by Ludwig Watzal
There, said it! Zionism contradicts not only human rights but also universal justice. Zionism is above all. No less than the Israeli Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked said this at a conference organized by the Israeli Bar Association in Tel Aviv. Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy calls her „Israel’s Minister of Truth.“ The top echelons of right-wing Zionism negate human rights.
Shaked and their ilk have been very critical of Israel’s High Court of Justice. In her speech, she criticized the court for giving insufficient attention to Zionism and the country’s Jewish majority. Zionism and the challenges the country is facing have become a blind spot, which carries no certain weight in comparison to individual rights. According to her, demography and the Jewish majority should be taken more into consideration. Perhaps the Israeli courts should follow Saudi Arabia’s or Turkey’s examples.
„Zionism should not continue, and I say here, it will not continue to bow down to the system of individual rights interpreted in a universal way that divorces them from the history of the Knesset and the history of legislation that we all know,“ Shaked said. The Netanyahu government pushes the controversial „nation-state bill“ that will determine that Israel is the „national home of the Jewish people“ and only they can realize the right to self-determination in the state. Shaked considers national and Zionist values as an „absolute truth.“
Critics of Zionism have been saying that the State of Israel is not a democracy because it discriminates its non-Jewish inhabitants because of not being Jewish. The Israeli political establishment pretends that Israel is a „Jewish and democratic“ state. Avram Burg, the former Speaker of the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, called this an „oxymoron,“ a contradiction in itself. Right from the start, critics of the pseudo-democratic character of Israel had a hard time; „Anti-Zionists,“ „Anti-Semites,“ or „self-hating Jew,“ are outlaws. Critics, such as Oren Yiftachel, Professor at Ben Gurion University, call Israel an „Ethnocracy.“
Shaked belongs to Naftali Bennett’s nationalistic „Jewish Home“ Party. This party together with the right-wing settler movement have hijacked Zionism and transformed it into a nationalistic, racist, and fascist-like ideology. Under Josef Burg, the longtime Interior Minister of Israel, the „National-Religious Party“ was a religious liberal, conservative party.
The Israeli right cherishes a claustrophobic world view, i. e., the whole world is against us, and a next Holocaust is just around the corner. The newest example is the BDS Movement, which is seen by the Zionist establishment and World Jewry as an existential threat fought against by all available means, which also means at the cost of freedom of speech. In the US and other European states, such as Germany, the Zionist Israel lobby and their Philosemetic accomplices are just going berserk about BDS and do everything to criminalize it.
Let’s be thankful to Shaked. Finally, she revealed the real face of Zionism, which anybody already knew who did not see things through rose-colored glasses such as the so-called Zionist left from the Labour party or the former Meretz party. They have been justifying the injustices, the racism, the occupation regime and the Apartheid system over decades. It’s a pity that the West still accepts their hypocrisy. They are the so-called „good Israelis“ in contrast to the Likudniks, not to speak of the Shakeds, Bennetts, Libermans and their ilk.
The disenchanting of the real face of Zionism by Shaked and Gideon Levy praise of this invited severe contradictions by so-called liberal Zionists such as Ravit Hecht. According to her, a „fragrance of true love exudes from Levy’s text to his honest, brave princess.“ Hecht tries to save the real or „good“ Zionism because what Levy and his ilk are defending is a „sadistic distortion.“ Hecht is wrong by insinuating that Levy and others prefer the leadership of Shaked and their conservative colleagues to the „liberal“ Likudniks. Levy praises Shaked only for speaking the truth about the real Zionism, which is anti-democratic, racist, and anti-liberal.
When has Zionism become „a blind spot in the law,“ what about Judaism? Hasn’t Zionism perverted and hijacked Judaism on which Zionism made recourse to? Zionism is a form of nationalism whitewashed with pseudo-Jewish rhetoric. The Zionists are using the Jewish religion as a facade to legitimize their racist and expansionist colonialism. The real problems of this ideology ruts in Zionism itself. To get rid of the problems, Israel must get rid of Zionism.
The Zionist intruders want to portrait this conflict as a religious one between Muslims and Jews, which is wrong. Jewish life has flourished in Muslim countries until the Zionist appeared on the scene in Palestine. Only then, the conflict started. The only goal of the Zionists is to take over the Land of Palestine and get rid of as much Palestinians as possible. The whole charade has nothing to do with religion and should be rejected by the international community. The Palestinian people are victims of a racist movement that is as distant to religion as the earth from the moon.
These are the real problems Zionism is facing. Levy knows this. That’s why he praised Shaked. She is the one to show the actual face of Zionism to the world. The international community should demand from Israel to become a constitutional liberal democracy for all its citizens. If Israel doesn’t obey, one consequence could be an international boycott of the State of Israel.