Are Jewish fundamentalists more dangerous than the secularists? Ask their
Palestinian victims
By Joseph Massad, Opinion Article, Middle East Eye,
12 April 2023
There is nothing Zionist Jewish
fundamentalists have called for that has not already been
committed or advocated by secular Zionists
An Israeli man walks past an election
billboard featuring the far-right coalition leaders Benjamin
Netanyahu, Itamar Ben Gvir
and Bezalel Smotrich, on 29 March 2019
(AFP)
For decades now, secular Zionists and even anti-Zionists
have been hectoring us about the danger of Zionist Jewish
fundamentalism. Their voices have become more trenchant in
the last few months with the accession to power of Benjamin
Netanyahu's right-wing government, which includes the
largest number of Jewish
fundamentalists ever in an Israeli cabinet.
Most of the secular Zionists worry that Jewish
fundamentalists are very dangerous to Israeli Jews, others
that they are also dangerous to Palestinians,
while some, including anti-Zionist secularists, insist that
they threaten the entire gentile world.
Yet, it has always been secular Zionists who commit the
most horrific massacres of Palestinians, who conquered and
colonised their lands, who discriminate against Mizrahi
Jews, and who remain friends with antisemitic
regimes and forces around the world - from
Hungary's Viktor Orban and other right-wing European
political movements to American evangelical fundamentalists.
It is also secular Zionists who continue to use military
censorship on all media in Israel, and who have continued to
rule the country under Emergency
Regulations since 1948. It is also the
secularists who enacted all the racist
laws for which Israel is so infamous.
What, then, makes the Zionist Jewish fundamentalists more
dangerous than secular Zionists?
Secular fundamentalism
Many of the anti-Jewish fundamentalist disquisitions are, in
fact, akin in tone and bias to the anti-Muslim - let alone the
anti-Islamist - treatises published by Islamophobic westerners,
and Arab and Muslim secularists.
Indeed, what the anti-Jewish fundamentalist tracts have in
common with the anti-Muslim and anti-Islamist tirades is an
unreserved commitment to white Protestant European liberal
secularism, deployed as the main "enlightened" reference with
which Islam, Islamism and fundamentalist Judaism (if not Judaism
itself) are always compared, and which leaves all the others
wanting.
A relevant example is the long interview that
the Israeli newspaper Haaretz ran a couple of weeks ago about
the influence of the American-born Israeli fundamentalist rabbi,
Yitzchak Ginsburgh. The interview was conducted with the
Israeli-educated and US-based professor of religion Motti
Inbari, a scholar of Ginsburgh and his movement. As a secular
Zionist, Inbari warns readers that Ginsburgh wants to transform
Israel into "Iran", as he seeks:
"To uproot the Zionist-secular spirit and to topple the
government, until a Torah-based regime can be established.
The Supreme Court, with its criminal decisions, must be
crushed. The army does not need to be crushed, only
subjugated. In this context, it’s important to draw
comparisons, and this must be stated explicitly: This is the
way of thinking of ISIS and Al-Qaida."
Inbari adds that Ginsburgh is also dangerous to
Palestinians and other gentiles as he believes that "Jewish
blood is worthier than gentile blood", and that "the Jews are
above nature, and therefore, in a situation in which a gentile
intends to kill a Jew, the gentile must be liquidated in order
to protect the Jew".
These are hardly new warnings. In a book published three
decades ago on Jewish fundamentalism in Israel, the pro-Israel
American Jewish political scientist Ian
Lustick, who opposes the 1967 occupation and supports
peaceful negotiations, insisted that the "belief system" of
fundamentalist Jews was "radically different from the liberal
humanitarian ethos shared by most Israelis and Americans".
Lustick identified fundamentalists
as "the greatest obstacle" to what he called "meaningful
negotiations". He claimed that,
unlike secular Jews who might oppose "peace" based on
"security", the fundamentalists do so based on "ideology". It
would seem secular Zionists have no ideology to guide them.
Lustick, who worried about US relations
with Israel being weakened by a Jewish fundamentalist takeover
in Israel, cautioned that such a fundamentalist regime "would
destroy the special relationship with the United States" that is
based on "perceptions of common moral, political, and cultural
purposes".
Such a fundamentalist Israel in possession of
"a large and sophisticated nuclear arsenal", Lustick concluded,
would be as threatening to US interests as "the Islamic
Revolution in Iran".
The adherence of Lustick and Inbari to official US propaganda
about Iran’s state structure as "fundamentalist" - or that it
constitutes a threat to the US - goes unquestioned, which is why
Jewish fundamentalists are compared by both of them to Iran as
the worst bogeyman of western secularists.
More dangerous?
Not to be outdone, the late anti-Zionist Israeli activist
Israel Shahak was even more forthright in his dire
anti-fundamentalist fulminations. In a book he co-authored in
1999 on the topic, he announced that
Jewish fundamentalists are a danger not only to Palestinians but
to "all non-Jews".
Like Inbari more recently, Shahak explained how
fundamentalist Judaism considers Jews unique racially and
genetically, with special Jewish blood and Jewish DNA which,
in turn, makes Jewish life special and more valuable than
non-Jewish life. While Shahak was aware of secular Zionist
anti-Arab racism, anchored in European secular racism, it is
unclear why he represented the Jewish fundamentalists' racism as
somehow more dangerous to Palestinians or other gentiles.
Indeed, Shahak went as far as attributing secular Zionist
racism to Judaism itself, and not to European secular racism.
Thus, the Jewish supremacist attitude prevalent among the
fundamentalists, we are told, seeped into the belief system of
secular Jews, to the point that Israeli protesters against
Israeli military involvement in Lebanon never mentioned Lebanese casualties.
Yet, can this omission be adequately explained by Jewish
fundamentalism alone? In the US, for example, reference is
often made to the 58,000 or so US soldiers killed in Vietnam
without mentioning the more than three million Indochinese these
US soldiers killed.
R-L: Israeli Defence Minister General
Moshe Dayan with the secular Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir
and other military
officers
during a military ceremony in Jerusalem on 1 November
1972 (AFP)
Would a chauvinist and racist secular nationalism which
privileges European white life - in its Zionist guise in Israel
and its anti-communist and anti-Asian camouflage in the US -
over the lives of non-whites also be the culprit, and not only
Jewish fundamentalism which privileges Jewish life?
From the outset, Shahak's views, similar to Lustick's and
Inbari's, deploy a comparative grid between fundamentalist
Judaism, on the one hand, and Protestant secular liberal Europe
and its Israeli secular imitators, on the other. It is within
this grid that many such authors tell their stories of horrific
Jewish fundamentalism.
Shahak's book continues like most recent western tracts on
Islamism, which exoticise Muslims and Islam before proceeding to
make the most outrageous conclusions about them.
The main difference, of course, is that, unlike the
anti-Islam pundits who are part of hegemonic western propaganda
against Muslims, Shahak's book challenges the hegemonic and
distortive Zionist rewriting of Jewish history. What the book
shares with the many anti-Islam tracts, however, is the a priori
positive valuation of the Protestant liberal secular West.
Shahak goes so far as to volunteer that
"The tension between fundamentalist and secular Israelis,
therefore, stems mostly from the fact that these two groups live
in different time periods".
Such evolutionist and Social Darwinist representations are
characteristic of many Western and some Muslim authors who write
on Islam and the Third World more generally.
'Enlightened' racism
The secular Shahak confuses religious piety with
fundamentalism. Unlike the secular Ashkenazim who are presented
as "enlightened" on the issue of Judaism and rabbinical
authority, we are treated to the patronising account that
"almost all Oriental [Jewish] politicians, including the Black
Panthers of the early 1970s and the members of the tiny Oriental
peace movements, commonly bow to and kiss the hands of rabbis in
public".
Aside from the similarity of this non-fundamentalist pious
gesture to how pious Arab Muslims and Christians treat their
clerics, this Orientalist panic in Shahak is compounded by the
description of the Mizrahi peace movements as "tiny" (which
indeed they had been historically), as if to suggest that the
Ashkenazi "peace" movements constituted mass popular movements
(which they never did).
| Ben Gvir astutely reminded his
secular accusers that all the heroes of the Israeli army
and the Zionist militia are heroes because they murdered
Palestinians |
Shahak had long predicted a civil war in Israel that never
materialised during his lifetime. In this book, he had more
startling predictions to
make: "It is not unreasonable to assume that [the fundamentalist
Jewish settler movement] Gush Emunim, if it possessed the power
and control, would use nuclear weapons in warfare to attempt to
achieve its purpose."
This is fully consonant with US propaganda about Islamists
and Muslim "rogue" states' alleged readiness to use nuclear
weapons, which, unlike Israel, they do not have, against the
West - especially so as Shahak goes
to pains to tell us that the gentiles do not only include the
Arabs but “all non-Jews”.
Absent from this narrative is the fact that Israeli prime
ministers Levi Eshkol and Golda Meir, secular Zionists, were the
ones who almost used nuclear
weapons against Egypt and Syria in 1967 and 1973. Shahak,
who has written on Israel's nuclear capability, was no stranger
to these facts.
The point is not that Gush Emunim in the 1990s or today's
Jewish fundamentalists would not use nuclear weapons (which
Israel has in abundance), but that they would not use them
solely based on their fundamentalist interpretation of Judaism,
but based on their Zionist convictions, which colour their view
of Judaism in the first place.
Most remarkable is that Shahak, Lustick,
and Inbari do
not see the American Jewish fundamentalist colonist Baruch
Goldstein - who massacred Palestinians at al-Ibrahimi Mosque on
Purim in 1994 - in the context of a racist and colonialist
secular Zionism and its myriad massacres of Palestinians since
the 1930s, but rather as part of Jewish fundamentalist
commitments.
For background to the massacre, Shahak, for example, even speaks of
the "well-documented cases of [Jews who committed] massacres of
Christians and mock repetitions of the crucifixion of Jesus on
Purim, most of which occurred either in the late ancient period
or in the Middle Ages".
Unlike these incidents, however, secular Zionist and Israeli
massacres of Palestinians are ongoing occurrences and provide
more immediate examples to emulate for the likes of Goldstein,
rather than some medieval Jewish practices. In invoking some
ancient Jewish instances of killing Christians on Purim, the
anti-Zionist Shahak unwittingly lets secular Zionism off the
hook.
There is to date nothing that Zionist Jewish fundamentalists
have called for that has not been already committed or advocated
by secular Zionism. This was perhaps best expressed by Israel's
Jewish fundamentalist Minister of National Security Itamar Ben
Gvir when he was a young man in 1994.
In an interview, the
young Ben Gvir castigated his hypocritical secular leftist
Jewish interlocutors who accused Ben Gvir of supporting murder
due to his defence of Goldstein.
To their horror and yells, Ben Gvir astutely and with sincere
honesty reminded his secular accusers that all the heroes of the
Israeli army and the pre-state Zionist militia, the Haganah, are
heroes because they murdered Palestinians. He was not wrong.
As for the ongoing propaganda campaign that Jewish
fundamentalists are somehow more dangerous or violent or
murderous than the secularists, ask their surviving Palestinian
victims and they will readily echo Ben Gvir's accurate account.
Joseph Massad is professor of modern Arab
politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, New
York. He is the author of many books and academic and
journalistic articles. His books include Colonial Effects: The
Making of National Identity in Jordan; Desiring Arabs; The
Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and
the Palestinians, and most recently Islam in Liberalism. His
books and articles have been translated into a dozen languages.
Netanyahu’s Comeback; Israeli Fascist Right Solidifies its Grip on Power
By Hussam AbdelKareem, Al Mayadeen English,
25 Nov 2022
Although Netanyahu is expected to form
a relatively stable government that could complete its 4-year
mandate, this government is "Israel's" most right-wing to date,
and its main figures have bred controversy because of their
racist views.
This time, the alliance of factions
Netanyahu is preparing to lead is quite different from his
previous governments.
Benjamin Netanyahu is back. The longest-serving Israeli
prime minister, whom many people thought was politically
finished, has won the latest Israeli elections and
emerged as the leading candidate to form the new Israeli
government. In fact, he has been already tasked with
forming the new government by Israeli President Isaac
Herzog, and in all likelihood, he’ll succeed in that
mission after negotiating with his political allies and
settling the disputes over assignments of ministerial
positions – something he’s done many times before.
Netanyahu’s Likud Party won 32 seats in the Israeli
Knesset (parliament), and his three potential partners
in government won another 32 seats, totaling 64 out of
the Knesset's 120 seats. This is a comfortable majority
in Israeli politics and Netanyahu is expected to lead to
a stable government that could complete its 4-year
mandate.
However, this time the
alliance of factions that he is preparing to lead is
quite different from his previous governments. In
addition to Likud, it is going to include the Religious
Zionism Party (14 seats), Shas Party (11 seats), and
United Torah Judaism (UTJ) Party ( 7 seats), all of
which are politically to his right. The Likud Party has
for long been considered the far–right stream in Israeli
politics, with its roots going back to the racist and
fascist ideologies of the terrorist Zionists Vladimir
Jabotinski and Menachem Begin. But the results of the
latest elections mean that Likud will be joined by
smaller parties that are positioned to its right. The
other three religious parties in Netanyahu’s coalition
adopt even more extreme views with regard to Arabs and
Palestine. Gone are the days when Netanyahu sits in a
cabinet alongside more center-leaning characters. The
right in “Israel” is now blatantly fascist and
religious. As for the left, it has almost vanished. The
Labour Party, which represents the heritage of the first
Zionist generation (Gurion, Golda Meir, and their likes)
that historically masterminded the creation of the
Israeli “state” and won its wars, got only 4 seats in
the Knesset out of 120!
As for the so-called
“peace process”, nothing will change. For over a decade
there has been no “peace process” with Palestinian Arabs
at all. Everything is on hold, no rounds of negotiations
with the Palestinian Authority, no political
initiatives, and no ideas on the table. All that
Netanyahu did, with the help of former President Trump,
was “bypass” the Palestinians and jump to establish
relations with some Arab countries.
Here we shed some light
on Netanyahu’s new allies and partners in the upcoming
Israeli government.
Smotrich and Ben-Gurion’s "unfinished business"
The young rising star of
the Israeli far-right was born in 1980 in an Israeli
settlement in Syria’s Golan Heights (occupied by
“Israel” since 1967) to parents of Ukrainian origin.
Between 2015 – 2019, his party was called “ The Jewish
Home” but then Bezalel Smotrich broadened his base among
Israeli settlers and extreme far-right groups and
entered the latest elections under “The Religious
Zionists” Party.
Smotrich publicly said
that Palestinian Arabs living within the borders of the
so-called “state of Israel” were there only by mistake
because Ben-Gurion didn’t finish his job” referring to
"Israel’s" founder and first Prime Minister David Ben
Gurion, who was responsible for the expulsion of over
750,000 Palestinians out of their homes and land in
1948. On another occasion, Smotrich said that “only Jews
in this land have the right of self-determination”, and
added that Arabs would be allowed to live only if they
give up their national aspirations and recognize the
Jewishness of the state and land!
Ben Gvir; Kahane’s heir
Itamar Ben Gvir was born
in 1976 to an Iraqi father and a Kurdish mother who
immigrated to Palestine in the late 1940s. Since his
early age, Ben Gvir was associated with extreme-right
movements calling for the expulsion, even elimination,
of Arabs from the country. He became the youth
coordinator of KACH, the organization founded by the
American Rabbi Meir Kahana in the 1980s. The KACH
movement was banned after the 1994 massacre at the
Ibrahimi Mosque in Al-Khalil, south of the occupied West
Bank, during which KACH member Baruch Goldstein shot and
killed 29 Palestinian worshippers and injured dozens
more.
KACH was designated as
racist and terrorist, so its operatives, including Ben
Gvir, were forced to change the names and banners of
their activities. Ben Gvir proudly kept an image of the
criminal Baruch Goldstein in his office, and was only
compelled to remove it only after he entered politics
and became a public figure later on. However, his first
party, Otzma Yehudit, was known to hail from Meir
Kahana’s ideology and heritage. Recently, Ben Gvir
joined forces with Smotrich and became the leader of a
major faction within the “Religious Zionism Party” known
as “Jewish Power”. In May 2021, Ben Gvir led a group of
settlers in storming the Palestinian neighborhood of
Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Al-Quds. He called on
Israeli forces and armed settlers to shoot any
Palestinians throwing stones, while brandishing a weapon
himself.
Shas Party: “Arabs are
insects”
The Shas party
represents the Eastern orthodox Jews known as Sephardim,
whose origins are from Arab and Islamic countries. Its
founder, spiritual father, and religious leader, the
late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, once called for the
annihilation of Arabs saying “they are evil and
damnable”. Yosef, a former Chief Rabbi of “Israel”,
preached that “it is forbidden to be merciful to them.
You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. The
Lord shall waste their seed and exterminate them,
devastate them and vanish them from this world”. And on
another occasion, he called the Arabs “snakes” and
added, “Those evildoers, the Arabs, God is sorry that he
ever created those sons of Ishmael”.
Shas is now led by Aryeh
Deri, who’s a faithful disciple of Rabbi Yosef. Shas
adopts very strict religious teachings that totally
exclude women from the party ranks. Media reports
suggest that Netanyahu is ready to offer Deri, who was
born in Morocco in 1959 and immigrated to Palestine in
1968, the very senior position of Security Minister.
Goldknopf: Math never
advanced "Israel"
United Torah Judaism
Party is the Ashkenazi equivalent to Shas, representing
the Western ultra-orthodox Jews of European origins, and
like it, it’s a male-only movement. Although UTJ’s
current leader, Rabbi Yitzhak Goldknopf, is 71 years
old, he’s relatively new to Israeli politics, having
spent most of his public life active in the social
arena. For years, he was responsible for chains of
schools and kindergartens known as “Beit Yaakov”, mainly
promoting religious education and upbringing. He also
served as secretary of the rabbinical committee for the
sanctity of Shabbat (the committee fought for
restrictions in the public space, including a campaign
that forced El Al airlines to stop flying on Saturdays). One Goldknopf's most striking statements was
“mathematics and English never advanced the country”,
which was said in the context of his opposition to
introducing modern curricula to religious Jewish
schools.
It is reported that
Galdknopf is demanding the post of Finance Minister for
himself!
Those were the main
parties and figures that will be an integral part of the
new Israeli government, holding senior posts and
dictating their racist agendas along with Netanyahu’s
Likud.
Hussam
AbdelKareem
Writer from Jordan
