The grotesque celebration by Israeli soldiers as they destroyed a Palestinian building in East Jerusalem is being treated as an aberration. But in fact there is a long history of Israelis celebrating the destruction of Palestine.
Ronit Lentin’s recent book “Traces of Racial Exception – Racializing Israeli Settler Colonialism”, demonstrates the importance and centrality of race in the Palestine-Israel context, an issue downplayed by Israel-apologists. Because veiling that racism in the eyes of the world is essential to maintaining the colonialist project.
When Trump called Ilhan Omar a “terrorist,” he was echoing an Israeli tactic against Palestinian dissenters. The charge has been used against sitting lawmakers, like when former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman called Hanin Zoabi a terrorist, and against poet Dareen Tatour and anti-occupation activist Ahed Tamimi.
Israel’s new Education Minister Rafi Peretz caused international uproar recently by supporting gay conversion therapy and suggesting that intermarriage is like a “2nd Holocaust”. Though the uproar over intermarriage was mostly outside Israel, for good reason – similar views about intermarriage have been expressed historically by the Israeli left.
A week ago, Haaretz published a bombshell investigative report about a government agency that was systematically disappearing Nakba archives. Yesterday, Israeli historian Benny Morris followed up with a piece focusing on the disappearance of archives specifically concerning the Deir Yassin massacre of 1948.
Haaretz reveals the existence of a secret department under the Defense Ministry which is tasked with making previously-open archives disappear in vaults. It was ostensibly tasked with protecting nuclear program secrets – but statements by its founder make it clear that it’s about undermining critical Nakba scholarship, such as the document stating that the principal reason Palestinians were fleeing in 1948 was hostilities by Zionist forces.
Israeli opposition party co-leader Yair Lapid tweeted after a shower, “Israel has to be a state of all its citizens.” Under attack, he reversed himself a half hour later. And Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz has upbraided him, calling the tweet a “seriously outrageous anti-Semitic remark … the slogan of the enemy”.
Benjamin Netanyahu has given the job of Transport Minister to Bezalel Smotrich, who says that he is working for God. Smotrich tried to become Justice Minister, and though his suggestion that Israel should follow biblical law ended that bid, there’s no reason his portfolio won’t grow in years to come.
This week an indictment against a Palestinian for alleged rape was retracted, and the State Prosecutor admitted that a Breaking the Silence member might have been telling the truth about assaulting a Palestinian. Jonathan Ofir says that both struggles – that to prove innocence, and to prove guilt – reflect the opposite sides of the Apartheid mirror.
Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon published an opinion piece in the New York Times suggesting that the way forward for Palestinians could only be a “surrender” of their national ambitions, and to commit a “national suicide”.