Tuesday, October 22, 2002

The Israeli Hill Youth are Proto-Fascists who Need to be Stopped In all the news this week of the sniper in Washington, the frantic efforts of the Bush team to push the UN over the brink to war, the bombing in Bali, and the latest bombing in Israel it was easy to miss one of the most significant and ominous developments of the week.  That was the attack by settler youth, called "hill youth" in Israel, on the army and police when they mounted a military operation to dismantle a single illegal outpost. Here is what happened.  For years religious and ideological settlers have tried to extend their boundaries by seizing far flung hill tops and establishing illegal outposts.  As a condition for remaining in the government, the labor defense minister, Ben-Eliezer vowed to start dismantling the outposts.  With Israeli intraparty elections coming soon, he determined to make good on his promise.  The military planned a secret operation which they knew would be highly controversial.  Haaretz:  “Minutes - some say seconds - after the presentation was made to the prime minister, defense minister, and public security minister, the beepers went off on settler leaders' belts telling them when the operation would begin (the next day) and which outposts would be evacuated” As a result, a crowd of hundreds of youth gathered around one of the outposts, and violently attacked soldiers and policemen when they attempted to remove them.  44 policemen and soldiers were injured, 15 requiring hospitalization. Next, the leading rabbi of the Yesha (settler) movement gave a religious ruling that it was illegal for any Jewish soldier to obey an order to remove a settler.  Then the right-wing cabinet minister Effi Eitam cursed Ben Eliezer in terms reminiscent of the vilification of Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin prior to his assassination by right wing settlers.  The brown shirts carrying out the riots are called “hill youth” in Israel.  They are young ideological settlers, given free reign by their rabbis, even to attacking soldiers.  This is proto-fascism. Here is what Gideon Samet writing in Haaretz, said “Why fascist? Because, even by the most dispassionate definition, people like Eitam fit the specifications of this European concept. The sanctity of the land, even beyond the boundaries of the state; the worthiness of blood sacrifice for areas beyond the horizon; the abstract concepts of the significance of the people and the homeland; and the readiness to use the nation's military might for the sake of all of the above. Israel, according to Eitam, is not just a pragmatic entity whose goal is to worry about the welfare of its residents. Its raison d'etre, from the Jordan to the sea, is "to reveal the image of God in the world ... to be the Noah's Ark of the future ... to reveal God's workings in history," and other idiocies that compete with the most degenerate texts from the height of German and Italian romanticism.” Unfortunately, the proto-fascist Hill Youth in Israel have their echos here in the U.S.  Lately many academics who have professed support for Palestians, and objected to Israeli occupation policies, have been called anti-semitic.  In a McCarthy like tactic, Daniel Pipes has begun a web site, similar in spirit to the web sites attacking medical personnel who perform legal abortions, that provides “dossiers” on professors around the country whom he considers anti-Israel.  Brandeis [thanks to Mik'e new blog for this] has just withdrawn its advertising from one of the Boston NPR affliates, WBUR, because its president claims the newscasts are “anti-Israel”.  What is happening here is that the feelings and potentially the tactics of the Hill Youth are being imported into mainstream American Judaism.  This is proto-fascism, and it must be stopped. 10:09:29 PM   comment []

© Copyright 2002 Toby Sackton. Last update: 12/26/2002; 9:30:56 PM.