"Israeli racism has a new and original justification: The people love it" (Gideon Levy in Haaretz)

Haaretz caption: Beitar Jerusalem fans holding the flag of the outlawed racist Kach party at Teddy Stadium

by Ken

Probably there will be a lot of Americans who bristle at the idea that Israelis have broken new ground with the discovery that bigotry is good for business. Certainly Chick-fil-A CEO doesn't need any lessons from around the world in making bigotry pay -- although he does seem to have some killjoy traitors in his organization who leaned on him to delete the tweet he sent out decrying the Supreme Court decisions on same-sex marriage.

Israel has its killjoys too, among them Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy, who unaccountably isn't thrilled by the idea of using anti-Arab bigotry to sell soccer. Can you imagine? My friend Leo passed this along to me, and I couldn't resist sharing it.

The Haim Revivo racism project

The new representative of Beitar Jerusalem's owner announced last week he wouldn't sign Arab players.

By Gideon Levy | Jul.07, 2013 | 4:41 AM |  7

Israeli racism has a new and original justification: The people love it. When there is racism, Arabs are prevented from joining sports teams, so the teams can find sponsors. If once we had political, practical, spiritual and religious Zionism, now we have ideological racism and racism stemming from the need to sign sponsors. The person who thought this idea up, the ideological successor to Theodor Herzl and Ahad Ha'am, is an ex-soccer player, someone who made the list of greatest Israelis of all time: Haim Revivo.

The new representative of Beitar Jerusalem's owner announced last week that he wouldn't sign Arab players. "We do not seek to bring in an Arab player and provoke the fans," Revivo said. "It wouldn't be the right thing to do." He also told the fans to tone it down because "these things make it hard to get sponsors" - he was referring to the spate of racist slurs, stone-throwing, spitting and other violent acts by Beitar fans.

Revivo's new deal, as clear as the whistle of former star referee Pierluigi Collina, is that racism is good because the fans like it. The fans must not be provoked because then there will be no sponsors and no money. Jean-Marie Le Pen and Jorg Haider never thought of that.

It's a fine thing to hear from Revivo, of all people, such base justification for racism. He reached the height of his glory when he played in a Muslim country. From 2000 to 2003, Revivo was the king of Turkey. He played for the two finest teams in Istanbul, Fenerbahce and Galatasary, scored lots of goals and was voted the best foreign soccer player in Turkey. To this day there are taxi drivers in Taksim Square who, if you say "Israel" to them, will respond "Revivo," their eyes glistening.

No "representative of the owner" at those two clubs ever said he wouldn't sign Jewish (or Israeli ) players so as not to provoke the fans. Nor was there any problem with sponsors. It's not hard to guess what would have happened if a problem had come up with the Jew Revivo. A top-of-their-lungs chorus would have emerged from Elie Wiesel, the Wiesenthal Center, Yad Vashem, the Anti-Defamation League and Benjamin Netanyahu against the Turkish anti-Semitism that was calling for our destruction. But Turkey simply loved Revivo, judging him only on the number of goals he scored, not where he came from.

Revivo has forgotten this. He is a coward, with the reality shows "Dancing with the Stars" and "Eyal Golan is Calling You" and chairmanship of the Israel Football Players' Association under his belt. He knows the soul of the beast - the fans of his new club - which is the soul of many Israelis, just more crude and violent. So sometimes I love the Beitar fans; they shout what Israelis are thinking. It's not for nothing that Eyal Golan sings: "Who casts out the demons? / It's us, the Beitars. / Who's the queen? / Who's the champ? / Beitar Jerusalem on top."

This tune just goes on and on; words of praise for Yitzhak Rabin's assassin, Yigal Amir, and words of hatred for Rabin and his late wife, Leah. "It happened in the square / The SWAT team was helpless / It didn't stop Amir / And suddenly, a red stain / We don't want a peace treaty." (The next part, about Leah Rabin, is unprintable ). And they sing: "We swear by the menorah / To the racism that is our dream / The whole world is our witness / There will be no Arabs here."

When they are lectured day and night about a Jewish state, they understand the real meaning better than other Israelis. Do Netanyahu and Likud MKs Yariv Levin, Danny Danon and Miri Regev think differently? Would Habayit Hayehudi leaders Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked phrase it differently?

Beitar's racist singing raises up dark and hidden feelings, whose very raising the self-righteous reject. Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu of Safed and the Beitar fans known as La Familia are the only ones who still manage to disgust us. Our political, judicial and educational leaders, no less racist and much more institutionalized, harmful and systematic, don't disgust us. So maybe we should thank this project of Revivo's. At least it disgusts us.

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Israeli pols take the first step toward making the country an officially racist state

Yariv Levin: laying the legal groundwork for Israeli apartheid

"If [Yariv Levin's proposed new Basic Law] will be accepted, Israel will be able to proudly hold the title of a Jewish and racist state, a unique political creation, which will certainly astonish the family of nations."

-- from an editorial in Haaretz [full text available
for subscribers and registered users only]

by Ken

Will it really? I mean, would such a concrete step toward apartheid, if enacted, "certainly astonish the family of nations"?

To Israel's detractors it would hardly mean much more than a touch of honesty in the official policy of institutional denial of basic rights to the country's Arab citizens. Whereas those who support Israel blindly will pay it no attention, just as the "Israel can do no wrong" crowd habitually ignores the evidence of Israeli fascism.

This just leaves those of us who wish Israel well, but not in the form its extreme right-wing loons have increasingly enforced on their countrymen. And what could we do but throw up our hands once again in the face of yet more evidence that the no-criticism-allowed supporters of Israel truly want to see their state go up in flames.

People with open eyes and working brains have been pointing out for a long time now that Israel is a ticking demographic time bomb -- that since it insists on living in its illegal expanded borders, it's just a matter of time before it becomes a minority-Jewish state, at which point it can no longer claim to be both a Jewish state and a democratic one.

Of course the Israeli Right by and large doesn't care, having not even a sentimental attachment to the idea of democracy. Still, it's going to be a mighty embarrassment to the outside world, especially since there's a key element missing. As the Haaretz editorial we're going to look at in a moment puts it:

The exclusion of the Arab minority in Israel has until now lacked a vital basis to its institutionalization. There is no law discriminating against Arabs, limiting where they may settle, negating their language as an official language or determining that they are challenging the state's Jewish identity.

You'll recall that following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's surprisingly tepid performance in the last election, he now heads a coaltion government in which some surprising voices are making themselves heard.

Basic Law: Apartheid in Israel

The proposal put forth by Coalition Chairman Yariv Levin is nothing short of an apartheid law, aiming to provide a solid legal basis for the exclusion of Israel's Arab minority.

Haaretz Editorial | 30.05.13 |

The exclusion of the Arab minority in Israel has until now lacked a vital basis to its institutionalization. There is no law discriminating against Arabs, limiting where they may settle, negating their language as an official language or determining that they are challenging the state's Jewish identity.

Israel has been forced until now to rely on tricks, excuses and winks to prevent Arabs from working in so-called sensitive places of work, delay building plans in their communities, limit how many of them reside in Jewish communities and not enforce the use of Arabic in official correspondences. Only in a few instances did the High Court of Justice intervene and the government had no choice but to obey the ruling.

Coalition chairman MK Yariv Levin decided to put an end to this murky reality and provide the unofficial apartheid policy a legal basis. Levin is proposing the Basic Law: State of the Nation, which is nothing short of an apartheid law. If it will be accepted, Israel will be able to proudly hold the title of a Jewish and racist state, a unique political creation, which will certainly astonish the family of nations.

Levin proposes, among other things, mandatory construction of Jewish communities, while building Arab communities will need authorization; abolishing Arabic as an official language and mandating the courts to give precedence in their rulings to Jewish identity in questions of democratic values and equal rights. That is to say, to give precedence to "Jewish" over "democratic" in defining the state.

Arabs will enjoy at best the status of a tolerated minority, with the option of turning them into a non-tolerated minority down the line, one which needs to be rid of because its presence spoils the state's Jewish purity.

Levin and his comrades have a vision: The racist state won't suffice with its recognized borders. It will officially adopt the living space divinely promised to it. "The Land of Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and where the state of Israel was established," the bill reads. Finally, the messianic dream will have a geographic, legal identity, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.

Levin is no joke, and he is far from being the exception. He is continuing the way paved by Avi Dichter, who failed in his efforts to legitimize apartheid. Moreover, he is a competitor with MK Ruth Calderon, a member of Yesh Atid, who is promoting together with Habayit Hayehudi MK Ayelet Shaked a similar bill, which at its heart subjugates democracy to the state's Jewish identity.

Instead of purging elements of racism from within its ranks, it turns out that the present coalition is also promoting apartheid in the guise of "new politics."

Listen again to the editorial writer's summation of the proposal: "Arabs will enjoy at best the status of a tolerated minority, with the option of turning them into a non-tolerated minority down the line, one which needs to be rid of because its presence spoils the state's Jewish purity."

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Whether in Israel or America, is it time to fight the Far Right's "smirking, obscene, proudly bigoted pronouncements"?

Israeli "patriot" Steven Plaut had "a suggestion" for Stephen Hawking, following the great physicist's announcement that he is boycotting the upcoming Presidential Conference in Jerusalem because of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. "I suggest," Plaut wrote, "that the people of Israel send Hawking for a free trip on the Achille Lauro!!"


"The Senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming, 'My country, right or wrong.' In one sense I say so too. My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right."

-- Missouri Sen. Carl Schurz, on the Senate floor, Feb. 29, 1872
(cited in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations, 1989)

"It has to stop. It has to stop here and now. When self-styled pro-Israel advocates on the far-right practice incitement and repulsive bullying to further their cause, when hate speech becomes the go-to tool in their belt, it is time for people who care about Israel's future to take a stand, call them out, shut them down, fight their smirking, obscene, proudly bigoted pronouncements."

-- Bradley Burston, in a Haaretz.com blogpost, "Targeting Stephen Hawking and Dustin Hoffman: Right-wing 'pro-Israel' advocacy as hate speech"

by Ken

With regard to the famous Carl Schurz "My country, right or wrong" quote, according to Respectfully Quoted "Schurz expanded on this theme in a speech delivered at the Anti-Imperialistic Conference, Chicago, Illinois, October 17, 1899":

I confidently trust that the American people will prove themselves . . . too wise not to detect the false pride or the dangerous ambitions or the selfish schemes which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of mock patriotism: "Our country, right or wrong!" They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: "Our country -- when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right."

(Schurz, “The Policy of Imperialism,” Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz, vol. 6, pp. 119–20)

"The deceptive cry of mock patriotism." You couldn't put it much better than that, especially as contrasted with "the watchword of true patriotism." And underlying that "mock patriotism" we have "false pride," "dangerous ambitions," and "selfish schemes." Already in 1899 Schurz saw the "modern" American Right full-blown, not to mention its media sponsor and overlord, Fox Noise.

"Our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: 'Our country -- when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.' "

It's a shame that we have to keep coming back to the truth and true significance of Schurz's "deceptive cry of mock patriotism." But it's essential that we continue doing so, because it appears that there will always be dishonest, dangerously ambitious, and selfishly scheming people using this mock-patriotic rhetoric to hornswoggle people they consider too stupid to know better.

My friend Leo passed on a timely blogpost on the perversions of the Israeli counterparts of our own right-wing liars and sociopaths by Haaretz's Bradley Burston. I want to pass Burston's piece on in its entirely, and because it's important to know who we're hearing from, here's his online bio:

Bradley Burston is a Haaretz columnist and Senior Editor of Haaretz.com which publishes his blog, "A Special Place in Hell."

During the first Palestinian uprising, Burston served as Gaza correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, and was the paper's military correspondent in the 1991 Gulf War.

In the mid-1990s he covered Israeli-Arab peace talks for Reuters. In 2006, he received the Eliav-Sartawi Award for Mideast Journalism, presented at the United Nations.

A native of Los Angeles, Burston moved to Israel after graduation from Berkeley. He was part of a group which established Kibbutz Gezer, between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Burston served in the IDF as a combat medic, later studying medicine in Be'er Sheva for two years before turning to journalism. He is married and has two daughters.

Now here's the post from Buston's "A Special Place in Hell" blog. (In the original you'll find abundant links, including citations for virtually everything factual.)

Targeting Stephen Hawking and Dustin Hoffman: Right-wing 'pro-Israel' advocacy as hate speech

Increasingly, the rabid far-right 'pro-Israel' camp is carrying out repulsive, hate-filled attacks on Jews whose most cherished wish is to see a stronger, more democratic Israel. It is time to take a stand.

By Bradley Burston | May 09, 2013 | 6:21 PM

Professor Steven Plaut teaches business finance and economics at the University of Haifa. He also writes articles, pamphlets and blog posts intended to defend Israel.

This is what he offered in defense of Israel this week, in response to physicist Stephen Hawking's decision to boycott next month's Presidential Conference in Jerusalem, over Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

"I have a suggestion," Plaut wrote on Wednesday, in a reference to the wheelchair-bound noted scientist, and to a 1985 incident in which Palestinian gunmen commandeered an Italian cruise ship, murdering a disabled American Jewish passenger and throwing his body overboard:

"I suggest that the people of Israel send Hawking for a free trip on the Achille Lauro!!"

Plaut's argument, that the proper punishment for boycotting Israel should be execution, was only slightly more obscene than that of attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of the Shurat Hadin-Israel Law Center Organization, a right-wing pro-Israel not-for-profit whose stated primary goals include "defending human rights" and conducting a "civil war" in court against global terror.

In a statement, Darshan-Leitner alluded to the fact that Hawking is almost entirely paralyzed and communicates through a speech generating device:

"His whole computer-based communication system runs on a chip designed by Israel’s Intel team. I suggest that if he truly wants to pull out of Israel he should also pull out his Intel Core i7 from his tablet.”

For years, prominent voices on the ostensibly pro-Israel far-right have been competing to see who can be the most outrageous in cruelty, the most childish in bullying, while pursuing a career in what they call Israel advocacy.

Just last week, the New York-based Jewish Press, which describes itself as "the largest independent weekly Jewish newspaper in the United States" and "a tireless advocate for the state of Israel," published a news article that used classic anti-Semitic imagery in the service of a right-wing polemic on Israel.

Taking actor Dustin Hoffman to task for accepting the Muslim Public Affairs Council's invitation to present an award to the Academy Award-nominated film "Five Broken Cameras," Jewish Press correspondent Lori Lowenthal Marcus wrote:

"Hoffman is someone whose Jewishness seems to have played very little role in his life other than as a trigger to anti-Semitic bullies, and the fact that his height, his nose, his nasal voice and his plucky, outsider roles are all stereotypically Jewish."

Later, Marcus, who also serves as president of the far-right Z Street Israel advocacy organization, concludes:

"So, in the end, Dustin Hoffman with his honking nasal voice and Semitic nose may be emulating the pattern of the mindless good-looking movie stars against whom he rose as the iconic non-handsome, non-sexy male movie star of the counter-culture years."

Increasingly, the rabid "Pro-Israel" far-right has taken on as principal targets Jews whose most cherished wish is to see Israel become a stronger, more democratic, more livable society.

Commentator and media personality Pamela Geller, whose bread and butter "pro-Israel" tack is hatred of Muslims, has branched out to target writer and editor Peter Beinart as "vomit-inducing kapo."

Geller, at times borrowing her writing style from Stormfront, has also called the Daily Beast's Beinart "the pet Jew turncoat" of Newsweek/Daily Beast Editor-In-Chief Tina Brown.

Of columnist Jeffrey Goldberg, Geller writes: "Jihad Jeff Goldberg, from one Jew to another, go to hell. Cuz it's foe shizzle you are going to rot there."

It has to stop. It has to stop here and now. When self-styled pro-Israel advocates on the far-right practice incitement and repulsive bullying to further their cause, when hate speech becomes the go-to tool in their belt, it is time for people who care about Israel's future to take a stand, call them out, shut them down, fight their smirking, obscene, proudly bigoted pronouncements.

The "pro-Israel" far right takes full advantage of -- even while scorning -- its liberal opponents' beliefs in freedom of expression and tolerance for democracy's sake. Their vile views regularly grace newspaper columns and are granted platforms by synagogues and Jewish organizations.

And it's only getting worse. It may have been anger over the realization that most Western Jews disagree with them, it may have been input from the high-IQ snots of Im Tirtzu, it may have been the sense that their beloved settlers have won a final and permanent victory in Israel, but of late, something terrible and growing is infecting far-right "pro-Israel advocacy."

It has to stop. We have to stop meekly putting up with it. Otherwise, as we've seen a number of times recently, if smartly dressed thugs of the right can disrupt a serious debate on Israel's future by booing and delegitimizing a two-state solution as being anti-Israel, the way forward is clear.

If the bigots, the fanatics, the Apartheid apologists, the velveteen fascists of the pro-Israel far-right are freely granted platforms as respected "experts" on Israel, no one who hates Israel as bigoted, fanatic, Apartheid-ruled and fascistic -- no one who wants to see Israel ostracized to death -- will ever need to say another word.

The Plauts, the Gellers, and a host of others will have already done their work for them.

One of the little things I love in this post is Burston's insistence on putting "pro-Israel" in quotation marks as applied to the "velveteen fascists" of the Israeli Right. As he says of the "something terrible and growing" that of late "is infecting 'pro-Israel advocacy":

"It has to stop. We have to stop meekly putting up with it."

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Just Skip The First Paragraph-- This Is About Obama And Medicare, Not Obama And Syria

If we're already fighting in Syria, it happened between the time I wrote this and Blogger published it. Right now-- as I'm writing-- Israel has just bombed a little for the past few days-- and, of course, there are no boots, no U.S. boots, on the ground in Syria (or... Iran). I'll add an update below when that changes. Although maybe I should remind everyone that in year 5 of the Obama presidency, the occupation of Afghanistan is still cooking along-- albeit as pointlessly as ever. And for some, as painfully. Eight American soldiers here, sixty-four American soldiers there... Vietnam it's not. But it's another pointless all-American tragedy.

No one's accusing Obama of being a secret Republican. Why bother? Establishment Democrats aren't that different from Establishment Republicans most of the time anyway. His catastrophic corporate trade policies are virtually identical with Bush's. Wall Street? Check. Is Penny Pritzker any less of a sleazebag and corporate criminal than anyone Bush appointed? "Obamacare?" Except for the name... it was a discredited Republican proposal to avoid single-payer universal health care. How about wrecking Social Security with Chained CPI-- another Republican idea Obama has embraced-- like the Sequester. Who would have ever imagined a worse Democrat than Bill Clinton in the White House? At least Clinton was smart. Obama really is turning out to be a fool and a lightweight. (No, I didn't vote for him in November. Did you?)

Can Obama do any more damage than he already has to the Democratic brand? Well of course. He has some crappy Republican ideas to wreck Medicare he's feeling good about. No one ever knows how great Medicare is 'til they turn 65. And then it dawns on you-- this isn't a theory; this is the best thing ever! I was the president of a company that was part of a Fortune 500 corporate monster. The carefully negotiated health insurance policy they gave company presidents is the best thing available-- blue chip to the max. Guess what-- so far Social Security is at least just as good. I actually think it's better but I want to give it a year before I make a final judgment. Unless Obama manages to wreck it before the year is up.

Obama says he likes a Republican Austerity plan that combines Medicare's doctor and hospital coverage in a way that saddles beneficiaries with higher costs. The Austerity crowd, both Republicans and the conservative Democrats Obama has surrounded himself with, feel that Medicare beneficiaries need to pay more. The proposals don't attempt to save money; they just shift the costs to beneficiaries while enacting a cap on catastrophic costs. The unified deductable (for Parts A & B) that Obama says he'll go along with is meant to raise expenses by hundreds of dollars for the vast majority of Medicare beneficiaries who aren't getting hospital treatment. "It's just shifting costs," explained Henry Waxman (D-CA), just "a way to ask people to pay more for their premiums." Waxman hasn't even signed onto the Grayson-Takano No Cuts letter and you get the idea that he still hasn't lost faith in Obama yet.

Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairman Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) has signed onto the Grayson-Takano letter and has analyzed it and called it a "net loss" for patients that "is not going to control rising costs." Meanwhile, of course, virtually all Republican congressmembers are getting behind Cantor's devious and callous approach that he articulated for the American Enterprise Institute: "We can modernize Medicare so it isn’t so complicated for seniors or healthcare providers. We should begin by ending the arbitrary division between Part A, the hospital program, and Part B, the doctor services."

I'm looking very skeptically on any incumbents who haven't signed onto the Grayson Takano letter which just states very clearly that "we will vote against any and every cut to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security benefits-- including raising the retirement age or cutting the cost of living adjustments that our constituents earned and need." Tuesday Blue America will be formally endorsing Pennsylvania state Senator Daylin Leach, who is running for the open congressional seat in northeast Philly/Montgomery County, which Allyson Schwartz is leaving. Daylin backs the Grayson Takano No Cuts approach. "At a time when corporate profits, executive compensation, the stock market and wealth disparity are at near record highs," he told us, "it is obscene to even consider balancing our budget on the backs of seniors and veterans. I fully supported President Obama's election, but I can't support any drift towards corporatism to appease tea-party extremists. If we are really serious about ensuring the solvency of Social Security while preserving benefits well into the future, there is a simple solution. We should raise the cap on income subject to the payroll tax from $110,000 per year to $200,000 per year. This is fair, reasonable, and keeps faith with those who rely on Social Security to survive."

No need to wait 'til Tuesday, when he joins us for a Crooks and Liars live chat session, to back Daylin's campaign. You can do it here, now.

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