Israel’s Repressive Diplomacy
JVL Introduction
Sympathy for the Palestinian cause runs deep among the peoples of north Africa and the Middle East generally.
So normalisation with Israel arouses fierce popular opposition. The only way of going ahead with it is to repress the popular sentiment and civil society protest it generates.
So the so-called “peace” process deliberately boosts the repressive forces that dominate governments in the area, reinforcing the very lack of democracy which critics of these countries complain about in the first place.
Peter Beinart, Editor-at-Large at Jewish Currents evaluates current developments.
This article was originally published by Jewish Currents on Mon 26 Oct 2020. Read the original here.
Israel’s Repressive Diplomacy
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A while ago, Zionist propagandists claimed that resistance to their incursions on Palestine were merely the product of reactionary effendis, and the simple fellahin would welcome Jews with their higher culture who would lead them to Western civilisation – the latter notion lingers on in the crasser forms of Zionist hasbara notably of course by Blair in his delightful scheme to bribe the Palestinians into grovelling to their lords and masters.
In fact solidarity with the Palestinians has long been, and still is, found amongst the Arab masses, as is illustrated by the instances cited by Beinart and plentifully elsewhere, including Pew’s opinion polls.
Zionist politicians of most stripes have made it crystal and explicitly clear that they prefer dealing with Arab dictators to reaching out to the Arab masses.
The class struggle across the Middle East and indeed North Africa is increasingly aligning itself into a form of anti-imperialist front, while naturally enough Israeli governments gleefully supply the machinery of repression (made by firms such as Elbit with its British plants) to Arab (and other) dictators with whom they have much in common.
Meanwhile the hasbarists boast that Israel is the only democracy the Middle East. You could hardly make it up.