Fascism is always the bastard child of bankrupt liberalism. Chris Hedges
Bankrupt liberalism is the US. It is also Israel.
Public attitudes and Big Lies
Lie #1
Israel Has an Inherent Right to Exist
Sorry, it doesn’t.
No state has an “inherent” right to exist. National states come and go. They are born and they die just like people. Where now the Crimean Republic of the 90s forcibly annexed by the Ukraine?
Israel’s legitimacy is political and depends upon acceptance of their neighbors and sometimes military force. Not to mention the ambitions of the United States of America—and its notions of a “liberal” world order—more accurately, a neoliberal one.
Let us keep in mind that Israel is a neocolonial venture, a mono pseudo-ethnic state formed mostly by European immigrants to Palestine by force of arms.
It was one Semitic people-- Ashkenazi Jews—supplanting another Semitic people—Palestinians-- many of whom were descended from Jews centuries ago who converted to other religions – Christianity and Muslim —proselytizing Zionism to get the support of other mostly unrelated but nominally” Jewish” communities worldwide.
The ideology of Ashkenazi Zionists appears rooted in German culture and is the flipside of Nazism-- a kind of exclusionary ethnicism and quasi-racism.
Israeli claims— if honored —would allow Israel to expand far beyond its current borders to Greater Israel.
The Nazis called it lebensraum. The Americans call it business.
Lie #2
Israel is a democracy
Israel still has a significant non-Jewish population—Muslims, Christians and Christians and Druze —but these people have fewer and fewer rights, although they have some representation in the Knesset.
The Palestinian peoples of the West Bank and Gaza, which the Israelis insist a part of Israel, have no representation whatsoever. They are non-people.
If the Israelis, granted full democratic rights to all the residents of the Palestinian territories it controls it would be a different matter— but they have no intention of doing that. Not ever.
Lie #3
Jews are one people
There is no such thing as a Jewish "people" – only Jewish people in the same sense that their Christian people and Muslim people and Buddhist people.
Once to say Jews were a race was anti-Semitic, now to say they're not a race is anti-Semitic. It's crazy how history plays with us.“ Shlomo Sand Israeli Historian)
“There is no Jewish genome and certainly no Jewish gene . Instead, all humans are a mix of the same building blocks, built with slightly different architectures. “The confusion about European Jews results from their tragic history of persecutions and deportations, creating multiple links between ancestry and geography. By dismantling our notions of genetically distinct populations and understanding our kinship, we can better appreciate our common history, and more importantly, our shared future.“ ( Eran Elhaik, Israeli geneticist)
The myth of the Jewish people is that God singled out the 12 tribes of Israel – the "Jews" as his Chosen People. With the Diaspora, the Jews were forced to disperse around the world. Always hoping to return. Although technically that could not happen until the temple was rebuilt.
But during the early Roman Empire, the "Jews", consisted of diverse ethnic groups, and many sects. They were a Messianic religion and spread with the Empire, intermarrying with various ethnic groups. So, you have the Sephardi, the Ashkenazi, the Mizrahi, black African Jews, even Chinese.
While 44% of Israelis are secular. Most of them are Ashkenazi or Russian. The lower-class Mizrahi are fundamentalist.
All Israelis speak Hebrew – but not the same Hebrew. The Mizrahi for example speak various dialects influenced by Arabic.
This means that achieving political and social unity in Israel is difficult.
Such unity as exists derives from the “Big Lie” of universal anti-Semitism, which is of course not anti-Semitism, but anti-Jewish-ness-- although no one quite knows what that is. This comes with the mythology of victimhood--like all mythologies, partly based on fact. There were pogroms — there was a Holocaust— but such events are unlikely to be repeated. People have new targets these days— the Russians, the Chinese, Muslims.
But Zionist Israel cannot maintain itself as a political entity without a sense of threat-- and lacking a real one, it must manufacture one in the form of Palestinian resistance to its brutal apartheid regime.
Lie #4
Hamas is a terrorist organization
The need for Israel to maintain cohesion, despite the differences of among its nominally Jewish but diverse peoples means that Hamas has to be demonized-- regardless of the fact that Palestinians are Semites—descended from the Jews of old and converts to Christianity or Islam.
Hamas was democratically elected to represent the people of Gaza.
However, unlike the corrupt PLO, it insists the occupation is just that-- a military occupation that should be written resisted militarily.
Bearing in mind Security Council resolutions 605 (1987) of 22 December 1987, 607 (1988) of 5 January 1988 and 608 (1988) of 14 January 1988 and General Assembly resolutions 43/21 of 3 November 1988, 43/177 of 15 December 1988 and 44/2 of 6 October 1989, on the deterioration of the situation of the Palestinian people in the occupied territories,
Deeply concerned and alarmed at the deplorable consequences of Israel's continuing acts of aggression against Lebanon and its continuing occupation of parts of southern Lebanon, as well as its refusal to implement the relevant resolutions of the Security Council, in particular resolutions 425 (1978) of 19 March 1978.
1. Calls upon all States to implement fully and faithfully all the resolutions of the United Nations regarding the exercise of the right to self-determination and independence by peoples under colonial and foreign domination;
2. Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial domination, apartheid and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle… (emphasis mine)
Let us keep in mind that the Israeli state was formed by Jewish terrorist groups including Irgun who carried out numerous massacres of civilians, some much worse than the recent attacks in Gaza. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander?
Lie #5
The attack on Gaza was a terrorist attack
Civilians died. No question about that.
But no matter what the form of military attack— civilians always die. And this asymmetric attack aimed at establishing a significant military capability.
There were three main goals.
One was to demonstrate the capability to penetrate Israeli air defenses, namely, the much-vaunted Iron Dome.
The second was to take hostages.
The third was to show the inadequacy of Israeli intelligence, which the Israeli establishment has propagandized as all seeing, all-knowing.
All these goals were successful .
An additional goal might have been to provoke Israeli over reaction-- brute force measures that violate international law and cannot be easily justified , thereby generating stronger support from Hezbollah, the Syrians, Iran, and others. Hamas needs supporters.
As a result, there has been a subtle change in the attitudes of the Turks and the Russians and Chinese-- and even the Saudis-- who do not want to see their plans for the Middle East and Central Asia scuppered by another war.
It is unlikely now that the Saudi’s will recognize Israel anytime soon or conclude the defense agreement with the US which they were discussing. Best to work something out with the Russians.
Lie #6
Israel has military superiority
The Israeli military today is not like the Israeli military in 1967.
If it sends the Army into Gaza, it must be prepared to take heavy losses in an unpleasant urban war. And this is not a country used to taking losses. Hamas is made clear that if Israel commits atrocities against his Palestinian civilians, it can expect tit-for-tat from Hamas.
That is also keep in mind that in Israel. It’s hard to distinguish between the military and civilians. AR 15’s are increasingly fashion accessories for the young.
In addition, the Israelis can expect Hezbollah to open a second front and Hezbollah has 80,000 cruise missiles and huge numbers of drones. The last time Israel fought a war with Hezbollah, it lost.
Israel is threatening to invade Syria and depose Assad and has bombed the runways of airports in Damascus and Aleppo—which will be quickly repaired. Can Israel survive a three front war? Once it could. Today I am not so sure.
Invade Syria and it has to face the Russians—who up until now have left it to the Syrians to deal with the Israelis, thanks to the significant Russian Israeli population. And there’s Iran waiting to jump in—not to mention the battle hardened Houthis.
Putin has already cautioned against overreaction and offered to mediate—probably the only person in a position to do so. In the Middle East he is regarded as an honest broker— unlike the US.
The Americans, by contrast, have sent a carrier group off the coast of Israel which is military nonsense in a conflict of this kind—just an advertising bonanza for the US military-industrial complex.
The American Navy Of course, which would not want to go head-to-head with the Russians which would result in the humiliating loss of at least two carrier groups and support vessels.
In the meantime, the Israelis are bombing Gaza using band munitions, and cutting off electricity, water and food with mostly Palestinian civilian casualties. The price of oil is rising, threatening Western economies.
But Hamas still has a lot of civilian hostages. No Israeli government could survive if those hostages are sacrificed unnecessarily.
And now media attention is shifting away from Israeli casualties to the Palestinians and their suffering.
So, continuing the punishment of Gaza is madness. Then again this is a mad, mad world.
https://julianmacfarlane.substack.com/p/israels-six-big-lies