writes in Electronic Intifida 11 June 2021
Israeli parliamentarians last week elected a new president for the country – failed Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog.
The Israeli presidency is largely a ceremonial post. Herzog takes office in July.
But it is significant that the new head of state has a record of violence and racism and has supported all of Israel’s wars against the Palestinian people. He is an anti-Arab racist, a proud former officer in a notorious Israeli spy agency and has spoken forcefully against Jews marrying non-Jews.
During his failed 2015 campaign to be prime minister, Herzog’s electoral list ran an ad in which Palestinians and Arabs are dehumanized, stereotyped and viewed as valid targets for killing. As the ad explains, Herzog is a veteran of Israel’s notorious Unit 8200 spy agency. Part of Israel’s military intelligence, Unit 8200 is known for mass surveillance, blackmail and violence targeting the entire Palestinian population.
You can watch the full Herzog ad, with English subtitles, in the video above.
Herzog’s 2015 election ad consisted of a series of short interviews with his former accomplices from Unit 8200 heaping praise on him.
“He understands the Arab mentality,” Yuval Albashan, one of his former comrades, says of Herzog. “He saw the Arabs in many different circumstances. He saw them through the sight of a rifle, and he saw them behind the sight of a rifle.”
As Albashan speaks, the ad cuts to footage of nonviolent Arab protesters. The crosshairs of a gunsight appears over a visibly Muslim man at the center of the crowd, implying that he’s a valid target for killing.
These images do not even appear to be from Palestine or of Palestinians at all. From a protest banner visible in the video, the footage appears to be of a demonstration – possibly in Egypt or Tunisia – in the context of the Arab Spring.
Herzog’s use of these images reinforces the racist message that all Arabs and Muslims are indistinguishable and equally worthy of killing.
This is reminiscent of how incoming prime minister Bennett recently used an image from Pakistan in a video justifying Israel’s killing of civilians in Gaza.
The imagery and claims about an “Arab mentality” in Herzog’s ad reflect classical racist and colonialist thinking – as if hundreds of millions of Arabs can be reduced to a stereotype that can be decoded by a supposed expert such as Herzog.
Anyone unwilling to see just how racist that terminology is should consider what the response would be to a politician anywhere claiming to “understand the Jewish mentality” or boasting of seeing “the Jews” through “the sight of a rifle.”
In 2014, whistleblowers from Unit 8200 revealed new details on its all-encompassing snooping operation, which intrudes on every aspect of life for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.
One of the details revealed by several of the whistleblowers was that it was common practice in the unit to mark an X on their headsets every time intelligence they provided was successfully used to kill a Palestinian.
This was known as “blood on the headset.” How much Palestinian blood does Israel’s new president have on his headset?
As appalling as this sounds, such violent behavior is judged to be a vote winner in Israel.