cause is not treated.

 

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I believe this is breaking news, but apologies if it’s already been posted. It certainly goes to Dan’s article here about “vigilante violence” (aka Israeli racist terrorism, imho) :

“Most Wanted Jewish Terror Suspect Arrested by Shin Bet

Meir Ettinger, a grandson of Meir Kahane, denies existence of a
Jewish terror underground, but calls for fighting the ‘idol worship’ of the existence of mosques and churches in Israel.

The Shin Bet arrested on Monday right-wing activist Meir Ettinger, who tops the Shin Bet security service’s list of most-wanted Jewish terror suspects.

According to intelligence, the 24 year old grandson the late right-wing extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane escalated his activity in 2014 and started planning a series of attacks against Palestinians. These were meant to stir up unrest among the Palestinians and thus bring about the overthrow of the Israeli government.

According to the Shin Bet, Ettinger was arrested with the aid of the special police force in the Judea and Samaria District and has been taken for interrogation…

Last year the Shin Bet sought to place Ettinger under administrative detention, but State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan denied the request. Instead, a restraining order was issued that prohibited him from being in Jerusalem and the West Bank, and he moved to Safed.

Following the deadly arson attack in the West Bank village of Duma, which killed an infant and wounded three of his family members, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon asked the Shin Bet to place several right-wing activists under administrative detention, including Ettinger.

Though Ettinger is currently under arrest, should he refuse to cooperate with his interrogators he could face administrative detention, pending the approval of a district court judge.

Last week, the Shin Bet claimed that Ettinger heads an underground group that in June torched the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes. Ettinger denied the accusation, saying in a post from Sunday on his regular blog on the Hebrew-language Kol Yehudi news website, that there is no Jewish terror underground.

However, he did assert that there are “lots and lots of Jews, many more than one might think, whose value system is very different than that of the High Court of Justice or the Shin Bet, and the laws that bind them are not the laws of the state … but rather laws that are much more eternal.”

In a blog post from Friday, Ettinger wrote that he does not lead the organization that was behind the church arson, and the Shin Bet’s claim that he does reflects the intelligence agency’s own crisis.

“Whoever made up this lie knows better than anyone else that his remarks were lies, and the Shin Bet understands that all of the activities they are looking into aren’t stemming from some kind of ‘organization’ but rather just happening on the ground, fueled by the most simple, popular insights that motivated people to feel that they need to take action, that kind of evil spirit that emanates from the establishment,” Ettinger wrote.

Continuing, he wrote: “The truth must be told. There is no terror organization, but there are many, many Jews, many more than one might think, whose value systems are very different than those of the Supreme Court or the Shin Bet, and are not bound the ignorant laws of the state, but rather by laws much more eternal, from the source of the living water.”

In his post, Ettinger explained the rationale behind targeting Christian holy sites. He wrote about the protest against the demolition of buildings in Jewish settlements, saying it was insufficient: “The important struggle over the Land of Israel must be joined with another, real struggle against the government’s sin of allowing idol worship to happen here, particularly mosques and churches, in the Land of Israel, where the sound of church bells interferes with the sound of Torah and prayers,” wrote Ettinger, adding, “the State of Israel added insult to injury by detaining two Jews suspected of torching the church.”

“[The Jewish principle of] mutual responsibility obligates all to pitch in, and not to forget the suspects who are being held for all of us. We must amplify the struggle against the desecration the state allows by funding and aiding idol worship in the Holy Land,” Ettinger wrote.”

read more: http://www.haaretz.com/beta/.premium-1.669372

He’s been “most wanted” all of this time???

Maybe this is just my not being socially liberal coming out, and maybe it’s just nit-picking, but it seems to me that racism against Ethiopian Jews, other Africans, and racism towards Palestinians and “the Arabs” ought to take considerable more precedence when we’re talking about things like this then the anti-homosexual sentiments amongst those on the Israeli centre and the Israeli right wings.

It really should be third or fourth tier as an issue in comparison to the other things you’ve written about here when you consider that it’s little more then insults and maybe some homophobic incitement. They’re not advocating for deporting the gays en masse or calling them “cancer”, and they’re not advocating for bombing the Tel Aviv gay village with incendiaries or white phosphorus.

“While some supporters of Israel may criticize Israeli security forces for what they perceive as a failure to perform their duties, the bitter truth is that these security forces are part and parcel of the same colonial project that has been expelling, ghettoizing, and killing Palestinians since the inception of the state. This explains why Israel’s vaunted security apparatus and networks of collaborators have been unable – or perhaps unwilling – to apprehend the suspects in the firebombing.”

True. So are the pols part and parcel of the same project. So are the 95% who cheered on the massacre last summer. So are the Israelis that don’t question Holot, etc. I followed you guys and your comments/photos on twitter this weekend about the open forum at Levinsky Park. It’s shame heaped upon shame. Does Israel ever really feel it? Do they care, or are they too far gone?

After the parade, right-wing Israelis gathered in Jerusalem’s Zion Square to celebrate the stabbing rampage. – See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/08/vigilante-violence-israeli#sthash.1MhX2LlN.dpuf
Dan Cohen: Did you see this gathering? How many people participated in this gathering? Where is reportage in relation to this gathering?

“No Grounds for Outlawing Racist Group, Concludes Israeli Security Agency

Israel’s defense minister had hoped to ban the far-right Lehava organization, which follows a Kahanist ideology.”

read more: http://www.haaretz.com/beta/.premium-1.669424?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=dlvr.it

I guess they’ll just have to monitor them … maybe they can field- test some of the technogarbage meant for field- testing on Palestinians.