[News] Israeli radio incites killing, expulsion of Palestinian citizens

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israeli-radio-incites-killing-expulsion-palestinian-citizens
Israeli
radio incites killing, expulsion of Palestinian citizens
May 20, 2021
------------------------------

Two mainstream Israeli radio journalists last week incited violence
targeting Palestinian citizens of Israel in Lydd – Lydda in English – a
city renamed in Hebrew as Lod after its ethnic cleansing in 1948.

Readers should be aware that this article will report on profane and
violent language, including references to sexual violence.

Asked by a Palestinian guest phoning into their radio show on 13 May if
Israeli Jews were “allowed to slaughter us,” host Yinon Magal replied,
“Yes, that’s how it will end, correct.”

The guest was Sheikh Yusef al-Bazz the city’s imam, who was explaining why
Palestinian youths had come out onto the streets to protest in solidarity
with their people in Jerusalem and Gaza.

He argued that the responsibility for any rioting lay with the Israeli
government.

“You forgot the power the Jews hold” in Israel, Magal shouted into the
microphone.

Magal’s co-host Ben Caspit <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ben-caspit>
made similar threats. He told al-Bazz that “you are making a mistake you
made in 1947-48.”

You can watch the radio segment in the video above.
Between 1947 and 1949, as the state was founded, the Zionist militias that
later became the Israeli army expelled two-thirds of the Palestinian
population to the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and to surrounding countries,
where they remain today.

As a result of the ethnic cleansing, Lydd, like other towns and cities, was
violently <https://www.palestineremembered.com/al-Ramla/al-Lydd/>
transformed <https://zochrot.org/en/village/49245> from an almost entirely
Palestinian city into an Israeli Jewish city with a Palestinian minority.

Palestinians call their violent expulsion from Lydd the “death march
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/why-aoc-honoring-israeli-war-criminal>
.”

Palestinian citizens of Israel are the survivors and their descendants of
the minority of Palestinians who managed to stay inside the new state.
Although they have some civil rights, like the right to vote, they face
routine racism, and discrimination enshrined in dozens of laws
<https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/7771>.

By bringing up 1948, Caspit was threatening that Israel would finish the
job of expulsion.

Using crude and violent profanity, Capsit told al-Bazz: “I am telling you
that even myself, a fierce critic against Netanyahu’s government, I think
that we should fuck the mother of your mothers.”

He argued that violence against the Palestinian citizens was necessary “to
show you who is the owner of the land here. This is why a Jewish state was
established.”

The same morning of the broadcast, Magal made a similar threat on Twitter.

He wrote that if “rioting Arabs” were “deported to Gaza,” matters would
“end pretty quickly.”

“Hello 1948, we got back to you again!”

The mass expulsions by Zionist militas that made the establishment of the
state of Israel possible are known in Arabic as the Nakba, “the
Catastrophe.”

Around 800,000 Palestinians were kicked out, with many massacred and
some documented
instances of rape
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-how-israel-systematically-hides-evidence-of-1948-expulsion-of-arabs-1.7435103>
.
Mobs rampage

The night before Caspit and Magal spoke, mobs of Jewish Israelis had
rampaged
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israel-vows-gaza-will-burn>
across towns and cities in Israel attacking Palestinian citizens.

In Bat Yam, south of Jaffa, Palestinian citizen Said Musa was dragged from
his car and beaten unconscious. He suffered life-threatening injuries that
required surgery.

The attack was broadcast on live television
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/today-we-are-nazis-says-member-israeli-jewish-extremist-group/33081>
.

A popular ice cream shop owned by Palestinian citizens in the same suburb
was smashed up by a Jewish Israeli mob.

“An organized pogrom took place tonight against Arabs in Bat Yam,” one
Israeli commenter wrote
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/today-we-are-nazis-says-member-israeli-jewish-extremist-group/33081>.

In Lydd a few days earlier, Palestinian citizen Moussa Hassouna was shot
dead by suspected Jewish Israeli residents
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/today-we-are-nazis-says-member-israeli-jewish-extremist-group/33081>.


Mobs of Jewish Israelis have been organizing in WhatsApp
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/today-we-are-nazis-says-member-israeli-jewish-extremist-group/33081>
and Telegram groups in recent days. One wrote they were “dying to kill
Arabs.”

Armed Jewish extremists from Israeli settlements in the West Bank have also
been taking part.

“We are no longer Jews today,” one user wrote in a Telegram group. “Today
we are Nazis.”

One of the WhatsApp groups includes the phrase “Fucking the Arabs” in its
title – echoing Caspit’s violent incitement.
While Israeli leaders have superficially condemned violence by both Jews
and Palestinian citizens of Israel, the state’s response has followed its
usual pattern: Most of the 1,200 arrests and all 120 indictments related to
the recent street violence have been against Palestinian citizens of
Israel, according
<https://www.axios.com/biden-weighs-in-violence-jews-arabs-israel-6823fcf5-6a6a-4a0f-9f30-20abe5377a94.html>
to Israeli journalist Barak Ravid.

That discrimination is so blatant that it has even disturbed the staunchly
pro-Israel Biden administration, Ravid said.
Household names

Israel expert and Hebrew translator Dena Shura described Yinon Magal and
Ben Caspit’s radio segment as “genocidal,” warning that the pair are both
very prominent household names.

“Their words have weight not merely as recommendations to their listeners
but also as reflecting opinions that are acceptable to the main thrust of
Jewish Israelis,” she said.

Between them, the <https://twitter.com/YinonMagal> pair
<https://twitter.com/BenCaspit> – who post mostly in Hebrew – have almost
420,000 followers on Twitter. Both have had newspaper columns and
mainstream TV shows.

Caspit is the author of two books on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His
latest, *The Netanyahu Years*, was acclaimed in the West.

British pro-Israel lobby group BICOM called
<https://fathomjournal.org/book-review-the-netanyahu-years/> Caspit “one of
Netanyahu’s fiercest critics.”

A TV series based on the book is reportedly
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahus-life-story-to-be-made-into-hbo-series-bibi/>
being produced by the company which made the Israeli versions of *X-Factor*
and *America’s Got Talent*.

Caspit also writes <https://www.al-monitor.com/authors/ben-caspit.html> for
the *Al Monitor* website.

Lobby group BICOM has
<https://www.bicom.org.uk/comment_and_opinion/al-monitor-israels-unrwa-dilemma-ben-caspit/>
for
years recommended Caspit’s
<https://twitter.com/search?q=%40BenCaspit%20from%3Abritainisrael&src=typed_query&f=live>
work.

In 2017, Caspit wrote an article in Hebrew insinuating that 16-year old
Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ahed-tamimi> should be raped.

“In the case of the girls, we should exact a price at some other
opportunity, in the dark, without witnesses and cameras,” he wrote
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/video-resistance-icon-ahed-tamimi-israeli-military-court>
.

Caspit later denied he had incited the rape of a child. He claimed
<https://twitter.com/BenCaspit/status/944948246602027008> the translation
was taken “out of context.”

But when pressed <https://twitter.com/Joyce_Karam/status/944943953165606912>
by journalist Joyce Karam, he did not deny its accuracy, saying
<https://twitter.com/BenCaspit/status/944931151143108608> “I don’t know who
translated it” and that
<https://twitter.com/BenCaspit/status/944948246602027008> “no rape or such
was on the agenda.”

Magal is a former lawmaker for the far-right Jewish Home
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/habayit-hayehudi> party, but quit in
2015 after allegations of sexual harassment
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-leaderships-sex-crime-problem/18836>
.

*Hebrew translation verified by Dena Shunra.*
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