Israel Plunging Deeper Into Fascism

As'ad Abdul Rahman writes: A psychosis of inferiority and fear rooted in history prompts far-right to commit atrocities against Palestinians

By As'ad Abdul Rahman
This commentary was published in The Gulf News on 19/03/2011

The foundation of Israel's strategy to serve the designated goals of Zionism has been built on certain pillars buried deep and invisible. Some of these pillars are: (1) The theory of absolute Israeli security. (2) Safe and secure boundaries. (3) Maintaining an overwhelming strike force that should always be superior to all the combined military forces of the enemy (Arab states) — Iran has been added to Israel's list of enemies with the possibility of Turkey and Egypt being added soon. (4) Maintaining the maximum flow of military hardware and financial aid coming in from abroad.

Israel has become hostage to the so-called ‘Masada complex'. It sees only deadly enemies ‘bent on annihilating the Jews'. Such a fear-stricken psyche can only produce suicidal policies exactly like the people of the Jewish town (Masada) committing suicide in early history as Roman legions prepared to storm their stronghold.

This state of mind currently dominating the Israeli psyche has erased self-confidence leading to the adoption of an apartheid policy with its inhumane brutal force being waged against non-Jews — the Palestinians — ‘to protect the survival of the Jewish state'.

Fascism is an offshoot of a panic-stricken mentality that requires arsonists to fan its raging flames. Fascist political parties of the extreme right are now dominating the political scene in Israel, especially in the wake of the Labour Party's demise. Such a growing fascist tendency is raising major concerns among Israeli human rights organisations and among many groups of conscience around the world including a vast number of Jews.

Israeli human rights organisations monitoring the situation in Israel feel abhorrence to see the increased level of racial discrimination against Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories.

Egoistic character

Keen observers see the same policies and practices adopted by the fascist regimes that once ruled in Germany and Italy being manifested in Israel today.

Dr Laurence Britt identified these fascist traits in his world-famous research as the "the dominance of extreme nationalistic tendency" which is extremely egotistic in nature.

Such a characteristic applies to Israel's political mentality based on a feeling of inferiority with regard to the Christians. The establishment of the state of Israel was supposed to free the Jews from such fears, but it never erased the memories of massacres and the repeated dispossession of Jews by Christians.

The Nazis spewed their anger against the German Jews instead of the western allies who defeated and humiliated Germany in the First World War. The bills of many pogroms gathering dust in Israeli memories and the bills of the Holocaust are being paid in full by the Palestinians.

The second trait of fascism is derived from distorted verses in religious books or a misunderstanding resulting from misinterpretation of these texts as the case was in issues relating to ‘Christians versus Jews'.

Jewish and Christian scholars in major American and western universities, as well as in the official Encyclopedia Judaica warn students studying the Torah to be aware of the distortion within the book which created ‘profane verses' that used the kosher and halal terms as a pretext to commit atrocities against non-combatant civilians, including innocent children and women in order ‘to protect and preserve Israel'.

These scholars explain the reasons for such verses as being the result of the memorisation of the Torah for 700 years before its verses were written down. Furthermore, the scribes who were transcribing the texts during the ‘Jewish exile in Babylon' added fables which were copied from texts found in the library of Babylon!

Such ‘profane verses' in the Torah command ‘Beni Israel' to commit massacres under "the command of the Lord of Israel". The so-called ‘Divine Command' is said to have been transferred to the Israelites by the prophets of Israel, headed by Moses himself as quoted in the Torah, which is totally false.

The same verses made it absolutely necessary to keep the Hebrew language an exclusivity of the Jewish priesthood in order to guard them as secrets away from the eyes of the public. The Hebrew language became a spoken language only after the birth of Israel in 1948.

These ‘profane verses' are never quoted during religious services in the Christian and Jewish houses of worship, but they allowed the fascist Rabbi Ovadia Yousef to call for the "annihilation" of the President of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, along with all the Palestinian people.

One can only predict that the wave of madness gripping the Israeli extreme right (religious or nationalist) will continue, yet it is alienating rights groups in a world that has become a small village where the human race is increasingly aware of every event taking place on earth.

Finally, one comforting fact reminds us that fascism, whether it targets race, gender, colour or religious dogma, is bound to annihilate itself by its own degenerate negative tendencies.

History will again prove this right.

Professor As'ad Abdul Rahman is the Chairman of the Palestinian Encyclopaedia.