[News] Selective outrage in Palestine: the problem is not just Smotrich, but Zionism

[Anti-Imperialist News]

middleeastmonitor.com
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230328-selective-outrage-in-palestine-the-problem-is-not-just-smotrich-but-zionism/>
Selective outrage in Palestine: the problem is not just Smotrich, but
Zionism
Dr Ramzy Baroud - March 28, 2023
------------------------------

By his own admission, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is a
"fascist homophobe". This declaration, which he made
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-01-16/ty-article/.premium/israels-far-right-finance-minister-im-a-fascist-homophobe-but-i-wont-stone-gays/00000185-b921-de59-a98f-ff7f47c70000>
on 16 January, should be enough to illustrate and emphasise the violent
nature of the latest political coalition concocted by Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu in December.

Although Smotrich is not the only politician in Netanyahu's cabinet with a
track record of violence, both real and rhetorical, he is a special case.
Unlike his boss, Smotrich does not feel the need for doublespeak or
occasional diplomatic words.

In recent months, he has become internationally famous, but not because of
any financial talent that could resolve Israel's impending financial crisis
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-02-22/ty-article/.premium/shekels-drop-likely-to-continue-as-govt-advances-legislative-overhaul/00000186-7840-d024-afbe-fdfcd6180000>
resulting of the weakening of the country's legal system. He has no
interest, never mind answers, in confronting Israel's inherent
socio-economic equality. None of this really matters, though, because
Smotrich is popular mostly for his racism.

In 2016, he made
<https://english.alarabiya.net/variety/2016/04/06/Arab-Jewish-segregation-comments-spark-furore-in-Israel>
headlines when he suggested that Jewish Israeli and Palestinian Israeli
women should be kept apart in maternity wards. His logic was as bigoted as
it was foolish: "My wife really isn't a racist, but after giving birth she
wants to rest and doesn't want those mass parties that are the norm among
the families of Arab women after birth."

At that time, Smotrich was a Knesset member representing the Jewish Home
party. He then joined the Union of Right-Wing Parties, Yamina, the Jewish
Home and Yamina, again, and, latterly, his current Religious Zionist Party.
This demonstrated that Smotrich, who is an illegal Jewish settler
<https://www.arabnews.com/node/2257591/middle-east> from Kedumim, near the
occupied West Bank city of Qalqilya, found his ideological home within most
of Israel's current extreme right-wing political groups.

In Israel's right-wing parties, racism is an important prerequisite for
political success. In fact, this is precisely how Itamar Ben-Gvir rose from
being
<https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/27/itamar-ben-gvir-israels-minister-of-chaos>
a youth leader of the extremist Kach party to becoming the country's
national security minister. Today, both Smotrich and Ben-Gvir hold the keys
to the fate of many Palestinian communities, and both are eager to expand
Jewish settlements, regardless of the illegality of such action, and the
bloodbath resulting from it.

When hundreds of illegal Israeli Jewish settlers torched the Palestinian
village of Huwara on 26 February, burning
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230227-eyewitness-settlers-carried-out-new-nakba-in-huwara/>
many homes and cars, killing one Palestinian and wounding over 100 others,
Smotrich had something to say about the violence. He objected, not to the
pogrom against a peaceful Palestinian community, but because, in his view,
the village should have been "wiped out" by the Israeli army, not settlers.

Smotrich later explained
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230305-israeli-minister-says-his-comments-to-wipe-out-palestinian-town-was-slip-of-the-tongue/>
his comment as a "slip of the tongue in a storm of emotions," but such an
unconvincing statement was a result of a compromise, due to practical
concerns about his ability to travel to various western countries. When
mainstream western media quickly overlooked his overt call for genocide in
Huwara, the man returned to his usual, racist discourse.

There is "no such thing as Palestinians because there's no such thing as
the Palestinian people," Smotrich preached
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230320-far-right-israel-mk-declares-i-am-palestinian/>
to an enthusiastic crowd of supporters on 19 March during a visit to
France. "The Palestinian people is an invention that is less than 100 years
old," he added.

To make matters worse, he was speaking from a podium that featured a map of
so-called "Greater Israel", the Zionist objective which includes modern-day
Jordan and other Arab land. Three days later, the Jordanian Parliament voted
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230322-jordan-parliament-approves-proposal-to-expel-israel-envoy-amid-tension/>
to recommend the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador from Amman.

But where is Washington amid this political chaos in its client state?
Following Smotrich's Huwara comments, US State Department Spokesman Ned
Price referred
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230306-us-defence-secretary-aims-to-reassure-mideast-allies-deliver-tough-message/>
to them as "repugnant" and called on Netanyahu to publicly disavow them. Of
course, Netanyahu neither reined Smotrich in, nor faced any further
challenge from the US. Not even official Israeli calls for the ethnic
cleansing of the Palestinians seem to have any impact on the "unbreakable
bond" between Washington and Tel Aviv.

Throughout the discussion and rage over Smotrich's comments, however, many
have wittingly or otherwise ignored some fundamental facts about racism in
Israel and its founding Zionist ideology. For example, Smotrich is a senior
elected official and a member of the most stable government in Israel in
years. He is not an aberration. His extremist ideology is now the
mainstream thinking <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63942616>
in Israel's "most right-wing government in history".

Moreover, his call for the destruction of Huwara was not an alien position
in Israel's history of ethnic cleansing and "incremental genocide
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/using-the-right-language-the-incremental-genocide-of-the-palestinians-continues/>".
Aside from the depopulation and destruction of over 500 villages and towns
in historic Palestine during the Nakba of 1947-48, Israel's colonial
expansion in the Occupied Territory is a continuation of the same violent
legacy. Every illegal Israeli Jewish settlement in the West Bank and East
Jerusalem stands atop Palestinian land, be it the ruins of an ethnically
cleansed village, an orchard or a privately-owned farm. Numerous Huwaras
have had to be "wiped out" for this settler-colonial regime to be sustained.

What's more, the "Greater Israel" map is not a recent invention, neither by
Smotrich, Ben-Gvir nor even by Netanyahu himself. In fact, it is older than
the state of Israel, as it was adopted by Zionist Revisionist groups, such
as the Betar movement
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200127-the-mussolini-jabotinsky-connection-the-hidden-roots-of-israel-fascist-past/>
and the terrorist Irgun, which played a critical role in the establishment
of Israel on the ruins of Palestine.

Finally, the racist notion that Palestinians do not exist, although
functional in terms of dehumanising the people of Palestine, is also an old
trope. It is linked directly to the old Zionist slogan that Palestine was
<https://www.bjpa.org/content/upload/bjpa/muir/Muir%20A%20Land%20Without%20a%20People.pdf>
"a land without a people for a people without a land". Many derivatives of
this racist colonial slogan have been uttered by Israeli politicians over
the years, the most famous of which was said by former Israeli Prime
Minister Golda Meir in an interview
<https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2019/3/18/the-mixed-legacy-of-golda-meir-israels-first-female-pm>
with the *Sunday Times* in 1969. "There were no such thing as Palestinians…
They did not exist," she told the British newspaper.

Although the world has grown less tolerant of such open racism, Israel
itself has remained the same. Indeed, the Smotrich and Ben-Gvir generation
is the logical heir to David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir. As such, selective
outrage in Palestine which sees some condemn Smotrich and his comments but
continue to embrace Israel and celebrate Zionism is not only hypocritical,
but also useless. Smotrich knows this very well, hence his continued
racism, desire for colonial expansion and open call for the destruction of
entire Palestinian communities.

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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