Haneen Zuabi (right), who represents the Arab nationalist party Balad in the Israeli Knesset, is heckled by Anastassia Michaeli, of the ultra-nationalistic Yisrael Beteinu party (centre). Photograph: David Vaaknin/AP
Read the details in the Guardian of Israel parliament member Haneen Zuabi’s experience aboard the ship attacked by Israel for why she seems very much to be a hero. But the issue for me is, how far right is normal political life now in Israel? What has become of an Israel where “the ultra-nationalistic Yisraeli Beteinu party” can be part of the government and represents near-majority (majority?) political sentiment toward Arabs? (“There’ve been no public-opinion polls yet, but clearly many Israelis support a hard-line approach to Gaza and the Palestinian situation in general; experts note the population has grown increasingly conservative since the second Palestinian intifada, or “uprising,” in 2000, exacerbated by hard-line new arrivals to Israel from Russia and elsewhere.”) And then there’s the ultra-orthodox religious party Shas, which provides Israel its Interior Minister. He’s seriously seeking to revoke Zuabi’s citizenship! (Emphasis added):
Gaza flotilla activist faces death threats
Haneen Zuabi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset, has been sworn at by parliamentary colleagues and received death threats since disembarking on Monday
Rachel Shabi in Jerusalem guardian.co.uk
Thursday 3 June 2010 17.21 BSTWhile other activists from the Gaza aid flotilla have returned home, one is left facing death threats and abuse in Israel. Haneen Zuabi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset who was aboard the Mavi Marmara, is now under armed protection after nearly 500 people signed up to a Facebook page calling for her execution.
During a heated parliamentary session yesterday Zuabi was sworn at and then shoved out of the chamber amid shouts of “Go to Gaza, traitor”.
The 41-year-old member of the Arab nationalist party Balad has also received death threats by phone and mail. “I am not scared,” she said, speaking from her home town of Nazareth in northern Israel. “This is inherent here, it is not something that started yesterday. It is just harder and harsher now.“
And then there’s Israel’s loony Interior Minister. Note the fantastical perspective (but I guess it is majority opinion (?) in Israel) on what was plainly a deadly attack by armed Israeli soldiers on unarmed civilians on a boat in international waters:
Interior Minister seeks to revoke Israeli Arab MK’s citizenship
Israeli Arab MK Hanin Zuabi took part in Gaza aid flotilla, in what Eli Yishai calls a ‘premeditated act of treason’ under protection of parliamentary immunity.
By Barak Ravid
Published 22:04 03.06.10
Latest update 22:04 03.06.10Interior Minister Eli Yishai petitioned Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to help him revoke the Israeli citizenship of Israeli Arab MK Hanin Zuabi, who took part in efforts to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza on a flotilla of aid ships earlier this week. . . .
“In recent days,” Yishai wrote to Weinstein on Thursday, “Israel’s citizens have witnessed how an Israeli member of parliament, Hanin Zuabi, headed a group of terrorists who aimed to hurt Israel Defense Forces soldiers, under the protection of her parliamentary immunity.” . . .
“MK Zuabi used her immunity as a cloak to protect her from the law, although she was undoubtedly aware of the activists’ preparations for the attack against IDF troops,” Yishai wrote. “This is a premeditated act of treason, and there is documented proof of this.”
The Christian Science Monitor reports (emphasis added) further on Zoabi:
Zoabi was released from police custody Tuesday because of her parliamentary immunity, and today addressed Israeli parliament in a fiery speech challenging Israel’s narrative that clashes were started by club-wielding activists.
“Israel spoke of a provocation, but there was no provocation,” she told the Knesset. “Why does the government of Israel oppose an investigation? Are you sure of the Israeli story?”
Her address to the Israeli Knesset was repeatedly interrupted by Jewish lawmakers calling her a traitor and shouting, “Go to Gaza, traitor!”
In a televised address Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Israel’s critics of “hypocrisy.”
But Zoab has not tempered her rhetoric. During a press conference Tuesday, according to Ynet news, she said: “It was clear from the size of the force that boarded the ship that the purpose was not only to stop this sail, but to cause the largest possible number of fatalities in order to stop such initiatives in the future.”
More on Avigdor Lieberman and his party, Yisrael Beitinu at Wikipedia. Here are some recent lowlights (emphasis added):
Lieberman’s party proposes ban on Arab Nakba
Nakba, or catastrophe, is day of mourning over displacement of 700,000 Arabs in 1948 war that led to Israel’s creation.By Reuters
Published 16:46 14.05.09
Latest update 03:34 15.05.09Avigdor Lieberman’s party wants to ban Israeli Arabs from marking the anniversary of what they term “the Catastrophe” or Nakba, when in 1948 some 700,000 Arabs lost their homes in the war that led to the establishment of the state of Israel.
The ultranationalist Yisrael Beitenu party said it would propose legislation next week for a ban on the practice and a jail term of up to three years for violators. . . .
Threat of the ‘thought police’ alarms Israel’s Arab minority
Freedom to oppose Israel’s right to exist among acts that right-wing politicians are attempting to outlaw
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Saturday, 30 May 2009Israeli Arab leaders have called an emergency meeting today to discuss their growing alarm over a series of “racist and fascist” bills being promoted by right-wing members of the country’s parliament. One of the bills has already brought fierce accusations from two prominent Jewish Knesset members that its backers are trying to create a “thought police” and “punish people for talking”.
. . . the Committee is also protesting at another bill, which was given its first reading in the Knesset this week, that would make it a crime to negate Israel’s right to exist as a “Jewish and democratic state”.
It was during a heated debate on that bill last Wednesday that Haim Oron, leader of the left-wing Meretz party, declared: “Have you lost all faith in Israel as a Jewish and democratic state? This crazy government, what on earth are you doing? A thought police? Have you all lost it?” And Roni Bar-On, who was the centrist Kadima finance minister in the last government, asked the promoters: “You want to punish people for talking? Soon, will you want to punish for thoughts?“
A third bill which is expected to come before the ministerial legislative committee tomorrow would enforce a “loyalty oath” on those seeking Israeli citizenship. The idea of the oath was a centrepiece of the election campaign waged by Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the hardline Yisrael Beiteinu party who is now foreign minister.
“some 700,000 Arabs lost their homes…“
Just for accuracy’s sake, it was more like “at least one million”. Some 750,000 or so were registered with the UN as refugees, but there were also tens of thousands who fled or were forced out and for various reasons did not register as refugees. I am personally acquainted with several of those. Oh, and they were not all Arabs either. They WERE Palestinians, however.
The fascist tendencies of a significant number of the Israeli politicians (and populace, for that matter) is becoming increasingly evident.
You can see the hate in this photo (be sure to enlarge).
Might as well be a mob of Aryans, for the sheer dehumanization being hurled at this lone woman.
All that is missing is to put lederhosen on those kids – they’d be the spitting image of ‘someone’s’ youth movement.
Thanks for the link – that’s a truly chilling image.
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A Palestinian woman whose house has been occupied by Jewish settlers argue with Israelis who came to celebrate Jerusalem Day on May 12, 2010 in front of her disputed house in the East-Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Israel is celebrating the anniversary of the ‘unification’ of Jerusalem, marking 43 years since it captured mainly Arab East-Jerusalem during the 1967 Middle East war. Thousands of people, mostly nationalist-religious Jews, were expected to take part in an annual march through Jerusalem later Wednesday that culminates in the Old City at the Wailing Wall, one of the holiest sites in Judaism AFP PHOTO/AHMAD GHARABLI
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
Her “disputed” house – don’t you just LOVE it?!
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CANBERRA (ABC News) July 6, 2009 – I found myself herded against a brick wall as they kept on spitting – on my face, my hair, my clothes, my arms. It was like rain, coming at me from all directions – hitting my recorder, my bag, my shoes, even my glasses.
Big gobs of spit landed on me like heavy raindrops. I could even smell it as it fell on my face.
Somewhere behind me – I didn’t see him – a man on a stairway either kicked me in the head or knocked something heavy against me.
I wasn’t even sure why the mob was angry with me. Was it because I was a journalist? Or a woman? Because I wasn’t Jewish in an Orthodox area? Was I not dressed conservatively enough?
In fact, I was later told, it was because using a tape-recorder is itself a desecration of the Shabbat even though I’m not Jewish and don’t observe the Sabbath. It was lucky that I don’t speak Yiddish. At least I was spared the knowledge of whatever filth they were screaming at me.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
Fascism cloaked in a second rate Jim Crow democracy.
Avigdor Lieberman’s crew of crazy Russian exiles never had any faith in that idea.
A “Jewish and democratic state”? Either you have an ethnocracy or you have a democracy. Sorry, you can’t have it both ways, Mr. Oron.
well, you can have both if the demographics are stable. But they’re not. Demographics are never stable. And if you use state action to keep them stable, then you’re going to run afoul of the democratic part of the equation.
You can only have a Jewish (or Muslim, or Christian, or Bhuddist, etc.) and democratic state if “stable demographics” means 100% Jewish (or Muslim, or Christian, or Bhuddist, etc.). Zionist leaders, starting with Herzl, realized this, and in the beginning thought it would be easy to “transfer” the non-Jewish indigenous population out of the land.
Once you define a state by a specific religion, race, or ethnicity you cannot call it a democracy unless all of the population is of that religion, race, or ethnicity because you have defined one group of citizens as superior. Israel can be either a Jewish state or a democratic state. It cannot be both – unless, of course, it completes the ethnic cleansing it undertook in 1948. And, as you say, if (or perhaps when) it does that it will have another set of problems calling itself democratic.