The crowning irony regarding claims about the hatefulness of such a phrase—one university administrator described it as “genocidal”—is that this idea is far more than a simple slogan where Israel is concerned. Rather, it captures the reality Israel has imposed on Palestine since 1967. Israel controls all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, an area that for all intents and purposes constitutes a single state under a single security regime and a single sovereignty. The drive to establish the “Greater Land of Israel” is the central ideological goal of the Likud Party, which has dominated Israeli politics since 1977. The commitment to Greater Israel was enshrined in the “Basic Laws” of the Israeli state in 2018 when the Knesset passed the “Nation State of the Jewish People” law. This law states that the right to national self-determination in Palestine “is unique to the Jewish People” and that “the State views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value, and shall act to encourage and promote its establishment and strengthening.” This commitment is one of the “guiding principles” of the current Israeli government, which stated that “the Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel,” including “Judea and Samaria.”

For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group.

The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.

Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015.

According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

While Netanyahu does not make these kind of statements publicly or officially, his words are in line with the policy that he implemented.

(continue reading)

Hi y'all! I was wondering if it would be antisemitic to call myself anti-Likud as a USAmerican goy? It seems to me they're kind of equivalent to our maga republicans but I wasn't sure if my understanding is ignorant of other context/nuance.

I've been listening and learning from a wide variety of sources and have come to the opinion that defining+criticizing any of the seemingly many interpretations of zionism is so far out of my own lane it's a whole different highway, and like I'm not trying to shirk responsibility for the antisemitism in my communities, but I don't want to risk cosigning and possibly amplifying the legitimate anxieties and traumas being caused in the diaspora.

Thank you for your time!

.

There is a difference between wishing and working for the liberation of the Palestinian people and the end of repression, violence, and war crimes and frothing, fervent falling into antisemitism.

Stop, think for a second, and recognize what you do, and do not know, about Palestine and Israel.

I have more than seen enough to make me question, to put it lightly, the anti-Israeli things being said as people casually gloss over and conflate Israel and Israeli, and Israeli and Jewish, creating a monolith of people and perspectives.

I lack the words or the reach to matter in and for this. But please don't allow yourselves to fall for baseless hatred and shallow, stilted thinking.

Both Israel and Gaza are in the throes of far-right theocratic governments (or wannabe governments) prioritizing the death of the other and their own power to the safety and long-term stability of their people.

Decency, principles, and the basic fucking reality of the situation requires you to know what you're talking about if you don't want to quickly degrade to being the shittiest of people, using the kindest language available to me.

Things are getting dicey

It’s honestly this simple and elaboration is unnecessary.

Germany's anti-Semitism expert insists that saying Israel is adopting Apartheid policies is "inherently anti-Semitic." But South African Jews who have immigrated to Israel find themselves in agreement: these policies match what we recall. Benjamin Pogrund: I’ve lived through it before: grabbing power, fascism and racism, destroying democracy. Israel is going where South Africa was 75 years ago. It’s like watching the replay of a horror movie. In 1948, as a teenager in Cape Town, I followed the results of the May 26 election on a giant board on a newspaper building. The winner-takes-all electoral system produced distorted results: the Afrikaner Nationalist party, with its smaller partner, won 79 parliamentary seats against 74 for the United Party and its smaller partner. But the Nats, as they were called, in fact won only 37.7 percent of the vote against the opposition’s 49.18 percent. Although the opposition got more than 11 percent more votes, the Nats said they had a majority and could do what they wanted.

In the Israel of 2023, I'm reliving some of these same experiences. Our proportional election system can distort results as well: last November, Likud, with its smaller partners, won 64 seats against 56 for the opposition. In fact, the right-wing bloc won by only 0.6 percent of the vote. The 0.6 percent government says that it represents the will of the majority and can do whatever it wants. It goes on saying this even though a poll from the Israel Democracy Institute shows that less than one-third of Israelis back its law to end the so-called reasonableness standard, which allowed the High Court to overturn government decisions it deemed unreasonable.

[Haaretz]

[Robert Scott Horton]

Mr Khan does not make direct comparisons between the two sides, except to lay out his claim that they have both committed a series of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He also emphasises that this latest war comes in the context of "an international armed conflict between Israel and Palestine, and a non-international armed conflict between Israel and Hamas".

Mr Khan says that the three main leaders of Hamas committed war crimes that include extermination, murder, hostage-taking, rape and torture. The men named are Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, Mohammed Deif, the commander of the Qassam Brigades, its military wing, and Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas political bureau. As part of their investigation, Karim Khan and his team interviewed victims and survivors of the 7 October attacks. He said Hamas had assaulted fundamental human values: "the love within a family, the deepest bonds between a parent and a child were contorted to inflict unfathomable pain through calculated cruelty and extreme callousness".

Israel, Mr Khan said, does have the right to defend itself. But "unconscionable crimes" did not "absolve Israel of its obligation to comply with international humanitarian law". The failure to do that, he said, justified issuing warrants for the arrest of Mr Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes including starvation of civilians as a weapon of war, murder, extermination, and intentional attacks on civilians.

The Israeli government of Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir is the most right wing, racist and genocidalist in the country’s history. It has abandoned any pretence of meaningful, accountable democracy, even for its privileged Jewish citizens. It has created a political conjuncture in which Israel has a serious Jewish supremacy problem, much like apartheid South Africa’s white supremacist mind-set.  In its reaction to Hamas’ violent actions inside Israel, this government is very comfortable committing genocide. The unqualified and uncritical support this fascist, criminal government has received from British political leaders, both Tory and Labour, will ensure that this genocide continues until Israel has achieved its deadly, illegal objectives.  As a consequence, it is essential that we redouble our calls for a ceasefire now; demand an immediate arms embargo; organise a comprehensive, global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel; and insist that the International Criminal Court bring charges against all those complicit in the war crimes committed in Gaza and the OPTs.

AIPAC is a tool used by a foreign government to assert control over the U.S. Government.

AIPAC has a long history of supporting extreme rightwing Republicans, including election deniers who still insist that Trump won the 2020 election.

👉🏿 https://www.mlive.com/politics/2023/11/michigan-senate-candidates-received-20m-offer-to-instead-primary-rashida-tlaib.html

👉🏿 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/18/pro-israel-lobby-group-aipac-midterms-election-deniers-and-extremist-republicans

👉🏿 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/may/17/pro-israel-lobby-defeat-democrats-palestinians-2022

👉🏿 https://www.democracynow.org/2024/1/2/ryan_grim_the_squad_congress_2024

Times of Israel correspondent Tal Schneider blames Prime Minister Netanyahu and his rightwing clique for the Hamas attack and massacres conducted by terrorists out of Gaza.

Netanyahu has tried to divide Palestinians and block the establishment of a Palestinian state by showing favoritism to the Hamas entity in Gaza while disparaging the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank. Yep, you read that right, Bibi was playing footsie with Hamas.

For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group. The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state. Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad. Hamas was also included in discussions about increasing the number of work permits Israel granted to Gazan laborers, which kept money flowing into Gaza, meaning food for families and the ability to purchase basic products. Israeli officials said these permits, which allow Gazan laborers to earn higher salaries than they would in the enclave, were a powerful tool to help preserve calm. [ ... ] Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015. According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2018, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. [ ... ] The same messaging was repeated by right-wing commentators, who may have received briefings on the matter or talked to Likud higher-ups and understood the message. Bolstered by this policy, Hamas grew stronger and stronger until Saturday, Israel’s “Pearl Harbor,” the bloodiest day in its history — when terrorists crossed the border, slaughtered hundreds of Israelis and kidnapped an unknown number under the cover of thousands of rockets fired at towns throughout the country’s south and center.

In short, Netanyahu, his Likud Party, and rightwing allies were being too clever by half – and their ploy blew up in their faces.

The extreme right in Israel have been trying to find a way to hold on to Gaza and the West Bank which were occupied by Israel during the 1967 war. They have been more interested in stonewalling a possible negotiated agreement with the Palestinians than seeking one. And thanks to a frequently divided and ineffectual opposition, the country has had prime ministers from the rightwing Likud Party for 33 of the past 46 years (if I counted accurately).

Netanyahu is sort of an Israeli version of the mythological "Smart Trump" who some US Republicans pine for. Like Trump, Netanyahu's overriding goal is the retention of power at all costs. But for a permanent peace, Israel is going to need somebody of similar caliber to Mandela, De Gaulle, Atatürk, or Masaryk. Netanyahu is not even close to being in the same league as such leaders.

Some 5,000 settlers gathered in Jerusalem on Sunday to celebrate their efforts to resettle the Gaza Strip and bring the coming of the Messiah one step closer. The fact that they remain a minority in Israel was of scant concern to them

''Voluntary' [emigration] is at times a situation you impose until they give their consent,' declared Netanyahu's communications minister on-stage, exposing the true message of the 'Conference for the Victory of Israel': The transfer, or expulsion, of Palestinians from Gaza

Some of the participants were National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu, Likud MK Ariel Kelner, Samaria Regional Council Head Yossi Dagan, Bezalel Smotrich, Orit Strock, Amichai Eliyahu and Yitzhak Wasserlauf, Haim Katz, Amichai Chikli, Shlomo Karhi, and more on top.

A huge map of Gaza hung on one of the walls with the names of the Katif Bloc settlements that were dismantled during the Gaza disengagement in 2005; alongside them were the names of planned future settlements. One of the organizers said that dozens of families had registered for each of the six groups planning to settle in Gaza.

It's an intentional fucking genocide and ethnic cleansing. As if there was any actual discussion about it, but just in case.

At a caucus meeting, right-wing Israeli lawmakers offered advice like 'in the northern Gaza Strip we first have to conquer, annex, destroy all the houses.' Every time someone mentioned the resettlement of Gaza, loud applause erupted "This event must end in a way that resounds everywhere in the Arab world," he said, adding that in the West Bank, "among the Arabs of Israel, in Syria, in Lebanon, everyone must see what has happened to Gaza and understand that this is the last thing he wants to happen in his life."

Le Likoud (parti de Netenyahu) incite les colons à se rendre sur les points de passages pour empêcher l'entrée de l'aide humanitaire à Gaza🇵🇸

It won't matter in the end when Apartheid Israel doesn't exist anymore.