“Ethnic cleansing” is shockingly popular in Israel:

Almost half of Israeli Jews want to kick out Arabs — Pew study
48% of Jewish citizens of Israel want to expel Arab citizens a new report finds, showing increasingly extreme views

Almost half of Jewish citizens of Israel want to kick Arab citizens out, according to a new study by leading polling agency the Pew Research Center.

When asked whether “Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel,” 48 percent of Jewish Israelis said they strongly agreed or agreed. On average, the more religious the person was, the more they supporting expelling Arabs.

British newspaper The Independent interpreted this to mean that there is widespread support for ethnic cleansing in Israel, according to the definition in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The Pew study does not indicate what means would hypothetically be used to expel or transfer Arab Israelis, but the International Court of Justice defines ethnic cleansing as “rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area.”

The responses to the question differed very clearly on ideological lines. The more conservative someone was, the more likely they were to believe that Arabs should be removed from Israel; the more progressive, the less likely.

Almost three-fourths (72 percent) of Jewish Israelis who identified as right-wing (which is 37 percent of the Jewish Israeli population) supported expelling Arab Israelis, along with 37 of Jewish Israelis who identified as centrist (55 percent of the Jewish Israeli population) and 10 percent of Jewish Israelis who identified as left-wing (8 percent of the Jewish Israeli population).

These results may appear shocking today, but Indigenous Arabs were in fact already ethnically cleansed in the 1947 to 1948 war that established the state of Israel. Palestinians call this violent expulsion the Nakba (the “catastrophe” in Arabic).

As Salon has previously reported, the Zionist militias that founded Israel ethnically cleansed large portions of historic Palestine, sacking hundreds of Palestinian villages and expelling roughly two-thirds of the Palestinian population at the time, more than 750,000 people.

Renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappé has documented how, in Israel’s Plan D (also known as Plan Dalet), “veteran Zionist leaders” created “a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine,” ordering soldiers to forcibly evict Palestinians with intimidation, siege, bombardment, fire, demolition and mines.

Plan D “spelled it out clearly and unambiguously: the Palestinians had to go,” Pappé noted. “The aim of the plan was in fact the destruction of both the rural and urban areas of Palestine,” the historian wrote, adding the Israel’s plan “contain[ed] a repertoire of cleansing methods that one by one fit the means the U.N. describes in its definition of ethnic cleansing.”

Still today, Israeli Arabs already endure enormous and structural discrimination. The Israeli human rights organization Adalah has documented more than 50 laws “that directly or indirectly discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel in all areas of life.”

http://www.salon.com/2016/03/09/ethnic_cleansing_is_shockingly_popular_in_israel_almost_half_of_israeli_jews_want_to_kick_out_arabs_pew_study/

Anyone shocked by this?

They rather proved that yesterday.

Last night more than 5,000 Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square in a massive outpouring of support for Elor Azarya, the Israeli soldier and French citizen who was recently indicted on manslaughter charges for executing a wounded, immobile Palestinian man on March 24 in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.

The rally filled Israel’s most well-known public square, akin to New York City’s Times Square. The crowd stretched as far as the eye could see from the stage. An all ages crowd of mostly Mizrachi, but also Russian and Ashkenazi, Israelis traveled from around the country to express anger at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, the media, human rights workers, and anyone they branded as “leftists.”  Despite their anger at public officials, they displayed unbridled allegiance to the army and state, in a culmination of what was the largest public display of fascism since the last war on Gaza in 2014, when anti-war protesters were beaten in the streets. Among the sea of flags and signs, one read “My honor is loyalty” – the motto of the Nazi SS. Last night was the latest example of the genocidal current running through Israeli society, one that has support from the grassroots to the parliament.



Several thousands Israelis filled Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square in support of the executioner-soldier Elor Azarya

Also in attendance were members of El Yahud, a loose network of Jewish supremacist thugs who organize mob violence against Palestinians and anyone they deem “leftists” that sprouted during the last assault on Gaza – a group journalist David Sheen compared to the Ku Klux Klan.



Member of Jewish street gang El Yahud with member of parliament Oren Hazan in the background

One protester called Moshe Ya’alon “a fucking leftist Kibbutznik” and “Judenrat.” He then called human rights organization B’tselem “fucking mercenaries” paid by Europe that should be tried and executed by the state for treason. “Like the Nuremburg process,” he said before adding,“It’s Brussels, not Tel Aviv.”

Demonstrator wearing t-shirt calling members of B’Tselem Nazis that should be tried and executed. Photo by Dan Cohen

Ya’alon, for his part, compared the demonstrators along with the majority of Israelis who support Azarya to ISIS supporters.

The square is named for  Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who twenty years ago was assassinated by right-wing Israeli Yigal Amir for his role in the Oslo Accords after official incitement from top political and religious officials, including now Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who led a mock funeral demonstration featuring a coffin and hangman’s noose where people chanted “Death to Rabin!”

Earlier that day, Netanyahu responded to the upcoming rally and issued a statement yesterday that “The IDF backs its soldiers… Our soldiers are not murderers,”  and in keeping with the discourse of fire, “I suggest that everyone lower the flames.”

But the flames inciter-in-chief Netanyahu had poured gas on were raging.

The family of Azraya was seated directly in front of the stage and were treated as national heroes, as if their son was a martyr for a holy cause. While public pressure has already been successful in reducing murder charges the killer faced to manslaughter, the crowd burst into chants of “Elor is a hero,” “release the boy,” and “death to Arabs,” “we will burn your village” and “Channel Two is Al Jazeera”  One widely-seen sign said “Kill Them All.”

However severely misguided, the anger was understandable. Numerous top Israeli officials have reiterated support for a policy of summary executions – a military practice commonly known as “confirming the kill” – but Netanyahu and Ya’alon initially distanced themselves from the killer, stirring fierce criticism from the right wing base and attacks from hard-right politicians looking to score points.

The mob’s anger at media, human rights workers, and “leftists” took form in attacks on journalists. Even as the crowd gathered before the event officially began, a mob of young men and boys attacked reporters from Israeli television Channels Two and Ten.

My colleague and independent journalist David Sheen was accused of being a “leftist” and attacked by a group of Israelis, then removed by Israeli police who threatened him with a night in jail if he didn’t immediately leave the premises. Sheen suffered bruising to his leg and was limping. A video of the attack uploaded by right-wing rapper The Shadow was viewed 80,000 times in a matter of hours.



“The police are not there to ensure that human and civil rights are respected,” Sheen commented. “They are there to ensure that the minimal amount of people are injured. When a mob of people starts physically attacking a person for no reason, instead of protecting that person at the cost of making the right-wingers even angrier, they prefer to assuage their anger and cleanse the area of anyone who might not share their racist ideology, no matter how innocuous that person is acting.”


Former member of parliament Sharon Gal of Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party emceed the event. “Raise the flags!” he urged the crowd. “This is the people of Israel!”



Also in attendance was ruling Likud party’s Oren Hazan, who earlier this month promised a “bullet in the head of every terrorist” at a town hall in Ramle David Sheen and I documented, and to demolish the Al-Aqsa compound and build a Jewish temple in its place last month. Hazan’s populist statements have made him a crowd favorite, and several people took selfies with the lawmaker.


Kahanists former member of parliament Michael Ben Ari and Boston-born settler leader Baruch Marzel, who Azarya shook hands with directly after he executed the Palestinian man, were in attendance too.

Notably absent were more prominent public figures who have scored political points at the expense of Netanyahu and Ya’alon by appealing to popular sentiments. Top national religious Israeli commentator Kalman Liebskind noted the significance of the absence of the mainly Ashkenazi national-religious settler camp, asserting that it was due to their lack of intra-Jewish class, race and religious solidarity:

It was an impressive rally. Among the people who were there were from Lod, Ramle and the periphery. Who wasn’t there? National religious and settlers. The national religious camp always has its hero soldiers, and they always seem to be from our camp. The religious youth can list off the accomplishments of our soldier heroes, but they will never commemorate those soldiers from Be’er Sheva that died right next to them. We’ve never cared for people like Elor Azarya who are carrying the stretcher. Although it’s thanks to that small group that we are allowed to sit comfortably in our strongholds. And we say that we are connected to the people, but let’s stop bluffing ourselves. But the truth is, there is nothing connecting the settlements and the periphery. Imagine if the soldier was one of ours. You would have seen a massive turnout. There would be 100s of buses. Hizme checkpoint [settler checkpoint from West Bank] would be bumper to bumper from all the Tel Aviv bound traffic. Jewish Home party members of parliament would have been there an hour early in full force. In a sentence, Religious Zionists proved again yesterday that all they care about is Religious Zionists. An ocean separates us from Charlie [father of Elor Azarya] from Ramle.

Speeches delivered by Azraya’s parents and sister were the somber exceptions to the otherwise celebratory atmosphere which featured performances by well-known Israeli musical acts including right-wing rapper Subliminal, Maor Edi, Amos Elgali, and Moshik Afia, who sang You and I will change the world, described by Sheen as a “well-known Jewish hippie anthem.”


Etti and Charlie Azarya, the parents of executioner-soldier Elor Azarya

At times, the performance was overtly festive. A group of Brestlev Orthodox Jews known as the Happy Haredim joined performers onstage, blowing shofars (ceremonial ram’s horns) stuff with wooden dowels with Israeli flags.

Right-wing rapper Subliminal and a Brestlev man blowing a shofar during the rally in Tel Aviv for soldier-executioner Elor Azarya

Directly in front of the stage, a performance artist wearing a bizarre oversized piece stood in front of Azraya’s family members. The piece consisted of four life-size dolls and the artist dressed in mock army and police uniforms with their hands and feet locked up.


Performance artist performs for Azarya family Photo by Dan Cohen
As the demonstration ended and the crowd poured into the streets, a man in a military uniform took photographs of me. Queries to official army spokespeople as to his identity have not been answered.

- See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2016/04/thousands-of-israelis-fill-tel-avivs-rabin-square-in-support-for-soldier-who-executed-palestinian/#sthash.kgK6Z4k0.dpuf


Wouldn't have been out of place in Nazi Germany.