Brain-dead, a voyage into the Fascist mind

Aharon Shabtai

PASSOVER, 2002
Instead of scalding
your pots and plates,
take steel wool
to your hearts:
You read the Haggadah
like swine, which
if put before a table
would forage about in the bowl
for parsley and dumplings.
Passover, however,
is stronger than you are.
Go outside and see:
the slaves are rising up,
a brave soul
is burying its oppressor
beneath the sand.
Here is your cruel,
stupid Pharaoh,
dispatching his troops
with their chariots of war,
and here is the sea of Freedom,
which swallows them.


Imagine this: in a university considered to be radical, a group of activists organize a week of events to commemorate the long occupation of Palestine by Israel. At the end of the week a hip-hop show is arranged where artists perform lyrics that include derogatory description of Jews. A group of Jewish students’, two women and one man hear the racist songs and decide to stand aside and hold the Israeli flag as a defying statement. Upon noticing the Israeli flag, three men, one of them a senator at the student government and another one an artist that has just performed, rush towards the Jewish students while yelling “Jewish pigs” and “we will kick those Jewish asses”. They hit and shove the Jewish students while other students stand, watching silently. In the next two days more Jewish students are attacked, this time with a knife.
Try to think, what would be the reaction of the media? How would the chancellor of this university respond? How would Zionists forces in this country reply to this act?

Last Thursday three Arab students on Berkeley campus decide to hold a Palestinian flag by a Zionist concert where derogatory lyrics towards Arabs were heard. They were quickly attacked by a group of Zionists. Racial slurs were yelled at them while three Zionists beat them up. A night afterwards, two other Arab activists were attacked, this time with a knife. The reaction of the media? a half assed article about a fight between supporters of Israel/Palestine in the university newspaper. The chancellor sends a letter asking students to be “civil”. While even the UC Berkeley police, who one would doubt have any leftist tendencies, categorize this as a hate crime, the media and our Chancellor try to be “objective”.

As pointed out in another article, the group perpetrating the attack (Zionist Freedom Alliance) has direct political lines to Fascist ideas and to military movements that grew out of these ideologies (who were later very conveniently integrated into the Jewish state). This is, again, not something that the media or UC Berkeley’s chancellor considered, after all, it’s just a racist attack on Arab students who were exercising some free speech, nothing like stenciling a swastika on a bus station.

I went to discuss the issue of racism and hate crimes with the Zionists who were behind the racial attack.

I approach Yehoda Hacohen who participated in the attack against the three activists, and is a spokesperson for the Zionist freedom Alliance. He seems to be baffled by my ability to speak Hebrew and to describe him as a racist. “But how can I be a racist?” he says “I live with Palestinians”. Which reminded me of the Mormon Church proclaiming that they have nothing against gays, they just don’t want them to have the same rights as everyone else. “That’s because you’re a settler” I answer “you stole Palestinian land and now they have no choice but to live with you”. Yehoda stumbles upon words trying to argue back. You need to forgive Yehoda, although describing himself as an “indigenous Palestinian” his Hebrew is rough and hard to understand. It carries a thick American accent that follows his obscure rhetoric to its unfounded end. Needless to say, Yehoda can’t really follow my arguments; he lacks basic understanding of history and in particular the history of the Middle East. His whole philosophy stems from incoherent metaphysical beliefs, that I, as a non-religious Jew (and I suspect even some religious Jews) find no value in.

Yehoda likes to talk about the legend of Mesada, where in 321bc, a community of Jews after three months of siege by the Roman army, decided to kill themselves and not to surrender. Yehoda does not see the relation of that to another population in Palestine that has been living under siege and occupation, nor does he see any connection of that to other historical figures that he likes to talk about-the Macabim. The Macabim were a group of religious fanatics who organized guerilla warfare against the Greek occupation of Palestine. One of the tactics employ by the Macabim was to sacrifice ones soldiers while killing Greek soldiers. Famous religious figures are considered to be holy-heroes for sacrificing themselves in battle. In other words suicide bombing was not invented by the Palestinians.
While Yehoda is trying to explain to me why it was justified for him and another two grown men to attack two women and one man for holding the Palestinian flag, I find it hard not to imagine Yehoda and his white privilege followers in other times of history; marching down the streets, brown uniforms, punching and hitting defenseless people, while describing themselves as victims. They are after all only trying to defend their “nation”. Add that to the national-chauvinist rhetoric employed by the Zionists Freedom Alliance, the racist talk about the enemy “from within” and the right to annihilate anyone that threatens the (racial) Jewish state, and I really can’t see the difference between Yehoda and any other Fascist leader.
After seemingly left without words, Yehoda assures all his students-followers that I work for the European Union. In Yehoda’s world, the UN and the European Union are conspirators in the destruction of Israel. In UN meetings, many resolutions condemning Israel’s actions in the occupied territories (and in Lebanon) have been allowed to pass: this is something that needs to stop. Yehoda could find unity with other quasi religious-fanatics who uphold weird conspiracy theories about the UN and Jews (which is essentially what Israel does); the problem is, however, that unlike these religious notecases, Yehoda is harassing activists and committing hate crimes. More than that, while doing that he proclaims to represent me, or all Jews for that matter.

Yehoda, you do not represent me and many other Jews when you commit racist hate crimes. Stop degrading my culture and heritage to make it fit into your limited world views. Your ideology is a dead-end road that would only lead to a fascist theocracy in Palestine. Your childish attempts to present Zionism as third world liberation is dumb; no one who has been following or studying the struggle of third world nations (or of Zionism for that matter) would take you seriously. You don’t understand Jewish narratives, and the bible and other Jewish traditional writings are not a real manifestation of history. More then that, your attempts to violently silence people who uphold human rights will never succeed. As history has shown (not that you would ever know it), People will always rise to occasion to oppose people like you and your fascist dogma.