Turmoil in Israel, trepidation in Palestine

Shortly after the fascists and fanatics took power in Israel and began transforming the Jewish state into an autocratic state verging on a theocracy, secular and liberal forces took to the streets. It was a desperate attempt to stop the new government from swiftly passing legislation that would curtail the powers of the judiciary and subordinate the country’s Supreme Court to the whims of the ruling coalition’s slim majority in parliament.

They were soon joined by sections of the Israeli military facility, with former generals condemning the dangerous devolution to authoritarianism. Likewise, parts of the powerful American Jewish community that long supported Israel as the “Jewish Democracy” warned against its descent into autocracy.

Indeed, Israeli headlines read such as guidelines for future autocracy, with the Minister of Justice seeking to strip the judiciary, the Minister of Communications threatening to defund Israel’s public broadcaster in order to channel money to a station favorable to the government, and the Minister of heritage accusing organizations representing Reform Jews of endangering Jewish identity.

Fearing a relapse into unrest, President Isaac Herzog silently intervened support from President Joe Biden, to facilitate a compromise between the government and the protesters. But what appears to be a well-intentioned attempt to build consensus is in fact an ill-advised attempt to appease fascists and give in to evil.

Any compromise offered by Herzog would skew toward the ruling majority, who have the power to interpret the articles as they see fit. A compromise will also whitewash and empower the ruling fascists, presenting them as responsible and pragmatic actors as they pursue their extremist agenda, and as the street opposition loses strength and slowly but surely disintegrates.

As Haaretz succinctly put it under the headHerzog, No Plan and No Compromise, “The plans are born in sin to condone a government led by a criminal defendant, who in a conflict of interest in everything about changes in the legal system and especially about such a radical ‘reform’.”

But the more sinister and dangerous ramifications of such compromise lie in the fact that it focuses on Israel’s liberal democracy for the Jews while ignoring its tyranny towards the Palestinians. In fact, reaching a compromise on internal affairs will certainly free up the government’s hand to expand its repression, deepen its occupation and multiply its illegal settlements.

Why?

Because neither the protesters nor the former generals and the current military clamoring to lead them have expressed interest in reversing or curtailing the government’s expansionist and segregationist policies in Palestine. They do not recognize or do not want to recognize the synergy between the growing appeal of Jewish supremacy and the vast apartheid in Palestine that they helped create.

That is hypocritical and dangerous. Like some of the earlier generation of security and intelligence chiefs recognized ten years ago, Israel had no security solutions in Palestine. And as former intelligence chief Ami Ayalon emphasized in his biography, Friendly Fire, Israeli democracy will turn into tyranny because of the occupation.

Enter Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel Minister of Chaoswho has been convicted of eight charges, including supporting a terrorist organization and inciting racism, and who, according to former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, poses a greater threat to Israel than a nuclear-armed Iran.

Today, Ben-Gvir serves as Secretary of Security alongside his genocidal partner in crime, Bezalel Smotrich, who is the Secretary of the Treasury. Both have risen to the highest echelons of power thanks to their racist campaigns and incitement against the Palestinians. Their fanatical religious movement grew out of the illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, based on the apocalyptic messianic belief in the need to take full control of all of historic Palestine, or “the land of Israel” as they call it. to deliver the Jewish people by any means necessary.

In other words, the zealots of Israel have a God-given vested interest in greater unrest in Israel/Palestine that strengthens and expands their base, especially among the youth. After decades of military occupation, polls and surveys to suggest that approximately 60 percent of Jewish Israelis support segregation of Palestinian Israelis, and that 60 percent today identify as right-wing, a number rising to 70 percent for the 18-24 age group.

That does not bode well for future peace or security.

The escalation of violence last week, as hundreds of Jewish settlers set fire to Palestinian homes and cars in four occupied Palestinian villages in what a senior Israeli military commander described as a “pogrom” is just a harbinger of things to come.

Many Israelis justify the pogrom as a legitimate response to the murder of two Jewish settlers in the West Bank, others equate Israel’s occupation with Palestinian resistance, or the occupation’s large-scale violence and isolated Palestinian attacks on soldiers and illegal settlers. who made their lives. hell.

Nonsense.

Despite the Palestinian Authority’s coordination with Israel on security and intelligence issues, Israel continues to humiliate Palestinian leaders, undermine their authority and undermine their legitimacy as its troops and settlers rampage through Palestinian neighborhoods and refugee camps.

Make no mistake, the engine of unrest and violence is Israel’s decades-long military and civilian occupation; an occupation that has quickly turned into an entrenched system of apartheid governed by two separate sets of laws, rules, norms and structures designed to favor the illegal settlers.

To maintain and extend Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, the ruling fascists plan to unleash more state and settler violence against the Palestinians, transforming Israel into a fascist garrison state and exacerbate regional unrest.

They must be stopped.