Pundits, traditionally at the end of each year, come up with predictions pertaining to the political future in the life of nations. So, what are the predictions of Israeli pundits? The government’s far-right extremist and racist policies along with rising terrorism by Jewish colonists encroaching on Palestinian land, apparently undeterred, are drawing criticism from Israeli journalists and writers alarmed by their threats and seeing gloomy prospects for the Zionist State.
Bradley Burston, senior editor of the website of liberal Israeli English-language newspaper Haaretz, has not wavered in revealing the realities of Israeli politics in his blog titled. “I am sick to death of Zionism and [...] the incitement which prides itself on hatred, yes that ‘beautiful face’ of fascism”, he wrote, adding that “It is up to every one of us. We can stand up now and confront it, or be put down later, like dogs.”
In another article, he spoke about “a new Judaism emerging among conscious Jews” noting that “the Jews in the University of Berkley voted to cut off support for Israel” during the Palestinian campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel in California. When the Israeli Knesset passed the racist law called ‘The Boycott Law’ targeting the Palestinians of 1948 areas, Burston’s article came up with the title of ‘The quiet sound of going Fascist’.
Carlo Strenger wrote in Haaretz that “the religious far-right advocates hatred of pluralism and an open society by leading a drive to have an obedient society without dissent”. Avirama Golan wrote in the same newspaper that “the toxic roots of Jewish terror are the religious Zionists who fan the flames of terrorism in the name of Judaism and a Jewish state”. It is exactly the very twin image describing the toxic waste called Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) whose beastly carnage is being carried out in the name of Islam.
Haaretz ran editorials drawing such similarities between Daesh and the colonists’ terror saying that “they [the militant Jewish colonists] have more in common with Daesh than they realise. Both groups should be confronted and destroyed”. Another editorial said: “The criminal acts of the Jewish extreme right are a much greater danger to Israel and to all Jews than Arab terror.”
Vital information disclosed in a Haaretz editorial last year indicated, “Palestinians to equal the number of Jews by 2017 and in 2020, Palestinians will be 7.13 million compared to 6.96 million Jews”. In other words: Kiss the Jewish state goodbye.
The well-known media site, Al Monitor, closely followed by Israelis, published a condemnation of the Jewish colonists in occupied West Bank, saying that “over the past decade, feral extremism has evolved within the [colonies]. Jewish terrorism is much as a consequence of the overall mood in the [colonies]”. This beastly extremism produced a video that went viral on the internet, shocking many Jews around the world. Billed as the “hate wedding”, the video showed guests in a Jewish colony in a frenzied dance with guns and knives, stabbing a photo of the murdered baby of the Palestinian Dawabsha family, who were burned alive in their beds in late 2015.
Al Monitor said it should serve as a wake-up call to all Jews to confront these “beastly and dangerous trends”. It concluded by saying: “Meet the Judeo-Daesh, which is the inevitable result of Israel’s presence in the West Bank.”
Israeli pundit Gideon Levy went further, saying Jewish colonists were targeting Israel itself. “First they built the [colonies], then, they killed the two-state solution, now they are free to strike at their next targets, Israel itself and world Jewry,” he wrote.
After voting in Berkley to support the Palestinian BDS drive, Burston produced a lawsuit that “targets the US government over permitting donations to West Bank [colonies], accusing the American donor charities [all Jewish] of violating US law, money laundering and defrauding the US tax authorities.”
The lawsuit asked the court to order the law enforcement authorities “to investigate the criminal activities of tax-exempt entities that have been funding or engaging in fraud for the last 20 years”.
The US treasury and the American taxpayers have lost millions of dollars in this fraudulent enterprise to enrich Jewish American millionaires who make tax-exempted donations to build colonies on stolen Palestinian land.
The US has dubbed itself “the honest broker” to help both the sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to reach a peaceful political settlement in the form of a two-state solution. Instead, the Palestinians got colonies, with more than 600,000 religious colonists allowed a brutal military power. And some ask: “Why the Palestinians, the Arabs and Muslims in general have all lost faith in America when all the Jews of conscience have already lost it too in fear for the survival of Israel and the safety of Jews, as seen by Israeli pundits?”
Professor As’ad Abdul Rahman is the chairman of the Palestinian Encyclopaedia.
