by David Ohana and Oded Heilbronner at Haaretz
The sound of thugs’ shoes in the alleys of the Old City on Jerusalem Day last week recalled the sound of the SA marches and the 1920s and 30s in Germany. As it was then, when brown-shirted militants violently swooped on any passing Jewish- or communist-owned store, so it is now, as yellow-shirted ones – the dumb disciples of their bully leader with a criminal past who now has a whole police force under his control – beat, kicked and swore at Arabs and journalists.
It was hard to distinguish between the thugs and the representatives of the state in the form of the Border Police; each of them had a well-defined role in imposing terror and fear on Old City residents in the annual fascistic ritual. Teenagers from the religious Zionist sector, who believe in the supremacy of the Jewish race and the “Jewish land,” brought to mind, in their violence, European right-wingers and fascists who hunted down socialists, communists and Jews.
Almost 100 years later, the roles are reversed: Now, violent Jews on their way to the Western Wall hunt down people of other ethnicities. Paralleling the growth of the radical right and the populist wave currently underway in Europe, proto-fascist groups are on the rise in Israel.
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- The Proto-fascist Plot to Destroy Israeli Democracy
- Neither Israel’s nor Germany’s Slide Into Fascism Was Accidental
These processes reflect global trends,…
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