[News] World silent as fascists join Israel government

[Anti-Imperialist News]

World silent as fascists join Israel government
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 24 October 2006

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5874.shtml


Official EU propaganda on display at Dublin airport claims that the 
"European Union is working for peace, security and stability 
everywhere." (Image: Ali Abunimah/EI)

In a frightening but long expected move, Israeli prime minister Ehud 
Olmert has brought the Yisrael Beitenu party into his coalition 
government. The party's leader, Avigdor Lieberman, is to be vice 
prime minister and, as "Minister for Strategic Threats," a key member 
of Israel's "security cabinet" in charge of the Iran portfolio.

Yisrael Beitenu is a dangerous extremist party with fascist 
tendencies that has openly advocated the "transfer" of Palestinians, 
including the transfer of Arab towns within Israel to a 
Bantustan-like future Palestinian entity. It has made clear that a 
Jewish supremacist state is more important than a democratic one. The 
party, whose strongest base is among Russian immigrants brought to 
Israel in the 1990s, surged at the Israeli election earlier this 
year, taking eleven seats in Israel's 120 seat Knesset.

Last summer, Israel launched a disastrous war of destruction against 
Lebanon, and continues its siege and onslaught against Palestinians 
in the occupied territories which has killed nearly three hundred 
people in three months and left hundreds of thousands without 
sufficient food, water and electricity. Lieberman has advocated even 
more harsh and criminal measures against the Palestinians and 
Israel's neighbors.

It is dismaying that the European Union, a key international actor, 
seems set to maintain warm, normal relations with this extremist 
government, thus giving it encouragement and legitimacy.

"You will understand that we cannot interfere with the setting up of 
a foreign government. This is a matter for which the concerned State 
alone is responsible," wrote Cristina Gallach, the official 
spokesperson for Javier Solana, the EU High Representative for 
foreign policy, in an email responding to a query about whether the 
EU would impose sanctions on Israel if Yisrael Beitenu joined the government.

Gallach added that "We think that both Israel and the Palestinians 
are aware of the responsibility they have in creating the favorable 
conditions for reactivating the Peace Process with the ultimate goal 
of having two States living side by side in peace and security." 
Other than such bland and cynical platitudes, Solana's spokesperson 
offered no hint of EU concern about the horrifying political 
developments within Israel that are certain to bring about further 
violence, escalation and needless suffering.

In an interview with an Israeli newspaper in September, Yisrael 
Beitenu leader Lieberman said: "The vision I would like to see here 
is the entrenching of the Jewish and the Zionist state...I very much 
favour democracy, but when there is a contradiction between 
democratic and Jewish values, the Jewish and Zionist values are more 
important." (Scotsman, October 23, 2006)

In addition to espousing ethnic cleansing, Lieberman has a long 
history of inciting discrimination, hatred and violence against 
Palestinians within the Jewish state and living under Israeli 
military occupation in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. 
When he served as minister of transport in a previous government, 
Lieberman called for all Palestinian prisoners held by the Israeli 
occupation authorities to be drowned in the Dead Sea and offered to 
provide the buses ("Lieberman blasted for suggesting drowning 
Palestinian prisoners," Ha'aretz, July 11, 2002). He has proposed to 
strip the citizenship of, and expel any Palestinian citizen of Israel 
who refuses to sign a loyalty oath to the Jewish Zionist state ("A 
Jewish demographic state," Ha'aretz, June 28, 2002).

In 2002, Lieberman declared, "I would not hesitate to send the 
Israeli army into all of Area A [the area of the West Bank ostensibly 
under Palestinian Authority control] for 48 hours. Destroy the 
foundation of all the authority's military infrastructure, all of the 
police buildings, the arsenals, all the posts of the security 
forces... not leave one stone on another. Destroy everything." He 
also suggested to the Israeli cabinet that the air force 
systematically bomb all the commercial centers, gas stations and 
banks in the occupied territories (The Independent, March 7, 2002). 
And, he has proposed bombing Egypt's Aswan Dam, despite that 
country's peace treaty with Israel since 1979. What will he propose 
to do to Iran?

Hebrew University professor Ze'ev Sternhell, a leading Israeli 
academic specialist on fascism and totalitarianism, was quoted by the 
Scotsman newspaper as terming Lieberman "perhaps the most dangerous 
politician in the history of the state of Israel."

Urgent action is needed to stem the growing threat to international 
peace and security that Israel presents. Rather than do anything of 
the kind, the office of the EU High Representative has set a new low 
standard, offering only appeasement and accomodation for Israeli 
extremism and apartheid. The claim that the EU does not interfere in 
the internal affairs of foreign governments is just a fig leaf for 
political cowardice and unwillingness to stand up to Israel or its 
backers; it is not remotely consistent with past or present practice 
in other cases.

Most glaringly, since Palestinians under occupation elected Hamas to 
lead the Palestinian Authority last January, in the Arab world's most 
free election ever, the EU has interfered in their affairs in the 
most irresponsible manner, imposing a total siege and cut off of aid 
that has directly penalized the Palestinian population, causing 
widespread hunger and deprivation. This siege is explicitly intended 
to force the Hamas-led authority to abandon the platform on which it 
was elected, or to force it out of office completely. (The EU claims 
it wants Hamas to recognize Israel and end violence, even though 
Hamas has observed a 22-month one-sided truce, halting attacks on 
Israel, and its leaders have issued repeated statements in favor of 
reaching a long-term agreement with Israel on the basis of equality 
and mutual, not one-sided, recognition.) The European Union, under 
Solana's personal stewardship, orchestrated this gross interference 
in the development of Palestinian democracy and punishment of those 
who tried to practice it.

And in 2000, EU countries took the unprecedented measure of imposing 
diplomatic sanctions on one of their own member states, Austria, 
after the far-right Freedom Party joined the government following 
elections. Although many voices criticized the EU for meddling in the 
internal affairs of a democratic country, one of the most vocal 
supporters of the sanctions was none other than Javier Solana, who on 
that occasion declared "I think Europe has given a very good example 
of how in important things -- things that have to go with principles, 
with values -- there's no possibility of compromise." ("Sanctions hit 
Austria," Reuters, February 4, 2000).

But when it comes to EU member states discharging their 
responsibilities to hold Israel accountable for its escalating 
violations of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, the Fourth Geneva 
Convention, numerous UN Security Council Resolutions, and basic human 
decency, the principles that Solana and many powerful others are so 
proud to boast of are nowhere to be found.

In this moral and political vacuum, it is ever more urgent to heed 
the call of Palestinian civil society to join the growing global 
campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions.

Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805080341/theelectronic-20>"One 
Country - A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse" 
(Metropolitan Books, 2006)


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