<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div id="container" class="container font-size5 content-width3">
<div id="reader-header" class="header" style="display: block;"
dir="ltr"> <font size="-2"><a id="reader-domain" class="domain"
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israels-genocidal-political-culture">https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israels-genocidal-political-culture</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">Israel's genocidal political culture</h1>
<p class="node__submitted"> <span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah">Ali
Abunimah</a></span> <span class="field field-blog">- </span><span
class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single"
content="2017-11-02T19:58:38+00:00">2 November 2017</span></span>
</p>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="content">
<div id="moz-reader-content" class="line-height4" dir="ltr"
style="display: block;">
<div id="readability-page-1" class="page">
<div class="sumud-region-main">
<article class="node-22141 node node-blog view-mode-full
node-is-page image-landscape">
<figure id="file-52441" class="media
media-element-container media-figure file file-image
file-image-jpeg"><source media="(min-width: 72rem)"><figcaption
class="group-caption field-group-html-element"><small
class="credit"><span class="field field-publisher"></span></small></figcaption></figure>
<p>On 11 October 1994, Israeli lawmaker <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/rehavam-zeevi">Rehavam
Ze’evi</a> and his wife Yael sent a brief letter to
Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara congratulating
the couple on the birth of their son Avner.</p>
<p>Netanyahu was at the time the head of the Likud Party
and the leader of Israel’s official opposition.</p>
<p>“Dear Sara and Bibi,” the letter begins. “Many Jewish
children and the transfer of the Arabs are the answer
to the demographic problem. Mazel tov!”</p>
<p>The Tel Aviv newspaper <em>Haaretz</em> <a
href="https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/untouched/1.4564576">found</a>
the letter in the archives of Ze’evi, who was also
known as “Gandhi.”</p>
<p>But the late general espoused anything but the
peaceful politics with which his namesake is
associated.</p>
<h2>Lived and died by the sword</h2>
<p>Ze’evi was a founder of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/aipac-adl-refuse-condemn-inclusion-ethnic-cleansers-new-israel-government/4432">Moledet</a>,
an Israeli party espousing the ethnic cleansing of
Palestinians – euphemistically known as transfer – in
order to maintain Israel as a Jewish state.</p>
<p>It also emerged last year that Ze’evi was a <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.714662">serial
rapist, a cold-blooded killer and an associate of
organized crime</a>.</p>
<p>Ze’evi died as he lived. He was assassinated by
members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine in 2001, while serving as tourism minister,
in order to avenge Israel’s killing of that group’s
leader, Abu Ali Mustafa, 40 days earlier.</p>
<p><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ayman-odeh">Ayman
Odeh</a>, the head of the Joint List, a group of
lawmakers representing Palestinian citizens of Israel
in Israel’s parliament, commented on the letter,
noting that Ze’evi is “the man whose legacy Netanyahu
does not want you to forget.”</p>
<p>Odeh might have been referring to the fact that
Netanyahu, along with much of Israel’s ruling
establishment, still honors Ze’evi as a national hero.</p>
<p>Since 2010, Israel’s education ministry has required
public schools to dedicate one day a year to honor
Ze’evi. But the adulation is not universal. This year,
the principals of Tel Aviv’s schools <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.817992">defied
the order</a>.</p>
<h2>Netanyahu’s incitement</h2>
<p><em>Haaretz</em> notes that while it found Ze’evi’s
letter in his estate archives, “unfortunately the
collection does not contain Netanyahu’s response.”</p>
<p>But there’s little reason to think Netanyahu would
have objected to Ze’evi’s violent anti-Palestinian
views.</p>
<p>This week marks the anniversary of the 4 November
1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/yitzhak-rabin">Yitzhak
Rabin</a> by Yigal Amir, an Israeli Jewish extremist
who opposed the 1993 Oslo accords between Israel and
the Palestine Liberation Organization.</p>
<p>Rabin’s widow Leah <a
href="http://articles.latimes.com/1995-11-14/news/mn-3058_1_leah-rabin">blamed
Netanyahu</a> for his role in inciting the murder of
her husband.</p>
<p>This week Peace Now tweeted out notorious video
footage of the hate rallies preceding Rabin’s murder,
in which the prime minister is called a Nazi and a
traitor.</p>
<p>Netanyahu can be seen in glimpses of the video.</p>
<p>Rabin’s killing paved the way for Netanyahu to win
power, becoming prime minister in an election the
following year.</p>
<p>In a tweet, Eli Valley, the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/satire-grotesque-hypocrisy-it-skewers/21466">American
Jewish cartoonist</a>, <a
href="https://twitter.com/elivalley/status/925373849339916295">suggested</a>
that the video of “Netanyahu at rallies comparing
Rabin to a Nazi/calling for his murder should be shown
in every Hebrew/Jewish day school on earth.”</p>
<p>Valley might have meant that as a challenge to how
normalized the culture of violence and ethno-racial
hatred embodied by the likes of Ze’evi and Netanyahu
has become in Israel and among its supporters around
the world.</p>
<h2>Myth of peace</h2>
<p>Today, Israeli politicians and public figures who
espouse expulsion of the Palestinians to deal with the
so-called “<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/demographic-threat">demographic
threat</a>” are <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/eu-refuses-condemn-israeli-genocide-plan">increasingly
confident and their ideas enjoy considerable public
support</a>.</p>
<p>The kinds of rallies inciting Rabin’s murder are
commonplace in Israel, though the cry is more
typically “<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/death-arabs">death
to the Arabs</a>.”</p>
<p>As for Rabin, he is still lionized as a man who gave
his life for peace by the so-called international
community and what still passes for an Israeli left.</p>
<p>The myth has taken hold that had Rabin not died, the
“peace process” would have stayed on the rails and
ended in a two-state solution.</p>
<p>But as Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli foreign
minister and negotiator, <a
href="https://www.democracynow.org/2006/2/14/fmr_israeli_foreign_minister_shlomo_ben">told
<em>Democracy Now</em> more than a decade ago</a>,
this is wishful thinking.</p>
<p>Ben-Ami called Oslo “an exercise in make-believe”
whose ambiguities allowed the parties to clinch a deal
in the short term, but only stored up for the future
the irreconcilable differences that would and did
bring the whole thing apart.</p>
<p>For one thing, the Oslo accords failed to make any
mention of Palestinian self-determination. This suited
Rabin, who according to Ben-Ami was only willing to
consider granting the Palestinians a “state-minus.”</p>
<p>“He never thought this will end in a full-fledged
Palestinian state,” Ben-Ami said.</p>
<p>In other words, Rabin’s ultimate goal was little
different from that of Netanyahu, the current prime
minister <a
href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-lambasted-for-incitement-in-insiders-rabin-biography/">still
accused</a> of helping put his predecessor in his
grave: to unload the political burden of ruling over
the Palestinians, while maintaining real, permanent
control of their land and their lives.</p>
<h2>“Force, might and beatings” … and ethnic cleansing</h2>
<p>For Palestinians, Rabin will always be remembered as
the officer who <a
href="http://articles.latimes.com/2004/jan/26/opinion/oe-morris26">oversaw</a>
the 1948 ethnic cleansing of tens of thousands of
people from <a
href="http://www.ameu.org/getattachment/864fbcfe-9f14-46d7-92f5-f5352ebbd803/The-Lydda-Death-March.aspx">Lydda
and Ramle</a>.</p>
<p>And he will be remembered as the defense minister who
tried to put down the first intifada, which began 30
years ago next month, with “force, might and
beatings.”</p>
<p>The <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/force-might-and-beatings-indelible-images-first-intifada">video
images</a> of Israeli soldiers deliberately breaking
the bones of young Palestinians on Rabin’s orders are
an indelible reminder of that time.</p>
<p>There are no heroes in Israel’s genocidal political
culture.</p>
<br>
</article>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://freedomarchives.org/">https://freedomarchives.org/</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>