The Protests at the LSE Against the Israeli Ambassador Weren’t Anti-Semitic – They Were Against a Racist, Anti-Semitic Fascist

That’s the only way I think Tzipi Hotovely can fairly be described. She’s the Israeli ambassador who was hurried off the campus at LSE by the cops and her security guards as protestors against the genocidal brutality of the Israeli state made their feelings extremely clear. Needless to say, the government and the Blairite Labour leadership have metaphorically clutched their pearl in horror at what a terrible deed has been done to her. The protests have been condemned by Priti Patel and Starmerite rentagob Lisa Nandy. Mike has put up a couple of pieces about the incident, pointing out that Hotovely was never in any danger because of the police protection she enjoyed. And today he’s posted another article quoting a number of well-informed Twitterers and commenters, including Asa Winstanley of the Electronic Intifada; the Groaniad journo Owen Jones, Natalie Strecker; Another Angry Voice and a Palestinian gent, Omar Ghraeib, which showed exactly how deeply unpleasant her extreme Israeli nationalist views are.

The Nakba, the forced expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians to create the nascent Israeli state in 1948 is well-documented. Historians have uncovered that it was achieved through massacres of thousands of Palestinians. People were gunned down hiding in mosques for sanctuary. A group of women tried to appease the Israeli troops through bringing them baskets of rice. They were shot in the stomach. All documented fact, covered in histories of the reality of the creation of Israeli on videos available on the internet. I think a few of them were put up by Abi Martin of The Empire Files on Tele-Sur. But Hotovely has declared this all ‘a lie’. This is, to me, as deplorable as the Nazis and anti-Semites peddling their lies that the Holocaust never happened, or the Turkish state covering up the Armenian genocide. But it’s also not just the Nadba she denies. She claims there’s no Palestinian people – a common trope of the Israeli state and its supporters over here. It started with Gold Meir and the Zionist pioneers claiming that the Palestinians were really recent settlers from Syria and other Arab nations because the landlords were absentees in those countries. It comes from the old Zionist slogan ‘A people without a land for a land without a people’ – except the land already had a people. Hence all the lies that the Palestinians don’t really exist, which I’ve seen repeated on extreme right-wing American and Canadian websites.

As an Israeli far-right nationalist, she wants Arab villages razed to be replaced by Jewish settlements. In May she was one of the main speakers at a Zionist demonstration in support of the Israeli embassy. During which the demonstrators showed just what kind of disgusting human beings they were by chanting in favour of burning down Palestinian villages and supporting Rabbi Mei Kahane, the founder of Kach. This is a group so extreme that even the Israelis call it a terrorist organisation. She so right-wing that she’s even called for Israel to invade Jordan and Syria. This is bonkers, but it would be supported by Ted Hagee’s Christians United for Israel, which would also like Israel to invade and annexe parts of Egypt and Iraq. Technically I think Syria is still at war with Israel due to the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights. A madman or -woman calling for real, renewed armed war is obviously a threat to peace in the Middle East. Which, incidentally she’s never given her explanation of how it can be achieved. A war-hungry maniac like her should not be let anywhere near power or international relations.

But let’s be fair, it’s not just Palestinians she hates. She also despises Jews, who protest against the Israeli state’s atrocities. In one of her wretched tweets she sneered at German Jewish critics, claiming in very anti-Semitic language that they were only doing it for the money. ‘Oy vey my German Euros!’, she tweeted. The mad right-wing Zionists trying to shut down any criticism of Israel do so by screeching that any critical remark must be an anti-Semitic trope. But this is a real one: that of the money-grubbing Jew. And right-wing Zionists also accuse their critics of being ‘offensive’! Well, I can only imagine how offensive her remarks must be to Jewish Germans, because the myth that Jews are materialistic, greedy and exploitative was at the heart of Nazi Jew-hatred and persecution. I’m also at a loss to know quite where she thinks these ‘German Euros’ that she claims were somehow being paid to her country’s Jewish German critics come from. They aren’t going to come from the German state, which supports Israel, nor its people, who are generally very friendly and well-disposed towards Jews. Germany is so welcoming towards Jews that many Israelis go there for their holidays. Nazism is banned under the Basic Law and Mutti Merkel’s government tried over and over to show that Germany was now a pluralist, anti-racist society that welcomed ethnic minorities. I dare say that there are individual Nazis ensconced in parts of the German state. But the German state as a whole is very, very definitely not going to give any kind of support to real anti-Semites.

The German-Jewish critics of Israel seem to me to be determinedly anti-racist generally. There’s a video on the web somewhere of the awesome Jackie Walker speaking at one of their meetings, and being given a warm welcome. This was after she was expelled from the Labour party on a trumped-up charge of anti-Semitism. She’s been subject to a torrent of horrendous abuse ever since, some of it viciously racist. She’s Black, and so her racist attackers have claimed she can’t be Jewish. There’s a vicious anti-Black racism in Israel. Abi Martin made a documentary a few years ago about the abuse and physical assaults made against Black Israelis. This included a maniac stabbing a baby in the head. The German Jews, who welcomed Walker and gave her a platform are far better people than Israel’s White supremacist defenders.

And just to show us what the state Hotovely so enthusiastically represents is actually like, Omar Ghraeib have tweeted about the shooting of a 13-year old Palestinian boy by an Israeli soldier, and Agent Rachel Swindon has also tweeted about the Israeli army’s destruction of water pipes serving four Palestinian villages. This is quite common, and is a method of squeezing the Palestinians in an attempt to force them off their land. Israeli soldiers also throw chemicals into Palestinian wells to make the water undrinkable. And the tweeters also rightly point out that the UN has condemned Israel as practicing apartheid.

Nandy was yelling that the demonstration was terrible attack on free speech. Which also shows what a revolting hypocrite Nandy is. As Daniel Finn points out, Nandy will not breathe a word in defence of the Palestinians. Her commitment to anti-Palestinian racism is ‘quite extraordinary’.

Of course, Patel and Nandy have also screamed that the demonstration was ‘anti-Semitic’. No. Definitely no! Many of Israel’s most ardent critics are themselves decent, Torah-observant and secular Jews. They’re severely normal, self-respecting people, who aren’t ‘anti-Semitic’ or ‘self-hating’ or any of the other wretched, vile smears that have been thrown at them. Some of them are Haredi Jews, who believe they are to remain in galut – exile – until the coming of the Messiah, as commanded in the Hebrew Bible and Torah. Others do so because they believe Israel violates the fundamental principles of the liberal Judaism they were raised in. You know, the type of Judaism that takes as its watchword ‘Jews should always be for the oppressed, never the oppressor’. And many are socialists following the ideas of the pre-War Bund, the Jewish socialist party that wanted Jews to stay in their ancestral homelands, fighting to be accepted as equals and friends by their gentile compatriots. Over here the British Jewish community before the First World War held exactly the same attitude. They wanted to be seen as patriotic Brits and Englishmen and women, not foreigners. The British Jewish establishment actually condemned the Balfour Declaration because they were afraid it would make gentile Brits see them as foreigners. It would create anti-Semitism. Philip Gould has posted a tweet from a Jewish group over here critical of Israel, Na’amod: British Jews Against Occupation. Now I don’t claim to be any kind of expert of Judaism, but I think it’s clear from their Hebrew name that they aren’t self-haters and anti-Semites. Natalie Strecker has also posted a tweet showing that, in contrast to Israeli nationalist propaganda, it is far-rightists like Hotovely who are unrepresentative of the Jewish community: “Imagine being so racist that you think a white supremacist who believes Palestinians should be subject to genocide represents Jews!!!” This was in response to someone called Caolan, who claimed that the protests were all anti-Semitic.

Way back in the early part of this century, Blair got into terrible trouble when he arrested the Chilean Fascist dictator, General Pinochet. Pinochet was responsible for horrific torture and massacres, which included the murder of a Spanish lad. Spain had put out an extradition for his arrest. Pinochet had arrived in Britain and was visiting his old friend, Maggie Thatcher. Blair pounced and had him arrested for crimes against humanity pending extradition to Spain. Thatcher and the right screeched in protest because, well, Thatcher and a large section of the Tory party support right-wing Fascist thugs like Pinochet, and he had given us aid during the Falkland’s conflict. It was all horribly bungled, as Pinochet should have been officially told first that he was not welcome over here. Blair’s regime was also guilty of human rights violations because of its grubby illegal invasion of Iraq. But in this instance it was trying to act in accordance with international law and humanity.

Hotovely is not the head of her state, but Israel is still guilty of many of the crimes for which Pinochet’s regime is abominated and reviled. I think it can be fairly said that rather than being defended and protected, the British state should be demanding her withdrawal because her racism is so much opposed to genuine, liberal British values.

In my opinion, she’s a Fascist of the same stripe as Pinochet, who should be facing tough questions from the International Court of Human Rights. But the British establishment just loves foreign Fascists if they’re on our side. And so we could expect nothing but smears and condemnation of the LSE protesters by Patel and Nandy.

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2021/11/11/it-wasnt-anti-semitic-to-reject-this-extreme-racist-israeli-ambassador/

Israel, Hitler, and the War on Racial Intermarriage

In November last year, 2018, that redoubtable opponent on Fascism and Zionism Tony Greenstein put up an article attacking the Likud government and the Israeli state for trying to discourage mix marriage between Jews and Palestinians, entitled ‘Israel’s War on Interracial Relationships and Miscegenation’.

The article was provoked by the controversy in Israel over the marriage of Lucy Aharish, an Arab TV news presenter, and Tsahi Halevi, the star of the TV series Fauda. The marriage was denounced by Interior Minister Aryeh Deri and Oren Hazan, a Likud backbencher, as well as Yair Lapid, the head of the Centre Party, Yesh Atid. The article also reported how various Israeli towns, like Petah Tikva, have tried to stop Jews socializing or marrying with Palestinians. That municipality has set up a special team to tackle Jewish women dating Arab or ethnic minority men. In the East Jerusalem settlement of Pisgat Ze’ev a vigilante group of young men patrol the streets seeking to disrupt any romantic meetings between Jews and ethnic minorities. As well as Petah Tikvah, Tel Aviv and Kiryat Gat also have government sponsored campaigns to prevented racial mixing. There’s even a counselling programme for Jewish women in an interracial relationship, as well as phoneline for people to ring to inform on Jewish women going out with Palestinians. The religious organization, Yad L’ahim, also assists these campaigns with its Anti-Assimilation Department, which has produced a video for use with the police.

Back in 2011 Tzipi Hotoveli, in her role as Chair of the Status of Women Committee in the Knesset, invited the racist far-right party Lehava to speak on how marriages between Jews and non-Jews could be prevented. The Education Ministry under Naftali Bennett also removed two books from the English language curriculum, Borderlife and Trumpet in the Wadi in 2015 and 2016, because they were romances between Jews and Palestinians. The article also notes that there was a similar controversy over the marriage of another mixed couple, Morel Malka and Mahmud Mansour. Civil marriage does not exist in Israel, so Malka converted to her husband’s religion, Islam. The couple’s wedding ceremony was marked by a demonstration by Lehava, whose members screamed anti-Arab slogans, including ‘Death to the Arabs’.

The article concluded

Because for Zionists, mixed marriage is not so much a religious as a racial/national matter. Race in Israel is defined by religion, hence why inter-marriage is not so much considered a sin as a form of treason. That was what an opinion poll found in Yediot Aharanot. Over half Israeli Jews believe that marriage is ‘national treason’. ‘Marriage to an Arab is national treason’.

http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2018/11/israels-war-on-interracial.html

This stance against racial intermixing is very similar to that of Apartheid South Africa and the American south during segregation. And, although the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism states that it is anti-Semitic to draw comparisons between Jews and Nazis, it is also very similar to Nazi Germany. The Nazis also passed legislation to prevent intermarriage between Aryan Germans and those peoples they judged inferior, like Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and Blacks.

Hitler himself stated his opposition to miscegenation in Mein Kampf, where he claimed that the Aryans had declined through interbreeding with the peoples they had conquered and colonized. He wrote in Mein Kampf

The Aryan races-often in absurdly small numbers-overthrow alien nations, and favoured by the numbers of people of lower grade who are at their disposal to aid them, they proceed to develop, according to the special conditions for life in the acquired territories-fertility, climate, etc., the qualities of intellect and organization which are dormant in them. In the course of a few centuries they create cultures originally stamped with their own character of the land and the people which they have conquered. As time goes on, however, the conquerors sin against the principle of keeping the blood pure (a principle which they adhered to at first) and begin to blend with the original inhabitants whom they have subjugated, and end their own existence as a peculiar people; for the sin committed in Paradise was inevitably followed by expulsion.

Adolf Hitler, My Struggle (London: Paternoster Row 1933) 121.

The Israeli state’s attempts to ban interracial romances and marriage is therefore exactly the same as that of South Africa, segregation America, and Hitler’s Germany, regardless of the IHRA’s attempt to rule out any discussion of it as ‘anti-Semitic’. It is part of the regime’s colonialist nature and subjection of the Palestinians.