Israel inches closer to fascism.

Avigdor Lieberman

Israel's deputy chief of staff, Yair Golan, said earlier this month that he saw trends in Israel similar to those in pre-Nazi Germany. His fears are not unfounded as the former right wing defense minister, Moshe Yaalon resigned after the war criminal Netanyahu brought Avigdor Lieberman in to the government to replace him. Yaalon said he was “fearful for Israel’s future”. Lieberman is a former nightclub bouncer and ultra nationalist who emigrated to Israel from Eastern Europe when he was 20. He has called for Israeli's to sign loyalty oaths much like Japanese Americans were forced to do to avoid internment and for expelling Israeli Arabs, an extension of the present ethnic cleansing policies of this apartheid state. He has also urged the state to bomb Palestinian businesses. He is a racist and neo-fascist.

That this colonial settler can be in a government that makes these statements and that receives billions of dollars in US military aid is disgusting. Imagine the anger and hatred that must well up in the hearts and minds of Palestinians whose families have lived there for generations and whose homes have been raised, farms demolished and land stolen. And the basis for this, what makes it "right" in the minds of those that support it, is that god declared it so.

The main support for this absurd idea comes form Zionism, and in the US it is Christian Zionists that are the dominant force in ensuring US government policy perpetuates it; for them, the developments in this part of the world have nothing to do with politics and economics but the second coming of the Christian god as written in Christian mythology, a tract called Revelations that makes sense to any thinking human being if read as a Grimm fairy tale.

From Kiev to Tel Aviv, the US taxpayer is funding the fascists.Here are a couple of commentaries referring to these developments. Facts For Working People is not affiliated with the organizations below and shares these views for the interest of our readers.

From: Mazin Qumsiyeh

Professor and (volunteer) Director
Palestine Museum of Natural History

The Israeli minister of Environment joined the previous defense minister to

quit the Zionist regime’s government because it is becoming more extreme.
With the addition of bar bouncer colonial settler Avigdor Lieberman (has a
house in an illegal colony here in Bethlehem), the fascist government is
now in good shape to take Israel to the next inevitable stage along. The
same trend-line that Nazi Germany took step-wise in the 1930s. It is no
wonder that so many more people are now drawing parallels between the two
regimes with similar exclusivist ideologies (Nazism and Zionism). Thousands
of Israeli Jews from Israel Shahak to Israeli General and Deputy Chief of
Staff Yair Golan have already made the comparison to the consternation of
the Zionist leadership. Ken |Livingstone's truthful statement taht JHitler
supported Zionism early on is well supported by facts (see my own writing
on the subject with quotes here: http://qumsiyeh.org/chapter6/).

Pioneers to draw parallel of actions of Nazis and Zionists and speak out
for justice for the native Palestinians were Holocaust survivors both
inside “Israel” (like Shahak and Davis) and outside like Hajo Meyer and
Hedy Epstein. Hedy just passed away and I knew her for almost 20 years as
one of the most principled dedicated and hardworking individuals. I
hesitated to ask her to join our wheels of justice bus tour in 2002 because
of her age (then in her 80s) but she did not hesitate in accepting and she
was just marvelous. She spoke out with authority and knowledge about the
ethnic cleansing and the massacres committed in Palestine by Zionists. She
also joined the boats trying to break the siege on Gaza. When she was in
her late 80s she was strip searched and poked by Israeli security forces at
Lod (renamed “Ben Gurion”) Airport. Please browse her website here to know
more about this remarkable woman: http://www.hedyepstein.com/

An obituary on Mondoweiss
http://mondoweiss.net/2016/05/holocaust-survivor-activist/

Leading Israeli human rights group says ‘no longer any point’ to filing
complaints against soldiers (system is not possible to address such
complaints) http://mondoweiss.net/2016/05/israeli-complaints-soldiers

and in GOOD news:
Dysfunctional Israeli leadership failing utterly in battle against BDS,
state watchdog warns
http://www.timesofisrael.com/dysfunctional-israeli-leadership-failing-utterly-in-battle-against-bds-state-watchdog-warns/

Stay human

Mazin Qumsiyeh
Professor and (volunteer) Director
Palestine Museum of Natural History
Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability
Bethlehem University
Occupied Palestine
http://qumsiyeh.org
http://palestinenature.org

For additional reading from Challenge Magazine:

Netanyahu sacks Ya'alon and makes new enemies

by Yacov Ben Efrat

It was hard to anticipate the sudden inclusion of right-winger Avigdor Lieberman into the government, not just because negotiations between the Labor Party's Yitzhak Herzog and PM Benjamin Netanyahu seemed a done deal, but mainly because it goes against all political logic. After the collapse of the previous government in 2014, in which Lieberman was a key player, and the stormy elections that followed, Netanyahu cobbled together a coalition of 61 MKs (the minimal number required for a Knesset majority), and since then his government has been hanging by a thread. The coalition obviously needed to be expanded. The question was the direction Netanyahu would take, toward Herzog or Lieberman. Although Lieberman is Likud's natural partner, the coalition suffered from an excess of ministers from the radical right. To deodorize, there seemed to be no way but to go with Labor (officially known as the Zionist Camp).

Since the outbreak of a third Intifada last October, preceded by the kidnapping and murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir and the firebombing of the Dawabsheh family, Netanyahu urgently needed the Labor Party to add a semblance of sanity to his ultra right-wing government. The extreme right in Israel is trying with all its might to shake up the status quo and end the symbiosis between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. They oppose the constraints against them on the erstwhile Temple Mount (now al-Aqsa) , as well as the slowdown of settlement construction. They focus, therefore, on provocations at al-Aqsa, terrorizing the Palestinians, vandalizing their property, and keeping a light finger on the trigger at the checkpoints.

Moreover, much effort is being made by Netanyahu and Ministers Miri Regev, Ayelet Shaked and Naftali Bennett, to weaken the “elites” in Israeli society. Writers and artists are branded enemies by the Minister of Culture (Regev), the Supreme Court has become a target for the Minister of Justice (Shaked), and the Minister of Education (Bennett) wants to implant religious education in the general curriculum. The dismissal of Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, whom Lieberman replaces, now adds the military elite to this list of undesirables. But it appears that Netanyahu may have gone too far. Ya'alon's position in the government had been crucial – indeed, he had served as Netanyahu's “flak jacket” – so his ouster came out of the blue. He had been the security honcho of the so-called "Moderate Right," the perfect answer to Netanyahu's opponents in the defense establishment, such as the late Meir Dagan (former chief of the Mossad) and Yuval Diskin, former head of the Shin Bet, both of whom had called Netanyahu a security disaster. Continue reading