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ABOUTBy Ben White, Electronic Intifada – 23 Jan 2012
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ben-white/anti-semitism-smear-about-targeting-mk-haneen-zoabi-even-though-it-uses-me
Last week I blogged about the intensified incitement against Members of the Knesset from the Palestinian minority in Israel. MK Haneen Zoabi has been the particular focus of this rage directed at Arab MKs who seek to defend the rights of their people against discriminatory laws and policies.
Others have noted recently on the strong possibility Zoabi, as well as her party Balad and maybe also the United Arab List, will be banned at the next election.
Haneen Zoabi
Today I was surprised to find myself being used in the campaign to threaten Zoabi, with Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot running a pathetic smear piece in both the Hebrew print edition, as well as the online English language version, Ynet.
But, despite the focus on my new book and writing, this was not about me; it is all about targeting a Palestinian citizen who is determined to use the legal means available to her in order to fight for her people – whether they are Israeli citizens, inside the Occupied Territories, or expelled refugees.
In my last post, I pointed to “an atmosphere where elected members of Israel’s Palestinian minority are surely at risk of physical harm.” Among the comments on today’s Ynet piece, you will find numerous attacks on Zoabi as “traitor” – including a call for the “death sentence.”
Zoabi surely knows the risks – and the reason why she is so despised by the apologists for apartheid could be found at the end of the Ynet article:
She fears nobody and she will continue to express what she believes in at every opportunity.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
“Among the comments on today’s Ynet piece, you will find numerous attacks on Zoabi as “traitor” – including a call for the “death sentence.”
The Zionist right, as many others have pointed out, are no different in core values, ethics, beliefs, and objectives as the Nazis of the 30′s. They see themselves as a master race, are prepared to use violence and assassination against their opponents, and seek expansion of territory, and anyone who dares to raise just one iota of protest they are labelled anti-semite, that smear which used to strike guilt and shame in all liberal, decent and fair minded people.
They are dangerous scum, who bribe, cajole and practice blatant cronyism and sycophancy to worm their way into the corridors of power through AIPAC in the US and ‘friends if Israel’ in the UK
They appear to see themselves as invincible, as Hitler did, but if you look around at the various discussion forums, their is a growing resentment against their arrogance and corruption where money is king and too many politicians can be bought for the promise of a few Directorships.
Corruption, morality, fairness, inequality are subjects now discussed at all levels, and it will only be a matter of time before the issue of removing these dangerous maniacs from positions of influence within the respective governments will be canvassed, and the smear of anti-semitism will have lost it’s gravity and be regarded with derision.
Despite the carefully-phrased comment, there’s one crucial difference that renders such commonly-made comparisons of little, if not outright negative, value: The objectives of the Nazis and those of the Zionists were vastly different.
The Nazis were intent on destroying the Jewish people, and others, and set up complex systems to accomplish that. The Nazi extermination machine was highly ‘successful’ in that it annihilated millions of people, 6 million Jews and many others.
Zionist settlers, then and now, and the State of Israel have been intent on creating, maintaining, and expanding a Jewish state in Palestine. To that end, their focus has always been on ethnically-cleansing Palestine of its indigenous population that inhabited the land for centuries. There is every indication that the Zionists would have been perfectly satisfied if the Palestinians were to vanish on their own — say, move to Australia and forget about their homeland — something that is not going to happen, fortunately.
The difference between physical annihilation and ethnic-cleansing is crucial. Indeed, no matter how viciously criminal ethnic-cleansing is — and, of course, it is — it does not meet the legal standards of systematic genocide.
Therefore, equating Zionism with Nazism is not only false, it is also misguided: no matter what you’re attempting to say about Zionism, Israel or the Occupation, it would fail to meet the ‘Nazism test.’ In fact, with a handful of exceptions, so would all other situations. In addition, doing so also plays into the hands of those who wish to minimize the impact of what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for decades.