Hanukkah is a holiday of Jewish liberation from occupation 2150 years ago. But Jews cannot celebrate the Jewish holidays as a matter of the ancient past at a time when Israel continuously presses its ‘Jewish liberation’ upon the besieged Palestinians, who are crushed under the boot of the ‘most moral army’.

On Monday, the Israeli parliament passed an amendment to the ‘Prevention of Infiltration Act’ so that it could continue to coerce African refugees to be deported. In 2011, former Interior Minister Eli Yishai said that the mere presence of the refugees is an “existential threat”, and vowed to defend the “Jewish majority”. This law shows that in the Jewish State Zionism informs each and every detail of Israel’s policy.

Retired Israeli general Amiram Levin is regarded as a liberal Zionist and is a strong supporter of Labor leader Avi Gabbay. In an interview, he says “Palestinians deserved the occupation” and Israel should give Palestinian leadership “a carrot in the form of a state, and if it doesn’t want it, we’ll tear it apart…. if they violate agreements, the next time we’ll fight here they will not remain, we will toss them across the Jordan…. We were way too nice in ‘67.”

American UN Ambassador Nikki Haley says that recognition of Jerusalem is about ‘not picking sides’. Yes, she and Trump are behaving recklessly. But they are continuing a policy of pandering to Israel that has been going on for many decades, under the mask of ‘peace talks’ and a supposed ‘honest broker’, the US.

Whilst condemnation is coming from around the world concerning Trump’s move to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the embassy there, Ehud Barak thinks it’s a non-issue. This is powerful evidence of the fact that Jewish Israeli society is fully behind the Zionist project of expansion and Palestinian removal, in violation of international law.

55 Israeli lawmakers including the Prime Minister and several ministers have petitioned the President Reuven Rivlin to reconsider his refusal to pardon the soldier-medic-killer Elor Azarya. Azarya is likely to get out of prison next spring, but he is so popular in Israel these lawmakers don’t want him to spend the winter in prison.

Israel seeks to remove 40,000 African refugees by deportation. How convenient it is for Israel that so many countries in the West are now governed by right-wing, white-supremacist, anti-immigrant and fascist forces. Herzl knew this over a century ago, where he noted, “The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies”. 

Lashing out against American Jews, Israel’s top diplomat Tzipi Hotoveli said that they were living “quite convenient lives” and that they don’t send their kids to the military. “People that never send their children to fight for their country– most of the Jews don’t have children serving as soldiers, going to the Marines, going to Afghanistan, or to Iraq.”

“Have you gone mad?” Tamar Zandberg of Meretz challenged Labor after it supported Netanyahu’s plan to deport 40,000 African refugees. But Avi Gabbay, the Labor leader, is pushing the faction to the right in order to meet the Israeli public where they stand, in racist policies.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin plays bad cop to Defense Minister Lieberman’s good cop. Rivlin refused to pardon former soldier-medic Elor Azarya in the Hebron execution of March 2016. Azarya’s sentence has already been cut so he will likely get out of prison next spring. Lieberman called on Rivlin to “mend the tears in society and the effect of the event and the trial upon IDF soldiers and the youth awaiting draft.”