A few threads ago Lavrov’s Dog has linked to a good video on racism in Israeli society. Here’s the transcript:
Israel is one of the most racist countries in the world. While you’ll never hear anyone in the mainstream media say this, this is actually one of the most important things you need to understand if you want to know what’s happening right now.A video of a woman shouting: “We’ll kill you all! All! All of you. One by one. f*ing Muslims.”
From its inception, the whole idea of Israel as a country was based on racism. Israel was conceived as a Jewish state, and while there’s nothing wrong in principle with Jews having a homeland, the problem is that they insisted that that homeland had to be in Palestine, which already belonged to someone: the Palestinians. The slogan of Israel’s founders was “A land for a people for a people without a land.” But deep down, they all knew that the only way to have a Jewish majority in Palestine, an Arab country, was to expel the Arabs. One of the founders of Israel, Yosef Weitz, wrote: “There is no room in the country for both [Arab and Jewish] peoples… there is no way but to transfer the [Palestinian] Arabs from here to the neighboring countries.” Israel was quite literally founded by expelling and massacring hundreds of thousands of Arabs in a years long process called the Nakba. And when you found a country based on racial exclusion, you’re going to get a culture that fosters and celebrates racial exclusion, because countries that commit terrible atrocities rarely acknowledge committing those atrocities. And the presence of Palestinians who remained in Palestine became a constant reminder not only of the violence that founded Israel, but of the constantly looming threat that they might come back and try to reclaim their land.
Every day you can find videos coming out of Israel showing Israelis calling for all Arabs to die…
A video of a crowd chanting “Death to the Arabs.” A video of a man shouting “A good Arab is a dead Arab.”
insulting the Prophet Muhammad…
A video of a crowd singing “[Prophet] Mohammed is dead.” A video of a man shouting “Your religion is rubbish.”
desecrating mosques, spitting on Christians, mocking and celebrating the murder of Palestinians, committing violent hate crimes against Palestinians, watching Gaza get carpet bombed from a cliffside for entertainment.
But don’t just go off these anecdotes. Let’s look at some of the polls. One poll found that two thirds of Israeli teens believe Arabs to be less intelligent, uncultured and violent. It also found that 50% of Israelis wouldn’t live in the same building as Arabs, wouldn’t befriend Arabs, wouldn’t let their children befriend Arabs and wouldn’t let Arabs into their homes. Another poll found that 60% of Israeli Jews want segregation from Arabs. Another poll found that half of Israeli Jews agree with the statement “Most Jews are better than most non-jews because they were born Jews.” The poll also found that 88% of Israeli Jews would be disturbed if their son befriended an Arab girl and 90% would be disturbed if their daughter befriended an Arab boy. This poll found that about half of Israeli high schoolers don't think Arabs should have the right to vote. Another poll showed that almost half of Israeli Jews don't want Arabs teaching their kids.
Not only are these views widely held in Israeli society, they’re also represented in government, which codifies these sentiments into law. For example, Israel has a law that says if an Israeli marries a Palestinian or someone from several other regional Arab states, that person isn’t allowed to move in with said Israeli. This law was passed in 2003, but it’s been renewed every single year since. Israel also doesn’t allow interreligious marriage to be performed in the country, which is meant to deter Jews from marrying non-Jews. In 2018, Israel passed the nation state law, a law which has constitutional status, which says the right to exercise national self-determination, i.e., have rights, is the exclusive right of Jews. No one else. There’s also the Nakba law, which makes it illegal to acknowledge the Nakba, the expulsions of Palestinians that were needed to found Israel. This would be like passing a law to make it illegal to talk about indigenous genocide or slavery in America. There’s also the admissions committee law, which basically allows towns to operate panels that deny applications for entry based on “sociocultural” compatibility, which essentially just legalizes racist housing discrimination.
In Israel, advocating genocide of Palestinians doesn’t hurt your chances of holding a high position in government, and in fact, in many cases, it helps. In 2014, Israeli lawmaker Ayelet Shaked wrote an unhinged rant on Facebook, calling all Palestinians enemy combatants and saying their mothers should be killed for giving birth to “little snakes.” The next year she was appointed the Minister of Justice by Benjamin Netanyahu. Itamar Ben-Gvir, a lifelong admirer of Meir Kahane—an Arab exterminationist—a man who praised the Jewish settler who killed a Palestinian for throwing a rock at him, a man who was famously acquitted after being criminally charged for chanting “Death to Arabs,” is Israel’s current Minister of National Security. He’s not some fringe figure either, he’s one of the most popular politicians in Israel right now.
In the last few days, Israel has been working hard to cast itself as the victim, the victim of hatred, the victim of terrorism, the victim of anti-semitism. That they have no choice but to lay siege to Gaza. But underneath this carefully concocted victim complex is a racist Jewish supremacist state that’s been trying to finish the job that the Nakba started for decades. And really, this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. After all, they’re literally cutting off water and electricity to a city of 2 million people right now. Their generals talk openly about flattening Gaza and killing “the animals,” meaning Palestinians. It’s obvious their goal is genocide.
