Our Wednesday News Analysis | 'Israel' and Ukraine; two sides with one ideology?

Source: Al Mayadeen
https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/opinion/israel-and-ukraine-two-sides-with-one-ideology

By Fra Hughes
Published December 18, 2022

It was the Russians who defeated Nazism in WWII, losing over 25 million of its people in the process. Without Russia, Europe would be today under the jackboot of the Third Reich.

Who would ever have believed in a million years or in a parallel universe that in the year 2022 anyone could write an article comparing "Israel" with Ukraine’s resurgent fascism?

Well, let's begin. Shall we?

Let us see if there is a comparison.

Let's see if that comparison is valid.

The Israeli entity was established in bloodshed in 1948.

Not the anti-colonial revolutionary bloodshed of Egypt, Ireland, Algeria, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Kenya, to mention a few. No, "Israel" was "born" in colonial bloodshed.

It didn't come from a risen people shaking off the chains and shackling of imperialist military occupation from the French, the British, the Spanish, the Dutch, or the Portuguese. No, these Israelis were colonial occupiers. They were alien settlers using brute force, military superiority, ethnic cleansing, rape, murder, mutilation, and other brutal extermination methods to cleanse what they claimed to be "their land" of its indigenous population.

The first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, was established in 1897 by Theodore Herzl.

It aimed to create a "homeland" for the Jewish people, a land where Jewish people could live "in peace" and "free from the threat of violence or discrimination." What a laudable goal considering that Jews had suffered disproportionately from pogroms and racist violence in many European countries from European rulers, primarily unelected Christian Monarchies of the time.

Many Jews were forced out of Spain in 1492; they emigrated and were welcomed into West Asia.

Palestine and most of the countries in the region already had settled ethnic indigenously-assimilated Jewish communities.

There were Iraqi Jews, Syrian Jews, Persian Jews, Yemeni Jews, Libyan Jews, etc.

Judaism is a religion; it is not an ethnicity...

Read more: 'Israel' and Ukraine; two sides with one ideology?

ISRAEL: THE END OF ALL ILLUSIONS

Source: Jews for Justice for Palestinians
https://jfjfp.com/israel-the-end-of-all-illusions/

Chris Hedges writes in JVL
Published December 13, 2022

"Netanyahu, who is charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three corruption cases, is determined to politicize the judiciary. He and his coalition partners will further curtail the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel who are already second-class citizens.

They will continue to push aggressively for a war with Iran.

They will support efforts to seize the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, which Jewish Israelis call the Temple Mount, the supposed site of the Second Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D.

Jewish extremists have long called for the Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest shrine for Muslims, to be torn down and replaced by a “Third” Jewish temple, a move that would set the Muslim world alight. Ben-Gvir, who considers Baruch Goldstein, the Jewish settler who in 1994 massacred 29 Muslims worshipers in Hebron, “a hero,” has announced an imminent visit along with other Jewish extremists to the site of the mosque.

When Ariel Sharon, then Israel’s opposition leader, went to the mosque site in September 2000, it ignited the Second Intifada."

JVL Introduction

Chris Hedges is in no doubt that the new government in Israel represents a seismic change.

It is one thing to argue that the logic of a liberal “Jewish and democratic” Zionist state tends towards inequality, oppression, supremacy.

It is another to recognise that that moment of Zionism has run its course.

What has happened is not more of the same, but much worse. It is a step change, says Chris Hedges, on the way to a “despotic theocracy”.

He pulls no punches when he says that “Ben-Gvir and Smotrich represent the dregs of Israeli society, one that promotes ‘Jewish identity’ and ‘Jewish nationalism’ in a Zionist version of fascism’s call for blood and soil.

It is these Jewish fascists who are now calling the tune.

And we can expect the war against the Jewish “traitors within” to go hand in hand with increased violence and death meted out to Palestinians as a matter of daily routine…

Read more: Israel: the end of all illusions

WHERE TO FIND HOPE

Source: Mondoweiss
https://mondoweiss.net/2022/12/where-to-find-hope/

By MITCHELL PLITNICK
Published December 17, 2022

It will take a long time for the Palestinian struggle to reach a tipping point. Not much will happen before it does, but the U.S. isn't the key to liberation. The Palestinian people are.

"So, if the key to Palestinian liberation is the United States, as Yasir Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas seem to have believed, then there is no hope. Fortunately for the Palestinians, the U.S. is not the key to Palestinian liberation.

The Palestinian people are. "

A short while back, I got a message from someone on Facebook asking me if I see any hope for the Palestinian people. Over two decades of doing work to support Palestinian rights, I’ve been asked this from time to time by people who are in a moment of despair, seeing the overwhelming power stacked against the Palestinians.

It’s not an easy question. I confess, there have been times over the past twenty-plus years that I have thought of finding a different area of social justice to work on. Sometimes, I’ve stayed in this struggle just because this is what I know best, while sometimes it’s been because it is just so special to me. But whatever the reason that I’ve kept at this, I couldn’t have done so if I couldn’t answer for myself why I fight this particular fight.

I am, after all, not Palestinian and, while I am Jewish, I’ve never done anything in support of Zionism or Israel. As an American Jew, there is an obvious connection between my ethnicity and the oppression of Palestinians, but I am also white, cis-male, American, and straight-presenting (although I’m bisexual). There are plenty of ways in which I am connected to a privileged group that is oppressing others. I don’t have to work on Palestine to leverage my privilege.

Palestine is an issue that is often used as an example of a quixotic battle. I disagree with that characterization, but it’s certainly true that we’re hard pressed to find a people against whom the deck is more stacked than the Palestinians. So am I just going through the motions on this issue or is there real hope for victory?

My focus is mostly on U.S. policy and how that warps and complicates the question of Palestine. For all the talk, theater, and games U.S. policymakers play claiming to respect human life, let alone human rights, the US places little value on lives that are not American. Even at that, the value placed on American lives is highly conditional (on race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, class, etc.)...

Read more: Where to find hope