Israel’s creeping fascism
JVL Introduction
Israel’s treatment of its own citizens and foreign nationals who stand in solidarity with Palestinians can be vicious. Sadly too many other countries, not least the UK, USA and Germany are also clamping down on protests and other actions in support of Palestinians and in opposition to the genocide in Gaza and the brutal occupation of the West Bank. Some in the UK have been charged with supporting terrorism and some in the USA have been deported or are at risk of deportation.
Meanwhile, in Israel, in ‘the only democracy in the MIddle East’ hundreds of Israeli citizens, mainly Palestinians, have been arrested and considered enemies of the State. Them and not, for example, violent settlers , soldiers committing war crimes or the politicians who incite and authorise violence. What sort of a State is this?
Sharing the images of the arrests, seem clearly designed not only to humiliate those arrested, but to deter others from taking action in support of Palestinians as well as encouraging a vile mindset as referenced, for example, in Meir Baruchin’s story.
All photos are by Oren Ziv and our thanks to +972 magazine, which we support.
LL
This article was originally published by +972 on Fri 9 May 2025. Read the original here.
Portraits of Fascism
Since Oct. 7, Israeli police have arrested hundreds for opposing the Gaza war and published degrading photos of several detainees. Seven agreed to be photographed again — this time on their own terms.
Loading article text…
I would challenge the idea that Israel is the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ as described here without quotation marks, no ethnocracy, indeed an identified apartheid state can sail under the imprimatur democracy. And more than that I would dispense with the idea of ‘creeping fascism’. In my view the state has crossed that line a long time ago.
Last night I watched an East German anti war film made in 1949 about the rise of the Nazis after WW1, ‘Rotation’. It depicts an ordinary worker, perennially unemployed, reluctantly having to acquiesce to the zeitgeist of Naziism in order to work, and whose son, indoctrinated by the teachers and ‘Party’ employees, betrays his fathers’ real political stance to the Riechstag. The worker is arrested. Not a great difference from the scenarios recounted in this article. The abject fear which is permeated in Israel now is palpably shown throughout the film of Germany during that time. The ‘Hague’ and its court awaits Starmer, Lammy and co., for their reprehensible, insane support for similarly genocidal Israel.