Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son Yair shared a cartoon on Facebook detailing George Soros running the world, particularly his family’s opponents, with anti-Semitic overtones: images of Reptilians and Masons and Illuminati.
Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu is the Rabbi of the town of Safed, and is one of the most notoriously racist rabbis in Israel. He has publicly said he will not condemn “price tag” attacks by settlers on Palestinians, saying “if the government won’t act, then the public should” and his most notorious act was signing a petition demanding no Jew rent or sell apartments to a non-Jew in his town of Safed; 300 rabbis joined the call. Now, an Israeli blogger exposed an old ruling (from 2002) of Eliyahu allowing rape during war. Says the rabbi, “When lives are on the line, you do not educate the soldiers to morality.”
In September, the right-wing organization Im Tirzu will celebrate 10 years of its activity – and will do so in Beit Shmuel, a conference center owned by a progressive Jewish organization with links to the Reform movement.
The government of Israel refuses to acknowledge the existence of an Israeli nationality, as doing so would mean nationality can be based on a non-religious basis – which is anathema to Zionism. Some Israeli universalists have sued, insisting that there is an “Israeli people.” The high court of the land has ruled against them.
When Nakba of Palestinians is your muttered policy– when you realize you may have to carry out another ethnic cleansing, as the Israeli right believes– it’s silly to moan about Nazis somewhere else. After all, you’re holding a very similar policy, and they’re likely to be your only allies. Yossi Gurvitz explains Netanyahu’s silence about Charlottesville.
When American Jews take a position on Israel based on it calling itself a Jewish state, they are playing Israel’s game: claiming Jews are a nation, and therefore that their voice counts more than non-Jews who live in Israel, giving strength to illiberal forces in that land. American Jews should express themselves as liberals, and form coalitions of others in and out of Israel on that basis.
Israeli security services responded to Palestinian knife attacks by surveilling social media and using an algorithm to predict who will commit violence. On this basis more than 400 Palestinians have been detained without having committed any criminal act. Though when they need a charge, Israelis say, Incitement.
Several Israeli Defense Forces conscripts have recently reported that they have ordered to appear in a ceremony where they were told they need to undergo a “giur,” or a conversion to Judaism. The military is doing it out of a belief – defined by former general Elazar Stern, now a member of Knesset for the Yesh Atid party – that “a Jewish soldier is inherently a better soldier.” Yossi Gurvitz writes, “Such a concept would cause generals from Julius Caesar through Genghis Khan and Heinz Guderian to raise an eyebrow, but is becoming increasingly common in the rapidly Jewified IDF.”
The Israeli media reported last week that the US government demands Israel will transfer some territory from Area C to Area B. These reports have not been confirmed yet, but they are already causing some trouble in the Israeli political system. What may be hiding behind this opaque formula may be the greatest breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 20 years.
The Netanyahu government has a clear policy in the West Bank: the creeping, de-facto annexation of large swaths of land, in direct contravention of international law, and without public debate. That means legalizing 80 settlement outposts in a secretive administrative manner.