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David Sheen’s lecture “the Bullet, the Ballot, and the Boycott” (Part 2)

by WTUL News & Views
Part 2 from journalist David Sheen’s lecture “the Bullet, the Ballot, and the Boycott” at University of New Orleans on Tuesday, November 10, 2015.
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[ Audio: 33 min ]

David Sheen is an independent journalist and filmmaker originally from Toronto, Canada who now lives in Dimona, Israel. Sheen began blogging when he first moved to Israel in 1999 and later went on to work as a reporter and editor at the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz. He now writes for a variety of local, regional and international outlets including Alternet and Electronic Intifada. Sheen is currently writing a book about African immigrants to Israel and the struggles they face. His website is http://www.davidsheen.com and he tweets from @davidsheen

On Tuesday, November 10, 2015 at University of New Orleans, David Sheen presented his lecture “the Bullet, the Ballot, and the Boycott” about Israeli incitement to racist violence, the focus of his on-the-ground reporting for the past five years. The core of the presentation concerns the dehumanizing discourse towards Palestinians, Africans and other non-Jews by top Israeli political and religious leaders, and the vigilante attacks they inspire, which spiked during last summer's assault on the Gaza Strip.

In Part 1, Sheen exposes the false dichotomy of Democratic and non-Democratic (territories) Israel. The rights and privileges are not accorded to people by the basis of their citizenship but by the basis of their ethnicity. Even worse, there are forces within the society who are trying to take that ethnocracy and turn it into a theocracy. In this second part of his lecture, “the Bullet, the Ballot, and the Boycott,” Sheen describes Jewish Diminunist groups sweeping into power in Israel today.

David Sheen considers Chabad, Jewish Home Party, and L’hava— Jewish Dimuninist, also referred to as supremacists, groups—whose goal is theocracy, whose strategy is race war, and whose tactic is arson.

1. Chabad’s motto “long live the king the messiah” adorns many of the attack sites. The group is a radical sect of Judaism that follows racist supremacist teachings of the Tanya, and Chabad’s top Rabbi approved of a recently published religious text that justifies killing Palestinian babies. The radical group nevertheless has amassed global political power: Chabad has met in the Oval Office with every U.S. president since Reagan and is close enough with President Netanyahu that the President wears their kippah (skull cap), adorned with the motto, in meetings with the group. Of all, Chabad’s lawmaker of choice is a politician who called for outright ethnic cleansing during Gaza attacks in 2014.

2. Jewish Home Party consists of politicians in Knesset and in government. A feature of their politics is bringing convicted terrorists into government. For example, two Jewish Home Party politicians met with terrorist who set off bombs and blew off a Palestinian man’s legs in Knesset. Further, as the political group fights in the halls of government for the Jewish rights to the highly-contested space of the al-Aqsa mosque—a 3rd holiest site in Islam, located in Jerusalem that is a center of conflict late summer 2015 for Israel’s encirclement of the site—those politicians meanwhile poses for photographs with the terrorists convicted of planning to blow the mosque up.

3. The third group, Lehava, consists of followers of the deceased Meir Kahane the father of Israeli-fascism, who has become iconofied, with his image, name, and ideology promoted among politicians and attackers alike. The subject of their attacks is often the “marriage” of Jews and non-Jews in Israel (anti-miscegenation laws exist prohibiting marriage between Jew and non-Jew in Israel, so take this to mean “celebration of a relationship”), and those terrorists who are brought before a court have their legal fees paid for by the Lehava’s charity. The charity is funded by Israeli government funds, through which U.S. taxpayers are also complicit: funding comes from both Israeli and U.S. tax-subsidized moneys. Whereas, thirty years ago even the right wing of Israeli politics condemned the fascist’s ideology, today this fascist group receives government funding, invitations by top diplomats into Knesset to speak, and social media promotion as Israeli politicians pose to take photographs of those iconofying his image.

Presenting photographic study and news stories of these Jewish Dimuninist groups, Sheen ties the groups to violent arson attacks. Known as Price Tag attacks—burning Palestinian trees, cars, mosques, churches, schools, and family homes— these racist hate crimes are not random acts of vandalism; in fact, perpetrators leave graffiti behind describing their intent, while politicians welcome and meet with convicted terrorists. Further, government lacks the effort to address these hate crimes at the police level, and public opinion leans with those who do not condemn racist hate crimes. Those who come out and speak against hate are attacked themselves.

Returning to the story of three acts of terrorism in particular, Sheen demonstrates evidence of cops, klans, and government officials working together:

Schools are segregated by race and religion. Of the very few schools integrated, a first grade classroom was firebombed. The perpetrators were sentenced to only 2 years prison time, and as they left the courthouse they were quoted saying, “it was worth it, a small price to pay to send our message.”

The Dawabsheh family home is attacked—father, mother, baby murdered by Molotov cocktail, while four-year-old brother survives with full body burns. Israel knows who the arsonists are but has chosen to prevent legal recourse in order to maintain the identity of their source. A gathering of religious leaders led a prayer circle for the four-year-old Dawabsheh brother, who survived firebombing of his family home, as an initiative of former Israeli government minister Rabbi Michael Melchior together with Rabbi Rafi Feurstein and Rabbi David Stav of the Tzohar rabbinical organization. The group was joined by senior members of the Islamic Movement including Sheik Abdullah Nimar Darwish as well as Rabbi Aryeh Stern, the chief rabbi of Jerusalem. At this prayer circle one of the Rabbis had this message, “Those doing Price Tags attacks, are doing real Jewish acts, just as we are doing Jewish acts by praying for his recovery. In the Jewish writings, you can find humanistic writings next to dark ideas, and the two are the two faces of Judaism. Until we understand this, we won’t be able to fight for the leading Judaism. It’s not that those who carry out hate crimes are a distortion of Judaism, and that we are the true Judaism. No, it is a struggle between two options of Judaism.”

Lastly, Jewish Diminunists attack the Israeli Defense Forces because their demand for swifter settlement of Palestinian lands is not met, and they are able to evade capture by the army through text messages with an insider. This insider is exposed to be no less than the major government whip at that time and now minister, whose acts of treason led to a promotion in government.
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