Israeli leaders are going crazy over the display of Palestinian flags– of course, because Israel is a Jewish state not a democracy. And an intellectual leader of the Israel lobby, Michael Koplow, admits the failure of Zionism in the reaction. “If waving a flag threatens Israel’s existence, then not only is Israel in far bigger trouble than anyone understands, but Zionism itself has failed.”
“The army and the settlement enterprise are one and the same” — a general in Israel’s occupying army says the quiet part about Zionism out loud. It has always been a messianic religious movement to establish Jewish supremacy in as much land as it can conquer. Gen. Roy Zweig was later reprimanded for speaking out, on Jerusalem Day.
‘Haaretz’ runs two articles attacking Israeli Zionism as a hateful dead-end, urging the world to take action. The authors’ scathing words would never make it into an American newspaper. Contemporary Zionism is a “Jewish mutation,” Amira Hass writes in despair. While B. Michael writes that Zionism has created a “small, arrogant, violent, wicked nation” of “Jew-oids” who have taken the “wicked parts of Judaism and turned it into the essence.”
Arabs are threatening to take over Israel and reduce the Jewish state to a 60-mile stretch of land on the coast, Defense Minister Benny Gantz warns a party meeting, reading out a crazed and surely-fake rant he received on WhatsApp. The Defense minister’s feverish credulity shows how unhinged and dangerous the thinking of Israel’s leaders is. But who is paying attention?
A week ago the Biden administration said it was “heartbroken” by the killing of U.S. journalist Shireen Abu Akleh– by an Israeli sniper, according to witnesses– and called for a “thorough” investigation. But now Israel refuses to investigate and top Biden aides welcome Israel’s defense minister to Washington and say nothing about the killing or the whitewash.
Six months ago there was outrage when the Israeli government designated multiple Palestinian civil society organizations as “terrorist institutions,” including from progressive lawmakers in Washington. But today, despite repeated calls for action, the U.S. government has still not challenged the designations in any way.
When Israel slaughtered hundreds of civilians in Gaza, mainstream journalists and politicians said the situation was too “complicated” to come out against such actions. Now they are cheerleaders for Ukrainian resistance, by any means, to military invasion and missile attacks. And Benny Gantz who bragged about bombing Gaza back to the Stone Age, is a hero to the Democratic Party. Yes there is an official propaganda line in the U.S., and journalists lost their mainstream careers for doing in Palestine what journalists routinely do in the Ukraine now.
3,400 Gazans received their national Palestinian ID cards for the first time following a rare approval from the Israeli government, which controls the Palestinian population registry in the occupied territory, and has put a freeze on issuing IDs for over a decade.
The Dutch Government lately deferred to the Israeli government in deciding to defund the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, a leading Palestinian civil society group, because its failure to screen its staff and board on the grounds of their political opinion and affiliation is considered “undesirable” and displays a “lack of candour” by the organisation. That is the sole basis put forward by the Dutch government to terminate funding which started in 2007.
If you want to understand the power imbalance between the United States and Israel, the farce over Biden’s broken promise to Palestinians to reopen the former U.S. consulate in Jerusalem is a good place to start. The State Department has beseeched Israel to relent in its opposition to the reopening. But the Israeli government is adamant against it. And guess who wins?