Far right push for a violent victory

Israeli police stop far-right activists during a demonstration in downtown Jerusalem, on October 3rd, 2015. Photo by AFP

Israel’s New Right Wants Blood in the Streets

The settlers who once led the camp have been pushed aside in favour of the wisdom of the masses, who want an immediate and violent solution.

By Chaim Levinson, Haaretz
October 06, 2015

On the eve of the Simhat Torah holiday, only a few people manned the protest tent outside the prime minister’s official residence in Jerusalem. That demonstration was launched by local-authority heads from the West Bank following the murder of the Henkin couple.

Meanwhile, Malachi Levinger, head of the Kiryat Arba local council, was making last-minute arrangements for the holiday. Inside the tent I was told I had come at a bad time — the local-council heads were busy showering and beautifying themselves for the holiday.

Good time or not, the current wave of violence, whether it develops into an all-out clash or dwindles into sporadic terror attacks, spells the end of the settler movement as the right’s ideological and political trailblazer. The pioneers who once led the camp have been pushed aside in favor of the wisdom of the masses, who want an immediate and violent solution.

The wheeling-dealing of the right’s leaders in recent years has produced a new layer of opinion that scorns balanced consideration. The meteoric rise of people like Miri Regev and Oren Hazan reflects the unapologetic, new right. Protest tents belong to the ‘90s. Nowadays they want blood in the streets and “Death to the Arabs” in Zion Square.

In the right wing of 2015, the Temple Mount has taken the place of Judea, Samaria and Gaza as the reason for the struggle. The vast majority of the right realizes that the settlements aren’t going anywhere. Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank is well rooted. The slogan “build a new settlement” even puts settler leader Ze’ev “Zambish” Hever to sleep. What remains is a symbol of capitulation to the Arabs on the Temple Mount.

Our era of exaggeration empowers every incident day after day. The accumulation of stone throwing, the shouting, Islamic State flags on the Temple Mount and the sense that Jews are being humiliated without protection further inflames the atmosphere.
Netanyahu failed to recognize the change on the right. It’s doubtful whether he recognizes it even now. The policy of maintaining the status quo to which he has so firmly clutched is perceived on the right as capitulation.

Meanwhile, the police translate Netanyahu’s policy with a lack of sophistication: arrests of Jews who mumble, sway or make the slightest gesture on the Mount that could be construed as breaking the ban on praying there. The accumulative effect is producing discontent.

The latest round of violence was the first time since Netanyahu was elected that his standing on the right has been fractured. He survived the settlement freeze, attacks by terrorists running people over with their cars, and last year’s Gaza war, but his great success in the March election whetted his voters’ appetite.

In the U.S. Republican Party, the voters don’t understand why the congressional majority doesn’t throw all of Obama’s initiatives into the bin. Similarly, the Israeli right doesn’t understand why despite the great victory Netanyahu doesn’t curb the powers of the High Court of Justice, stymie funding for anti-occupation groups B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence, release the restraints on Israeli army snipers and expel the “leaders of the terrorists” to Jordan and Syria.

The rightists are beginning to realize that Netanyahu isn’t willing to enact the comprehensive reforms they want; rather, he opts for self-adulation about the determination and calmness with which he’s handling the situation.

My Israel, the Facebook page previously run by Naftali Bennett and Ayalet Shaked, has produced a video against Netanyahu. This is the first harbinger. Any more terror attacks and even his buddy interior designer Moshik Galamin won’t save him.
If the region reaches a boiling point, this time the right’s frustration will lead to counterviolence. Both the first and second intifadas were accompanied by Jewish violence, including killings.

The gaping rift between right and left, increasing violence unlinked to the conflict, the incitement on social media, the sense of emergency that the Arabs are coming with machetes and atomic bombs to exterminate us — all this will pull more groups into the circle of violence.

A careful assessment would liken the third intifada to a popular clash between ethnic groups. A Jew can’t walk in an Arab area and an Arab can’t walk in a Jewish area. The walls between the societies will grow higher. To try to “understand the other” will be compared to treason. It’s doubtful whether Netanyahu is capable of doing anything to change this mood.

Hundreds of nationalist activists, Lehava led, protested in Jerusalem’s central Sacher Park on Thursday night starting at 9 p.m., in a demonstration against the ‘lack of clear decisive action by the government to end the rising wave of Arab terrorism’ [Arutz Sheva]. Photo by Miriam Alster/Flash 90.

‘There is no co-existence with cancer’: Right-wing Israelis demand gov’t give military ‘free hand’ to fight Palestinians

By Scott Ratner, Mondoweiss
October 09, 2015

Brandishing their typical black and yellow flags and Hebrew signs boasting “Kahane was Right” and “There is no co-existence with cancer,” hundreds of right-wing activists took to the streets of Jerusalem Thursday night in a growing phenomenon of public demonstrations led by the country’s leading fascist groups such as Lahava and La Familia. Despite negligible attempts by Israeli police to force the demonstrators from proceeding (the demonstration was not granted prior police approval), the Jewish crowds began marching at around 9 pm when police officers made it readily apparent that they had no intention of halting the mostly youth from making their away across the city

Guided and instigated by far-right ideologues such as Benzion Gopstein and Baruch Marzel, the crowds chanted their usual “Death to Arabs,” “A Jew has a soul, an Arab is a son of a whore,” and other similar malicious slogans.

The marauding Jews marched from the city’s main soccer stadium to the Old City before scores of Israeli riot police prevented them from crossing into the neighboring Palestinians neighborhoods. Upon being denied access to cross the Old City, scuffles and outright fighting erupted between Jewish protesters and riot police, which according to police spokeswoman Luba Samri, resulted in the arrest of four individuals, including three 16 year olds and Gopstein himself. Throughout the ensuing clashes, rocks and pebbles were thrown directly at the police officers, accompanied by the occasional chant of “Arab lovers” and “Israel is a police state.” From there, the demonstrators dispersed, with many of them raiding the nearby Mamilla shopping center that abuts Jaffa Gate, continuing their chants against Arabs and searching for Palestinians to intimidate and harass. Although the current author did not witness the disturbances in Mamilla, media reports confirm several instances of attacks committed by Jewish rioters, including the use of pepper spray against Arab pedestrians.

Speaking to several participants, the main theme of Thursday’s protest clearly revolved around the perception that the Israeli government, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in particular, was not taking a firm enough hand against the recent stabbings witnessed across the country. One participant, who identified himself as Shai, exhorted that “We need to give the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) a free hand in entering Arab villages, arresting all Arabs suspected of harboring anti-Israel sentiments or supporting these attacks, and destroying the homes of terrorists immediately after any attack.” When questioned about how lone wolf attacks can be prevented using harsher military measures, he returned to the ethos that “We need to let the army do its job thoroughly” as well as claimed that “(Palestinian Prime Minster) Abbas is directly responsible for the spilling of Jewish blood.” A follow up comment that questioned whether political frustration and economic despair could be adequately countered with suppression elicited no response other than “The army will take care of the situation.”

Virulent right wing, racist Jewish groups are certainly not a new phenomenon in the Old City and central square of Jerusalem, but the recent events have nonetheless spawned a markedly more aggressive trend among extremist groups. For example, when an Israeli-Palestinian citizen noted for her peace advocacy and outreach efforts to Jewish citizens participated in a sit-in led by a leftist Israeli group to mourn the death of two Jewish settlers killed in the northern West Bank on October 1, the event soon spiraled out of hand when hundreds of right wing demonstrators noticed the presence of a women wearing a Hijab and proceeded to encircle her, chant unbelievably vulgar insults and threats against her and her family, and flick garbage and cigarette butts at the left-wing activists. As a witness to those events, I can attest to not only the sheer verbal violence directed at a woman whose sole purpose was to express solidarity with her Jewish peers and condemn the loss of life, but also the lackluster response of the nearby Israeli riot police to provide any sort of protection until it was abundantly clear that failing to intervene would result in physical violence (and as one quote from the above 972 article in Hebrew reveals, at least one police officer stated her embarrassment and shame with being forced to protect a group of peace activists). Such instances point to, among things, the hypocrisy of Jewish groups and individuals who claim that Palestinians routinely fail to condemn acts of violence against Israeli civilians, and more importantly, to the growing prevalence and even dominance of staunch racism throughout the Israeli public sphere.

Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli political establishment have grown increasingly accustomed to scapegoating Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas for attacks against Israelis, claiming that his “incitement” galvanizes Palestinians to perpetrate acts of violence against Israeli Jews. Notwithstanding Abba’s public statements to the contrary as well as assessments from the Israeli intelligence itself that the PNA leader has not been inciting the Palestinian street to violence, it has grown more and more common for Israelis to blame the aging leader for Palestinian anger. Missing in this sequence of events is the formative and ongoing incitement of Israeli settlers and radicals that dehumanizes Palestinians, encourages Jews to disregard Muslim sensitivities surrounding the Al Aqsa Mosque, and prompts calls for greater militarization and Jewish vigilantism.

Thursday night’s unsanctioned and unlicensed march of Israeli extremists and their willingness to resort to violence against their state’s security forces testify to the impact that incitement is having on Jewish youth throughout the country, and portends an ever-growing threat of entrenching the current spiral of bloodshed.

Scott Ratner is an American-Israeli citizen currently living in Jerusalem and working with the Centre for Democracy and Community Development.