The Myth of Israeli Democracy Explodes

22/10/08

Last week (Wednesday, October 8) riots broke out in the town of Acre near the Israeli-Lebanese border. They began when a Palestinian resident of the town (a descendent of the 3,000 who were permitted to stay after 10,000 of their compatriots were ethnically cleansed in 1948) drove his car into an Israeli district. As it was the Jewish feast of Yom Kippur several local residents objected to such an extent that they dragged him from his car and physically assaulted him.

News of this incident spread throughout the Arab quarters of the town leading to mass demonstrations against the racist brutality inflicted upon the driver in particular and against the Palestinian people in general.

Throughout the weekend the violence escalated with several Palestinian houses being torched and their residents being forced to flee. The town was submerged in a cloud of tear gas as the Israeli police attempted to restore their ‘order.’

As these events continued, Palestinians in the West Bank were subject to increased pressure from their erstwhile neighbours who live on land stolen at the barrel of a gun. On Sunday a settler’s son was stabbed leading residents of the illegal settlement of Yetsahir to come to the nearby village of Asira al-Kabaliya in an attack that wounded three Palestinians.

In response to this, Ehud Olmert, helmsman of the Occupation, condemned the settlers’ actions by insisting, “In the state of Israel, there will be no pogroms against non-Jews.” And this as the descendents of those Palestinians who weren’t expelled from their homes in 1948 were under a direct and violent threat in Acre.

Olmert’s position as prime minister of the State of Israel itself is evidence of his hypocrisy, for that very state is founded upon the mass expulsion and murder of Palestinians.

Such an attitude is only to be expected however as the basis of the Israeli State crumbles further into the mire of internal division and external over-extension, so common amongst flailing empires and their vassals.

For it is clear that the increasing Israeli anxiety over the future existence of the ‘Jewish State’ is reflective of a deeper knowledge of its necessary failure. The State itself embodies two opposing ideological bases: first (like all ‘liberal democratic’ Western democracies), that of equality and freedom (constantly undermined by the exploitative capitalist relations that made it possible) and, second, that of a religious-ethnic justification rooted in the European experience of the Jewish people incorporating a belief in the ‘divine right’ to historic Palestine (undermined by the very existence of the Palestinian people).

As time passes the Israelis become entrenched in the unwinnable war in the West Bank and Palestinians living within the state become more and more numerous and less and less compliant in allowing the racist status quo to remain unchallenged from within. Gaza has already been lost not least due to the fact that forcing 1.5 million ‘unruly’ Palestinians under the yoke of Israeli power was severely threatening the Jewish majority in lands governed by the State of Israel.

Therefore, the race riots and anti-Arab pogroms in what was known as ‘the model of multi-cultural Israel’ are symptoms of a much deeper malaise: one that festers in the very heart of the Israeli State.

Imperialism and racism can neither shroud their crimes in the cloak of democracy nor defeat a people secure in the knowledge of who they are, what they’ve lost and having nothing left to lose.