Germany’s new Nazis see Israel as role model

Ali Abunimah Power Suits 25 September 2017


Israel and its supporters have made alliances with racists, anti-Semites and Islamophobes all over Europe. (via Flickr)
“Unfortunately, our worst fears have come true,” Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said of the electoral success in Sunday’s general election of Alternative for Germany.

Known by its German initials AfD, the extreme nationalist party won almost 100 seats in Germany’s lower house.

“A party that tolerates far-right views in its ranks and incites hate against minorities in our country is today not only in almost all state parliaments but also represented in the Bundestag,” Schuster said.

The party is notorious for harboring all manner of racists and extremists, including apologists for Germany’s war record and Holocaust revisionists.

It was a disaster that Germany’s mainstream politicians saw coming.

Sigmar Gabriel, the country’s foreign minister, warned earlier this month that if AfD scored well at the ballot box, “then we will have real Nazis in the German Reichstag for the first time since the end of World War II.”

Pro-Israel funder backs new Nazis
While Germany needs no lessons in how to be racist, this catastrophe can in part be attributed to leaders in Israel and their fanatical supporters: for years they have made common cause with Europe’s far right, demonizing Muslims as alien invaders who must be rejected and even expelled to maintain a mythical European purity.

It can also be attributed to German leaders who for decades have strengthened this racist Israel by financing Israel’s military occupation and oppression of Palestinians.

What happened in Germany is another facet of the white supremacist-Zionist alliance that has found a home in Donald Trump’s White House.

In the past few weeks, liberal flagships The New York Times and The Washington Post have been hunting for the nonexistent shadows of Russian interference in the German election.

Meanwhile, as Lee Fang reported for The Intercept, the Gatestone Institute, the think tank of major Islamophobia industry funder Nina Rosenwald, was flooding German social media with “a steady flow of inflammatory content about the German election, focused on stoking fears about immigrants and Muslims.”

The Gatestone Institute is chaired by John Bolton, the neoconservative former US diplomat notorious for his hawkish support of the invasion of Iraq.

Gatestone articles making claims about Christianity becoming “extinct” and warning about the construction of mosques in Germany were regularly translated into German and posted by AfD politicians and sympathizers.

Story after story claimed that migrants and refugees were raping German women and bringing dangerous diseases to the country, classic themes of the Nazi propaganda once used to incite genocidal hatred of Jews.

In a tragic irony, Rosenwald’s father, an heir to the Sears department store fortune, used his wealth to help Jewish refugees flee persecution in Europe.

His daughter took a different path. Journalist Max Blumenthal has called Nina Rosenwald the “sugar mama of anti-Muslim hate.”

Blumenthal reported in 2012 that Rosenwald “used her millions to cement the alliance between the pro-Israel lobby and the Islamophobic fringe.”

In addition to funding a host of the most notorious anti-Muslim demagogues, Blumenthal reported that Rosenwald “served on the board of AIPAC, the central arm of America’s Israel lobby, and holds leadership roles in a host of mainstream pro-Israel organizations.”

The party of Anders Breivik
In a profile the day after the election, The Jerusalem Report, published by the right-wing Jerusalem Post, gave AfD deputy leader Beatrix von Storch a platform to set out the party’s anti-Muslim ideology.

The Jerusalem Report also quotes German political scientist Marcel Lewandowsky explaining that “AfD members view the European Union as a traitor to Europe’s Christian heritage because they let in the Muslims. The view is that the Islamization of Europe was caused by the EU.”

“Replacement” by Muslims, Lewandowsky explained, “is the core of the fear of AfD voters.”

This means that the core ideology of the party is indistinguishable from that of Anders Breivik, the Norwegian who murdered 77 of his fellow citizens, mostly teenagers at a Labor Party youth camp, in July 2011, in the name of stopping the “Islamization” of Europe.

One of the biggest benefactors of Rosenwald’s largesse, according to Blumenthal, has been Daniel Pipes, the influential pro-Israel, anti-Muslim demagogue who Breivik cited 18 times in his notorious manifesto.

Admiration for Israel
AfD deputy leader von Storch, who sits in the European Parliament, also uses The Jerusalem Report interview to lay out her party’s pro-Israel stance, comparing its German nationalism to Israel’s Zionist ideology.

According to the The Jerusalem Report, von Storch is a founder of “Friends of Judea and Samaria,” a far-right European Parliament grouping that supports Israel’s illegal colonization of occupied Palestinian land.

Bizarrely, that group lists as one of its contact persons the head of the “Shomron Regional Council,” a settler organization in the occupied West Bank.

“Israel could be a role model for Germany,” von Storch told The Jerusalem Report. “Israel is a democracy that has a free and pluralistic society. Israel also makes efforts to preserve its unique culture and traditions. The same should be possible for Germany and any other nation.”

Von Storch’s identification with Israel echoes that of US Nazi demagogue Richard Spencer, who has described his vision of an Aryan “ethno-state” as “white Zionism.”

AfD chair Frauke Petry has also expressed support for Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. In February, she told the right-wing Jewish publication Tablet that her only visit to Israel gave her a positive view of the country.

“Suddenly the picture you get is somewhat different than what you got when you live far away,” she said.

These views, again, echo those of Anders Breivik. He was a strong admirer of Zionism, and advocated an alliance with Israel to fight against Muslims and their “culturalMarxists/multiculturalists” supporters.

Israel’s settler leaders have taken note of AfD’s support. As the world reeled from AfD’s electoral success, Yehuda Glick, a lawmaker in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, tweeted that all those who were “in a panic” about AfD should rest assured that Petry was working “intensively” to expel any anti-Semitic elements.


Glick, a leader in the apocalyptic movement that seeks to destroy Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque and replace it with a Jewish temple, also recommended an article outlining AfD’s pro-Israel stance.

According to Tablet, Petry’s visit also led her to believe “that Europe should be learning more from Israel in its fight against terrorism.”

According to a recent survey, this strong support for Israel is felt across the ranks of AfD’s leadership.

Alliance with Zionism
There is a clear logic for AfD leaders to join the newly invigorated alliance between far-right, traditionally anti-Semitic forces on the one hand, and Israel and Zionists on the other.

Party chair Petry has argued that Jews should should be willing to talk to AfD over supposedly common interests, explaining, according to Tablet, that “it is the left wing in Germany and new Muslim immigrants who are leading her country’s anti-Israel movement.”

“Both anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are strongest in the Islamic community, as well as the left,” von Storch said. “They reject the fact that the Judeo-Christian foundations of European civilization are instrumental to its success. We recognize the threat they pose to both Israel and Germany’s Jewish community and their safety is a high priority for us.”

This is of course the most brazen revisionism: for centuries Europe’s Christian authorities not only did not consider Jews as a foundational part of their “civilization,” but persecuted them mercilessly, eventually attempting genocide.

But such facts are glossed over in the interests of a present-day anti-Muslim alliance that is prepared to torch the increasingly frayed fabric of pluralistic societies for the sake of Israel and German national purification.

Israel’s support for fascists
Critically, as Glick’s tweets indicate, this has not been a one-way affair. It has been encouraged by Israel and its lobby groups.

The notion that Israel is the spearhead of a Western civilizational battlefront against Islam has been a key claim of Netanyahu.

He and other Israeli leaders have exploited every terrorist outrage in Europe to advance the poisonous message that Israel is “fighting the same fight.”

And powerful Israel lobby groups, such as the Anti-Defamation League, that are now expressing alarm at the electoral success of the AfD, are far from innocent.

For years, the Anti-Defamation League – which poses as an “anti-hate” group – courted and whitewashed influential anti-Muslim hate-preachers because they supported its pro-Israel agenda.

This embrace between Zionists and their supposed opposites continues to thrive in the welcome former Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka have found from Israel and its lobby groups.

Bannon will speak at the Zionist Organization of America’s upcoming gala, while Gorka, who has ties to Nazis and violent anti-Semitic militias, was recently welcomed in Israel.

It can be seen in the Israeli government’s long and conspicuous silence while the rest of the world condemned August’s neo-Nazi rampage in Charlottesville, Virginia.

It can also be seen in Netanyahu’s embrace of far-right European leaders including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has attempted to rehabilitate his country’s Hitler-allied wartime leadership.

While the brazenness of this alliance may be shocking, it dates back to the early years of both the Zionist and Nazi movements. As Columbia University professor Joseph Massad has pointed out, Zionists and European anti-Semites historically shared the same analysis: that Jews were alien to Europe and had to be moved elsewhere.

And it continues: Israeli commentators are noting that Israel has not rushed to condemn AfD.

Netanyahu – always quick to pounce on the alleged anti-Semitism of Israel’s critics – took to Twitter to congratulate Chancellor Angela Merkel on her victory, but has so far remained silent about the subject that everyone else is talking about.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that AfD hired the same US political consultancy, Harris Media, previously used by Trump and Netanyahu’s Likud Party to spread its anti-Muslim message.

Going mainstream
Despite its electoral success, AfD is riven by splits: its chair Frauke Petry made the surprise announcement on Monday that she won’t join her party’s parliamentary caucus.

One strategy party leaders are deploying to make AfD more palatable is to try to assuage the fears of the Jewish community.

Undoubtedly, it will continue to attempt to do so by expressing admiration and support for Israel – the same approach as France’s historically anti-Semitic Front National.

We can expect to see AfD double down on its support of Israel, including its colonial settlements in “Judea and Samaria.”

But this is indeed a mark of its mainstreaming. Historically, Germany’s postwar establishment, including the governments led by Merkel, has “atoned” for the country’s genocide of Jews by supporting Israel to commit crimes against Palestinians.

Billions of dollars of German “reparations” went not to helping Holocaust survivors, but to arming Israel to carry out military occupation and colonization.

For Palestinians, then, Merkel’s “moderate” centrism and AfD’s overt bigotry and racism, are little different in effect.

Just as Donald Trump presents the unvarnished face of the American militarism and imperialism that has victimized people around the world for decades, AfD is in some ways a more honest voice of a Germany that speaks of “human rights,” while unconditionally supporting an Israel whose main export is extremism and Islamophobia.

Europe’s nativist racism joined with this ill-wind from Israel produces a toxic mix.

This article has been updated since initial pu

No free speech for fascists? Is free speech negotiable? Who decides?

Ever since I reached an age where I could read newspapers or understand what was on the radio (which we had years before we had a TV) I heard about 1st Amendment issues and censorship. When I was in elementary school and later on, high school(in the 1950s), some politicians or government authority was always trying to make someone calling for equality shut up.

When I was 15 years old laws were on the books that made it illegal to be a member of the Communist Party. If someone was labeled (truthfully or not) a red (of any shade) they lost their job. While attending my Indianapolis high school we had to go to assemblies to hear the ravings of Dr.Fred Schwartz of the Christian Anti-Communist League, and watch the movie "Operation Abolition" about the diabolical plot of world Communism and the ACLU to eliminate the House Un-American Activities Committee. HUAC was loaded with southern segregationist members of the House whose main goal was to accuse Labor Unions, atheists, Martin Luther King and the whole civil rights movement of being directed by the USSR.

Censorship, denial of the right to express "contrary ideas," such as socialism, racial equality, homosexual rights: this was the norm. The radicalization of the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam war movement and feminism pushed back against attempts to repress free speech and the right to protest and blew these restrictions away.

Back then it was the reactionaries and rightist, the theocratic nut cases, who wanted to censor ideas from the left they didn't like, to make them illegal. They were forced into retreat in the 1960s and 70s. But they regrouped and kept chipping away... at women's rights, voting rights, any kind of social equality. Under Reagan they began making a comeback with attacking voting rights and women's reproductive rights. With Trump there is an all out assault on all fronts.

Fortunately, most people still believe that free speech and the right to assemble and protest is a basic right for all of us.

Groups like the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) among others have been important in fighting for free speech for all.

When those who pose as radical leftists and champions of the oppressed call for denial of free speech for those they deem as "fascists" it is not a plus. It damages the left and abandons the moral hight ground.

Free speech isn't divisible, something that can be rationed out. Either everyone has it or no one has it. Antifa is the latest iteration of the Black Block, an organization that specialized in leaching off of mass protests and then leading splinter group attacks on property and the police. Like the Black Block it is certain to be infiltrated with police agents whose goal is to escalate violence to discredit the protesters. Their assertion that there is no free speech for fascists and inclination to wade into street fighting is a trap. The Antifa are suckers who give the cops and the fascists what they want. The cops and authorities want to paint the far left and the far right as the same thing: crazy violent people who deserve no rights. The actual fascists and white nationalist want to inspire their ranks and potential recruits that they are taking on the left and beating them up in the streets.

Those who want to deny free speech and assembly to the far right, fascists, KKK and their ilk give them a cause to use to rally support: "Hey we white people are being victimized by these leftist thugs."

In the wake of Charlotte, the Boston events showed the way to fight back against fascists. Tens of thousand of peaceful counter-protesters demoralized the handful of racists who showed up and they slinked away. Other racists rallies called for in the San Francisco Bay Area fizzled and were called off due to fear of a big counter mobilization from the left.

When you support free speech for all and the right to assemble to demand change for everyone there is no issue of enforcement. It's the law. It's in the Constitution. Case Closed! If one class of the population is to be denied these rights because of their ideology or intent how do you decide who is to be denied?

Can people on the left be stupid enough that they themselves have the right or, more importantly, the power to enforce a ban on the far right? Will the local police say to Antifa: "Yes sir, boss. If you say the Klan can't march here in our city then we will obey you?"

Only the state (last time I checked it's a capitalist state that doesn't care much for the left) can enforce a ban on fascists. Do you want to give them that authority? Who gets to define the term "fascist?" Will a campus administration, a city or state or the federal government ask Antifa to advise then on who is a fascist and what should be done with them?

It's time to get real. The mass protests in St. Louis against police getting away with the murder of young black men are real. There are many other struggle where we should take to the streets in protest. And build the protests where we are not playing childish games and dressing up in costumes. We need serious mass mobilizations over DACA, Trump's appalling in-your-face racism, travel bans, warmongering saber rattling and endless war in Afghanistan...to name a few issues.

Ayelet Shaked and the fascist ideology

Israel/Palestine Jonathan Ofir on September 11, 2017
Mussolini, Italy's fascist leader, in 1934






Yesterday, Haaretz columnist Rogel Alpher published a piece titled “Israeli Minister Shaked Takes After Mussolini”. In it he opined that Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked was literally, not just metaphorically, a fascist. Alpher was referring to that speech where Shaked said: “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.”


Ayelet Shaked

The minister’s announcement of a “moral and political revolution” aimed at strengthening national principles at the expense of universal individual rights was comparable to Mussolini’s “doctrine of fascism,” the columnist said. He cited Mussolini’s “revolutionary negation” of individualism and liberalism, wherein the nation “was a superior, super-personal reality … a moral law, a tradition, a mission binding together generations past, present and future, and all the individuals”(quoting from Jacob Talmon’s “The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution”).


Rogel Alpher

Alpher’s column came after Gideon Levy’s column, which was also based on the speech Shaked gave, on that same critical sentence about Zionism and individual rights. But Levy actually thanked Shaked for “telling the truth” and for “speaking honestly.” And that truth was, as Levy put it: “Zionism contradicts human rights, and thus is indeed an ultranationalist, colonialist and perhaps racist movement.”

But now we need to step back a bit, and combine these two angles into a kind of intellectual 3D picture:

If Alpher is calling Shaked an actual fascist, based upon what she said, and if Levy is concluding that those words are a true and honest representation of Zionism itself, then the combined logic must be, that Zionism is itself a form of fascism.

That actually makes a lot of sense. It doesn’t have to mean Zionism is a carbon copy of Italian fascism, just like the crime of Apartheid doesn’t require identical features to Apartheid South Africa (and as I have recently opined, Zionism is Apartheid, and worse). Racist, ultra-nationalist endeavors tend to flock together in alliance, just like the Mussolini-Hitler alliance, or more recently the Netanyahu-Orban alliance (wherein Netanyahu threw Jewish philanthropist George Soros under the anti-Semitic Hungarian bus). There has of course also been the actual alliance between the Zionist Revisionists of Zeev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky and the Italian Fascists. Jabotnisky’s ideology, which informed the Jewish terrorist Irgun and Stern Gang factions in Palestine, was the informer of Menachem Begin’s Herut, which morphed into Likud.

When Jabotinsky’s fighters were training in the 1930’s, a leading Italian naval publication stated:

“In agreement of all the relevant authorities it has been confirmed that the views and the political and social inclinations of the Revisionists are known and that they are absolutely in accordance with the fascist doctrine. Therefore, as our students they will bring the Italian and fascist culture to Palestine.” (Noted in Eric Kaplan, The Jewish Radical Right: Revisionist Zionism and Its Ideological Legacy, 2005, see p. 149-171).

Alright, alright, some will say – that’s the right-wing Zionism, but what about the left wing?

Well, I believe that Ben-Gurion’s famous words from 1938, where he said that

”If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel”

are an epitome of that essentially fascist ‘revolutionary negation of individualism and liberalism, wherein the nation was a superior, super-personal reality, a moral law’. It is that will to sacrifice individuals – aye, even children – for the supposed ‘greater national good’. Note that Ben-Gurion was not speaking about soldiers fighting in a war. He was speaking about children, who weren’t even citizens of any “Jewish state” and never signed up for it. Under this all-encompassing Jewish ‘national’ notion, every Jew is considered a part. This comes full circle with Netanyahu speaking on the supposed behalf of Jews all over the world, saying to them “Israel is your home” in the wake of terror attacks on Jewish targets.

All Zionists understand this, even if it is at an instinctive level. The will to sacrifice Palestinian rights (as well as other rights) for the ‘national Jewish home’ is a core tenet of Zionism. There are no real moral qualms in Zionism about ethnic cleansing of Palestinians; any such qualms are quelled by the claim that it’s ‘complicated’. When a Zionist like the self-proclaimed ‘leftist’ Israeli historian Benny Morris finally concedes the fairness of the term ‘ethnic cleansing’, it comes with the supposedly-exonerating caveat–

“There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing.”

Morris echoes Ben-Gurion’s words: “I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it” (as quoted in Morris’s own book Righteous Victims). Yet Morris opines that Ben-Gurion should have gone further in his ‘transfer’: “If he was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job.”

So these are the more ‘honest’ voices of Zionism. The voices that forgot to keep the mask of political correctness. They come from both right and left, but the right seems more prone to drop the mask.

Incidentally, Benjamin Netanyahu’s son Yair recently posted a virulently anti-Semitic meme, where George Soros is depicted as a global manipulator, controlling a reptilian, a caricature ‘Illuminati’ Jew, and a train of other figures who are supposedly the ‘food chain’ feeding off the Netanyahu family, all (except the reptilian) holding their hands in the “happy merchant” fashion. The meme, congratulated by the Nazi Daily Stormer as “awesome,” caused quite some outrage in Israel, especially in the left. But Communication Minister Ayoub Kara, who is Netanyahu’s ‘Arab puppet’, asserted that Yair Netanyahu was “just a kid playing on Facebook.“

Yair Netanyahu’s meme is an example of how Zionism brings anti-Semitism full circle (as I wrote last year). And when it does that, many distance themselves, temporarily, because it looks bad.

But what if it’s not temporary? What if Zionism is, indeed the embodiment of fascist ultra-nationalism, and is racist at its very core? This would mean that it is also, inherently, anti-Semitic, because it would turn against Jews for being Jews – if they do not toe the ultra-nationalist line. These would be “the wrong kind of Jews”, as Zionist leader (and later Israeli President) Chaim Weizmann said to Lord Balfour. The same Chaim Weizmann who met with Mussolini four times between 1923 and 1934.

Understanding that Israel is enacting Apartheid is not a very complicated conclusion nowadays. To understand that this Apartheid is part and parcel of the basic Zionist ideology informing it can be a bit harder, but it’s a logical step to make. Again, Israel does not have to copy South African Apartheid for the crime of Apartheid to be enacted, as was cogently and meticulously documented in this year’s UN commissioned report on Israeli Apartheid by professors Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley.

Likewise, Israel doesn’t have to copy Italian Fascism precisely for Zionism to be regarded as a fascist ideology. Alpher’s appraisal of Shaked’s words are actually an appraisal of Zionism, with its revolutionary, ultra-nationalist notions. And Levy says that Shaked is actually telling the truth about Zionism.

So the plot thickens, the net tightens. And for those who follow the logic of this, the question is really reduced to: Do you want to support a fascist ideology?

WHY WHITE NATIONALISTS LOVE BASHAR AL-ASSAD

Mariam Elba
September 8 2017, 11:54 a.m.
IT SHOULDN’T BE surprising that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has become an idol among white nationalists in the United States.

During the white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally several weeks ago in Charlottesville, Virginia, Baked Alaska, an infamous far-right YouTuber, livestreamed an encounter with a demonstrator wearing a T-shirt that read “Bashar’s Barrel Delivery Co.” The shirt alluded to the Assad regime’s frequent, horrific use of barrel bombs — weapons employed to indiscriminately target rebel-held areas of Syria.

That rally-goer shouted, “Support the Syrian Arab Army!” and “Assad did nothing wrong!” They gloated over how Assad can “solve this whole ISIS problem” with just two chemical bombs. James Fields, the 20-year-old white supremacist who allegedly rammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer, posted a portrait of Assad, in military regalia and aviator sunglasses to Facebook. A superimposed caption read: “UNDEFEATED.”

There’s a simple explanation for how the American far-right became curiously infatuated with the Arab totalitarian leader: Their hearts were won over by the Assad family’s years-old propaganda campaign at home in Syria. Assad’s authoritarianism uses the same buzzwords as the far-right to describe the society he’s trying to build in his own country — a pure, monolithic society of devotees to his own power. American neo-Nazis see Assad as a hero.

As the chaos of Charlottesville and its aftermath was unfolding, Assad addressed a group of diplomats in Damascus about the ongoing war in Syria. “We lost many of our youth and infrastructure,” he said, “but we gained a healthier and more homogenous society.”

Whereas white nationalists aim to create a healthy and homogeneous society through racial purity, for Assad it means a society free of any kind of political dissent, excluding any Syrian living outside the territory his regime controls. Anyone who does not fit Assad’s specific definition of what it means to be Syrian is up for execution.

Alexander Reid Ross, a lecturer of geography at Portland State University and author of the new book, “Against the Fascist Creep,” said Assad is a figure that is central to a realization of “Eurasianism.” The notion “holds that Russia will lead the world out of a dark age of materialism and toward an ultranationalist rebirth of homogenous ethno-states federated under a heterogeneous spiritual empire,” Reid Ross said.

In other words, the Assad dynasty, with the strong backing of Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian state in Russia, is the Middle East’s leading force toward creating a society that is spiritually, socially, and politically “pure.” Cosmopolitanism, with diversity in political thought and social identity, is an obstacle for those aiming to realize this vision.

Assad is a key figure in confirming the white nationalist worldview. “Holding on to Syria,” Reid Ross said, “marks for them a crucial foothold in a larger geopolitical mission — one that has everything to do with that spiritual purity associated with family, tradition, and nation.” To the far right, Assad is at the front lines in the fight against the Islamic State and, more broadly, the forces of “Islamic terrorism” in the Middle East under a nationalist banner that looks very much like their own.

And the admiration doesn’t run in only one direction. The Assad regime has cultivated relationships with far-right white nationalists for decades. One of these was allegedly Alois Brunner, who actually died in Damascus in 2010. There is reason to believe that Brunner advised Bashar’s father Hafez al-Assad on torture techniques used in Syria’s infamous prison system, even as the regime has denied ever harboring Bruner.

Syrian children hold portraits of President Bashar al-Assad during a gathering in support the ruling Baath party at a school in the government-held side of the northern city of Aleppo on November 17, 2014. AFP PHOTO/JOSEPH EID (Photo credit should read JOSEPH EID/AFP/Getty Images)
Syrian children hold portraits of President Bashar al-Assad during a gathering in support of the ruling Ba’ath party at a school in the government-held side of the northern city of Aleppo on Nov. 17, 2014. Photo: Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images
IN SPITE OF the Assad regime’s track record of being the primary perpetrators of escalating Syria’s civil war — which has likely left half a million dead and spurred a massive exodus of refugees — the United Nations, the United States, and certainly Russia are all looking for solutions to the Syrian crisis that keep Assad in power. Assad’s relationship-building and connections with fringe politicians in the West has contributed to creating international legitimacy for his continued rule, as well as fueling a propaganda machine that paints the dictator as one of the final Arab leaders standing up against American imperialism and “Islamic extremism.”

Radwan Ziadeh, a fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, and a prolific, longtime Syrian dissident, said that the Assad dynasty’s central strategy in forging international legitimacy was to cultivate an image as a guardian of Christians in Syria and the wider region.

This mythos he built around himself has worked well in garnering support for the Assad family from outside Syria. Aside from Brunner and other Nazis taking shelter in Syria, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke visited Damascus in 2005, addressing a “demonstration” in support of Assad’s fight against Zionism, propping up Assad’s image as an anti-imperialist. (Palestinian refugees within Syria have suffered greatly under Assad’s sieges.)

Even more recently, as journalist Alex Rowell recently pointed out, far-right politicians from the French National Front, Golden Dawn in Greece, and Vlaams Belang in Belgium, among many others, met with Syrian government officials in Damascus over the past few years. The meetings came as the regime began to gain momentum against opposition forces with the help of Russian military intervention and support.

The Ba’ath Party, a multi-national party which was led by Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Hafez al-Assad in Syria, held meetings with international far-right parties. The Iraqi Ba’ath Party met with the National Front in France and Die Republikaner in Germany, both far-right parties in the E.U., according to Reid Ross. “The radical right and fascists see them as nationalists like them,” he told The Intercept.

Though Assad has also won some support from international political forces on the left, Reid Ross argued that the support from the right is crucial to Assad’s success. “The most important international support for Assad stems from a white supremacist base and a white supremacist administration in the U.S.,” he said.

Assad’s vision of creating a “healthy” and “homogenous” society is what white nationalists have aspired to create for themselves. We don’t need to look as far back as Hitler’s Third Reich to see what their world vision could be. We only need to look at Syria today.

“He destroyed Syria,” Ziadeh said. “The population of Syria dropped before 2011 from 23 million people to into 17 million and you have millions displaced inside the country. It’s a country in ruin.” What’s left, Assad hopes, is a society that uniformly supports his rule.

Correction: Sept. 8, 2017, 2:36 p.m.
An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to the death toll of the Syrian civil war as being in the millions. Around half a million people have died in the war.

Roger Waters: Congress Shouldn’t Silence Human Rights Advocates

By ROGER WATERS
September 7, 2017
Op-Ed Contributor

Members of Congress are currently considering a bill that threatens to silence the growing support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian freedom and human rights, known as B.D.S. This draconian bill, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, threatens individuals and businesses who actively participate in boycott campaigns in support of Palestinian rights conducted by international governmental organizations with up to 20 years in prison and a $1,000,000 fine.

By endorsing this McCarthyite bill, senators would take away Americans’ First Amendment rights in order to protect Israel from nonviolent pressure to end its 50-year-old occupation of Palestinian territory and other abuses of Palestinian rights.

The American Civil Liberties Union has condemned the bill, which the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is lobbying for, as a threat to the constitutional right to free speech.

All Americans — regardless of their views on Israel-Palestine — should understand that potentially targeting and blacklisting fellow citizens who support Palestinian rights could turn out to be the thin end of a thick authoritarian wedge.

This is not new. Some two dozen anti-B.D.S. bills have been introduced in Congress and state legislatures across the country as part of an insidious effort to silence supporters of Palestinian human rights — some have already passed. In most cases, these bills bar states and the federal government from doing business with, or investing in, companies that abide by boycott or divestment campaigns related to Israel’s violations of international law. None of these laws has been tested in court yet.

This criminalization of support for B.D.S. in the United States mirrors similar efforts in Israel. In 2011, the Knesset passed a law that permits Israeli citizens or organizations who publicly endorse B.D.S. to be sued by anyone who has been affected by the boycott call. And earlier this year, it passed a law that allows Israel to deny entry to foreigners who have publicly supported boycotts. It was under this law that Alissa Wise, an American rabbi who was part of an interfaith delegation to the Holy Land, was recently prevented from boarding a flight to Tel Aviv.

Criminalizing boycotts is un-American and anti-democratic. Boycotts have always been accepted as a legitimate form of nonviolent protest in the United States. In 1955 and 1956, a bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., incited by the protest of Rosa Parks and others, became one of the foremost civil rights struggles against segregation in the South.

More recently, the National Collegiate Athletic Association refused to hold championship events in North Carolina after state legislators there passed a law that curbed legal protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and set discriminatory rules regarding transgender bathroom use in public buildings. Numerous artists, including Bruce Springsteen, refused to perform in the state; major corporations canceled investments in North Carolina. The voice of boycott in support of civil rights was heard and the bill was repealed, albeit as part of a problematic compromise.

In these cases, progressives lauded these boycotters as champions of equality. So why do national lawmakers — including supposedly progressive Democrats — want to make an exception for those who support equal rights for Palestinians?

When the cause is just, boycott has shown itself to be an effective method of shining light on human rights abuses and the flouting of international law. That is why the Israeli government and its supporters are so determined to silence those who support B.D.S.


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Pro-Israel groups have for years attempted to demonize supporters of B.D.S. — trust me, I know. I am currently in the middle of a 63-date tour of the United States and Canada. Audiences of tens of thousands are coming together at our “Us + Them” shows, which embrace love, compassion, cooperation and coexistence and encourage resistance to authoritarianism and proto-fascism. These appearances have been greeted by a few sporadic protests by right-wing supporters of Israel.

These protests would be of no consequence, if they did not occasionally have truly negative consequences. For instance, the city of Miami Beach prevented a group of school children from appearing onstage with me after pressure from the Greater Miami Jewish Federation. I understand that city officials have a democratic right to disagree with my opinions, but I was shocked that they were willing to take it out on kids.

These attacks are routine and relatively minor. But the Israel Anti-Boycott Act is serious “lawfare.” Officials in Nassau County in Long Island are threatening to take legal action to shut down two shows I have scheduled there next week, using a local anti-B.D.S. law passed in 2016. If the Nassau County attorney proceeds against the operators of the Nassau Coliseum, we will have our day in court and argue on behalf of all those who believe in universal human rights and the First Amendment.

Polls show that nearly half of all Americans, and a majority of Democrats, would support sanctions against Israel because of its construction of illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Indeed, more and more churches, student groups, artists, academics and labor organizations are backing the tactics of boycott and divestment as a means to pressure Israel to end its abuses of Palestinians. If passed, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act could put them all, from archbishops to altar boys, artists to artisans, at risk of arrest on felony charges.

Those who are attempting to silence me understand the power of art and culture. They know the role artists played in the civil rights struggle in the United States and against apartheid in South Africa. They want to make an example of us to discourage others from speaking out.

Instead of working to undermine B.D.S., Congress should defend the First Amendment right of all Americans and stand on the right side of history by supporting equal civil and human rights for all people, irrespective of ethnicity or religion.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/opinion/roger-waters-congress-silencing-advocates.html?referer=https://www.google.com/

The Zionist Tango

Why the racist honesty of Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked is preferable to the fake views of the Israeli left

Gideon Levy Sep 03, 2017 1:22 PM
 from Haaretz

Ravit Hecht attributes a “fragrance of true love” for my “honest, brave princess,” Justice Minister Shaked, in her op-ed “When Gideon Levy fell in love with Ayelet Shaked.” Hecht knows my taste in women is slightly different than that, and that, despite what she writes, I don’t know how to dance the tango. But my appreciation for Shaked and her ilk is that they do not deceive: they openly acknowledge their nationalism and racism. 
They don’t hide their belief that the Palestinians are an inferior people, indigenous inhabitants who will never gain the rights Jews have in the Land of Israel-Palestine; that no Palestinian state will ever be established here; that Israel will ultimately annex all of the occupied territories, as it already has done in practice; that the Jews are the Chosen People; that Zionism is in contradiction to human rights and superior to them; that dispossession is redemption; that biblical property rights are eternal; that there is no Palestinian people and no occupation; and that the current reality will last forever.

Many of these views are also held among the Zionist left, Hecht’s ideological camp. The only difference is that the Zionist left has never admitted it. It envelops its views in the glittering wrapping paper of peace talks, separation and hollow rhetoric about two states, words it has never really meant and has done precious little to realize.

That’s why I prefer Shaked. With her, what you see is what you get – racism. In its actions and deeds, the Zionist left has done everything to implement Shaked’s views, only in polished words and without acknowledgement. The Zionist left is embarrassed by things Shaked and her colleagues are not ashamed of. That doesn’t make the left any more moral or just. It has merely been quasi-Shaked in its actions.
The occupation was no less cruel under left-wing Israeli governments, which was the founding father of the settlement enterprise. Those princes of peace  Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin established more settlements than Shaked and caused the deaths of more Arabs. The left has enthusiastically defended every military action Israel has carried out and every brutal act committed by the Israel Defense Forces. It hasn’t just sat silent in the face of such acts; it has been supportive. Always.

Operations Cast Lead and Protective Edge in Gaza (in 2008-09 and 2014, respectively) involved thousands of senseless deaths, and most of the Zionist left supported them. The majority of those on the left supported the siege on Gaza, the checkpoint executions, the nighttime abductions, the administrative detentions, the abuse, dispossession and oppression – the left remained silent throughout. 

But the truth is that it’s not Shaked and it’s not the left. It’s Zionism. Havoc has been wreaked, as Hecht herself wrote. But instead of trying to repair the unstable foundations, all of Israel – and not only the right wing – has done everything to undermine them even further. 
Yes, this involves the 1948 War of Independence, which has to be discussed even though it’s uncomfortable. The spirit of 1948 has never stopped blowing here and, in this respect, Shaked and Hecht are in the same boat. According to this view, there is only one people here that needs to be considered, only one victim, and it is entitled to do as much harm as it wishes to the other people. That is the essential evolution of Zionism. 
It could and should have been rectified, without derogating the Jews’ right to a state. But the Zionist left has never done this. It has never acknowledged the Nakba suffered by the Palestinians, and never did anything to atone for its crimes. This never happened because the Zionist left believes in exactly what Shaked believes in.
It is true there are many other issues in which the right causes national disasters the left never would have created. But on the other side of the line lives a people that for the past 50 years – the past 100, actually – has been suffering and oppressed. Not a day goes by without horrible crimes being committed against it. We can’t say, “Be patient. We’re busy at the moment with the status of the Supreme Court.”
And on the truly crucial issue that overshadows all others, Shaked and Hecht are performing a perfect tango together, with a fragrance of true love exuding from them both – a Zionist tango.

read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.810226?utm_source=smartfocus&utm_medium=email&utm_content=opinion/.premium-1.810226&utm_campaign=Gideon+Levy&utm_term=20170903-02:28&writerAlerts=true