Gulf News: Baroud on Israel’s ‘Culture of Fear’
Scores of Israeli troops storm al-Aqsa Mosque in Occupied East Jerusalem. (Photo: via Al-Manar)
Recently, a new bill was hurriedly passed in the Israeli Knesset. The Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People is the latest concoction of Israel’s right-wing Zionist Jewish parties that have dominated Israeli politics for years. With the Israeli ‘Left’ rendered irrelevant, or having itself moved to the Right, the right-wing elements of Israel now reign supreme.
However, since Israel has defined itself by its Jewish identity since its very inception, why is there a need then for a new ‘basic law’?
In fact, how can one, explain the torrent of new bills and newly-passed laws that essentially reiterate Jewish supremacy and dominance and restrict the rights, movement and free speech of Arabs and anti-occupation Jews?
Producing laws through nominally democratic institutions to ensure Jewish majority and the suppression of Arabs and political dissent in general, is nothing new in Israel. However, the constant emphasis on the Jewishness of Israel and the masking of the Palestinian identity are hardly practical tools to guarantee one’s racial and ethnic supremacy.
Such power is already secured through military occupation and a carefully-moulded political system that treats Israeli Jews as first-class citizens and Arabs as an inferior minority.
Indeed, there is another dimension to this story.
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