“The Worst of Israel’s Enemies”-- Trump’s new Mideast appointees.

First, there’s this dreadful poster, which was published on Telegram by a popular Israeli right-wing talk show host. It reads, “They want to leave. Encourage their emigration now.”  

 ‘They’-are the Palestinians. More than two million of them are in Gaza. That’s minus 43,000 who Israeli forces have killed since the horrific Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. Most of the Palestinian dead were women and children. Another 100,000 have been injured, their legs blown off, their bodies mutilated, disfigured for life.

 “The poster was produced by “Gaza Forever,” an organization for the promotion of “humanitarian immigration of the population of Gaza.”  

The word “humanitarian” is right out of Orwell. What would “unhumanitarian” immigration look like?

Rafi Spivak, a film editor and teacher born in Israel who now lives in Vancouver and occasionally works with my film-making son, Jeffery, forwarded the poster.

 “The idea is to force the entire population of Gaza out of there,” says Rafi, “by making their life unbearable. They call it ‘voluntary immigration’ because ethnic cleansing doesn’t sound so good.

“This idea has been gaining popularity with Jewish Israeli right-wingers, has been mentioned by Israeli ministers as a legitimate strategy, and is openly discussed on television.

“This post has 13,000 views, 2000 likes and positive reactions, and some of the most racist and sadistic comments I’ve ever read: ‘They should just swim, no need to waste money on ships.’ Or ‘No one will take them; everyone knows they’re human garbage.’

“The problem isn’t even these disgusting people but the rest of the Jewish population of Israel, the people that feel appalled by this idea but fail to see that in many ways it’s exactly what Israel is doing in their name right now in Gaza, where 24 more people were killed last night in two separate bombings.”

Call what’s going on in Gaza genocide or ethnic cleansing; at this point in Israel, no one seems to care. Nor do they care about a similar process going on in the Occupied Territories, where three million Palestinians live. It has the same objective: Drive the Palestinians off their land.

Initially, Hitler was also very open to the idea of Jews immigrating from Germany and Austria. But at the Evian Conference in 1938, the world made clear its doors were shut. The Fuhrer concluded the world didn’t give a damn about the Jews.  So, he proceeded with his “final solution.”

 So, what happens if the Palestinians are unable to leave Gaza—and the Occupied territories? What happens if no countries agree to open their doors? Will Israel be willing to declare itself an Apartheid state openly? Or will it somehow continue pretending it isn’t? Will the rest of the world go along with the pantomime?

What is astonishing is that these atrocities are not happening in the shadows, in a distant land. They are transmitted daily on social media around the globe, as are the desperate calls for aid from the ONGs and international organizations that still have the guts to work there.

The dreadful images on that poster above could also be depictions of desperate Jews long ago attempting to flee what they had thought were their homelands in Western and Eastern Europe.  But the great majority of Israelis –and Jews in the Diaspora--seem unable to make that connection.  Why is there a total lack of empathy? Why is there also a complete lack of understanding of why Israel has become such a pariah?

Besides wringing his hands, Joe Biden did nothing serious to stop the slaughter. He continues to supply Israel with the weapons and international cover they need to continue the shameful process.

Posted in Israel after Trump’s election.

In any case, with the advent of Trump, it looks like all the barriers are down. That’s the bleak conclusion of one of the most outspoken of Israel’s liberal voices--Gideon Levy, the reporter from Haaretz who daily chronicles the ethnic cleansing that’s been going on in the Occupied Territories for the last year.

He writes, “Tragedies are befalling Israel one after the other. The next impending one will occur on January 20, when Donald Trump is sworn in as president. If the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Adviser and the U.S. ambassador to Israel stick to their words, the coming years spell disaster for Israel.

“The next period will determine its fate as a perennial apartheid state thanks to its ostensible friends, who are no more than blood merchants, dealers who will deepen Israel's addiction to occupation, bloodshed and power, irrevocably.

“They should not be labeled "friends of Israel," they are the obverse. They are the worst of its enemies. The new people in charge of the U.S.'s foreign policy are friends of apartheid, occupation, the settlements and war. Trump is the most moderate and restrained of this lot. He may restrain them somewhat. Itamar Ben-Gvir may also take part in restraining this group of wackos in Washington, if only he overcomes the language barrier….

“Racist and ignorant, they know nothing about the reality in the Middle East other than settler propaganda they have been brainwashed with in evangelical churches and on visits to settlements. The most criminal of Zionist enterprises, the settlements, has never had such adamant propagandists. Settler leader Yossi Dagan is already justifiably celebrating their appointment in front of every camera.

“They will push Israel into annexation, population transfer, war crimes - which are not crimes in their eyes - ethnic cleansing and genocide. They will dismantle the last global watchdogs, empty of content the international community's institutions and arm Israel even more than their predecessors. They will put a stop to the International Court of Justice and with it the remnants of global justice. The bell may also toll for NATO and the United Nations. On January 20, Israel will receive a permit to kill, cleanse and deport. The addict will get the keys to the pharmacy's drug cabinet.

“The designated Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, sees only Israeli victims in this terrible war. "… for almost a year now over 60,000 Israelis have [been] living in hotels & their kids going to school online," complained this pro-Israeli propagandist, who hasn't heard about the two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the one million Lebanese who've lost everything they owned, moving around helplessly, terrified. They don't have a hotel to sleep in and their children are not studying online. They are being massacred by Israel.

“…Their fate doesn't interest him because they are all terrorists – that's what the settlers told him.

“Michael Waltz, the new National Security adviser, speaks like right-wing journalist Shimon Riklin. "We have to let the IDF finish the job," he wrote recently. And the new ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, is a frequent visitor at the settlements and an inveterate supporter of annexation, viewing the 2005 disengagement from Gaza and four West Bank settlements as "one of Israel's greatest failures…."

“This bunch's term in office will shape the future almost irreparably. The hope that they will cast off their positions, as happens sometimes to Israeli politicians, is our last hope, and it too seems to be baseless.”