US journalist: Israel the master of racism and dehumanization

An American journalist and writer is of the opinion that it’s absolutely logical and fair to maintain that Israel is a racist and apartheid entity that abides by no internationally-recognized rule or convention.

Ben Norton said in a recent interview with Iran's Fars News Agency that the Zionist entity is unrestrainedly suppressing the Palestinian citizens, and because of its strong political, economic ties with the United States, it’s never held accountable over its war crimes and violations of international law.

According to Norton, the United States is complicit in the atrocities of the Zionist entity. He said: “Israel has violated at least 70 UN Security Council resolutions, but the US has prevented any punishment. Israel has committed crime after crime after crime, but the US has prevented the UN from taking any disciplinary action.” Ben Norton believes that along with the military campaign in the usurped land of Palestine, the Zionist entity is also carrying out an intense, racist campaign of demonizing and dehumanizing the Palestinian people to justify their killing. He said: “To perpetuate the violence upon which it thrives, a state ultimately must convince its soldiers to pull the trigger. If it humanizes those whom it wants dead, it becomes hard for soldiers to blindly follow orders to kill — the soldiers see how much they have in common with their supposed enemy. But if it dehumanizes those whom it wants dead, those same soldiers will not think twice – before killing. Racism is the most effective means of practicing dehumanization, and Israel is the master of both.”

Ben Norton is a freelance writer and journalist based in the United States. A well-informed commentator on the current affairs of the West Asia-North Africa region, his work has been published in Electronic Intifada, CounterPunch, Common Dreams, and ZNet. Here are answers of Norton to questions posed on the politics of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel’s racial discrimination against the people of Palestine, its contributions to the growth of Islamophobia and the international community’s responses to the criminal actions of the Zionist entity.

Q: Do you find any similarities between the apartheid regime that ruled South Africa from 1948 to 1994, and the Zionist regime that has been putting in place derogatory laws of racial discrimination against the people of Palestine for more than 6 decades? Many scholars have drawn an analogy between the two in terms of treatment of the people under their rule. Do you consider it a logical analogy?

A: The apartheid Israel-South Africa analogy is a rather common and useful way of introducing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to those who may not be familiar with it. To answer the question, yes, I think the analogy is logical. In some regards, however, it is rather limited. First and foremost, I should say that we need not ask my opinion on the matter; we can simply turn to Desmond Tutu, one of the most prominent leaders in the movement against South African apartheid, who had said: “I have been to the 1967 Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid. I have witnessed the humiliation of Palestinian men, women, and children made to wait hours at Israeli military checkpoints routinely, when trying to make the most basic of trips to visit relatives or attend school or college. This humiliation is familiar to me and the many black South Africans who were corralled and regularly insulted by the security forces of the Apartheid government.”

Tutu has been a vocal supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Correspondingly, he too has advocated drawing an analogy between the boycott movement against apartheid in South Africa and the BDS movement against apartheid in occupied Palestine.

There are myriad examples of this apartheid in practice. In perhaps the most recent instance, Israeli War Minister Moshe Ya’alon officially banned Palestinians from traveling on public transportation. In 2012, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy published the results of a scholarly statistical study in Israel’s most prominent newspaper, Haaretz. The poll “exposes anti-Arab, ultra-nationalist views espoused by a majority of Israeli Jews,” noting that 49% of Israeli Jews explicitly want their government to treat Jewish citizens better than Arab ones. It found that 69% would object to giving 2.5 million Palestinians the right to vote if Israel were to annex the West Bank and that 74% are in favor of separate roads for Israelis and Palestinians. Even in this hyper-nationalist and jingoist society, 58% of Israeli Jews admit their government practices apartheid against Arabs.

In the US, denial of this reality runs deep. In April 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry — while obsequiously acquiescing to most of Israel’s demands and happily supporting most of Israel’s illegal actions, including expansions of Jewish settlements the UN has continuously insisted are illegal — warned that Israel risks becoming “an apartheid state”, as if it weren’t already one. He quickly recanted his statement, after the media chewed him up and spit him out. In the US political establishment, one cannot dare utter such a comparison, because one cannot dare criticize Israel.

In November 1973, the UN General Assembly instituted the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, defining apartheid as “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.” As examples of apartheid in practice, it lists “murder, torture, inhuman treatment and arbitrary arrest of members of a racial group; deliberate imposition on a racial group of living conditions calculated to cause it physical destruction; legislative measures that discriminate in the political, social, economic and cultural fields; measures that divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate residential areas for racial groups; the prohibition of interracial marriages; and the persecution of persons opposed to apartheid.” All of these are practiced in Israel. All of this said, I am sympathetic to the position that the apartheid Israel-South Africa analogy breaks down when one considers some important factors. In the words of Noam Chomsky, “In the Occupied Territories, what Israel is doing is much worse than apartheid. To call it apartheid is a gift to Israel, at least if by ‘apartheid’ you mean South African-style apartheid. What’s happening in the Occupied Territories is much worse.”

More simply, Palestinians live in an apartheid system. Palestinians live under something far worse. Zionism is an explicitly racist and explicitly settler colonialist ideology. The “Father” of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, openly spoke of “the idea of Zionism, which is a colonial idea,” calling it “something colonial.”

Consequently, if one had to pick a historical parallel to the Zionist project of ethnic cleansing in Palestine, perhaps the best option would be the European colonialists’ own project of settler colonialism in what we call the “Americas.” This is particularly true in the US and Canada, where the preponderance of the population is not of Indigenous descent. The land we now inhabit was ethnically cleansed. European colonialists used African slave labor in order to build their colonies. To speak generally, the European colonialists’ preferred strategy was to ethnically cleanse Amerindian natives by forcing them off from their land into smaller and smaller settlements, or by simply killing them. Similarly, in 1947-1948, the agenda of Zionism was to ethnically cleanse the land of Arabs in order to create a Jewish state. Distinguished Israeli historian Ilan Pappé has painstakingly detailed these blatant policies in his 2006 book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. This is the Nakba.

Many Zionists believe God gave them all of the land West of the Jordan River – or even beyond, in the case of Kahanists, including parts of modern-day Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq as well. Many non-religious Zionists believe the same. As Pappé once joked, “Most Zionists don’t believe that God exists, but they do believe that He has promised them Palestine.”

Q: What do you think is the root for the racially-driven, egregious hate crimes against the Palestinians by the Israeli settlers and other residents of the 1967 occupied lands including eastern part of al-Qods? There are reports of Israelis approaching the Palestinian people on the streets, shouting “Death to Arabs” and insulting them. Why do the Israelis, who have actually occupied the homeland of the Palestinians and displaced thousands of them, hate the Palestinians?

A: It should be recognized that, for centuries, Jews and Arabs, including Muslims and Christians, lived in relative peace. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a religious conflict. Those ignorant of the historical roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict claim Jews and Arabs have been “fighting forever.” Such a position is blatantly un-historical and incorrect. The problem is not that Jews are inherently racist against Arabs or that Arabs are inherently racist against Jews. Jews and Arabs are both Semitic peoples who speak Semitic languages and share a common history. The problem is simply the racist, colonialist movement of Zionism. The “Father” of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, openly spoke of “the idea of Zionism, which is a colonial idea,” calling it “something colonial.” He appealed to British colonialists including genocidal mining magnate Cecil Rhodes for support. In the 1947-1948 war, Zionist militias forcibly expelled 800,000 Palestinians from their homeland. Even before the war began, fascist Jewish militias such as Irgun and Lehi indiscriminately bombed Palestinian civilian areas. Both of these groups modeled themselves after European fascist movements. Lehi in fact aligned itself with the Nazis and Italian fascists. The Jewish Agency and leaders of Jewish organizations around the world regularly condemned Irgun and Lehi as terrorist groups. In April 1948, the two militias carried out the infamous Deir Yassin massacre, slaughtering over 100 Palestinian civilians, including women and children. In June 1948, Irgun was disbanded; former Commander Menachem Begin created the Herut party out of its ashes. That Zionism has explicitly colonialist and fascist origins is indubitable. A movement that is rooted in such obscenely racist ideologies, therefore, does not suddenly become progressive and peaceful. Even so-called “left”-leaning Israeli Prime Ministers still exhibit unmitigated bigotry. While publicly insisting that there “were no such thing as Palestinians,” that they “did not exist,” Golda Meir regularly espoused overtly racist beliefs.

In 1947, in the midst of proto-Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine, David Ben-Gurion, the supposedly “leftist” founder of Israel, and later the ethnocracy’s first prime minister, ordered the military to no longer worry about differentiating between “innocent” and “guilty” Palestinians. “Every attack has to end with occupation, destruction and expulsion” of the indigenous Arab population, Israel’s Founding Father commanded. He later maintained that “[w]e must do everything in our power to ensure that they never return.”

Not long ago, it was not controversial to point out that Zionism is overtly racist. In 1975, with the ratification of General Assembly resolution 3379, the United Nations determined “that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” With the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, the US wrestled back hegemony over the UN and forced the revocation of the resolution — yet the fact that the preponderance of the international community voted on the statute (72 to 35) attests to its accuracy. The racism that we see today, therefore, is not exactly new. One might argue that the level of racism has reached a new high, but it has been present since 1947 and before. Israeli mobs shout “Death to Arabs” because Israel is fundamentally structured upon the death of Arabs, and because the hyper-nationalist ideology of Zionism says that Arabs must be killed in order to maintain the ethno-religious purity of that state. Israel, like any aggressor and oppressor, creates false pretenses to justify its continued aggression and oppression. If Palestinians violently resist their incremental genocide, they are called “terrorists,” sub-human “snakes” – in the words of Member of Knesset Ayelet Shaked – who supposedly “do not value human life.”

Q: How do you think Israel has contributed to the growth of Islamophobia and discrimination against the Muslims by spreading a fear of them, as represented by the Palestinian Arabs, who are denied their most basic religious rights, including the right to worship and say prayers in the al-Aqsa Mosque? Why has Israel embarked on a project of systematic abuse, torture and persecution of the people of Palestine? Is it part of a larger project spearheaded by the US government?

A: It should be established, firstly, that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a religious conflict. As with many conflicts, it may appear to be religious, at surface level, but the conflict is fundamentally a political one. There is a religious element, because most of the people on the two sides of this political conflict are of different religions, yet the Palestinians are ultimately fighting for freedom, human rights, and control over their own lives and land. Religious nationalists, including religious Jewish Zionists, and especially Christian Zionists in the US, often like to speak of the conflict as if it were religious, because then they can use extremist interpretations of Christianity and Judaism to justify the crimes against humanity Israel has committed against the indigenous Palestinians. But this still does not make it religious at its core. Israel also sometimes employs this strategy, exploiting Islamophobia as a tool to increase support for its project of settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing. It is, frankly, in Israel’s interest to spread anti-Muslim bigotry. The majority of Palestinians are Muslim. By playing off of religious prejudices, Israel can further dehumanize the population it ultimately wishes to see ethnically cleansed. Because the interests of the bourgeoisie and Christian Zionists happen to coincide on the issue of Israel-Palestine, at the surface, it may appear as though it is a religious conflict. It is not, however. As with most conflicts in human history — even apparently religious ones, such as the Crusades — it is fundamentally materialist at its core. It is about economics, power, and control over capital.

Q: How is the reaction of the hardline white supremacist Israelis to the emergence and empowerment of the progressive movements in the Occupied Parts and the fact that a growing number of Israelis are waking up to the atrocities committed by the Zionist leaders in defiance of international law, Security Council resolutions and calls by the community of nations that demand Israel to live up to its commitments as an occupying power?

A: The reaction of Israel to any form of resistance in Palestine is always the same: violent repression. I would not say that leftist movements in the Occupied Territories are growing. On the contrary, support for Islamist resistance forces, namely Hamas and Islamic Jihad, is growing. Israel is exploiting this fact and relying on ignorant anti-Muslim bigotry to further demonize Palestinian resistance, claiming Hamas is the “same” as ISIS, Boko Haram, and other violent, reactionary groups. It matters not to Israel that Hamas – and Hezbollah, as it often adds to its Naughty List – is an unambiguous enemy of ISIS, nor that ISIS has publicly vowed to destroy Hamas because Hamas, in its words, “defends democracy.”

And, beyond that, it is because the PLO, dominated by Fatah, has proved itself to be complicit with Israeli oppression. Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) has actively worked with Israeli security forces in order to suppress Palestinian resistance. In 2010, the PFLP voluntarily suspended its participation in the PLO, protesting chairman Abbas’ collusion with the government that is waging a “war against the Palestinian people.” The PFLP explained the PLO “does not meet the needs or aspirations of the Palestinian people” and has “accepted the logic of the slave master and does not seek to change the reality.” By betraying the Palestinian people it purports to represent, the PLO has given its secular, nominally left-leaning ideology a bad reputation.

Q: For a long time, the Israeli politicians have been using the cover of "anti-Semitism" to obstruct any criticism of their actions and discriminatory policies against the Palestinians. They automatically brand as anti-Semite and Jew-hater anyone who condemns their brutalities, regardless of the essence and content of the criticism that has been leveled. Is the excuse of anti-Semitism going to work for a long time and help the Israeli leaders evade accountability and facing justice?

A: The Zionists use many obscene and vile tactics to justify their racist, settler colonialist ideology, yet the ubiquitous anti-Semitic slur may very well be the most repugnant of them all. The unfortunate reality is that many people do not know the difference between Judaism or Jewishness and Zionism. Zionism is an explicitly racist and explicitly settler colonialist ideology. The “Father” of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, openly spoke of “the idea of Zionism, which is a colonial idea.” Zionists exploit this ignorance of the definition of Zionism in order to whitewash Israeli crimes. In many ways, it can be argued that Zionism itself is an anti-Semitic current. Many Zionists have gotten to the point where they are so extreme in their jingoist hyper-nationalism that they try to argue that anti-Zionism is inherently anti-Semitic. In short, when Zionists claim anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, what they are actually saying is that all Jews have the same political ideas and believe the same things. Now that is anti-Semitism. Accordingly, Zionists often use anti-Semitism as an excuse to disguise the real reasons why Palestinians engage in resistance against the state that is ethnically cleansing and colonizing them. Zionists reiterate ad nauseam the preposterous notion that “all Palestinians are anti-Semitic.” For starters, this ignores the fact that Palestinians are Semitic themselves. The term “anti-Semitic” was created by racist 19th-century German pseudo-scientists. Like most racists, they used “Semite” as synonymous with “Jews,” without realizing that both Jews and Arabs are Semites.

Q: The Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has been in effect since 2006, has caused a true humanitarian disaster in the besieged coastal enclave. As you wrote in one of your recent articles, more than 90% of the people of Gaza live in extreme poverty, over 65% of the population is unemployed, and 95% of Gaza's water is undrinkable. Why doesn't the UN take action to change this calamitous situation and help the defenseless people of Gaza? Who is responsible for the plight of more than 1.5 million Palestinians entrapped in Gaza?

A: The role of the UN in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is important. For not just years, but for decades, the UN has played a leading role in speaking out against the Israeli occupation, ethnic cleansing, and oppression of Palestinians. In its November 1967 resolution 242, the UN Security Council, demanded that Israel withdraw from the territories it militarily occupied only five months before. Since then, Israel has only withdrawn from the Sinai Peninsula; it still illegally occupies the West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights. With UN Security Council resolution 446, adopted in March 1979, the UN also explicitly maintained “that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace.” The US abstained from this vote. Countless UN resolutions and statements have since stated the same thing: Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian land, and the settlements are illegal. Moreover, every few years when Israel “mows the lawn,” massacring Palestinian civilians, UN officials consistently accuse Israel of war crimes.

But, in spite of this seemingly objective behaviour, there are many things to criticize about the UN. There has been collusion between UN and Israeli officials; this is documented. Thanks to Wikileaks reports, in just one of the many examples of backdoor dealing, we now know that UN officials, all the way up to the Secretary General himself, were working with US officials to censor the Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, known colloquially as the Goldstone Report. Even the Goldstone Report, nonetheless, with all of its flaws, was quashed by President Barak Obama. The problem is not necessarily with the UN. The UN does have a lot of problems on a lot of issues, and it is much too kind to Israel. The problem is with the US. Israel has violated at least 70 UN Security Council resolutions, but the US has prevented any punishment. Israel has committed crime after crime after crime, but the US has prevented the UN from taking any disciplinary action. The US constantly vetoes resolution that would hold Israel accountable for its crimes. The UN is very, very, very far from perfect. The UN is by no means objective, but, on the issue of Israel’s occupation and colonization of Palestine, it is at least 10 percent objective.

AS/SS