From the NSO Group to Ben and Jerry: the Zionist State and its Supporters are on the Front Line of Reaction!

by Yossi Schwartz, ISL (Section of the RCIT in Israel / Occupied Palestine), 25.07.2021

The months of June and July have further exposed the class and political nature of the Zionist apartheid state and the new right-wing government led by the ultra-nationalist Naftali Bennett. On June 30, the new government reached a deal with the settlers of the outpost Givat Eviatar near the city of Nablus in the 1967 occupied West Bank. The settlement, according to the state of Israel, is illegal. According to this deal, the Zionist army will remain in the outpost, the Zionist state will decide whether the land is state land and then the settlers will return to Givat Eviatar. Palestinian private lands are declared state lands when the Palestinian peasants do not work the land for 10 years. The settlers protected by the Zionist army shoot the Palestinian peasants who try to work on their land, and thus the private land becomes state land. This, of course, is pure robbery by the Zionist apartheid state.

The reactionary nature of Bennett’s government

Then the government tried to renew a 2003 law that it cynically called the “family unification law”, which prevents Palestinian citizens of Israel from marrying Palestinians from the West-Bank and live in Israel. The law did not pass this time because the government could not master majority members of the racist Knesset (Zionist parliament) and the right-wing opposition of Netanyahu, because of political maneuvering, did not support this racist law. In addition, the government could not win this time the support of the Joint List. Nevertheless, even without a law the government prevents the unification of Palestinian families. Like always the law is justified by security reasons while the real reason is to keep the Jewish majority. The protest movement against Netanyahu did not protest against this racist law. The real division in the Jewish Zionist population is between the robbers of 1948, mainly Ashkenazim, and the robbers of 1967, mainly Mizrahi (Arab origin) Jews who climbed the social pyramid after 1967 when the Palestinian and guest workers have occupied the lower levels of the pyramid and for this reason, they support the Likud.

Then, on July 18th, Bennett and the minister of police, Omer Bar Lev from the Zionist Labor party, allowed the ultra-reactionaries, the religious Zionists, to enter the Al Aqsa mosques during the Muslim holy day of Eid Al Fatah. Bennett stated that Israel preserves freedom of worship for Jews on what the Zionists call the Temple Mount. Unlike the claim of the Zionists that Al Aqsa was built on the ruins of the Jewish temples, it is more likely that these temples were built in another location. Jews who lived in Palestine prior to the Zionists prayed on the Olive Mountain.

“Everything historians know about the so-called “First Temple” comes from the Bible. Thankfully, it offers a surprisingly detailed description of what King Solomon’s temple looked like — including its supposed exact dimensions. According to the Bible, the temple was built from masterfully quarried stone blocks, with a roof and interior lined with lavish wood planks. Solomon used pure gold to overlay the temple’s holy inner sanctum, where he also placed a pair of 15-foot-tall gold cherubims — sphinxes — to guard the Ark of the Covenant.

Yet not a single stone from this structure has ever been found, despite over a century of searching for connections between Biblical text and dig site evidence. Archaeologists simply keep coming up empty…despite the destruction; it’s easy to see why archaeologists might expect to find remnants from such a large and long-standing structure.” [1]

As the historians know and the Zionists admit, British imperialism offered the Zionists to settle in Kenya (“Uganda plan”) to guard the British railways. If the Zionists had agreed to this plan, one can only wonder where in Kenya the Zionists would claim were the Jewish temples.

To allow the ultra-nationalists to pray in the courtyard of Al Aqsa, the Zionist police removed by force the Muslims from the Mosques. Under pressure, Bennett retreated from his statement, saying Jews have only the right to visit the place but not pray there. This year, Eid AL Fatah and Tisha B’av, a fast day for religious Zionists who commemorate the claimed destruction of the ancient Jewish temples, coincided. Many Zionist ultra-nationalists want to destroy the mosques and build the third Jewish temple instead of the mosques. About 1600 of them entered the Muslim Noble Sanctuary. The United Arab List led by Mansur Abbas, who is a partner with this right-wing government, was forced to condemn the so-called visit by the ultra-nationalists and said that the activists of the Southern Islamic movement will defend the sanctity of Al Aqsa Mosque. The question, of course, is why this reactionary party is a partner with Bennett’s government.

The Israeli government is very worried because 25% of American Jews see Israel as an apartheid state that commits genocide against the Palestinians. It believes that massive propaganda among the growing Anti-Zionist secular American Jews will bring them back to support the Zionist apartheid state. For this reason, Yair Lapid, the new Foreign Minister of Israel, said on July 14th, it’s time that we tell the right story about anti-Semites. “It’s time that we tell the world what we face.” Then he said, “Anti-Semites weren’t only in the ghetto in Budapest. The anti-Semites were slave traders who threw chained slaves into the ocean. The anti-Semites were the Hutu tribe members in Rwanda who slaughtered the Tutsis. The anti-Semites are those Muslims who have killed more than 20 million fellow Muslims in the past decade. The anti-Semites are the Islamic State and Boko Haram.” [2]

This, of course, is wrong, because while Anti-Semitism is a form of racism, not all forms of racism are Anti-Semitism. His statement was not because of ignorance but an attempt to bring back the more left leaning Jews to the cause of racist Zionism.

But then the story of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream surfaced. This company, founded by two progressive Jews, decided to block the sale of its product to the Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The Vermont-based ice-cream company has a history of support for a wide array of democratic causes, including marriage equality, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter. Thus, in spite of the fact that it is a capitalist firm and a soft pro-Zionist as it supports Israel but not the settlements, it is under heavy attack by the Zionists who call this decision Anti-Semitism. The village idiot, the new president of Israel, Isaac Herzog called boycotts of the settlements a new kind of terrorism. Yair Lapid was forced to remove his “progressive” mask and wrote on his twitter: “Ben & Jerry’s decision represents a shameful surrender to anti-Semitism, to BDS, and to all that is wrong with the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish discourse We will not be silent”…. “Over 30 states in the United States have passed anti-BDS legislation in recent years. I plan on asking each of them to enforce these laws against Ben & Jerry’s. They will not treat the State of Israel like this without a response.”

Thus, for the real Lapid, those who support the stealing of Palestinian lands are the oppressed and those who oppose the robbery of the Palestinians are the new slave traders. It is important to mention that Black Lives Matter came in support of Ben and Jerry, a step in opposing racist Zionism. This will help to destroy the Zionist propaganda about the only democratic state in the Middle East. The left-wing leaning Jews support the BLM movement.

The NSO Scandal

The Zionist propaganda has suffered another blow with the scandal of the NSO. “The allegations that spy software known as Pegasus may have been used to carry out surveillance on journalists, activists – and even perhaps political leaders – highlights that surveillance is now for sale… Israel has always been a first-tier cyber-power with top-end surveillance capabilities. And its companies, like NSO Group, often formed by veterans of the intelligence world, have been among those to commercialize the techniques.” [3]

As can be expected, the company behind the tool, NSO Group, has denied the allegations and says its customers are carefully assessed. What a joke! Do they believe that they can tell lies and more lies and be believed? Let us be clear, the sale of this company is approved by the Israeli government, like the sale of weapons to all oppressive regimes, including Myanmar, to give one recent example.

“A global outcry was triggered when several international media organizations reported that the Pegasus spyware was used in hacking smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, and government officials in several countries.” [4]

Israel has appointed an inter-ministerial team to white-wash “the reports based on an investigation by 17 media organizations that said Pegasus had been used in attempted or successful hacks of smartphones using malware that enables the extraction of messages, records, calls and secretly activates microphones.” [5]

“Ignoring concerns that Saudi Arabia was abusing Israeli spyware to crush dissent at home and abroad, Israel encouraged its companies to work with the kingdom. (….) Israel secretly authorized a group of cyber-surveillance firms to work for the government of Saudi Arabia despite international condemnation of the kingdom’s abuse of surveillance software to crush dissent, even after the Saudi killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, government officials and others familiar with the contracts said“.[6] As a matter of fact, in 2018, “Edward Snowden said on Tuesday that software from the Israeli firm NSO Group Technologies was used to help track the dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed last month at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.” [7]

It will not surprise anyone to hear that this scandal will be declared by the Zionists as a new form of Anti-Semitism and terrorism against Israel.

What the Zionists fail to understand is that we live in a new revolutionary situation and that Israel, which has committed so many crimes, is in the same situation as South Africa’s apartheid was in the early 1980’s.

It is true, of course, that the imperialists still support Israel because it is the front line of imperialism in the region. At the same time, a growing number of workers, poor, students, trade unions and the lower middle class see Israel as an apartheid state.

Zionism and the Olympic Games

The people of Japan oppose the games as it costs billions of their citizens’ and taxpayers’ cash to build the necessary infrastructure to host 339 events in 33 sports, with brand new stadiums, new roads, and thousands of apartments to house the athletes’ village. The polls show that 80% of the Japanese oppose the games [8]. Many thousands demonstrate with the sign: games kill the poor. They know what they are saying as these billions should have been invested in hospitals fighting the Covid-19.

“Hospitals in Japan’s second largest city Osaka, are buckling under a huge wave of new coronavirus infections, running out of beds and ventilators as exhausted doctors warn of a “system collapse” and advise against holding the Olympics this summer.” [9]

The big capitalists of Japan see it as a great opportunity to make money, and thus, like many other events, the games reflect the growing class struggle between the workers and poor on one hand, and the capitalist class and their government on the other. Japan’s Prime Minister Suga cynically insists that the Olympics will serve as “proof that humanity has defeated the coronavirus, despite evidence to the contrary.” [10] He just proves that the capitalist class and its servants use the epidemic for political and economic reasons to serve the capitalists.

For this reason, at the new Olympic Games in Tokyo, a moment of silence was observed for the athletes representing Israel killed in Munich in 1972. What happened in the early morning of September 5, 1972 is that a group of Palestinian guerrillas known as Black September stormed the Olympic Village apartment of the Israeli athletes, and took eleven hostages. They demanded that Israel release 230 Arab political prisoners held in Israeli jails for opposing the Zionist repression. After negotiations to free the Israeli athletes broke down, the group took the hostages to the Munich airport. The German police opened fire from rooftops and killed three of them. A gun battle erupted and left the hostages, two more Palestinians and a policeman dead. While as revolutionary Marxists we do not support such actions as individuals or small groups cannot replace the popular armed rising, the blood of these athletes is on the hands of the Zionist state and the German police. Just for the record: Around one million Palestinians have been arrested by Israeli forces since the 1967 Middle East war, according to a local NGO:

“Around 17,000 women and girls and 50,000 children were among those detained,” the Commission on Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs said in a statement .The NGO said more than 54,000 administrative detention orders have been recorded since 1967.” [11]

While we support athletic games, the Olympiads are not in the interest of the international working class. To give an example. In 1936 the Olympiad took place in Nazi Germany to prevent it from taking place in Moscow. The Olympic committee knew that the Nazis opened the concentration camp in Dachau for the Communists including Jews already in 1935. The committee demanded from Hitler to remove the road signs showing the way to the camp. There was a mass movement that called for boycotting the Olympic games in Nazi Germany that the Olympic committee ignored even though it knew that Jewish athletes were barred from German sports clubs. The decision of the Olympic committee to hold the games in Berlin and thus to promote the Nazis’ propaganda was motivated by their anti-communism hoping that Nazi Germany would attack the USSR. At that time the USSR was still a degenerated workers state in spite of Stalin.

Zionism and Hooliganism

The desecration of Jewish graves is an expression of Anti-Semitism that should be condemned and also the fight against the hooligans. The reports of the ADL in the USA do not miss any such events of hooliganism. For example, on June 21 2021, we were informed that dozens of headstones were knocked down, with several destroyed, at a Jewish cemetery in Poland.

However, what Israel and the ADL are hiding is the destruction of Muslim cemeteries in Israel. In July 2020, the Tel Aviv District Court rejected a petition by the Jaffa Islamic Council against the construction of a shelter for homeless people (look how “progressive” and “social” can the Zionists be when it comes to using Palestinian land!) on a plot that was an old Muslim cemetery. The court ordered to continue immediately the construction of the homeless shelter on site. The Jaffa Islamic Council was ordered to pay legal costs to Tel Aviv municipality [12]. There are other known cases. For example, In the cemetery of Mamila in Jerusalem, the municipality built a large parking lot. Jaffa’s Hilton Hotel is built over the cemetery of Abd al-Nabi village. Tel Aviv University built a parking lot over Sheikh al-Muwannis. Yet the scope of these acts of hooliganism is hardly known. A Zionist researcher that tried to justify this vandalism had to admit:

“Reports and letters kept in Israel’s National Archive from the 1950s and 1960s attest to the fact that it (destruction of Muslim cemeteries, Ed.) was a widespread phenomenon. This was not part of an organized plan handed down by the state, but rather a spontaneous process led by various local agents and individuals, who appropriated parts of the graveyards to build shelters, storehouses, and barns. In many other places, cemeteries were destroyed as part of the vast construction of roads, settlements, and public buildings… In various places in Israel, the erasure of Muslim cemeteries and the appropriation of their sites for the development of Jewish settlements grew. This practice was especially noticeable in settlements that had been inhabited by new immigrants during the 1950s and 1960s, as well as in places that were undergoing physical expansion and development. In many cases, the price of developing new neighborhoods, streets, and buildings was the demolition of deserted cemeteries…. The demolition of Muslim cemeteries in the State of Israel was indeed widespread and included many regions and sites…. In 1966, Yaakov Yehoshua, head of the Department, described how the Muslims in Israel viewed the condition of their holy places. He determined that the ‘Muslims do not view highly the many projects that Israel initiated for them (health centers, orphanages, schools, etc.) if at the same time, cemeteries are desecrated and mosques are destroyed or turned into synagogues and clubs.’ He added that ‘many houses were built on the sites of cemeteries.” [13]

The Coming New Crisis of the New Government

The real crisis that the new right-wing government of Israel will face is the vote on the national budget. It will include more money for the Zionist army for its attacks on Syria, Iran, and Lebanon. It will not cut the high profits of the food marketing monopolies. The cost of food in Israel is extremely high. Last January, a study released by the Knesset showed that the price of food in Israel, like milk and eggs, is 25% higher than in the EU. Farm products are 11% higher than in the EU. They are so high because of the marketing monopolies and their lobbies, import taxes and Kashrut regulations. [14] These monopolies are protected by the new Minister of Treasure Lieberman, who plans to cut the profits of middle-class farmers.

To pass the vote on the budget, they will need the vote of the Joint List. There are reports that the Joint List will support the right-wing government led by Bennett. “With the government’s threadbare majority endangering the passage of the national monetary plan, an Arab-majority alliance could cooperate with the leadership in exchange for economic benefits.”[15]

“In an interview on Channel 12’s Meet the Press on Saturday night, July 17, Joint List leader MK Ayman Odeh (Hadash) said that his fraction will not support any budget “that harms Israel’s weakest citizens. We will only vote consistent with our working-class values. ” [16] What are the working-class values of the Stalinist party and its front Hadash? For example, supporting the butcher Assad as they did? Is it to lie that Cuba is a socialist state while it is already a capitalist state? In April 2020 the Stalinists of Israel wrote in their publication: “Reiterate our solidarity with the Communist Party of Cuba, and the Cuban government and people in their struggle to defend the socialist path of development.” Odeh’s answer does not make it clear whether the Joint List will vote for the budget on the ground that this budget is an improvement for the working class, while you have to be an idiot not to understand that this government supports the big capitalists.

The only principled position for the Joint List will be to oppose the budget, but it is unclear as yet what the decision of the Joint List will be. Will they betray the Palestinians and the Arab masses with the lie that this government is better than Netanyahu and get some promises for crumbs or take the principled position? Let us recall that the Second International moved to the camp of the imperialists by voting for the war budget of the different imperialists.

The main force in the Joint List is Hadash, the front of the Stalinists, calling themselves communists, a party that supported Assad the butcher. On these types of parties, Lenin wrote:

“And is there such a great difference between Lloyd George and the Scheidemanns, Legiens, Hendersons and Hyndmans, Plekhanovs, Renaudels and Co.? Of the latter, it may be objected, some will return to the revolutionary socialism of Marx. This is possible, but it is an insignificant difference in degree, if the question is regarded from its political, i.e., its mass aspect. Certain individuals among the current social-chauvinist leaders may return to the proletariat. But the social-chauvinist or (what is the same thing) opportunist trend can neither disappear nor “return” to the revolutionary proletariat. Wherever Marxism is popular among workers, this political trend, this “bourgeois labor party”, will swear by the name of Marx. It cannot be prohibited from doing this, just as a trading firm cannot be prohibited from using any particular label, sign or advertisement. It has always been the case in history that after the death of revolutionary leaders who were popular among the oppressed classes, their enemies have attempted to appropriate their names so as to deceive the oppressed classes. ” [17]

Down with the Zionist apartheid state!

For a red, democratic Palestine from the river to the sea!

To fight Anti-Semitism, it is necessary to fight Zionism!

Defend Ben Jerry’s Ice cream against the Zionist attacks!

Vote no on the budget of the new right-wing government!

References:

[1] https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/was-king-solomons-temple-a-real-place

[2] https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/07/fury-israels-lapid-redefines-anti-semitism

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57910355

[4] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-lawmaker-sees-possible-export-review-nso-spyware-scandal-2021-07-22/

[5] Ibid

[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/17/world/middleeast/israel-saudi-khashoggi-hacking-nso.html