[News] Israel's pogroms in Jerusalem

Fri Apr 23 13:28:43 EDT 2021

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210423-israels-pogroms-in-jerusalem/
Israel's
pogroms in Jerusalem
Asa Winstanley - April 23, 2021
------------------------------

The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines
<https://www.britannica.com/topic/pogrom> a pogrom as "a mob attack, either
approved or condoned by authorities, against the persons and property of a
religious, racial, or national minority".

That is exactly what is happening today against the Palestinian people in
Jerusalem.

Palestinians are not a minority in Palestine – the country that lies
between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. But due to Israel's
apartheid regime
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/downloads/201703_UN_ESCWA-israeli-practices-palestinian-people-apartheid-occupation-english.pdf>
that has ruled the country since 1948
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20170515-remembering-the-nakba/>, the
majority of Palestinians were expelled from the areas that today form
so-called "Israel proper", and which many Palestinians term "1948
Palestine".

Due to a slow process of Israeli ethnic cleansing since then, Palestinians
are no longer the majority in Jerusalem. But in recent weeks that process
has sped up in that city, the historic capital of Palestine.

Some truly terrifying clips have been circulated online – including by
credible journalists – showing rampaging mobs of mostly young Israeli men
attacking Palestinians in Jerusalem and chanting
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210423-100s-jerusalemites-injured-as-ultra-right-wing-israelis-march-chant-death-to-arabs/>
"Death to the Arabs" (while being incited and led by mainstream Israeli
political <https://twitter.com/davidsheen/status/1385337007459741700> and
religious leaders).

Hundreds of Jewish supremacists descend upon Palestinian East Jerusalem,
chanting "Death to the Arabs!" https://t.co/zQvQttn2Rv

— David Sheen (@davidsheen) April 22, 2021
<https://twitter.com/davidsheen/status/1385319944762675206?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

HAPPENING NOW: Armed far-right Israeli civilians attack a Palestinian home
while children cry.

These are the kinds of acts of blood-curdling violence that Israelis are
committing en masse in Jerusalem tonight.

Keep your eyes on and your hearts with the Palestinians there.
pic.twitter.com/1GKBXeoOcx <https://t.co/1GKBXeoOcx>

— JVP #SaveSheikhJarrah (@jvplive) April 22, 2021
<https://twitter.com/jvplive/status/1385365600885559297?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

Raw footage from last night https://t.co/8jvD4KYxfI

— David Sheen (@davidsheen) April 23, 2021
<https://twitter.com/davidsheen/status/1385522106889297922?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

This is not a new phenomenon, but it has increased in recent weeks, partly
due to a ruling by an Israeli court demanding
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-save-sheikh-jarrah-campaign>
new expulsions of Palestinian families from the Jerusalem neighbourhood of
Sheikh Jarrah.

*READ: The 'real' apartheid
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210417-the-real-apartheid/>*

The families have been until the start of May to leave their homes and hand
them over to Israeli settlers.

These actions by the apartheid state of Israel have only encouraged the
"Death to the Arabs" hate mobs. And therein lies the key to understating
the essence of a pogrom.

Israeli settlers rampage through occupied Jerusalem chanting "Death to the
Arabs." What you see here is not a fringe minority of extremists, but the
mainstream racism of a state built on ethnic cleansing and apartheid.
https://t.co/vCjsTZMJer

— Tamara Nassar (@TamaraINassar) April 22, 2021
<https://twitter.com/TamaraINassar/status/1385321445006397446?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

A pogrom is carried out by violent mobs, who are deemed in the discourse of
the government and of the corporate media to be "extremists". There is no
doubt that these mobs are far-right Jewish-supremacist extremists by any
objective definition.

But they are not extremists in terms of the mainstream of Israeli political
discourse and – crucially – of the actions of the racist state itself.

You can see this very clearly in a viral video clip that was circulated by
the American anti-Zionist group, Jewish Voice for Peace.

These clips of the settler are from the 2009 film "My Neighborhood."

But they could've been filmed yesterday.

This May, settlers will once again forcibly remove Palestinian families in
#SheikhJarrah
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/SheikhJarrah?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>.
Their efforts to do so have been sustained, unrelenting, over decades now.
pic.twitter.com/f0FAM6wbH8 <https://t.co/f0FAM6wbH8>

— JVP #SaveSheikhJarrah (@jvplive) April 21, 2021
<https://twitter.com/jvplive/status/1384898285777952769?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

The clip was from a 2009 film about Sheikh Jarrah. But as JVP notes, it
could easily have been filmed today. Expulsions of Palestinians by mobs of
highly ideological religious Zionist fanatics are still frequently carried
out, in the same way seen in the clip.

But the most telling part of the video is perhaps not so much the actions
of the mob itself, but how they are endorsed and backed by the racist state.

You see the thugs of Israel's highly-armed military "Border Police" force
standing by and watching the takeover, making sure that the Palestinians
are not able to defend themselves or their homes.

This is the very definition of a pogrom.

In the clip posted by JVP, Israeli settler leader Jonathan Yosef is
shamelessly explicit about all this, saying: "We take house after house.
All this area will be a Jewish neighbourhood … We are going to the next
neighbourhood and after that we'll go [to] more. Our dream [is] that all
East Jerusalem will be like West Jerusalem. [A] Jewish capital of Israel."

He then gives a far clearer, far more honest – and frankly more accurate –
definition of Zionism than the lying dissimulators of liberal and
"left-wing" Zionism ever could (with their nonsense about "Jewish
self-determination" in a country which has never been exclusively Jewish).

I see this as a continuation of the Zionist project. The return to Zion. Is
it at the Arabs' expense? Yes. But our government institutions were also
built at the expense of Arabs who lived here. And so was the state itself

he says.

Everything Yosef said in this definition of Zionism is objectively true.
The difference though, is that he thinks that such violent, racist
extremism is good and praiseworthy, while I (and the vast majority of
people around the world) reject it as a horrifying injustice.

Yosef is no marginal figure or merely some obscure wild-eyed extremist. As
my colleague David Sheen reports
<https://merip.org/2021/02/three-decades-after-his-death-kahanes-message-of-hate-is-more-popular-than-ever/>,
he sits on Jerusalem's city council for Shas – a religious extremist party
which also happens to have won the third highest number of seats in
Israel's parliament in the election last month.

"we will stay here…"https://t.co/v0YCBLSRyw

— Ben White (@benabyad) April 23, 2021
<https://twitter.com/benabyad/status/1385514939004096515?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

Despite the ongoing Israeli crackdown, thousands of #Palestinian
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/Palestinian?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
worshipers performed the weekly Friday prayer today at the Al-Aqsa Mosque
compound in occupied Jerusalem. pic.twitter.com/S4e24X4t25
<https://t.co/S4e24X4t25>

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) April 23, 2021
<https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1385545241680351234?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

But the Palestinians show no sign of backing down, lying down, giving up,
or, – in the words of Zionism's racist founder
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/oct/03/israel1> Theodor Herzl –
allowing Israel to "spirit the penniless population across the border" of
Palestine.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
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