Avigail paints an accurate picture of the Isreali mentality. Boots on the ground may be the only option. Also, the Palestinians on the West Bank must overthrow the quisling PA, put weapons into hands and fight for their very existence. As Che said: homeland or death.
Even as I have admired Ernesto Che Guevara since childhood, there is a fundamental difference: he was a son of the ruling elite. Look at those rebeldes - what a friendly language we had back then! - who still live today. José ‘Pepe’ Mújica, Dilma Roussef, Lucía Topolanski Saavedra … they turned out to be real uruguayos, real brasileiros though not native originally.
They fought for the dispossesed. Not for themselves. La solidaridad es la ternura de los pueblos.
Where are the sons and daughters from the centre of the israeli (lebanese, syrian, kurdish, turkish) society to take that task? Name one, just one.
There was a short window of oportunity, during the 'Arab Spring' that someone could have emerged.
Ibrahim Traoré? Surprising things are happening in Westafrica.
They’ve long become completely assimilated into mainstream Israeli Zionist society. This was happening even before I left. Jewish Israeli society has a cult mentality. If you want to be accepted into the mainstream, which isn’t just a social issue but includes getting employment and a mortgage, you need to fall into line.
There is freedom of speech in Israel but within well-defined limits that everyone knows from a very young age. You can't question Zionism or suggest that it is a settler-colonial movement, or show too much empathy to the Palestinians. This will earn you the title of ‘traitor’.
It is getting more difficult for dissenters these days in Israel but they’re still not under any serious threat—unlike Germany in the 1930s or the Palestinians inside Israel. Or in other words, Jews can choose to refuse and resist but they don’t because the majority agree with Israel’s aims and believe the Palestinians are antisemitic monsters who need to disappear. I can tell from the photos and videos that came out of Gaza that some of the most vile perpetrators in Gaza are Israeli from Mizrahi background.
I’m also from Mizrahi/Spanish origins. My father’s father was born in Turkey and my grandmother in Greece. My mother’s parents were from Romania but their background was in Spain—they denied it and always wanted to be seen as ‘white’ European Jews. My mother and her parents were profoundly racist against ‘black’ (Mizrahi) Jews. Although my parents were a ‘mixed marriage’ my mother’s parents never approved, and my mother always felt and openly behaved superior to my father and his side of the family.
The only thing that stopped a confrontation in Israeli society that was too brutal or prolonged—there were some clashes in the 1970s—and that eventually also led to the complete ‘assimilation’ of Mizrahi Jews into Israeli society is the deliberately inculcated sense of shared Jewishness, and the powerful narrative that Jews are always in danger.
Mizrahi Jews did not suffer any persecution in their original Muslim countries, but Israel could not allow this truth to spread, so it destroyed that first generation of migrants it brought to Israel. It couldn’t have them tell people that Muslims and Arabs were fine and didn’t hate Jews. Israel needed them to disappear so they wouldn’t ‘contaminate’ the European Zionist narrative. Israel was dominated by the ‘white’ Ashkenazi Jews who brought a colonial mindset and hatred for darker-skinned people who did not speak European languages. They originally maligned those migrants as ‘primitives’ who ‘lived on trees’ and would ‘stab you in the back’.
I grew up on these stereotypes, which were similar even identical to the ones used against all Arabs—the world Palestinian was never used. We were taught that ‘those people’ (Palestinians) were ‘Arabs’ and that all Arabs were ‘primitives’ who hated Jews for being Jews. You can see how the original generation of Mizrahi Jews who were forced to come to Israel under false pretences and deceitful acts by Israel, had to be silenced and eliminated. They could have easily been more sympathetic to the Palestinians because of similarities in culture, language, cuisine. Israel destroyed the families of those original generations and then indoctrinated their children, who became fully assimilated into the Israeli Zionist mainstream.
Through its education system, Israel made the children of Mizrahi Jews despise their parents’ generation, reject and despise Arabic and Arab cultures, forget their parents’ stories and experiences and completely adopt Israeli identity. A part of this was allowing Mizrahi music and some food to become mainstream. It was a kind of a concession to those cultures, because assimilation that is too strong and demands complete abandonment of one’s identity, can lead to resistance. Instead, you make some accommodations and ‘normalise’ some aspects of their culture, so they can feel ‘accepted’. Israel has always sought to create a ‘melting pot’ to enforce one cohesive identity defined by the ideals of Zionism, such as the ‘new Jew’ etc. I was a product of that.
Incidentally, my entire DNA is from the Iberian peninsula what is now Portugal and Spain apart from 0.9% Neanderthal. Going back 100,000 years I have no DNA from the Eastern Basin of the Mediterranean, which means I am likely descended from people who were converted to Judaism rather than have any origins in ancient Paléstina (the Roman name for Palestine)
The mythologizing of the foundation of Israel aside, if you look at the well-known founders and builders of Israel, none of them had ever been persecuted by the nazis. In fact, those zionists were safely away in the UK, the USA, or in the British mandate of Palestine when the nazis were perpetrating the holocaust:
Zeev Jabotinski
Chaim Weizmann
David Ben Gurion
Golda Meir
Ariel Sharon
Moshe Dayan
Yitzhak Shamir
Shimon Peres
Looking at the biography of the presidents of Israel, the pattern is even more pronounced, with all of them having immigrated to or been born in Palestine when Hitler came to power:
Yosef Sprinzak
Yitzhak Ben-Zvi
Kadish Luz
Zalman Shazar
Ephraim Katzir
Yitzhak Navon
Chaim Herzog
Ezer Weizman
Reuven Rivlin
And the same characteristic is evident for the prime ministers:
Moshe Sharett
Levi Eshkol
Yigal Allon
Yitzhak Rabin
Menachem Begin escaped Poland in the nick of time. He was persecuted by the NKVD, but he never confronted the nazis.
For that matter, the Israeli attempts to stamp out Yiddish in favor of modern Hebrew is also most instructive.
Modern Hebrew is a Westernised development, rather removed from the biblical language. It is European in pronunciation and syntax. Much of the vocabulary comes from Arabic.
Modern Hebrew vocabulary is based on Biblical Hebrew. It included giving new meanings to words from the Bible and newly invented words that often borrow their structure, even meaning often from the French language. For example the word for potato in Hebrew is identical to the French ‘pomme de terre’.
There are words in modern Hebrew that are originate from ancient Assyrian or taken straight out of it, for example the world for rooster.
Hebrew grammar had to be invented from scratch as the grammar in the Bible is too limited and not suited for modern life. Some of the principles of modern Hebrew grammar were adapted directly from French.
There are words in Hebrew that are similar to Arabic, but that is because both languages have a similar linguistic origin. Israel has appropriated some words from Arabic, and it’s not surprising that these are mostly swear words that are quite vile. This helped to malign Arabic and reinforce the idea that it is a ‘primitive’ language belonging to a ‘primitive’ and ‘vile’ people. Mizrahi Jews were actively discouraged from speaking Arabic and their guttural accent in Hebrew was ridiculed and shamed. This has continued to the present. There was a movement to teach us Arabic in primary school but the initiative was abandoned very quickly due to public and political pressure. You can’t ‘humanise’ your ‘enemy’…
Despite spending the bulk of my childhood in that entity, I never really connected with the local "culture".
Partly because it seemed like a bad pastiche of other things and I was from England where a lot of those real things seemed to come from. I never really thought about the food and language that was stolen from the local population.
In my ignorance I knew something, it seems.
I wonder if the states who have access to the appropriate amount of force in the region to deal them a meaningful blow (no disrespect to the great people of Yemen), even from selfishness are going to eventually do something before they too are subjected to attacks?
The Yemenis have shown that the US is not capable of fighting.
The longer it takes for someone to interdict physically Israel's activities, the worse it will be for everyone in the region and around the world.
This article raises numerous strong points. I hope that it will be widely circulated.
For geopolitical reasons, the world’s states have backed the criminal Zionist project. Yet the Zionist entity frames itself and Jews generally as eternal victims, the targets of universal hatred, despite all evidence to the contrary. Even Avigail, an intelligent and urbane humanist, moved to Australia (another settler-colonial state) expecting to be hated. The upside-down world that the Zionists have created would be hard to believe if we could not see it ourselves.
The knee-jerk framing of people—entire continents—as «anti-Semitic» is another part of this falsehood that is inseparable from Zionism. Its targets often fall for it because they don't want to be associated with anti-Semitism. In another context, they would not stand for it. Obviously it is illogical to dismiss a political or social statement on the grounds that the person uttering it is allegedly «anti-Semitic», for the allegation is not even relevant: even if it were true that Avigail or I or any other opponent of Zionism were «anti-Semitic», our political statements against Zionism could still be perfectly correct and sound. Unfortunately, otherwise sensible people are often intimidated into silence by the constant threat of being tarred with the «anti-Semitic» brush.
There can be no negotiation with a genocidal entity armed to the eyeteeth by the US and its partners-in-crime. The very suggestion of «negotiating» with the Zionist entity lends undeserved legitimacy to its genocidal, racial-supremacist goals while falsely implying relative parity between it and the Palestinians. Nor would any state that has thrown its weight behind Zionism have any independent rôle to play even if a «peace process» were possible.
That song is appalling, and its imposition upon whole choirs of schoolchildren exemplifies exactly the brainwashing that Avigail has described repeatedly. I fully agree with Avigail that she simply had to leave occupied Palestine for the sake of her soul and her mental well-being.
The current actions by Israel & redefining of antisemitism in the West to include any criticism of Israel, are rapidly “devaluing” the moral value of being labelled an antisemite. While older generations who are pro-humanity, equality, justice, Left, etc may still be offended if they are labelled as antisemite, younger generations may not even be offended, but might actually start to consider it as honourable, to be labelled an antisemite.
An old song says «You ain't been doing nothing if you ain't been called a red». Well, you ain't been doing much for Palestine if you ain't been called an anti-Semite.
From the Zionist perspective, as long as the "antisemite" label remains low-status this is a feature, not a bug, as it provides a pretext for demanding double standards and special pleading.
Similar, Zionists surely were rejoicing at the killing of the two Embassy workers.
This article summarises much of my own (much less severe) exposure to Christian Nationalistic propaganda growing up as a White Afrikaner at the end of apartheid SA. If it was not for the change that occured here in SA in the 1990s & some fortunate encounters in my adolescence, I might have developed a similar “us-against-the-world” (or “laager”) mentality.
Thanks so much for writing and commenting. I always value hearing from people from SA who lived through Apartheid on either side. Your stories should all be written and heard by everyone.
I grew up with the ‘us-against-them’ and believed it, but even as a child I felt resistant to it, or at least resentful initially. It felt like a rotten way to live for a child who just craved to develop, feel wanted, and see good around me.
I had nothing to back up my instincts against this prevailing mentality. It’s just felt like a horrible way to live and I wanted to know why ‘everyone hated me’? When I did manage to ask with the naivety of a child, I was told that it was ‘because we were Jews’. When I asked ‘but why’? I was told that antisemitism was basically like a mental illness that is passed on to people with their ‘mother’s milk’— another way of making a bogus claim that it is genetic. In other words, it couldn’t be helped. It was just how life was. I never truly accepted it and I guess unconsciously set out from a young age to find out for myself. I was fanatical about studying English at school right from when we started in year 5 in primary school when I was 10. It’s almost as if I had an inkling that one day I would leave Israel, although I don’t remember ever thinking about it consciously or believing it was possible for me, given my dreadful, abusive family background.
There is a point where there is nothing more you can say or ask when you try to make sense of it. The whole thing is a dead-end, circular line of argument based on the poison of trauma psychology that is stuck and stagnant.
Now at 60, with 25 years’ experience as a therapist and what I have gained from my own process of recovery, I understand it all much better. But an explanation is not an excuse, and empathy should be there to mitigate whatever harm people feel compelled to inflict on others, because of whatever grievances, real or imagined, or psychological problems they happen to have.
I see little empathy for the Palestinians in Israel today. Only a small minority are real dissenters and objectors in Israeli society. The majority let their fear and need to belong override any empathy they are capable of. One day I realised that my universal human values were far more important to me than belonging (to any group).
I was warned early in the process that I was basically condemning myself to death at the hands of antisemites. But all the death threats, harassment and abuse I ever got was always from Zionists, never from Palestinians or anyone else. So the Zionists, the people I was supposedly a part of, are their own worst enemy really.
Having said all of that, we cannot wait until they get a clue or get therapy. We must focus on saving the Palestinians right now.
One of the memorable statements from Madiba has been that both Blacks (the oppressed) as well as Whites (the oppressors) were victims of apartheid. Though the injuries are different and reveal themselves differently over time.
For many years I was ashamed of being called Afrikaner, because of the terrible connotations and the history of exploitation and oppression, which inherently went against my values and principles. I called myself an Afrikaans speaking South African. However, when I read Steve Biko's "I Write What I Like" writings (written in the 1970s), and especially his admonishments to Blacks in SA not to be ashamed of being Black because their is nothing to be ashamed about, I came to accept my Afrikaner heritage with all its baggage, and make it my life's responsibility to "pay back" and make recompense for the privileged life I've been able to lead - still a long way to go.
As you say, the immediate action MUST be to stop the killing of Palestinians, by whatever means necessary and implement actions to prevent killings and death in the future. It is also clear from your own experience, that many millions of Israelis are also victims of the Zionist ideology and it will require a lot of hard work in order to heal not just the Palestinians who have been oppressed, traumatised & terrorised by Israel, but also the millions of Israelis who were required to forego their humanity in order to do the oppression, violence and terrorism on the Palestinians on behalf of the Israeli state. Many may not want to, but from experiences in SA, somewhere between 50% to 80% of Israelis might be able to be "rehabilitated" and able to "escape" their indoctrination. Most importantly, what must be stopped is the trauma which affects everyone being transferred onto future generations in order to reduce future violence.
Yes, both the elevated group and the oppressed group are victims. They should not, however, be placed on a par.
The elevated group is limited by its false belief in its superiority. Eager to cherish its undeserved status, it fails to appreciate how limited and foolish it is, and how badly manipulated and controlled.
There is no need for you to feel ashamed of something that is merely an accident of birth, just as there is no reason to feel proud of it.
Having grown up in the US, I have wondered how I turned out as I have, rather than becoming like most people there. Like you, I grew up in a racist settler-colonial society, one that very much treated itself as superior («American exceptionalism»). But I rejected its values, its culture. Even as a child I knew that something was wrong with it.
That paranoia... a paranoia so evident in a Christian Zionist I encountered in October 23. Truly one of the kindest people I know yet her eyes wide with fear as she told me how much the Arabs hated the Israelis...
That song... a predecessor to that appalling blood lust song sung so sweetly by Israeli children that stunned not enough of us a year or so ago.
Thank you for bringing your experiences to the fore.
I was one of those kids once, and I remember how horrified I was when I finally realised what all those lyrics I used to sing as a child actually meant…
Zionism as a movement and an ideology has been centered around the main postulate that European (and after years of propaganda, also non-European) Jews are inherently aliens and will (and should) never live among non-Jews - because the Gentiles and non-Jews inherently hate Jews (why? see point 1 - because they are inherently aliens, etc.) Circular reasoning arguing that Jews must be separated from non-Jews - either physically or tribally - and pursue their own thriving and hegemony, not consulting non-Jews what is allowed to do and what is not allowed.
Ideology sits on top of a particular psychology, or in other words, it is an expression of a particular psychology. Nazi mindset has existed long before Nazism appeared as an ideology. I would argue that all colonial and settler-colonial movements are based on the same mindset…
Europe is the result of the migration of many different peoples at different times. I suppose this did lead to displacements of people already there, killings (of the men) and rape (of the women), coexistence, differentiating languages, cultural skills ...
When did the knowledge of superiority come into play - superiority other than physical strengh, brutal military force - ? When did it turn into supremacy?
It was there with the crusades.
It was already there during the reconquista on the iberian peninsula, and the conquista of the 'newly discovered' Americas. Indeed, without this mindset of superiority nobody would have spoken of discovery, as there were people there already (there always were).
The English legal tradition has, believe it or not, a law of colonialism. In «conquered colonies», the prevailing legal system continued until the conquering power (Britain) changed it. The many colonies regarded as «settled colonies», however, were considered to be _terrae nullius_ 'noöne's land' and thus to lack a legal system; consequently, the invaders' law took effect upon settlement. Of course, just about every colony other than Pitcairn Island had a population whether Britain chose to recognise it or not.
How far back? As far as imperialist capitalism exists. The difference between the historic past and the end of the 19th-the 20th century is imperialism and the use of industrial level of destruction, aimed at establishing of a hegemony on a global scale. Such as British, German-Austrian, American, Zionist. It is first and foremost, division of humanity on Uber- and Untermenschen, civilizational supremacism (Discovery Dictrine, La Mission Civilisatrice", "Dog In Manger", "White Man's Burden", "Clash of Civilizations", "Judeo-Christian values"), an ideology that claims that certain nations or races are inherently inferior and must be subjugated, controlled, enslaved or eliminated.
The main belief in Zionism, Nazism, British and American imperialism is that they have a special right to do unspeakable atrocities to other peoples because they are superior and better - and other people are inherently inferior or savage.
This belief is accompanied by unprecedented WMD and means of terror, such as bombs, prisons, surveillance, sieges and regime changes.
As one Israeli woman said "It is a war and we are just stronger! Deal with it!"
"... because they are superior and better - and other people are inherently inferior or savage."
How did this idea enter the brain of [some] people?
The 'hegemony on global scale' is a very new idea. 'Globalists' are trying to reduce our world through language (the word 'gobal' itself) and images.
Lockstepped covid showed that they still are not able to do so. Our world is much bigger than just 'a globe', and we can magnify it through the words we use.
It's a way to rationalise domination. One group grains power over another; its members see that not as oppression and subjugation but as a just reflection of their superiority. If they are superior, why shouldn't they be on top? They prefer to see themselves as deserving and worthy, not as cruel and evil oppressors.
This idea has been indoctrinated into certain nations' minds through modification of religious texts, such as Talmudic Judaism, Scofield Bible, Protestantism. These are relatively new developments, compared to Judaism proper, Palestinian/Orthodox Christianity or Islam. When these ideas are combined with unprecedented industrial power and manufacturing of previously unavailable weaponry, the capitalist credo of grabbing, stealing, dominating, subjugating and abusing for profit is met with corresponding means.
Zionism as a belief existed for centuries, starting with Maimonides. But only in the 19th century it became possible to enact it politically. Same with imperialism, Napoleon also wanted the world domination, but he lacked the means.
I said, Nazi ideology. Not Nazism per se. Nazi ideology is approximately same old as political Zionism, the end of the 19th Century. Britain, US, Europe. It includes eugenics, nation-breeding, human hierarchy, race science, division of humanity on higher and lower races, blood purity, etc.
Zionism is THAT but addressing exclusively Jews. Herzl had an idea to completely separate Jews from Gentiles. He said that antisemitism is a result of separation of Jews from non-Jews but in the same breath he ALSO said that in order to combat antisemitism, one needs to remove Jews from Europe and practically end the so-called Diaspora .
It is of course a sure recipe to make Jews (Zionists) even more alien and hostile than ever before.
The thing is, Scott, Zionism is antisemitism. Zionists hated Jews. All of them, except Zionists. Weizmann called them "economic and moral dust" and said that they must perish. In 1938. He said that only the new kind, the strong, young ones will go to Palestine and settle there. Zionism is a breeding project. To create a "new Jew" out of hatred for Jewish "diaspora". Zionists also hated and despised Middle Eastern Jews.
So yes, Zionism is as antisemitic as Nazism or fascism. That is why Zionists court white supremacists and white supremacists, such as Brevik, are enamored with Zionism.
Yes, Zionism is indeed anti-Semitic. The early Zionists saw the Ashkenazi Jews as weak, passive people. The Zionists promoted the anti-Semitic notion that Jews had no place in Europe. On that they entirely agreed with the Christians conducting the pogroms.
Zionists courted non-Jewish English anti-Semites to secure massive migration of Jews to Palestine when it was under British control. Zionists solicited the Nazis, too and cut deals with them for the sake of the criminal Zionist project.
CODEPINK, in partnership with Palestine Youth Movement’s campaign #MaskOffMaersk, is applying pressure on Maersk, the multinational shipping company sending military cargo to Israel. In unmasking Maersk, we’ve learned that Zurich Insurance insures Maersk’s weapons shipments to Israel for its genocide in Gaza.
On May 15, Nakba Day, they attempted to speak with Zurich Insurance in Chicago — they responded by kicking us out of the building.
Join the campaign and sign the letter: Zurich: Stop Insuring Genocide!
Israel is a direct reflection and extension of British and US settler colonialism, wearing the ugly mask of Zionism. Plus, and primarily, a terminal case of capitalism. This Genocide is the end. It’s over. The Zionist Israeli state, the US Empire, the colonial exploitation by Europe & Britain, is all collapsing. It will flop around a little more, but it’s over. There is a new world rising in the East, and it’s even bigger than China.
I learned about a new resource for those wanting to do something for and about Gaza. Please take a look and see if there’s something that you can do here:
We call on the newly elected, American Pope Leo XIV to do whatever it takes to save Gaza and stop the bombing, and end the starvation. Let him go to Gaza and stand with the suffering people who are being massacred by Israel and the Western posers. Is there anything more important in today's world than this?
The gringos of the Estragos Unidos have arrogantly claimed for themselves the name of a pair of continents making up an entire hemisphere. Much of the world has stupidly gone along with this piece of imperial hubris.
I join you in rejecting the reference to Palestine as the «holy land». As for the Roman Catholic Church, it has thrown its weight behind plenty of projects such as Zionism; its support for the Zionist entity doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
You made my day! Valió la pena desvelarse a las cinco.
Prefiero los “estragos unidos”, precisamente por lo parecido al original: tuve que leerlo dos veces para darme cuenta de la intención. Por otra parte, tambien me gusta los “United Nothings”.
The Catholic Church opposes Zionism. I know. I’m Catholic. We have plenty to be ashamed of, but that heresy isn’t ours. It’s Protestant, and, in particular, Evangelical. There are Palestinian Catholics in Gaza, btw.
The Catholic Church used to oppose Zionism. Now it falls all over itself to pander to the Zionist entity. Some years ago, Pope Francis said that criticism of the Zionist entity constituted anti-Semitism and that the Zionist entity had the right to exist. That doesn't sound like opposition to Zionism.
" ... international pressure will not compel Israel to abandon its settler-colonial ambitions. Rather, it will likely accelerate them."
Your reasoning feels so plausible that it can't get any more frightening. If - and I've no doubts about it - every pressure from outside, even boots on the ground, will only nurture the shared psyche of israeli society, of being victims and not being loved by the world outside, than nothing at all can escape this self fulfilling fear, it all will contribute to strenghen this perception.
And in the end - we can already see it growing - what the israeli society fears will indeed come true: they are - as group, as country, perceived as - mildly speaking - as 'not good'.
This is a vicious circle. Boots on the ground are necessary to save the Palestinians, as people, as a culture as a nation.
But what would be your advice to save the israeli society from its ever speeding up 'hamster wheel'? [Not that I am too eager to save israeli psyche, but I feel there is pressure building up in israeli society itself which could explode into a even much bigger desaster.]
To be honest Arturo, I don’t really care much just now about the psychology of Israeli society or its soul. Right now the priority is to stop Israel’s genocide machine and save the Palestinians. They are on borrowed time and Israel is determined to finish the job. When every last Palestinian child is safe, then we can turn our attention to Israeli psychology.
Back in the 1990s there was a ‘lightbulb' joke about therapy: ‘How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the lightbulb needs to want to change'. I am not seeing anyone in Israel asking us to save them from themselves…
I still hope that enough secular Jews leave Israel, and that this will weaken it. I doubt that that the religious Zealots left behind, who are getting ready to take over the country, will see any need to change. They suffer from the 'Massadah complex', which is the same as the psychology of murder-suicide.
There will not be a civil war in Israel (or it’s highly unlikely), and the remaining secular population will succumb to the rule of religious Zionism. Israel is a very dangerous country and everywhere you look, except for small bubbles, you will find insanity.
The whole of the settler-colonial society will have to be reëducated. The process is likely to take a few generations.
South Africa and the US offer good illustrations. Decades after the end of overt, legalised subjugation of Black people (and its replacement by covert, nominally illegal subjugation of Black people), the white settler populations have not overcome their supreme attitudes. The Zionist settler population is far worse, precisely because, as Avigail has pointed out, Zionism has been hellbent from the beginning on eliminating all Palestinians from Palestine, whereas the whites in the US and South Africa have sought not to kill but to exploit the Blacks.
To me the Levant is not much darker than white. And the zionist settlers have many more shades to them. (But I might be colourblind.)
To me this is about 'we against the rest of the world'. And the Palestinians are the first.
Of course this is racism, but it also is much more than that.
Boots on the ground will save lives. I've no doubt about that (though I don't see Europe establishing them either. Should the UK, France, Turkey and Germany again send troops? Better not ...) But boots on the ground won't remedy the underlying roots of zionism. Reeducating is often changing one indoctrination for another. It doesn't work, as I see it. See Germany. See the USA.
It won’t, you’re right. In fact, this will only strengthen its resolve and reinforce its worldview. that’s because Israeli society interprets everything and anything done against it as motivated by hatred of Jews, not by the desire to save Palestinians or anything else. Israel does not accept that it is doing anything wrong to the Palestinians! I am dead serious about this. They see the world differently from everyone else. But right now the priority must be saving the Palestinians from a comprehensive genocide and ethnic cleansing.
I was not suggesting anything about black and white; I was using the US and South Africa as examples of settler-colonial societies in which the occupiers retain their attitude of supremacy long after a superficial change in the social structure. Reëducation of a population trained to view itself as superior will take a long time—generations.
I dunno, make Israelis subject to obligations and *consequences* instead of de facto unlimited rights and watch them get a whole new attitude, right quick.
Germans were all chest-thumping "the world belongs to the strong!" Social Darwinists until they got a taste of the Red Army and decided that this tough guy schtick wasn't so much fun when you are on the receiving end.
They promptly morphed into the biggest metrosexual weenies on the wimpiest continent on the planet.
But Israel won’t, or at least not likely (and I would very much like to be wrong). Israel is not Germany and their mania is far deeper than any that existed in German society during the Nazi era. Read _Darkness Over Germany_ by Amy Buller.
The old human lady I used to practice my Polish on told me about seeing the Germans fleeing Poland in 1943-44, running as fast as their legs would carry them, abandoning equipment, abandoning wounded comrades, anything that would slow them down, and she knew that something truly terrifying must be pursuing them.
In 1941-42, they had thought the Germans to be invincible. If anything she said, they were more sadistic running out then marching in, a playground bully who had met a much bigger, meaner bully and was terrified of losing his grip.
For that matter, I talked with an old Ukrainian, a veteran of The Great Patriotic Fatherland War, about captured SSmen on their knees, pleading for their lives, crying, offering bribes, showing photos of their children, promising obscene sexual favors....funny how that works in humans.
Indeed, Germany would happily have overrun the whole world had the Red Army not beaten the living hell out of the Germans. When the settler population occupying Palestine similarly gets the stuffing kicked out of it, it will behave exactly as the defeated Germans did.
Older generations might decide to stay & fight, even deploy their nuclear weapons as a means of defeating the “enemy”, especially the Ben-Gvirs & Smotrichs in Israel. but most will likely force their children to leave, some “escorted” by the elderly (60+ yr olds) though many of the indoctrinated 15yr olds & older may decide to stay & fight.
However, if this were to eventually happen, what would the tales, stories & legends these youngsters grow up with be?
Do Israelis not understand their peril? When Iran struck Nevatim, it made clear that it doesn't need nuclear warheads to eradicate tiny Israel overnight. If all the Palestinians are purged, what's to prevent that?
I don’t think they do. While they are chronically anxious, they are also arrogant and believe that they are invincible. I know this sounds like a contradiction, but this is genuinely what Israeli society is like. It is filled with inner contradiction and makes little sense. All I care about right now is how dangerous they are, and the fact that they are absolutely determined to eliminate all Palestinian presence from all of historic Palestine.
Why would Herzl, a wealthy and well-integrated German Jew, who has not even been to any Slavic countries, grab a garmoshka, is a mystery.
Israeli Zionists cannot accept the fact that Zionism was born from Western race-science, civilizational white supremacism and wealthy, greedy and narcissistic Jews' feeling of being inherently underappreciated, it was not born from any "persecution" of the Jewish Diaspora in poor Slavic shtettles.
He wouldn’t. This song, as stupid as it is, is very clever at weaving different narratives, and unrelated elements together. I have grown up with this very effective mind manipulation especially with the use of popular art in Israel. Herzl had nothing to do with garmoshkas or music for that matter, especially Russian. The lyrics of this song create a link between him and the dominant culture brought to Israel by Russian Jews. At the time Israel was still trying to be socialist and viewed itself with smug superiority as a ‘fair’ socialist culture, which of course it was anything but. The ‘white’ supremacist, so-called socialist culture dominated everything. ‘Black’ Jews, that is Mizrahi Jews could not get work and were not allowed to join the big trade union that dominated the country at the time and through which you could get work.
This stupid song has many layers to it, that I could easily go into, but not that interested in doing because it doesn’t deserve my energy. But it is a really good example of narrative creation in Israel and the joining of unrelated elements to attempt to cobble together a coherent identity narrative.
Jews in Israel back when I was a child were from all over the place and were speaking different languages. I grew up hearing Romanian, Russian, Polish, Yiddish, Arabic, German, Bulgarian, just name it. There was a real danger that social cohesion would not emerge naturally. Also, as a genocidal settler-colonial society the governments of that era felt an urgency to create an identity narrative that unified everyone.
As I explained elsewhere in the comments, Israel deliberately destroyed the first generation of migrants from Arab countries practically coerced to come to Israel. They kept them in hovels for decades, discriminated against them, said they were primitive that lived on trees and would stab you in the back —the identical stereotypes Israel taught about ‘Arabs’ (aka Palestinians). It destroyed their social structure and families and then indoctrinated their children. These people knew the ‘whole world’ was not ‘against us’ because they came from Muslim countries where Jews were perfectly fine. Antisemitism was a European phenomenon. The authorities in Israel could not have allowed that generation of migrants to feel an affinity with the Palestinians, experience empathy for them or question the prevailing Zionist narrative. So they destroyed them. Their children became thoroughly indoctrinated, especially after Israel society started to make concessions to Mizrahi cuisine and music. Some of the worst perpetrators in Gaza and the CWB are Mizrahi Jews. Nothing in Israel happened by accident.
People of Irish descent in the US were lumped in with Blacks in the nineteenth century. By the first few decades of the twentieth century, however, they were quintessentially white. They elevated themselves by serving as police officers and other agents of the state who performed the important task of oppressing the Blacks. There seems to be a parallel to the Mizrahi Jews whom you describe.
Settler-colonial society in occupied Palestine has always put the Ashkenazi population ahead of other Jews (never mind non-Jews). The Mizrahi Jews were kept in distant, desolate places and were forced to live in bad conditions. Black Jews from Ethiopia were even forced to undergo «conversion» to Judaism. Thus the Ashkenazi Jews colour-coded the settler population in its racist way, while seeking to establish cohesion among settlers in occupied Palestine.
That's one aspect of that song that may not be evident: the unified «we» of the song papers over the reality of Zionist racism by implying falsely that «we» are united and equal.
The Ethiopian Jews who came to Israel didn’t in the end have to ‘convert’. But the Rabbinate suggested at the time pricking the men’s penises to symbolise circumcision... I remember that. I was still there at the time. It never happened but it was appalling.
Israel has always been a fundamentally racist country. Like you said before, sometimes the dominant group chooses to accept those it had initially rejected (US mainstream and the Irish immigrants). In Israel there was always a necessity to create a cohesive society if the Zionist project was to succeed. You cannot complete it if a huge segment of the population challenges the official narrative and undermines the entire premise on which the project is based… The destruction of the first generation of Mizrahi migrants was quite deliberate. I remember those times very well. We had one of those government shanty towns not far from my primary school. We were indoctrinated to think of Moroccan, Iraqi, or Yemenite Jews as primitive and dangerous, Moroccan in particular (‘they’d stab you in the back with a knife at the first opportunity’)… etc. It was disgusting beyond belief and all quite deliberate. There is no question Israel was heavily dominated by ‘white’ Ashkenazi Jews. My own mother was fixated on seeing herself as Ashkenazi, and more cultured and superior, but it turns out she wasn’t Ashkenazi. (I hope she rolls in her grave…)
Thanks for correcting me. I remember reading about a proposal to have the Ethiopians undergo formal «conversion»; I didn't know that it had not been carried out. But the very suggestion exhibits appalling racism.
In the US, circumcision was widespread until fairly recent years and still is to a smaller extent. Male converts to Judaism, even in the Reform movement, undergo the pricking of the penis as a substitute for circumcision if they have already been circumcised.
By the way, some of the established Jews who had been living in Palestine before the Zionist invasion were driven out during the Nakba right along with the Palestinians. Those Jews largely spoke Arabic…
The whole Zionist project is inherently racist, postulating as it does that Jews have no place in Europe and that Jews should have exclusive dominion over a land primarily inhabited by others. Unsurprisingly, Zionist racism has created racial distinctions among Jews as well.
Zionism was the project of an élite—people like Herzl who looked down upon the Jewish masses and certainly did not have their interests at heart. European Jews overwhelmingly opposed Zionism until the Nazi era.
And, yes, Zionism is a poisonous fruit of the «scientific» racism of the late nineteenth century (common in Europe and especially in the US), combined with ancient Jewish racism (viewing Jews as the «chosen people»; making Jewish identity a matter of maternal descent).
"After a year of tireless investigation, we have identified the military unit responsible, as well as the commander who led the operation that killed Hind, her family, and the two medics who tried to save her."
The Hind Rajab Foundation has filed a war crimes complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, on May 3, Hind Rajab's 7th birthday.
To know more about The Hind Rajab Foundation, there are a couple of really good interviews that Glenn Greenwald did on his Rumble platform, and Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada, did with the head of this organisation, Dyad Abou Jahjah. It was very informative.
Here's a petition calling for accountability for the arrest of Ali Abunimah in Switzerland for the crime of speaking about Palestinian rights:
Avigail paints an accurate picture of the Isreali mentality. Boots on the ground may be the only option. Also, the Palestinians on the West Bank must overthrow the quisling PA, put weapons into hands and fight for their very existence. As Che said: homeland or death.
Military force is certainly the only option, and the so-called «Palestinian Authority» is indeed nothing but a quisling puppet of the Zionist entity.
¡Patria o muerte!
Even as I have admired Ernesto Che Guevara since childhood, there is a fundamental difference: he was a son of the ruling elite. Look at those rebeldes - what a friendly language we had back then! - who still live today. José ‘Pepe’ Mújica, Dilma Roussef, Lucía Topolanski Saavedra … they turned out to be real uruguayos, real brasileiros though not native originally.
They fought for the dispossesed. Not for themselves. La solidaridad es la ternura de los pueblos.
Where are the sons and daughters from the centre of the israeli (lebanese, syrian, kurdish, turkish) society to take that task? Name one, just one.
There was a short window of oportunity, during the 'Arab Spring' that someone could have emerged.
Ibrahim Traoré? Surprising things are happening in Westafrica.
"Where are the sons and daughters from the centre of the israeli (lebanese, syrian, kurdish, turkish) society to take that task?"
Avigail.
They’ve long become completely assimilated into mainstream Israeli Zionist society. This was happening even before I left. Jewish Israeli society has a cult mentality. If you want to be accepted into the mainstream, which isn’t just a social issue but includes getting employment and a mortgage, you need to fall into line.
There is freedom of speech in Israel but within well-defined limits that everyone knows from a very young age. You can't question Zionism or suggest that it is a settler-colonial movement, or show too much empathy to the Palestinians. This will earn you the title of ‘traitor’.
It is getting more difficult for dissenters these days in Israel but they’re still not under any serious threat—unlike Germany in the 1930s or the Palestinians inside Israel. Or in other words, Jews can choose to refuse and resist but they don’t because the majority agree with Israel’s aims and believe the Palestinians are antisemitic monsters who need to disappear. I can tell from the photos and videos that came out of Gaza that some of the most vile perpetrators in Gaza are Israeli from Mizrahi background.
I’m also from Mizrahi/Spanish origins. My father’s father was born in Turkey and my grandmother in Greece. My mother’s parents were from Romania but their background was in Spain—they denied it and always wanted to be seen as ‘white’ European Jews. My mother and her parents were profoundly racist against ‘black’ (Mizrahi) Jews. Although my parents were a ‘mixed marriage’ my mother’s parents never approved, and my mother always felt and openly behaved superior to my father and his side of the family.
The only thing that stopped a confrontation in Israeli society that was too brutal or prolonged—there were some clashes in the 1970s—and that eventually also led to the complete ‘assimilation’ of Mizrahi Jews into Israeli society is the deliberately inculcated sense of shared Jewishness, and the powerful narrative that Jews are always in danger.
Mizrahi Jews did not suffer any persecution in their original Muslim countries, but Israel could not allow this truth to spread, so it destroyed that first generation of migrants it brought to Israel. It couldn’t have them tell people that Muslims and Arabs were fine and didn’t hate Jews. Israel needed them to disappear so they wouldn’t ‘contaminate’ the European Zionist narrative. Israel was dominated by the ‘white’ Ashkenazi Jews who brought a colonial mindset and hatred for darker-skinned people who did not speak European languages. They originally maligned those migrants as ‘primitives’ who ‘lived on trees’ and would ‘stab you in the back’.
I grew up on these stereotypes, which were similar even identical to the ones used against all Arabs—the world Palestinian was never used. We were taught that ‘those people’ (Palestinians) were ‘Arabs’ and that all Arabs were ‘primitives’ who hated Jews for being Jews. You can see how the original generation of Mizrahi Jews who were forced to come to Israel under false pretences and deceitful acts by Israel, had to be silenced and eliminated. They could have easily been more sympathetic to the Palestinians because of similarities in culture, language, cuisine. Israel destroyed the families of those original generations and then indoctrinated their children, who became fully assimilated into the Israeli Zionist mainstream.
Through its education system, Israel made the children of Mizrahi Jews despise their parents’ generation, reject and despise Arabic and Arab cultures, forget their parents’ stories and experiences and completely adopt Israeli identity. A part of this was allowing Mizrahi music and some food to become mainstream. It was a kind of a concession to those cultures, because assimilation that is too strong and demands complete abandonment of one’s identity, can lead to resistance. Instead, you make some accommodations and ‘normalise’ some aspects of their culture, so they can feel ‘accepted’. Israel has always sought to create a ‘melting pot’ to enforce one cohesive identity defined by the ideals of Zionism, such as the ‘new Jew’ etc. I was a product of that.
Incidentally, my entire DNA is from the Iberian peninsula what is now Portugal and Spain apart from 0.9% Neanderthal. Going back 100,000 years I have no DNA from the Eastern Basin of the Mediterranean, which means I am likely descended from people who were converted to Judaism rather than have any origins in ancient Paléstina (the Roman name for Palestine)
The mythologizing of the foundation of Israel aside, if you look at the well-known founders and builders of Israel, none of them had ever been persecuted by the nazis. In fact, those zionists were safely away in the UK, the USA, or in the British mandate of Palestine when the nazis were perpetrating the holocaust:
Zeev Jabotinski
Chaim Weizmann
David Ben Gurion
Golda Meir
Ariel Sharon
Moshe Dayan
Yitzhak Shamir
Shimon Peres
Looking at the biography of the presidents of Israel, the pattern is even more pronounced, with all of them having immigrated to or been born in Palestine when Hitler came to power:
Yosef Sprinzak
Yitzhak Ben-Zvi
Kadish Luz
Zalman Shazar
Ephraim Katzir
Yitzhak Navon
Chaim Herzog
Ezer Weizman
Reuven Rivlin
And the same characteristic is evident for the prime ministers:
Moshe Sharett
Levi Eshkol
Yigal Allon
Yitzhak Rabin
Menachem Begin escaped Poland in the nick of time. He was persecuted by the NKVD, but he never confronted the nazis.
For that matter, the Israeli attempts to stamp out Yiddish in favor of modern Hebrew is also most instructive.
Modern Hebrew is a Westernised development, rather removed from the biblical language. It is European in pronunciation and syntax. Much of the vocabulary comes from Arabic.
Modern Hebrew vocabulary is based on Biblical Hebrew. It included giving new meanings to words from the Bible and newly invented words that often borrow their structure, even meaning often from the French language. For example the word for potato in Hebrew is identical to the French ‘pomme de terre’.
There are words in modern Hebrew that are originate from ancient Assyrian or taken straight out of it, for example the world for rooster.
Hebrew grammar had to be invented from scratch as the grammar in the Bible is too limited and not suited for modern life. Some of the principles of modern Hebrew grammar were adapted directly from French.
There are words in Hebrew that are similar to Arabic, but that is because both languages have a similar linguistic origin. Israel has appropriated some words from Arabic, and it’s not surprising that these are mostly swear words that are quite vile. This helped to malign Arabic and reinforce the idea that it is a ‘primitive’ language belonging to a ‘primitive’ and ‘vile’ people. Mizrahi Jews were actively discouraged from speaking Arabic and their guttural accent in Hebrew was ridiculed and shamed. This has continued to the present. There was a movement to teach us Arabic in primary school but the initiative was abandoned very quickly due to public and political pressure. You can’t ‘humanise’ your ‘enemy’…
José Mujica died last week, on 13 May 2025.
Yes. 😢🇺🇾
Che Guevara is no role model. He was a Maoist who tried to start a nuclear war and very nearly succeeded.
Despite spending the bulk of my childhood in that entity, I never really connected with the local "culture".
Partly because it seemed like a bad pastiche of other things and I was from England where a lot of those real things seemed to come from. I never really thought about the food and language that was stolen from the local population.
In my ignorance I knew something, it seems.
I wonder if the states who have access to the appropriate amount of force in the region to deal them a meaningful blow (no disrespect to the great people of Yemen), even from selfishness are going to eventually do something before they too are subjected to attacks?
The Yemenis have shown that the US is not capable of fighting.
The longer it takes for someone to interdict physically Israel's activities, the worse it will be for everyone in the region and around the world.
The caged beast will lash out.
This article raises numerous strong points. I hope that it will be widely circulated.
For geopolitical reasons, the world’s states have backed the criminal Zionist project. Yet the Zionist entity frames itself and Jews generally as eternal victims, the targets of universal hatred, despite all evidence to the contrary. Even Avigail, an intelligent and urbane humanist, moved to Australia (another settler-colonial state) expecting to be hated. The upside-down world that the Zionists have created would be hard to believe if we could not see it ourselves.
The knee-jerk framing of people—entire continents—as «anti-Semitic» is another part of this falsehood that is inseparable from Zionism. Its targets often fall for it because they don't want to be associated with anti-Semitism. In another context, they would not stand for it. Obviously it is illogical to dismiss a political or social statement on the grounds that the person uttering it is allegedly «anti-Semitic», for the allegation is not even relevant: even if it were true that Avigail or I or any other opponent of Zionism were «anti-Semitic», our political statements against Zionism could still be perfectly correct and sound. Unfortunately, otherwise sensible people are often intimidated into silence by the constant threat of being tarred with the «anti-Semitic» brush.
There can be no negotiation with a genocidal entity armed to the eyeteeth by the US and its partners-in-crime. The very suggestion of «negotiating» with the Zionist entity lends undeserved legitimacy to its genocidal, racial-supremacist goals while falsely implying relative parity between it and the Palestinians. Nor would any state that has thrown its weight behind Zionism have any independent rôle to play even if a «peace process» were possible.
That song is appalling, and its imposition upon whole choirs of schoolchildren exemplifies exactly the brainwashing that Avigail has described repeatedly. I fully agree with Avigail that she simply had to leave occupied Palestine for the sake of her soul and her mental well-being.
The current actions by Israel & redefining of antisemitism in the West to include any criticism of Israel, are rapidly “devaluing” the moral value of being labelled an antisemite. While older generations who are pro-humanity, equality, justice, Left, etc may still be offended if they are labelled as antisemite, younger generations may not even be offended, but might actually start to consider it as honourable, to be labelled an antisemite.
I'm older generation I suppose and have made a 180º turn regarding my feelings about being labelled whatsoever.
Smearwords tell more about those using them. Their only function is to end all conversation.
I don't allow anyone to shut me down. I dissent when I want to dissent and consider this the fundamental step of human emancipation.
In this context this would be:
Free Palestina! 🇵🇸 and
No impunity for Israel! ⚖️
An old song says «You ain't been doing nothing if you ain't been called a red». Well, you ain't been doing much for Palestine if you ain't been called an anti-Semite.
From the Zionist perspective, as long as the "antisemite" label remains low-status this is a feature, not a bug, as it provides a pretext for demanding double standards and special pleading.
Similar, Zionists surely were rejoicing at the killing of the two Embassy workers.
This article summarises much of my own (much less severe) exposure to Christian Nationalistic propaganda growing up as a White Afrikaner at the end of apartheid SA. If it was not for the change that occured here in SA in the 1990s & some fortunate encounters in my adolescence, I might have developed a similar “us-against-the-world” (or “laager”) mentality.
Thanks so much for writing and commenting. I always value hearing from people from SA who lived through Apartheid on either side. Your stories should all be written and heard by everyone.
I grew up with the ‘us-against-them’ and believed it, but even as a child I felt resistant to it, or at least resentful initially. It felt like a rotten way to live for a child who just craved to develop, feel wanted, and see good around me.
I had nothing to back up my instincts against this prevailing mentality. It’s just felt like a horrible way to live and I wanted to know why ‘everyone hated me’? When I did manage to ask with the naivety of a child, I was told that it was ‘because we were Jews’. When I asked ‘but why’? I was told that antisemitism was basically like a mental illness that is passed on to people with their ‘mother’s milk’— another way of making a bogus claim that it is genetic. In other words, it couldn’t be helped. It was just how life was. I never truly accepted it and I guess unconsciously set out from a young age to find out for myself. I was fanatical about studying English at school right from when we started in year 5 in primary school when I was 10. It’s almost as if I had an inkling that one day I would leave Israel, although I don’t remember ever thinking about it consciously or believing it was possible for me, given my dreadful, abusive family background.
There is a point where there is nothing more you can say or ask when you try to make sense of it. The whole thing is a dead-end, circular line of argument based on the poison of trauma psychology that is stuck and stagnant.
Now at 60, with 25 years’ experience as a therapist and what I have gained from my own process of recovery, I understand it all much better. But an explanation is not an excuse, and empathy should be there to mitigate whatever harm people feel compelled to inflict on others, because of whatever grievances, real or imagined, or psychological problems they happen to have.
I see little empathy for the Palestinians in Israel today. Only a small minority are real dissenters and objectors in Israeli society. The majority let their fear and need to belong override any empathy they are capable of. One day I realised that my universal human values were far more important to me than belonging (to any group).
I was warned early in the process that I was basically condemning myself to death at the hands of antisemites. But all the death threats, harassment and abuse I ever got was always from Zionists, never from Palestinians or anyone else. So the Zionists, the people I was supposedly a part of, are their own worst enemy really.
Having said all of that, we cannot wait until they get a clue or get therapy. We must focus on saving the Palestinians right now.
One of the memorable statements from Madiba has been that both Blacks (the oppressed) as well as Whites (the oppressors) were victims of apartheid. Though the injuries are different and reveal themselves differently over time.
For many years I was ashamed of being called Afrikaner, because of the terrible connotations and the history of exploitation and oppression, which inherently went against my values and principles. I called myself an Afrikaans speaking South African. However, when I read Steve Biko's "I Write What I Like" writings (written in the 1970s), and especially his admonishments to Blacks in SA not to be ashamed of being Black because their is nothing to be ashamed about, I came to accept my Afrikaner heritage with all its baggage, and make it my life's responsibility to "pay back" and make recompense for the privileged life I've been able to lead - still a long way to go.
As you say, the immediate action MUST be to stop the killing of Palestinians, by whatever means necessary and implement actions to prevent killings and death in the future. It is also clear from your own experience, that many millions of Israelis are also victims of the Zionist ideology and it will require a lot of hard work in order to heal not just the Palestinians who have been oppressed, traumatised & terrorised by Israel, but also the millions of Israelis who were required to forego their humanity in order to do the oppression, violence and terrorism on the Palestinians on behalf of the Israeli state. Many may not want to, but from experiences in SA, somewhere between 50% to 80% of Israelis might be able to be "rehabilitated" and able to "escape" their indoctrination. Most importantly, what must be stopped is the trauma which affects everyone being transferred onto future generations in order to reduce future violence.
Yes, both the elevated group and the oppressed group are victims. They should not, however, be placed on a par.
The elevated group is limited by its false belief in its superiority. Eager to cherish its undeserved status, it fails to appreciate how limited and foolish it is, and how badly manipulated and controlled.
There is no need for you to feel ashamed of something that is merely an accident of birth, just as there is no reason to feel proud of it.
Having grown up in the US, I have wondered how I turned out as I have, rather than becoming like most people there. Like you, I grew up in a racist settler-colonial society, one that very much treated itself as superior («American exceptionalism»). But I rejected its values, its culture. Even as a child I knew that something was wrong with it.
That paranoia... a paranoia so evident in a Christian Zionist I encountered in October 23. Truly one of the kindest people I know yet her eyes wide with fear as she told me how much the Arabs hated the Israelis...
That song... a predecessor to that appalling blood lust song sung so sweetly by Israeli children that stunned not enough of us a year or so ago.
Thank you for bringing your experiences to the fore.
I was one of those kids once, and I remember how horrified I was when I finally realised what all those lyrics I used to sing as a child actually meant…
It is wrong to force such garbage onto impressionable children who don't have the ability to refuse.
Zionism as a movement and an ideology has been centered around the main postulate that European (and after years of propaganda, also non-European) Jews are inherently aliens and will (and should) never live among non-Jews - because the Gentiles and non-Jews inherently hate Jews (why? see point 1 - because they are inherently aliens, etc.) Circular reasoning arguing that Jews must be separated from non-Jews - either physically or tribally - and pursue their own thriving and hegemony, not consulting non-Jews what is allowed to do and what is not allowed.
It is just a mirror of Nazi ideology.
Zionism predates naziism. So how does the mirror work now?
Ideology sits on top of a particular psychology, or in other words, it is an expression of a particular psychology. Nazi mindset has existed long before Nazism appeared as an ideology. I would argue that all colonial and settler-colonial movements are based on the same mindset…
How far back takes us that idea?
Europe is the result of the migration of many different peoples at different times. I suppose this did lead to displacements of people already there, killings (of the men) and rape (of the women), coexistence, differentiating languages, cultural skills ...
When did the knowledge of superiority come into play - superiority other than physical strengh, brutal military force - ? When did it turn into supremacy?
It was there with the crusades.
It was already there during the reconquista on the iberian peninsula, and the conquista of the 'newly discovered' Americas. Indeed, without this mindset of superiority nobody would have spoken of discovery, as there were people there already (there always were).
The English legal tradition has, believe it or not, a law of colonialism. In «conquered colonies», the prevailing legal system continued until the conquering power (Britain) changed it. The many colonies regarded as «settled colonies», however, were considered to be _terrae nullius_ 'noöne's land' and thus to lack a legal system; consequently, the invaders' law took effect upon settlement. Of course, just about every colony other than Pitcairn Island had a population whether Britain chose to recognise it or not.
How far back? As far as imperialist capitalism exists. The difference between the historic past and the end of the 19th-the 20th century is imperialism and the use of industrial level of destruction, aimed at establishing of a hegemony on a global scale. Such as British, German-Austrian, American, Zionist. It is first and foremost, division of humanity on Uber- and Untermenschen, civilizational supremacism (Discovery Dictrine, La Mission Civilisatrice", "Dog In Manger", "White Man's Burden", "Clash of Civilizations", "Judeo-Christian values"), an ideology that claims that certain nations or races are inherently inferior and must be subjugated, controlled, enslaved or eliminated.
The main belief in Zionism, Nazism, British and American imperialism is that they have a special right to do unspeakable atrocities to other peoples because they are superior and better - and other people are inherently inferior or savage.
This belief is accompanied by unprecedented WMD and means of terror, such as bombs, prisons, surveillance, sieges and regime changes.
As one Israeli woman said "It is a war and we are just stronger! Deal with it!"
"... because they are superior and better - and other people are inherently inferior or savage."
How did this idea enter the brain of [some] people?
The 'hegemony on global scale' is a very new idea. 'Globalists' are trying to reduce our world through language (the word 'gobal' itself) and images.
Lockstepped covid showed that they still are not able to do so. Our world is much bigger than just 'a globe', and we can magnify it through the words we use.
It's a way to rationalise domination. One group grains power over another; its members see that not as oppression and subjugation but as a just reflection of their superiority. If they are superior, why shouldn't they be on top? They prefer to see themselves as deserving and worthy, not as cruel and evil oppressors.
This idea has been indoctrinated into certain nations' minds through modification of religious texts, such as Talmudic Judaism, Scofield Bible, Protestantism. These are relatively new developments, compared to Judaism proper, Palestinian/Orthodox Christianity or Islam. When these ideas are combined with unprecedented industrial power and manufacturing of previously unavailable weaponry, the capitalist credo of grabbing, stealing, dominating, subjugating and abusing for profit is met with corresponding means.
Zionism as a belief existed for centuries, starting with Maimonides. But only in the 19th century it became possible to enact it politically. Same with imperialism, Napoleon also wanted the world domination, but he lacked the means.
I said, Nazi ideology. Not Nazism per se. Nazi ideology is approximately same old as political Zionism, the end of the 19th Century. Britain, US, Europe. It includes eugenics, nation-breeding, human hierarchy, race science, division of humanity on higher and lower races, blood purity, etc.
Zionism is THAT but addressing exclusively Jews. Herzl had an idea to completely separate Jews from Gentiles. He said that antisemitism is a result of separation of Jews from non-Jews but in the same breath he ALSO said that in order to combat antisemitism, one needs to remove Jews from Europe and practically end the so-called Diaspora .
It is of course a sure recipe to make Jews (Zionists) even more alien and hostile than ever before.
Which is what happened.
Zionism as Lena described it is well aligned with the position of the anti-Semites who likewise insisted that Jews had no place in Europe.
The thing is, Scott, Zionism is antisemitism. Zionists hated Jews. All of them, except Zionists. Weizmann called them "economic and moral dust" and said that they must perish. In 1938. He said that only the new kind, the strong, young ones will go to Palestine and settle there. Zionism is a breeding project. To create a "new Jew" out of hatred for Jewish "diaspora". Zionists also hated and despised Middle Eastern Jews.
So yes, Zionism is as antisemitic as Nazism or fascism. That is why Zionists court white supremacists and white supremacists, such as Brevik, are enamored with Zionism.
Not to mention Mussolini and Hitler...
Yes, Zionism is indeed anti-Semitic. The early Zionists saw the Ashkenazi Jews as weak, passive people. The Zionists promoted the anti-Semitic notion that Jews had no place in Europe. On that they entirely agreed with the Christians conducting the pogroms.
Zionists courted non-Jewish English anti-Semites to secure massive migration of Jews to Palestine when it was under British control. Zionists solicited the Nazis, too and cut deals with them for the sake of the criminal Zionist project.
CODEPINK, in partnership with Palestine Youth Movement’s campaign #MaskOffMaersk, is applying pressure on Maersk, the multinational shipping company sending military cargo to Israel. In unmasking Maersk, we’ve learned that Zurich Insurance insures Maersk’s weapons shipments to Israel for its genocide in Gaza.
On May 15, Nakba Day, they attempted to speak with Zurich Insurance in Chicago — they responded by kicking us out of the building.
Join the campaign and sign the letter: Zurich: Stop Insuring Genocide!
https://www.codepink.org/zurichletter?source=direct_link&
Israel is a direct reflection and extension of British and US settler colonialism, wearing the ugly mask of Zionism. Plus, and primarily, a terminal case of capitalism. This Genocide is the end. It’s over. The Zionist Israeli state, the US Empire, the colonial exploitation by Europe & Britain, is all collapsing. It will flop around a little more, but it’s over. There is a new world rising in the East, and it’s even bigger than China.
I learned about a new resource for those wanting to do something for and about Gaza. Please take a look and see if there’s something that you can do here:
https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/campaigns
We call on the newly elected, American Pope Leo XIV to do whatever it takes to save Gaza and stop the bombing, and end the starvation. Let him go to Gaza and stand with the suffering people who are being massacred by Israel and the Western posers. Is there anything more important in today's world than this?
https://chng.it/gkvBfY44rq
Please sign the petition and share widely.
… us-american pope, svp. Jaime Bergoglio was ‘the first american pope'..
[The comments on the petition are up to one year old - mr Prevost is pope for less then 2 weeks now. Explain.
And btw I'm not going to sign a petition that calls Palestina 'holy land'.]
The gringos of the Estragos Unidos have arrogantly claimed for themselves the name of a pair of continents making up an entire hemisphere. Much of the world has stupidly gone along with this piece of imperial hubris.
I join you in rejecting the reference to Palestine as the «holy land». As for the Roman Catholic Church, it has thrown its weight behind plenty of projects such as Zionism; its support for the Zionist entity doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
¡¡Estragos Unidos!! That one is great! Nunca mejor dicho.
Lo inventé hace años. También «Estúpidos Unidos».
You made my day! Valió la pena desvelarse a las cinco.
Prefiero los “estragos unidos”, precisamente por lo parecido al original: tuve que leerlo dos veces para darme cuenta de la intención. Por otra parte, tambien me gusta los “United Nothings”.
The Catholic Church opposes Zionism. I know. I’m Catholic. We have plenty to be ashamed of, but that heresy isn’t ours. It’s Protestant, and, in particular, Evangelical. There are Palestinian Catholics in Gaza, btw.
The Catholic Church used to oppose Zionism. Now it falls all over itself to pander to the Zionist entity. Some years ago, Pope Francis said that criticism of the Zionist entity constituted anti-Semitism and that the Zionist entity had the right to exist. That doesn't sound like opposition to Zionism.
Absolutely true. My apologies! I shall reword, immediately.
" ... international pressure will not compel Israel to abandon its settler-colonial ambitions. Rather, it will likely accelerate them."
Your reasoning feels so plausible that it can't get any more frightening. If - and I've no doubts about it - every pressure from outside, even boots on the ground, will only nurture the shared psyche of israeli society, of being victims and not being loved by the world outside, than nothing at all can escape this self fulfilling fear, it all will contribute to strenghen this perception.
And in the end - we can already see it growing - what the israeli society fears will indeed come true: they are - as group, as country, perceived as - mildly speaking - as 'not good'.
This is a vicious circle. Boots on the ground are necessary to save the Palestinians, as people, as a culture as a nation.
But what would be your advice to save the israeli society from its ever speeding up 'hamster wheel'? [Not that I am too eager to save israeli psyche, but I feel there is pressure building up in israeli society itself which could explode into a even much bigger desaster.]
To be honest Arturo, I don’t really care much just now about the psychology of Israeli society or its soul. Right now the priority is to stop Israel’s genocide machine and save the Palestinians. They are on borrowed time and Israel is determined to finish the job. When every last Palestinian child is safe, then we can turn our attention to Israeli psychology.
Back in the 1990s there was a ‘lightbulb' joke about therapy: ‘How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the lightbulb needs to want to change'. I am not seeing anyone in Israel asking us to save them from themselves…
I still hope that enough secular Jews leave Israel, and that this will weaken it. I doubt that that the religious Zealots left behind, who are getting ready to take over the country, will see any need to change. They suffer from the 'Massadah complex', which is the same as the psychology of murder-suicide.
There will not be a civil war in Israel (or it’s highly unlikely), and the remaining secular population will succumb to the rule of religious Zionism. Israel is a very dangerous country and everywhere you look, except for small bubbles, you will find insanity.
D'accord.
You'll know it better than any of us. No civil war ... that could be a deadlock (enquistamiento in english?)
I think it is ‘encystment’ — it is when an organism creates a protective bubble or cyst around itself for protection…
«Entrenchment», rather; but «deadlock» makes the most sense in this context.
The whole of the settler-colonial society will have to be reëducated. The process is likely to take a few generations.
South Africa and the US offer good illustrations. Decades after the end of overt, legalised subjugation of Black people (and its replacement by covert, nominally illegal subjugation of Black people), the white settler populations have not overcome their supreme attitudes. The Zionist settler population is far worse, precisely because, as Avigail has pointed out, Zionism has been hellbent from the beginning on eliminating all Palestinians from Palestine, whereas the whites in the US and South Africa have sought not to kill but to exploit the Blacks.
Then I got it wrong.
To me this is not about 'white' versus 'black'.
To me the Levant is not much darker than white. And the zionist settlers have many more shades to them. (But I might be colourblind.)
To me this is about 'we against the rest of the world'. And the Palestinians are the first.
Of course this is racism, but it also is much more than that.
Boots on the ground will save lives. I've no doubt about that (though I don't see Europe establishing them either. Should the UK, France, Turkey and Germany again send troops? Better not ...) But boots on the ground won't remedy the underlying roots of zionism. Reeducating is often changing one indoctrination for another. It doesn't work, as I see it. See Germany. See the USA.
It won’t, you’re right. In fact, this will only strengthen its resolve and reinforce its worldview. that’s because Israeli society interprets everything and anything done against it as motivated by hatred of Jews, not by the desire to save Palestinians or anything else. Israel does not accept that it is doing anything wrong to the Palestinians! I am dead serious about this. They see the world differently from everyone else. But right now the priority must be saving the Palestinians from a comprehensive genocide and ethnic cleansing.
I was not suggesting anything about black and white; I was using the US and South Africa as examples of settler-colonial societies in which the occupiers retain their attitude of supremacy long after a superficial change in the social structure. Reëducation of a population trained to view itself as superior will take a long time—generations.
I dunno, make Israelis subject to obligations and *consequences* instead of de facto unlimited rights and watch them get a whole new attitude, right quick.
Germans were all chest-thumping "the world belongs to the strong!" Social Darwinists until they got a taste of the Red Army and decided that this tough guy schtick wasn't so much fun when you are on the receiving end.
They promptly morphed into the biggest metrosexual weenies on the wimpiest continent on the planet.
But Israel won’t, or at least not likely (and I would very much like to be wrong). Israel is not Germany and their mania is far deeper than any that existed in German society during the Nazi era. Read _Darkness Over Germany_ by Amy Buller.
Unless and until forced. Much like Germans.
The old human lady I used to practice my Polish on told me about seeing the Germans fleeing Poland in 1943-44, running as fast as their legs would carry them, abandoning equipment, abandoning wounded comrades, anything that would slow them down, and she knew that something truly terrifying must be pursuing them.
In 1941-42, they had thought the Germans to be invincible. If anything she said, they were more sadistic running out then marching in, a playground bully who had met a much bigger, meaner bully and was terrified of losing his grip.
For that matter, I talked with an old Ukrainian, a veteran of The Great Patriotic Fatherland War, about captured SSmen on their knees, pleading for their lives, crying, offering bribes, showing photos of their children, promising obscene sexual favors....funny how that works in humans.
Fear trumps all in most people. But we can develop beyond this and we even know how. It will just take time to get it across to everyone…
Indeed, Germany would happily have overrun the whole world had the Red Army not beaten the living hell out of the Germans. When the settler population occupying Palestine similarly gets the stuffing kicked out of it, it will behave exactly as the defeated Germans did.
Older generations might decide to stay & fight, even deploy their nuclear weapons as a means of defeating the “enemy”, especially the Ben-Gvirs & Smotrichs in Israel. but most will likely force their children to leave, some “escorted” by the elderly (60+ yr olds) though many of the indoctrinated 15yr olds & older may decide to stay & fight.
However, if this were to eventually happen, what would the tales, stories & legends these youngsters grow up with be?
Who would IMPLEMENT obligations and consequences?
That's the problem: the whole Western bloc supports the Zionist entity, as do many of its lackeys in the South.
Do Israelis not understand their peril? When Iran struck Nevatim, it made clear that it doesn't need nuclear warheads to eradicate tiny Israel overnight. If all the Palestinians are purged, what's to prevent that?
I don’t think they do. While they are chronically anxious, they are also arrogant and believe that they are invincible. I know this sounds like a contradiction, but this is genuinely what Israeli society is like. It is filled with inner contradiction and makes little sense. All I care about right now is how dangerous they are, and the fact that they are absolutely determined to eliminate all Palestinian presence from all of historic Palestine.
Why would Herzl, a wealthy and well-integrated German Jew, who has not even been to any Slavic countries, grab a garmoshka, is a mystery.
Israeli Zionists cannot accept the fact that Zionism was born from Western race-science, civilizational white supremacism and wealthy, greedy and narcissistic Jews' feeling of being inherently underappreciated, it was not born from any "persecution" of the Jewish Diaspora in poor Slavic shtettles.
He wouldn’t. This song, as stupid as it is, is very clever at weaving different narratives, and unrelated elements together. I have grown up with this very effective mind manipulation especially with the use of popular art in Israel. Herzl had nothing to do with garmoshkas or music for that matter, especially Russian. The lyrics of this song create a link between him and the dominant culture brought to Israel by Russian Jews. At the time Israel was still trying to be socialist and viewed itself with smug superiority as a ‘fair’ socialist culture, which of course it was anything but. The ‘white’ supremacist, so-called socialist culture dominated everything. ‘Black’ Jews, that is Mizrahi Jews could not get work and were not allowed to join the big trade union that dominated the country at the time and through which you could get work.
This stupid song has many layers to it, that I could easily go into, but not that interested in doing because it doesn’t deserve my energy. But it is a really good example of narrative creation in Israel and the joining of unrelated elements to attempt to cobble together a coherent identity narrative.
Jews in Israel back when I was a child were from all over the place and were speaking different languages. I grew up hearing Romanian, Russian, Polish, Yiddish, Arabic, German, Bulgarian, just name it. There was a real danger that social cohesion would not emerge naturally. Also, as a genocidal settler-colonial society the governments of that era felt an urgency to create an identity narrative that unified everyone.
As I explained elsewhere in the comments, Israel deliberately destroyed the first generation of migrants from Arab countries practically coerced to come to Israel. They kept them in hovels for decades, discriminated against them, said they were primitive that lived on trees and would stab you in the back —the identical stereotypes Israel taught about ‘Arabs’ (aka Palestinians). It destroyed their social structure and families and then indoctrinated their children. These people knew the ‘whole world’ was not ‘against us’ because they came from Muslim countries where Jews were perfectly fine. Antisemitism was a European phenomenon. The authorities in Israel could not have allowed that generation of migrants to feel an affinity with the Palestinians, experience empathy for them or question the prevailing Zionist narrative. So they destroyed them. Their children became thoroughly indoctrinated, especially after Israel society started to make concessions to Mizrahi cuisine and music. Some of the worst perpetrators in Gaza and the CWB are Mizrahi Jews. Nothing in Israel happened by accident.
People of Irish descent in the US were lumped in with Blacks in the nineteenth century. By the first few decades of the twentieth century, however, they were quintessentially white. They elevated themselves by serving as police officers and other agents of the state who performed the important task of oppressing the Blacks. There seems to be a parallel to the Mizrahi Jews whom you describe.
Settler-colonial society in occupied Palestine has always put the Ashkenazi population ahead of other Jews (never mind non-Jews). The Mizrahi Jews were kept in distant, desolate places and were forced to live in bad conditions. Black Jews from Ethiopia were even forced to undergo «conversion» to Judaism. Thus the Ashkenazi Jews colour-coded the settler population in its racist way, while seeking to establish cohesion among settlers in occupied Palestine.
That's one aspect of that song that may not be evident: the unified «we» of the song papers over the reality of Zionist racism by implying falsely that «we» are united and equal.
Of course it does!
The Ethiopian Jews who came to Israel didn’t in the end have to ‘convert’. But the Rabbinate suggested at the time pricking the men’s penises to symbolise circumcision... I remember that. I was still there at the time. It never happened but it was appalling.
Israel has always been a fundamentally racist country. Like you said before, sometimes the dominant group chooses to accept those it had initially rejected (US mainstream and the Irish immigrants). In Israel there was always a necessity to create a cohesive society if the Zionist project was to succeed. You cannot complete it if a huge segment of the population challenges the official narrative and undermines the entire premise on which the project is based… The destruction of the first generation of Mizrahi migrants was quite deliberate. I remember those times very well. We had one of those government shanty towns not far from my primary school. We were indoctrinated to think of Moroccan, Iraqi, or Yemenite Jews as primitive and dangerous, Moroccan in particular (‘they’d stab you in the back with a knife at the first opportunity’)… etc. It was disgusting beyond belief and all quite deliberate. There is no question Israel was heavily dominated by ‘white’ Ashkenazi Jews. My own mother was fixated on seeing herself as Ashkenazi, and more cultured and superior, but it turns out she wasn’t Ashkenazi. (I hope she rolls in her grave…)
Thanks for correcting me. I remember reading about a proposal to have the Ethiopians undergo formal «conversion»; I didn't know that it had not been carried out. But the very suggestion exhibits appalling racism.
In the US, circumcision was widespread until fairly recent years and still is to a smaller extent. Male converts to Judaism, even in the Reform movement, undergo the pricking of the penis as a substitute for circumcision if they have already been circumcised.
By the way, some of the established Jews who had been living in Palestine before the Zionist invasion were driven out during the Nakba right along with the Palestinians. Those Jews largely spoke Arabic…
The whole Zionist project is inherently racist, postulating as it does that Jews have no place in Europe and that Jews should have exclusive dominion over a land primarily inhabited by others. Unsurprisingly, Zionist racism has created racial distinctions among Jews as well.
Such great comment, thank you, Avigail.
Zionism was the project of an élite—people like Herzl who looked down upon the Jewish masses and certainly did not have their interests at heart. European Jews overwhelmingly opposed Zionism until the Nazi era.
And, yes, Zionism is a poisonous fruit of the «scientific» racism of the late nineteenth century (common in Europe and especially in the US), combined with ancient Jewish racism (viewing Jews as the «chosen people»; making Jewish identity a matter of maternal descent).
Petition for the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil.
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/demand-the-immediate-release-of-columbia-student-pro-palestine-advocate-mahmoud-khalil-from-dhs-detention
"After a year of tireless investigation, we have identified the military unit responsible, as well as the commander who led the operation that killed Hind, her family, and the two medics who tried to save her."
The Hind Rajab Foundation has filed a war crimes complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, on May 3, Hind Rajab's 7th birthday.
Please join me in making a contribution.
https://buy.stripe.com/cN228hbY5g7jaM84gg
To know more about The Hind Rajab Foundation, there are a couple of really good interviews that Glenn Greenwald did on his Rumble platform, and Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada, did with the head of this organisation, Dyad Abou Jahjah. It was very informative.
Here's a petition calling for accountability for the arrest of Ali Abunimah in Switzerland for the crime of speaking about Palestinian rights:
https://chng.it/8D4pkxPhWS
Please sign the petition and share widely.
This is the best piece you have ever posted.
Thank you!