Shulamit Aloni / Israel is controlled by religious fanaticism
“Hooray for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman – they are eradicating everything we built, everything we dreamed about and everything we fought for.” writes Shulamit Aloni, leader of Meretz and Minister of Education in Israel in the early 1990s in Ha’aretz 4th July 2009.
Not very long ago, during Rabbi Meir Kahane’s racist rantings, the late writer and journalist Amos Elon gave me a copy of a letter Lord Rothschild sent to Herzl in August 1902. In the letter, Rothschild explains why he refuses to support the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. He writes that he “should view with horror the establishment of a Jewish colony pure and simple; such a colony would be Imperium Imperio; it would be a Ghetto with the prejudice of the Ghetto; it would be a small petty Jewish state, orthodox and illiberal, excluding the Gentile and the Christian.”
Nevertheless, and despite phenomena like Kahane, the hope prevailed here over the years that Rothschild’s harsh vision would prove false; that Israel would indeed “ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex,” and “guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture,” as stated in the Declaration of the Establishment of the State.
Time has passed and many heirs to Kahane have arisen – not only among a greedy and savage multitude but also among “the public’s chosen representatives” in the Knesset and government. The latter are busy preparing blatantly racist laws and sending armed police to thwart Palestinian-initiated international cultural events because the regime believes the Arabs of the Land of Israel, the native Palestinians, are not worthy of being called human beings…