Israel’s rightwing parliament overwhelmingly passed a permanent law barring the naturalization of Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza married to Israeli citizens yesterday. The law in earlier forms has been cited as an “apartheid” law by human rights organizations, but even Israeli centrists voted for it with “a heavy heart.” While the Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked celebrated the law as a triumph of the Jewish state.
Tensions are flaring again in Sheikh Jarrah as right-wing Israeli lawmakers and Jewish settlers continue to incite violence ahead of the looming displacement of another Palestinian family from the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood. Scuffles ensued over the weekend after the far- right Israeli lawmaker, Itamar Ben Gvir of the Religious Zionism alliance, “opened” an office in Sheikh Jarrah, on the property of the Salem family, who are under threat of expulsion.
House Speaker Pelosi is leading a delegation of Democratic Congress members to Israel this week, including progressives Barbara Lee and Ro Khanna. The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights calls on the politicians to cancel the “apartheid delegation” amid “Israel’s escalating ethnic cleansing” of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem.
It is a fiction to argue that there is any “co-existence” or that there are “mixed cities” inside Israel. It is a reality of ghettos and apartheid: an ongoing colonial project of Jewish supremacy. The reality of settler-colonialism, of Judaizing Palestine, is present in Lydda, “inside Israel” as much as it is in Sheikh Jarrah, in the occupied territory.
The massive escalation of violence in Palestine has come at a very convenient time for Benjamin Netanyahu, and it follows a very recognizable pattern of events and developments which have helped him keep his grip on power in Israel.
Why won’t the U.S. mainstream media report on Jewish supremacists in Israel?
Jewish Power, the party of followers of the late Jewish-fascist rabbi Meir Kahane, has helped get six seats in the Israeli parliament for its bloc, Religious Zionism. So Itamar Ben Gvir, the Kahanist who keeps a poster of Baruch Goldstein, the 1994 Hebron massacre perpetrator, in his living room, will enter the Israeli parliament, Knesset. James Zogby and other commentators have compared Jewish Power, to the KKK or neo-Nazis.
By campaigning for conservative “Arab” voters, Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to suppress the Palestinian vote, by shattering the Joint List, which won a historic 15 seats in the last election and is now polling at only 9.
Response to Netanyahu’s deal with right wing racist party shows that US Israel lobby is getting tired of fighting for the good Israel. That drumbeat of racism and Jewish supremacy is working on American advocates for Israel. They’re losing their own illusions. What was “dangerous and deeply concerning” two years ago is just more of the same today.