Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
2 July
ISRAEL SHAHAK ON ISRAELI STATE RACISM
On this day in 2001, Israel Shahak died. The head of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights from 1970-90 wrote: “It is my considered opinion that the State of Israel is a racist state in the full meaning of this term: In this state people are discriminated against, in the most permanent and legal way and in the most important areas of life, only because of their origin. This racist discrimination began in Zionism and is carried out today mainly in co-operation with the institutions of the Zionist movement”.
إسرائيل شحاك ورأيه في عنصرية الدولة الإسرائيلية
2 يوليو
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 2001 ، توفي إسرائيل شاهاق. كان شاهاق رئيس الرابطة الإسرائيلية لحقوق الإنسان والحقوق المدنية من 1970-90: اذ كتب "أعتقد أن دولة إسرائيل هي دولة عنصرية بالمعنى الكامل لهذا المصطلح: في هذه الدولة يتعرض الناس للتمييز ، في أكثر الطرق الدائمة والقانونية وفي أهم مجالات الحياة، فقط بسبب أصولهم. بدأ هذا التمييز العنصري مع الحركة الصهيونية واستمر لهذا اليوم بشكل رئيسي بالتعاون مع مؤسسات الحركة الصهيونية ”.
Zionist Jewish fundamentalists are no less murderous than their ISIS Muslim counterparts or the US God and Guns White supremacists and should not get an exemption during the current wave of false "anti-semitism" accusations. Israel Shahak condemning the crimes of Zionist Jewish fundamentalists should no more be silenced than critics of ISIS or Hagee.
Bar-Ilan University historian Haim Genizi, said that "Shahak's extreme anti–Israeli statements were welcomed by the PLO, and [were] widely circulated in pro–Arab circles", in detriment to the interests of the State of Israel.
Novelist Gore Vidal said Shahak was
"the latest, if not the last, of the great prophets...Israel's authorities deplore Shahak. But there is not much to be done with a retired professor of chemistry who was born in Warsaw in 1933 and spent his childhood in the concentration camp at Belsen. In 1945, he came to Israel; served in the Israeli military; did not become a Marxist in the years when it was fashionable. He was — and still is — a humanist who detests imperialism whether in the name of the God of Abraham or of George Bush. Equally, he opposes with great wit and learning the totalitarian strain in Judaism. Like a highly learned Thomas Paine, Shahak illustrates the prospect before us, as well as the long history behind us, and thus he continues to reason, year after year. Those who heed him will certainly be wiser and — dare I say? — better."
Jewish History, Jewish Religion p. viii.
Shahak on the National Religious Party and the religious settlers
"The ideology of the NRP and Gush Emunim, the group of religious settlers in the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, is more innovative than the ideology of Haredi Jews. Rabbi Abraham Yitzhak Kook, who was the chief rabbi of Palestine and a most prominent rabbinical supporter of Zionism, devised this ideology in the early 1920s and developed it thereafter. Rabbi Kook the elder, as he was called, was a prolific author. His followers considered him to be divinely inspired. After his death in 1935 he achieved the status of a saint in NRP circles. The rabbis who graduated from his yeshiva in Jerusalem, "Merkaz Harav, or Center of the Rabbi...founded Gush Emunim (Block of the Faithful). The Gush Emunim aims were to initiate new and to expand already existent Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories. With the help of Shimon Peres, who in the summer of 1974 became the Israeli defense minister and thus the person in charge of the Occupied Territories, Gush Emunim in the remarkably short time of a few years succeeded in changing Israeli settlement policy." Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, p 55
This article on the SPSC website since 2008 is frequently condemned as proof of the 'anti-semitism' of those who criticise the genocidal settlers of Gush Emunim,
"Gush Emunim, is heavily armed and carries out the most revolting crimes against innocent Palestinians across the West Bank. This writer visited the Palestinian village of Yanun after settlers had washed their dogs in the Palestinians’ drinking water. A Medieval ideology goes hand in hand with Medieval tactics - Hebron settlers poison village wells with putrescent chickens. They beat and shoot Palestinians, poison their sheep, generally act like the violent thugs they are."
Israel Shahak lecture at MIT (introduced by a young Chomsky)
https://www.youtube.com/embed/u9tMfsSzq-g