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Red Rag column: religious fanaticism in Paris and elsewhere
By: Gideon Spiro
12 January 2015 (English translation 24 January)

Religious fanaticism: an enemy of humanity

The slaughter carried out by religious extremists at the office of the
satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo is an affront to freedom of expression,
freedom from religion, the freedom to be homosexual, in short – an affront to
democracy, and it makes no difference if the murderers are emissaries of al-
Qaeda, the Islamic State or the Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home Party. They must
be fought uncompromisingly; but unlike the extreme Right, which exploits
events like these for incitement and persecution of outsiders, defenders of
democracy will take care not to transgress its boundaries in this struggle.
The government of Israel has jumped onto the bandwagon of struggle against
terror, but that is a pretence. The State of Israel is a terror state. The 47
years of the Occupation have been 47 years of cruel terror. Terror is the
official policy of the government of Israel. The Israeli army of Occupation,
the Israel Security Agency and the ideological nucleus of fascist settlers are
producers of the terror among the fruits of which is the counter-terror of the
occupied, which itself is often horrific. Regarding the murder of the French
journalists, it is relevant to mention during that Israeli Occupation the
soldiers and police of the Occupation have killed/murdered/wounded/arrested
more than ten journalists.

After the events in Paris the electronic media devoted many hours to
discussions about the struggle against terror. All the universities in Israel
and two or three colleges as well have research institutes dedicated to
security subjects. Each of those institutes has its resident terror expert.
Many of the researchers in these institutes are retired high-ranking military
officers. So it is easy to understand why these institutes not distinguished
by their open-mindedness.

The terror experts spread out to the various radio and television studios. I
heard some of them, and wonder of wonders, regardless of which institute they
came from, they all had the same advice for Europe: separate the Arab-African-
Muslim population from the general population for purposes of questioning,
detention and searching at airports, as is done in Israel.

Netanyahu exploited to the hilt the murder of the four Jews who were hostages
in the kosher supermarket, and called on the Jews of France to emigrate (to
“ascend”, in official language) to Israel. He “forgot” to tell them that by
leaving France to go to Israel they will be forsaking a state that struggles
against racism for one where racism is a foundation of its official policy. He
also “forgot” to point out that Israel is the most dangerous place in the
world for Jews. The number of Jews who have been killed due to antisemitic
events in Europe since end of the Second World War is less than one percent of
those who have been killed due to Israeli military adventures.

And there is another point that is not talked about openly but on which there
is a quiet consensus: when Netanyahu encourages the immigration of French Jews
to Israel, he means young families with children of kindergarten or public
school age. The men, after a process of absorption, will be integrated into
the military system, and the children will be programmed in the education
system such that when they reach age 18 their big dream will be to be in the
Givati or Golani Brigade or the Paratroopers and to patrol the casbahs of
Nablus or Jenin as Occupation police. Clearly, if the Jewish community in
France were to organize the mass emigration of retired Jews over 70, the
Israeli government would immediately close the gates and the Law of Return
would be as if it had never existed. Israel wants them young, so they can be
sent to the Occupied Territories for policing and oppression. Those French
people need to be told that to immigrate to Israel under the current
circumstances would be to all intents and purposes immoral. You will be
leaving a country that has undergone a painful detoxification from colonialism
in favour of a country that is turning colonialism into a religion. You will
be going decades back in time, to the days of the Battle of Algiers when
France stood on the brink of a military coup and the loss of its democracy.

That is what awaits you in today’s Israel. We must simply speak the truth.


The riddle that is Obama

The Palestinian Authority submitted a resolution to the Security Council
calling for a peace agreement to be signed and the Israeli Occupation to end
by 2017. From an anti-Occupation perspective, it was a generous proposal. It
gives Israel three years to prepare for peace and to return the settlers to
within the recognized borders of Israel. Upon the 50th anniversary of the
Occupation the stranglehold would be removed from the necks of the
Palestinians.

The Palestinians’ joy was premature. They did not take into account the
manipulative capacity of the Israeli government and its agents. A fixed date
for the end of the Occupation is Netanyahu’s nightmare. Why would he agree to
a change the in the status quo that is so convenient for him? Forty-seven
years of Occupation have accustomed Israel to the status of privileged master
lording it over the Palestinian slave devoid of rights. So far the Palestinian
resistance movement has not succeeded in repelling the invader. A situation of
coexistence between horse and rider has been established. Netanyahu apparently
believes that it is possible to scorn the nations of the world forever while
maintaining a functioning economy. It is a very addictive drug from which it
is hard to rehabilitate. So it is but natural that Netanyahu and his
government have enlisted in the international campaign to thwart the
Palestinian resolution.

The question to which I have no answer is: why did President Obama himself
enlist in support of the Israeli effort? It is well known that there is no
love lost between Netanyahu and Obama. White House staffers who belong to the
President’s inner circle leaked to the press that the President loathes
Netanyahu. He will certainly never forgive Netanyahu’s interference in favour
of the Republican candidate in the elections in which Obama was running for a
second term.

And moreover, on President Obama’s visit to Israel in March 2013, which was
conducted according to all the rules of protocol, there was one event that
diverged from the rules: a meeting with students in Israel. Knowing that
Netanyahu is leading Israel to a dead end mired in the swamp of the
Occupation, he thought that through a direct meeting with educated young
people he could influence public opinion in a way that might nudge Netanyahu
off the disastrous path that mainly takes the form of continued construction
in the settlements, or even remove him from power at the next opportunity. In
his speech Obama emphasized the blessings that would accrue to Israel from
ending the Occupation, adding that the children of Palestine also have the
right to grow up without troops of a foreign army patrolling their streets. It
was a brilliant speech, of the type that paved his way to the presidency. But
what works in the US does not always work in Israel. Netanyahu is still PM, he
continues to build in the settlements, he torpedoes all attempts at meaningful
negotiations, is leading Israel to a state of apartheid, erodes human and
civil rights through McCarthyite legislation, initiates wars in which war-
crimes are committed, and much of Israel’s youth run to war like a bunch of
mad dogs.

The Palestinian UN resolution was close to the official position of the US,
and yet the US voted against it. There are those for whom the explanation lies
in the two words “American imperialism”, which explain everything, even two
contradictory phenomena. That is a legacy from the era of the Cold War, when
to its opponents the US symbolized the essence of evil.
I did not accept that view back then, and certainly not today.

Why, then, did the USA vote against the Palestinian resolution? Did Netanyahu
cast a spell on Obama? As said, I have no answer, only theories. Maybe Obama
told himself, if Israel wants to commit suicide, who am I to stop it? To hear
Netanyahu talk, haughty and delighted, the day after the rejection of the
Palestinian resolution in the Security Council one would think he had saved
Israel from a terrible calamity – the end of the Occupation, when what he had
really done was to move it closer to the abyss. It reminded me of Chamberlain
returning from his conference in Munich in 1938 declaring, “I have brought
peace”. Of course there are differences between the two events but the common
denominator is that both leaders led their peoples astray: one did not bring
peace, and the other did not bring security, and certainly not peace either,
and blood flowed like water.


Letter to Noam Solberg

To the settler Noam Solberg
Judge in the Supreme Court (no joke)
Shaarei Mishpat St.
Hakirya, Jerusalem

12 January 2015

Recently I read in Haaretz that you were on the panel of judges sitting
as the High Court of Justice that approved barring the entry to Israel of a
Palestinian delegation from Gaza in order to file a petition with the court.
See how low you have sunk: judges barring access to the court under the
protection of the army of Occupation. That shameful decision befit the panel,
which represented the essence of the judicial whoredom that we have received
in increasing dosages since the Occupation began in 47 years ago: you, a
settler who is a party to the theft of lands and the regime of apartheid in
the Occupied Territories; Elyakim Rubenstein, who as Attorney General
supported the Occupation and its horrors and harassed Arab Members of the
Knesset, and Uri Shoham, who as IDF Judge Advocate General was responsible for
the shameful system of military courts that serves as an arm of the
Occupation. Everything was included in your panel except justice and law.
Nevertheless, I would have expected from you at least some fairness, not the
fairness of a British gentleman or that of a human-rights defender, but the
fairness of a Mafioso, for even in the Mafia there are certain things that are
just not done. What I mean is that you should have recused yourself
from sitting on any panel dealing with the Occupied Territories. As a settler
you have a personal interest in the outcome.

If it were up to me the name of the High Court of Justice would be changed to
the High Court for the Distortion of Justice.

Gideon Spiro


Translated from Hebrew for Occupation Magazine by George Malent
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