What good comes from Israel silencing criticism? By Sara Dowse

 

Born in 1938, two days after Kristallnacht, I grew up during a period of rabid American antisemitism. In response, two relatives helped found the Anti-Defamation League. Learning of the atrocities Hamas committed in southern Israel, I was aghast like everyone. But I was not surprised. Israel has been hoisted on its own propaganda, regardless of the consequences. It has almost succeeded in silencing its critics, even – maybe especially – its Jewish ones, of whom there are many.

Six years ago, I published a novel based on the life of my grandfather’s sister, a Zionist who in 1922 left from what is now Moldova to join a kibbutz in British Mandate Palestine. After seven years there, she was deported with some other kibbutz members for supporting the 1929 Arab riots. Why were the Arabs rioting? Why were there Jews supporting them? In searching for answers, I came to understand the complexities within Zionism and the intrinsic problems with it.

I learned of Asher Ginsburg, for one, a significant early Zionist who went by the pen-name Ahad Ha’am. In essays like ‘The truth from Eretz Israel’ and ‘This is not the Way’ he debunked the common assertion that Palestine was ‘a land without people for a people without land’. While in favour of Jews establishing a connection with our ancestral homeland, he was vehemently opposed to establishing a Jewish-privileged state there. The father of what he called Cultural Zionism, Ha’am was at odds with Theodor Herzl, the driving force behind the more zealous Political Zionism, which gained in strength as European antisemitism intensified, ending in our Holocaust tragedy.

Ahad Ha’am’s wasn’t the only dissenting voice among Zionists, nor was my great-aunt my only connection with Israel. Born in 1938, two days after Kristallnacht, if thankfully safe in Chicago, I grew up during a period of rabid American antisemitism. In response, two other relatives helped found the Anti-Defamation League. As were all in my family, they were ardent Zionists. One, Philip Klutznick, was the principal benefactor for restoring the ancient city of Ashdod after the razing of Isdud, the Palestinian village that had replaced it. Klutznick eventually became president of the World Jewish Congress, but at some stage he began having second thoughts about Israel’s policies. These he recorded in a memoir called No Easy Answers. In July 1982, with Pierre Mendes-France and Nahum Goldmann, two other past Congress presidents, he released a Paris Declaration criticising Israel for refusing to negotiate with Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). This was two months before the massacres of Palestinian refugee camps in Sabra and Shatila.

What does this mean if you’re not prepared to negotiate with your enemy? Can this ever be productive? Or is it a convenient fiction? Never mind that Israel initially fostered Hamas as a foil to the PLO, now Fatah. Today reputable sources such as Seymour Hersh and Peter Rodgers have revealed that, before Hamas’s gruesome attack on October 7, Netanyahu had funded Hamas through Qatar to quiet them and thus allow his far-right coalition to concentrate on its depredations on the West Bank. But Hamas seized its moment instead.

Learning of the atrocities Hamas committed in southern Israel, I was aghast like everyone. But I was not surprised. In 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were driven from the country where they had been the majority, never allowed to return, while a Jew like me would have been welcomed as an immigrant and would be even now. For Palestinians who remained, the new Jewish state imposed a military occupation. In 1967 the occupation spread to the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and Gaza, developing into the brutal apartheid of today. Since 2007, Israel has imposed a punitive blockade on Gaza, destroying its economy, not to mention the damage done by four Israeli bombardments before this one. As a result of Israel’s exercising its ‘right to defend’, some 90 percent of men under 30 had been left unemployed. While accepting that Hamas has imposed its own autocracy on the people of Gaza, it was unreasonable to the point of arrogance on Israel’s part to expect them not to resist.

I’ve been a member of a small committee on Sydney’s northern beaches which had funded two men from Gaza to train here as lifesavers for establishing Nippers programs on the beaches there. The programs were underway when Israel retaliated for the Hamas attack. Like the rest of our committee, I’ve received a gut-wrenching letter from one of these men on the day of Israel’s reprisal. There has been no word since.

For years I’ve been critical of Israeli governments. But with their rigid, defensive dogmatism within Israel’s borders and its blindly accepting supporters in the Diaspora, Israel has been hoisted on its own propaganda, regardless of the consequences. It has almost succeeded in silencing its critics, even – maybe especially – its Jewish ones, of whom there are many. Who would know of Jewish Voice for Peace, Not in my Name, Jews against the Occupation, Independent Australian Jewish Voices, to name some. And who or what has been served by this silencing? Certainly not Israel, or Jews in the Diaspora. Certainly not the Palestinian people. And as for any hope of peace, how long must we wait for that?

https://johnmenadue.com/what-good-comes-from-israel-silencing-criticism/

 

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By Ramzy Baroud
     Common Dreams

 

“(Tutsis) are cockroaches. We will kill you.”

Arabs are like “drugged cockroaches in a bottle.”

The first quote was a line repeated frequently by the Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, a Rwandan radio station, which is largely blamed for inciting hatred towards the Tutsi people.

The second is by former Israeli army Chief-of-Staff Gen. Rafael Eitan in 1983, speaking at an Israeli parliament’s committee.

Rwanda’s hate-filled radio station operated for only one year (1993-94), yet the outcome of its incitement resulted in one of the saddest and most tragic episodes in modern human history: the genocide of the Tutsis.

Compare “Radio Genocide” to the massive Israeli-U.S.-Western propaganda, dehumanizing Palestinians almost with identical language to that used by Hutus’ media.

Many seem to forget that, long before the Gaza war on Oct. 7, and even long before the establishment of Israel itself in 1948, the Zionist-Israeli discourse has always been that of racism, dehumanization, erasure and, at times, outright genocide.

If one is to randomly select any period of Israeli history to examine the political discourse emanating from Israeli officials, institutions and even intellectuals, one is to draw the same conclusion: Israel has always built a narrative of incitement and hatred, thus making a constant case for the genocide of Palestinians.

Only recently, this genocidal intent is becoming obvious to many people.

“There is… a risk of genocide against the Palestinian People,” the U.N. experts said in a statement on Oct. 19. But this “risk of genocide” is not born out of recent events.

Indeed, effective political or military actions anywhere in the world hardly take place without an edifice of text and language that facilitates, rationalizes, and justifies those actions. Israel’s perception of Palestinians is a perfect illustration of this claim.

Prior to the establishment of Israel, Zionists denied the very existence of the Palestinians. Many still do.

When that is the case, it becomes only logical to draw a conclusion that Israel, in its own collective mind, cannot be morally culpable of killing those who have never existed in the first place.

Even when Palestinians factor into the Israeli political discourse, they become “bloodthirsty animals,” “terrorists,” or “drugged cockroaches in a bottle.”

It would be too convenient to label this as just “racist.” Though racism is at work here, this sense of racial supremacy does not exist to merely maintain a sociopolitical order, in which Israelis are masters and Palestinians are serfs. It is far more complex.

As soon as Palestinian fighters from Gaza crossed into the southern border of Israel, killing hundreds, not a single Israeli politician, analyst, or mainstream intellectual seemed interested in the context of the daring act.

The post-Oct. 7 language used by Israelis, but also many Americans, created the atmosphere necessary for the savage Israeli response which followed.

The number of Palestinians killed in the first eight days of the Israeli war against Gaza has reportedly exceeded the number of casualties who were killed during the longest and most destructive Israeli war on the strip, dubbed “Protective Edge,” in 2014.

According to The Defense for Children International–Palestine, a Palestinian child is killed every 15 minutes, and, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, over 70 percent of all of Gaza’s casualties are women and children.

For Israel, none of these facts matter. In the mind of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, often perceived as a “moderate,” the “rhetoric about civilians not (being) involved (is) absolutely not true.” They are legitimate targets, simply because they “could’ve risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime,” he said, referring to Hamas.

Therefore, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” according to Herzog, who promised payback.

Ariel Kallner, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, explained Israel’s goal behind the Gaza war. “Right now, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 1948,” he said.

The same sentiment was conveyed by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the man responsible for translating Israel’s declaration of war into an action plan: “We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly,” he said on Oct.  9. “Accordingly,” here, meant that “there will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed.” And, of course, thousands of dead civilians.

Since Israel’s top political authorities have already declared that all Palestinians are collectively responsible for the Oct. 7 events, this means that all Palestinians are, per Gallant’s assessment, “human animals,” deserving no mercy.

Expectedly, Israel’s supporters in the U.S. and other Western countries joined the chorus, also using the most violent and dehumanizing language, thus cementing mainstream Israeli political discourse among ordinary people.

U.S. presidential hopeful Nikki Haley told Fox News on Oct. 10 that the Hamas attack was not just on Israel but “is an attack on America.” It was then that she made her sinister declaration, while looking directly at the camera, 

“Netanyahu, finish them, finish them… finish them!”

Though U.S. President Joe Biden and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken did not use the exact same words, they both made comparisons between the Oct.7 events and the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The meaning behind this requires no elaboration.

For his part, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham rallied American conservative and religious supporters, declaring on Oct. 11, also on Fox News, 

“We are in a religious war here… Do whatever the hell you have to do… Level the place.”

Much more, equally sinister language was — and continues — to be uttered. The outcome is being broadcast around the clock. Israel is “finishing off” the Gaza civilian population, it is “leveling” thousands of homes, mosques, hospitals, churches, and schools. Indeed, it is producing another painful episode of the Nakba.

From Golda Meir’s “Palestinians did not exist” (1969) to Menachem Begin’s Palestinians are “beasts walking on two legs” (1982), to Eli Ben Dahan’s “Palestinians are like animals, they aren’t human” (2013), to numerous other racist and dehumanizing references, the Zionist discourse remains unchanged.

Now, it is all coming together, the language and the action are in perfect alignment. Perhaps, it is time to start paying attention to how Israel’s genocidal language is translated to an actual genocide on the ground. Sadly, for thousands of Palestinian civilians, this awareness is simply too late.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out. His other books include My Father was a Freedom Fighter and The Last Earth. Baroud is a non-resident senior research fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). This is his website. 

This article is from Common Dreams.

https://consortiumnews.com/2023/10/27/the-genocidal-language-behind-israels-intent-in-gaza/

 

 

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