Israel and the Jewish State-Nation Law, or how people to affirm their identity, forget their history.
The historical nemesis of the Jewish people has probably reached the highest peak with the recent approval by the Knesset, the Israeli single-chamber parliament, of the so-called Jewish State-Nation Law.
The Jews, it is certainly not pleonastic to remember it, have always been persecuted and humiliated in the course of their history. Treated as citizens/human beings of the lowest level, they were often persecuted for their beliefs and imprisoned in ghettos. They had no possibility of being part of the political-social life of the State (or Kingdom, Nation…) in which they were living and their freedom was constantly attacked and humiliated by laws that limited it.
All this lasted for about two thousand years, more or less until the end of the Second World War. Since then, from when for a sense of civilization and shame - let us say so, without bringing into play geo-political and economic interests - the winning States, then the West, have given the Holocaust survivors the opportunity to have a territory to consider home, the victims par excellence have turned into ruthless executioners. They expelled the Palestinians -the modern sacrificial lambs- from their homes, expropriating them of their possessions and their belongings, they locked them in modern ghettos and deprived them of almost every right, especially the most human and fundamental right that is the right to happiness. To give an example, it is as if you had a four-room house with kitchen closet and bathroom and suddenly someone who has power and money you can not rebel against, decides that one of the rooms, including everything that contains, is no longer yours but of other people who no-one knows where to accomodate them. Even if in some way you could accept such an abuse, this is not the end yet. Because the new occupants not only do not apologize for the intrusion, they do not collaborate to create the foundations for a common life, but slowly they occupy all the other rooms, they relegate you to the closet, limit your use of kitchen and bathroom and they are not even happy yet! They would like you to leave the whole house to them and if you really do not know where to go, no matter, you can always die.
What makes the behavior of Israeli leaderships unbearable, anthropologically speaking, is that from who you would expect total aversion to the ghettos, racial laws and oppression on a religious-ethnic basis, it is given precisely a very cruel example of a return to a dark past made of segregation and willing of systematically eliminating people considered inferior.
The apotheosis of this historical nemesis - or historical forgetfulness or a total aversion to History - is precisely the recent promulgation of the law which establishes the superiority of Jews, in Israel, over non-Jewish citizens, first of all Arabs, but also Christians, Buddhists, laity and so on and so forth.
Here are some points of this law that could be euphemistically defined controversial.
Paragraph 2 states that the only flag of the state of Israel is the one with the blue star of David in the middle (it seems a trivial thing, we'll see later the reason why it can be worrying).
Paragraph 4: The official language is Hebrew. Before it was also Arabic (e.d.), which is downgraded to "consensual language". To give and example, this means that while before even Arabic was taught at school, now it will no longer be a duty. Whereas before a Palestinian could use Arabic to defend himself against any accusation, he will now have to do it exclusively using Hebrew.
Comma 7: "The State considers the development of Jewish settlements as a national value and will act to encourage and promote their establishment and consolidation". Regarding this last point, it is interesting to note that even the president of Israel and some members of the Jewish right -who voted for the law- opposed it, judging it to be a racist norm that violates human rights and that it would legalize an apartheid regime towards the Palestinian Arabs.
It would be interesting to know if the promulgators of these norms were aware of very similar laws promulgated in Nuremberg in 1935, the so-called Nürnberger Gesetze (Laws of Nuremberg).
Rhetorical question…
Let see, also in this case, some basic points.
The so-called "Reich Citizenship Law" foresaw the division of the population into "citizens of the Reich", i.e. citizens of German blood or similar and simply belonging to the State, defined as "members of alien races", i.e. subjects. Does not it remind you of something? What is worrying is not so much the fact that the citizens of the Reich are only the Germans or the citizens of Israel are only the Jews, but the consequences of these decisions. In the implementing decrees following the Nuremberg Laws, German Jewish citizens gradually lost all rights: what was not allowed before those laws, such as racial dismissal, prohibition of carrying out public functions and works, loss of health and social rights, filing, etc., it was enshrined in the German Constitution and found "legal foundation" precisely in the law that enshrined the superiority of the Germans over other citizens.
Another law that reminds us of something is the "Reich flag law". It sanctioned that the hooked cross in the center was the symbol of Nazi Germany and that Jews were forbidden to display this flag, but could display Jewish symbols. This apparently banal law served to punish anyone who outraged the swastika, for example by tearing the flag or burning it. It was used for what the vile Nazis were able to do better: to instill hatred and fear. This is tremendously and sadly similar to the recent norm approved in Israel.
A final consideration on a topic that deserves pages and pages for discussion and comments. Those who consider the Germans who lived at the time of the Third Reich as dull and inhumane racists, are mistaken. This definition could be applied to the Nazis and their more or less implicit supporters, but not to the Germans tout court, because, albeit in the minority, there were those who opposed the nefarious racial laws of Nuremberg considering it the prelude, as it actually happened, of an escalation of barbarism. Likewise, allegations of racism, oppression and intolerance can not be addressed to Israelis or Jews as such, because even in Israel and among the Jewish communities there are those who, albeit in the minority, are aware of the wickedness of such laws, and in which dark era they can carry them.
As there was a way to define the Germans who approved the racial laws, that is Nazis, there is a way to define who approves the laws on Jewish supremacy. They are the Zionists and their resemblance to the Nazis is as unbelievable as it is disconcerting.
What has been said has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. The memory of the Nazi and Fascist racial laws and of the Holocaust must always act as a warning to the whole of humanity and everyone must be free to profess any creed in any place he wishes.
What, then, if you care about the fate of an oppressed and marginalized people like the Palestinian, just like those who, fortunately, had at heart during the Nazis the fate of the Jews, oppressed and marginalized?
In the way that to counteract the South African apartheid in the past, product of that Country has been boycotted, as if to save the Asian forests we must boycott palm oil, to try to give a sign of civilization against Israel, one of the weapons in our possession is the boycott of Israeli products. It is not nice, it is not easy, but perhaps it can serve to give a shock and support to those who, from within Israel itself, have as their objective peace and solidarity and not hatred and racism.
