Airing the ‘Dirty Laundry’ On Israel (for the umpteenth time)
In Israel ‘race science’ is alive and well, and it is used to eliminate the Palestinian people
(If you have received this by email, please click on the title to get the most up-to-date version. I often continue to edit and correct typos after publishing the first version)
I find it beyond frustrating to read and hear the way people speak about Israel. The media have no idea what they are talking about most of the time, and world leaders still speak in terms of negotiations, and agreements. Intelligence agencies in the West are so well-resourced. How is it possible that world leaders and media still do not understand Israel and do not recognise what it really is?
All eyes have been on Gaza since last October. But the world’s attention should have been on Palestine, the Palestinian people, and Israel’s policies for the past seventy-five years. The BBC reported this morning (still misleadingly calling what goes on in Gaza a ‘war’) that Netanyahu “has vowed Israel can ‘stand alone’, after the US warned arms shipments could be stopped if he orders a full-scale invasion of Rafah in Gaza”. Israel is starting to drop the pretence now, and reveal its true self and true aims. Will the world finally act, if so, when, and is it too late for the Palestinian people? It is certainly too late for tens of thousands of dead and maimed, and for the millions who have been scarred by ongoing trauma caused by continually unfolding horrors.
The Real Israel
For years I have been trying to explain to people that Israel’s only aim, its raison d’être, is to remove every last Palestinian from all of historic Palestine, and Judaise the entire territory from the river to sea. Before you squirm, ‘Judiasation’ (יהוד) is not my term. This is Israel’s own language and terminology. This is how they speak and write inside Israel.
Modern Hebrew is only spoken in Israel. Not everything published or said in Israel is translated into English, which is quite intentional. Few people are aware that all media outlets in Israel have to clear the military censor, before they can publish anything that is not just superficial gossip, or fluffy trash. If more was translated into English or other languages, perhaps things would be different. But Israel carefully controls what is translated, and everyone there knows not to ‘air the dirty laundry’.
What Israeli Jews say to one another is very different from what they would allow themselves to say to anyone who is not Jewish, or who does not live in Israel. Even progressive, otherwise excellent publications like +972, which is published from inside Israel are often careful about what they say, and how they say it. I can read between the lines, and I recognise the signs of self-censorship.
Before you mention Haaretz, you need to know that it is a Zionist and fundamentally loyalist newspaper. Even its name is deeply Zionist. Ha’aretz literally means ‘the land’. But in Hebrew the word haaretz has a possessive meaning. It does not just mean ‘the land’. It means ‘our land’. Israeli Jews do not refer to Israel as Israel. They call it ‘haaretz’.
For years, talking to my brother there I would refer to Israel as ‘Israel’, and that would come across as very strange. To refer to the country by its name rather than by the possessive term, automatically set me apart as someone who did not belong. To say ‘haaretz’ in Hebrew is a way of stating your belonging.
Haaretz newspaper does not do anything that does not serve Israel. It publishes dissent, because its job is to promote Israel’s image as a democracy that is open to self-scrutiny and reflection. Hardly anyone reads Haaretz in Israel. It is a newspaper whose readership is mostly from outside Israel. When Israel no longer needs this kind of image promotion, the authorities will either close the newspaper, or will force it to get rid of dissenting writers like Gideon Levy. Gideon knows he is on borrowed time. He knows Israel as well as I do.
The world has largely moved on from notions of race, racial purity, and the ‘race science’ that drove them. Generations of people have never heard about ‘race science’, which was mainstream in the 19th Century, and through the first half of the 20th Century. Race ‘science’ and its fraudulent, unscientific ideas have been wiped out of textbooks, and university courses. If it is ever mentioned, it is in the context of discrediting it and explaining why it had to go. It is therefore understandable if most people assume race science no longer exists, and no one follows it.
What people do not know is that race science and the discriminatory and genocidal policies it informs, are alive and well in the so-called, ‘democratic’ and ‘progressive’ state of Israel. Israel has promoted itself to the Western world as the bastion of Western values in an otherwise ‘backward’ Middle East, and as a Western ally sharing progressive science, principles, and values. But Israel is nothing of the sort. Psychologically, Israel is the most primitive state in the Middle East, and as a result also the most dangerous one.
The definition of Jewishness in Israel is not dependent on religious observance, but on ‘blood’. If you are born to a Jewish mother, and your mother was born to a Jewish mother, then you are ‘Jewish’, according to Israel. It does not matter what you believe, or do not believe. It does not matter if you follow any Jewish traditions, or observe Jewish religious practice. It does not matter if you do not believe in God, or if you are Buddhist, or anything for that matter. Your blood is the only thing that determines who you are, not you, or your ideas about yourself. If you have ‘Jewish blood’, you are welcome into the country, and into immediate and full citizenship rights. The Palestinians are not Jewish — Israel does not care if they are Muslim, Christian, or atheist — because they do not have ‘Jewish blood’.
Much like any cult, Israeli psychology is paranoid, insular, inward-looking, and all pervasive. The things you learn as you grow up there mould your very identity, your way of thinking, and feeling, and the way you perceive the world, and your place in it. You might rightly say that everyone’s education shapes them this way. But what differentiates cults from non-cults, is what happens when you begin to question the cult’s doctrine or perspective on life, or when you try to leave. Most cults have mechanisms to keep people inside, and there are penalties for leaving or questioning. In Israel these penalties are not yet formal — although this is rapidly coming. Society itself enforces cult belonging and keeping people in the fold.
All cults aim to replace individual identity with group identity, and Israel is no different. Jewish Israeli indoctrination does not just shape you, it becomes you. I was subjected to the same thing. Like a fish in a pond, you are unaware of the water you are in. It is your reality. It is your life. It takes a real shock to the system to realise what you are swimming in. Only when a fish is pulled out of the water can they realise they were in it. Cults make you believe that you will die without the group, in the same way that the fish would die if it was not returned to the water. I started to become aware of my disturbing, cult-like psychology when, as a psychotherapist back in Australia, I began to work with cult escapees. It was shocking to recognise how similar my psychology was to theirs. I had the same psychological structure in relation to Israel that my clients had in relation to the cults they were born into, and chose to leave.
Individuality and independent thinking are problematic in cults. In Israel you can have your own thoughts, as long as they do not cross the invisible, but well recognised line of what is permissible to question. If you do have doubts, you keep them to yourself. You certainly do not share them with the outside world, which is the ultimate sin. Cults do not like their secrets known to the world outside them.
Cults are meant to keep their adherents in, and so does Israel. If you have Jewish blood, and decide to live in Israel, you do not just live there. You are expected to subscribe to the dominant philosophy of life, which is imbued in the language and the culture. This is the reason that many Jews who have moved to Israel from Western countries have ended up going back to their original countries. They could not cope with this all-pervasive psychological oppression.
Imagine that your country asked you what race you are in your passport application, on your application for a mortgage, or a job, or that your children’s school checked their ‘race’ before they could be admitted. Imagine that your ‘race’ conditioned what you could or could not do, or what you were entitled to. In our society it would not only be unacceptable. Discrimination on ‘racial’ grounds is against the law. But not in Israel. In Israel your ID card tells everyone what your ‘race’ is. It is deliberately hidden behind the euphemism ‘nationality’, because Israeli documentation can be seen by people outside of Israel. But everyone in Israel knows what ‘nationality’ really means. It means race, blood.
A Jewish ID card (of course they have ID cards in Israel) and birth certificate say, ‘Nationality: Jewish’. A Palestinian citizens of Israel, has ‘Arab’ as their nationality, aka ‘race’. Israel considers ‘Arabism’ a race too, and does not differentiate between Palestinians, or citizens of other Arab countries. Israel does not recognise the Palestinians as a distinct people, with their own history, culture, cuisine, customs, language. To Israeli Jews and to the state of Israel, an ‘Arab’ is an ‘Arab’, of which the most important factor is, they are not a ‘Jewish’…
Below is my Israeli birth certificate, and underneath it is a part of a birth certificate of a Palestinian citizen of Israel with identifying details disguised.
A Few Words About the Jewish Israeli Belief System & Antisemitism
Israeli society teaches every child that they are born Jewish, and that it is who they are. It teaches them that they cannot be safe, except when surrounded with other Jews. They are taught that everyone hates Jews. Even if they might appear friendly, non-Jews will inevitably turn against Jews at some point. The next holocaust, children as young as six are taught, is just around the corner. They are taught that Israel is the only barrier between Jews and complete annihilation, that Israel is the only protection Jews have against the next incarnation of the Nazis, indeed the only thing that keeps them safe from the next holocaust.
According to Israel the present incarnation of the Nazis are the Palestinian people, and anyone who supports them! Yes, that includes you. This is why the accusation of antisemitism is so liberally flung at people. It is not only a deflection from Israel’s crimes, and an attempt to silence critics. It is truly what Israeli Jews believe.
Israeli children are also taught that to be able to protect Jews from annihilation, Israel must be purely Jewish, run by Jews, and for Jews. Israel does not believe it can have non-Jews within it, because all non-Jews are a potential threat. If Israel allows a sizeable non-Jewish population, the demographics could one day shift in favour of non-Jews. If everyone has equal voting rights, Israel could end up being governed by non-Jews. This prospect triggers an unspeakable terror in the hearts of Israeli Jews. Israeli Jews believe that only a racially pure state can keep them safe from annihilation. Any non-Jewish minorities have to be kept under tight control. Anyone who thinks that the Palestinian citizens of Israel have equal right, needs to think again. The systemic discrimination against them is hidden from the rest of the world, but it is there. (Ilan Pappé discusses this in Ten Myth About Israel, and so does Susan Nathan in The Other Side of Israel).
The Israeli education system teaches that antisemitism is not the same as ‘ordinary’ racism. Antisemitism, the hatred of Jews, is like a mythical beast, a supernatural force that can never be extinguished. It might lie dormant for a while but it is always lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce. When it pounces, Jews have no friends, and can only rely on one another for survival. Israel teaches that antisemitism is passed on with ‘mothers’ milk’, or another way of looking it at is that it is genetic… Israel is obsessed with genetics, Jewish racial purity and demography. According to Israel if you do not have ‘Jewish blood’, you are always susceptible to antisemitism. Those of us who by accident of birth do have ‘Jewish blood’ are stuck with it. You can never not be Jewish, no matter what you do.
The most important principle in the life of Jews, Israel goes on to teach, is the survival of the Jewish people. All other considerations, all universal values have to take a back seat, especially if Jewish people are threatened, which is always. If you do not understand this about Israel, you do not understand Israel.
I was in Aberdeen on Tuesday and a friendly, intelligent taxi driver who told me he is a migrant from Pakistan, said he feels sorry for the Israeli people. He said he thinks the people are fine, but that their government leads them astray. That view is unfortunately held by a lot of people. I can see why people would think that. In countries without a cult-like psychology that can indeed be the case. People feel one way, but are led by bad rulers who steer their country in directions, of which the majority of people do not necessarily approve. That is certainly the case in dictatorships. Why it is also like this in democracies is a topic for a separate discussion. But this is definitely is not the case in Israel.
What next?
When I read the article from the BBC that I mentioned at the start, I was hoping that finally the world would wake up. The racist, cult-state of Israel has a bunker mentality, militarily, and economically. It has always calculated that US and other support might end at some point. Its policy was to use deception to make the most of it while it lasted. I grew up believing that any support for Israel was temporary, that Israeli existence is an ongoing struggle, and that we were always the victims. This is what most Israeli Jews still believe.
Like all cults, Israel believes it does not need anyone else. It is alone in the world and has only itself to rely on. Most Israeli Jews would not mind going poor for a while. They have enjoyed prosperity in the past three decades, but deep down they always saw it as temporary. They think it is a virtue, and a mark of character to rough it in the name of protecting their country.
Israel is a dangerous country whose entire purpose is to rid itself of every last Palestinian. It has no other goal for itself, and no vision beyond this. It never did. Israel was hoping that it would get away with its settler-colonialism, and with removing all the Palestinians, and that it would become ‘normalised’ in the world (this too is straight out of Israel’s own narrative in Hebrew). But there was never a guarantee of this. Israel’s relationship with the rest of the world was always based on exploitation of others to help Israel reach its ultimate goal. Israel is only in it for itself. If the rest of the world is not helpful to Israel, it does not matter.
Many Israeli Jews believe that they can live in a poor ghetto all by themselves, but not everyone does. Many would leave; many are already leaving. It is impossible to get numbers, because the Israeli bureau of statistics is hiding this information from their website. It is, of course, deliberate. It would be bad for cult morale if people could see how many are leaving. But no matter how many are leaving, there are enough who cannot leave, because they do not have other citizenships, and do not have anywhere else to go.
Israel will have to be stopped with military force, or it will wipe out the entire Palestinian population, including the Palestinian citizens of Israel. Israel does not care what the rest of the world thinks. It never did. It got what it could out of US, UK, Australia, Germany, and France’s tax payers to cushion and furnish its bunker with as much supply as possible. It is ready to go it alone now.
I do not see military intervention to stop Israel happening any time soon.
The world has to accept that it has abandoned the Palestinians to a deranged, psychopathic, criminal genocidal perpetrator.
(I hope Germany is paying attention, but am not holding my breath).
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Thank you for writing this. It's in synch will what I am learning elsewhere about the zionist movement and Israel. In her well-written and well-documented book, "Perceptions of Palestine," Kathleen Christison describes, among other important aspects of zionism, the purposeful and pervasive obliteration of identity of the Palestinian people by Israeli Jews and their backers in the West for the past 200 years. Even the Balfour Declaration refers to this diverse group of people as "non-Jewish", that is, describing them in relationship to Jews and not by who they are. Unfortunately, each one of my elected officials in my state, Democrat or Republican, is an adament zionist who knows little or nothing about Palestinian history or people.
Dear Avigail... Thank you for this essential piece. I also have been saying that only a superior army's military invasion will stop Israel. Not negotiations, not talks, not UN's or ICJ's resolutions. It is a monster that started to devour the West as well, with the same brutality and impunity. It is worse than Nazism because Germans were not a sacred nation, but Jews are, in the eyes of the whole world, perhaps. Not all Germans were Nazis, of course, and not all Jews are Zionists or Israelists, but Nazis were German and Israelis are Jews. That means they are untouchable. I do not know if any strong army that would touch (Zionist, Israeli) Jews who are now inflicting such horror on people. Israel will not stop with Palestinians in Palestine. It will go for the whole Palestinian Diaspora (6 million people) and for everyone else whom they would call "terrorist" and "antisemite". Mostly in the West, as we can see the draconian persecution unfolding now. But they have been doing the same in Russia (and before that, in the USSR), silencing any opposition and any voices of reason. I am reading the stunning book by the historian Thomas Suarez "Palestine Hijacked" - how so many people prior to Balfour Declaration saw what was coming, and could do nothing, against colossal blackmail and pressure from Weizmann and Rothschild and their jackals. It is an unimaginable tragedy of humanity that lasts for 120 years and there is no end in sight.