GOLIATH = ISRAEL’S ETHNIC CLEANSING GOALS WILL FAIL = MAX BLUMENTHAL

“Goliath, Life and Loathing in Greater Israel” – Max Blumenthal on Reality Asserts Itself with Paul Jay on The Real News Network Oct 2013

ISRAEL = GOLIATH
PALESTINE = DAVID

Click for Video Interview and Text of Max Blumenthal by Paul Jay on The Real News Network

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Max discusses his book and ethnic cleansing in Israel.  Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author in many publications.

JAY:  In late 1960s if a political leader of Israel talked in overt racist language about cleansing Israel of its Arab population, people would have been appalled and would not have accepted that they belong to a state that was essentially racist with political leaders talking that way.

JAY:  NOW Israeli political leaders talk in racist terms like Avigdor Lieberman, who was Israel’s foreign minister.  Max Blumenthal looks at this growing racism overt racism in Israel.

JAY: If you have a state based on a religion, you’re already into kind of a core of a racist idea, or at least ethnic idea, in the very formulation of the ideology that goes with that state. Poll in 2009 of Russian immigrants showed, 77% supported forcibly transferring Palestinians out of Israel – Their primary political representative is Avigdor Lieberman.

BLUMENTHAL: Yes Israel is an ethnocracy = NOT a multiethnic, multireligious democracy = It is NOT a real democracy at all. = It privileges one group of immigrants who have used colonialism (methods) against the will of the indigenous Palestinian population.

BLUMENTHAL:  Israel = Privileges Jews or imported Jews over NON-Jews = Arabs living in historic Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

BLUMENTHAL:  Israel’s system requires the engineering of a Jewish demographic majority. = USE MURDERS and FORCE PEOPLE TO LEAVE!

BLUMENTHAL: Israel system’s essential idea = You go through a historical process–it could take up to 100 years –for the state’s terminal phase of overt racism and even proto-fascism. = To quote dozens of leading liberal Israelis, like Uri Avnery, founding-generation Israelis like Chana Maron, who performed at the Habima Theater in the original Hebrew plays right off Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard…saying that fascism is in the air, that we’ve become a fascist state, and that we’re almost ready to divorce ourselves from it.

BLUMENTHAL: Engineering a Jewish demographic majority = Jews must  out-breed the Palestinians = Importation of millions of post-Soviet Russian Jews = 30% increased in Jewish population or around 300,000 Russians = Inferior Jews declared by Israel’s state-appointed rabbis to not be actually Jewish according to Jewish law. When the Russians arrived they were convinced they would reap all these benefits, but now they are non-Jewish and discriminated against = Treated pretty badly by the veteran Israelis.

FACT:  A bare majority of Jewish Israelis favor the expulsion of Palestinians in a poll in 2013.

BLUMENTHAL:  Avigdor Lieberman, Russian Jew representative moved into Israeli politics Likud Party in late 1980s courtesy of Netanyahu = Pushes the immediate interests of the Russian Israeli public = ANTI-DEMOCRATIC AUTHORITARIAN INTERESTS.  = Lieberman rises to the top of the Likud Party as a faction chairman for Netanyahu (1992) + He enters Netanyahu’s cabinet (1996) when Netanyahu comes into power + He runs for reelection (1999) and picks up two seats/year in the Yisrael Beiteinu Party catering to Russian political power.

BLUMENTHAL: (TRICKY DEVILS) on the one hand campaign for civil marriage in Israel (had to go to Cyprus to get a civil marriage) = Problematic for Russians who are not defined as Jewish. + At same time Campaign to CLEANSE Palestinians from Israel = Inspiring RACISM by shouting at Palestinian members of Knesset that you should take your bundles and leave. = “we’ll take care of you one day” Lieberman said to a member of the Balad Party = Basically threatening to kill them and introducing laws to strip them of their citizenship.

BLUMENTHAL: 2009 Lieberman comes into power as the 3rd-largest Party –Yisrael Beiteinu — during Operation Cast Lead’s brutal assault on Palestinians in Gaza = Helped fuel the right-wing mood of the Israeli public. Lieberman ran commercials showing Arab members of Knesset next to statements in which he accused them of expressing disloyalty. = Winning slogan of Lieberman is “No loyalty, no citizenship”. He eventually stripped Palestinian citizens of their Israeli citizenship. = Now trend in Israeli society.

BLUMENTHAL: (RADICALIZING ISRAELI YOUTH) 2009 Yisrael Beiteinu won high school mock elections in Israel by a wide margin = NOT just among Russian youth but overall.  EDUCATION SYTEM LOADED WITH PURE PROPAGANDA!

BLUMENTHAL: Lieberman was temporarily removed from his position as foreign minister because of his ties to the mafia + Going on trial with other mafioso figures, like Michael Cherney, Russian mafia-linked set up fake companies for Lieberman in Cyprus and put his 22 year old daughter on his payroll at $200,000/year = Collected bags of cash textbook corruption + Lieberman lost important municipal elections in the Jerusalem mayoral election.

FACT:  LEFT-WING ZIONIST PARTY Nir Barkat = He’s behind the Sheikh Jarrah expulsions of Palestinians + Behind a lot of the settlement activity in East Jerusalem. = Actually Right Wing running against far right.

LIEBERMAN = Replaced by Moscow Russian Likud Party Ze’ev Elkin, who I interviewed — younger and MORE EXTREME than Lieberman and barely speaks English = Became foreign minister of Israel = Favors annexing most of the West Bank = Remarkable.

JAY: Talk about the Lieberman Plan for two-state solution — a very interesting map.

BLUMENTHAL: Plan Lieberman = U.S. and Israel are proposing to the PLO as the two-state solution but Lieberman proposes to do it unilaterally — To basically drive the Palestinian citizens out or marginalize them + Redraw the borders of Israel around a series of Arab towns with huge populations in the north of Israel near the Green Line to strip them of their citizenship and benefits and place them into the hands of the autocratic Israeli DICTATED PLO because they don’t have J-positive blood.

JAY: In late 1960s a Lieberman as a foreign minister and current Israeli political culture would have been REJECTED as being so overtly racist. How did this happen?

BLUMENTHAL: In 1967, when the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip began, there was a different political culture in Israel, as labor Zionists still dominanted, but they had sowed the seeds for the rise of Likud. But politicians and generals were doing what Lieberman plans to do.  Lieberman may not have been responsible for the degree of ethnic cleansing that the labor Zionist movement did.  The Russian Jewish public says you call us fascists; well, what about what Labor did? Labor committed the Nakba and ushered in the occupation.

BLUMENTHAL: In 1967 Israeli society was unsure of its own survival, insecure, and the victory was like this rapturous moment which was endorsed by a who’s who of the labor Zionist intelligentsia + Revisionist Zionist intelligentsia.  The Greater Israel document (authored by people across the political spectrum with almost no opposition) is an endorsement of the occupation and a declaration that the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), is the cradle of the ISRAEL and ordered the conquering of the West Bank with massive ethnic cleansing of 300,000 Palestinians – driven from their homes — Abba Eban now considered by USA Jews as this elegant, silver-tongued intellectual figure – MOTIVATED THESE DEEDS of Ethnic Cleansing repeatedly on USA TV.

JAY: Abba Eben’s a good example of NO matter what Israel’s doing, the face it shows to the outside world is this kind of enlightened, articulate, cultured man who would never admit to being overtly racist.  But Lieberman BLEW THAT!  So now ETHNIC CLEANSING is acceptable to BRIBED AND INTIMIDATED AIPAC-WALL STREET OWNED American politicians.  So Israel can have COMMIT MASSIVE MURDERS and it doesn’t shake USA GOV’s support for Israel an iota?

BLUMENTHAL: Americans want to believe there’s a good Israel so Israel projects a good image to USA — Americans see Israeli PR-PROPAGANDA strategy FOSTERED by the WALL STREET OWNED American media

FACT:  NOW Israeli P.R. is slowly collapsing as figures like Lieberman come to the fore  and Americans see the EXTREME TERROR ISRAEL USES ON PALESTINIANS.

WESTERN OWNED MEDIA = Shies away from books like Goliath = Made a concerted attempt to whitewash Lieberman = Robert Siegel from NPR hosted Lieberman at a D.C. banquet and interviewed with softball questions in front of a who’s who of the Beltway elite. It is remarkable, that someone actively campaigning to strip people of their citizenship because of their ethnicity was treated so well in USA = A race to the bottom.

BLUMENTHAL: Back to 1967, there were three ancient villages in the Latrun gap, Israelis saw as fingers sticking into the state of Israel preventing Israel from building a highway from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  One village, Imwas or Emmaus in the Bible is where Jesus met with three of his disciples — Israelis bulldozed all 3 villages.  Amos Kenan, a commander, wrote about it in a really harrowing letter, which wasn’t supposed to be exposed. He talked about the church crashing to the ground and homes being bulldozed and families being told to march to Ramallah. And in their place, the Jewish National Fund built Canada Park, which is a forest, that amazes a lot of Americans who visit Israel — Making the desert bloom by planting trees — Promotional Campaign.  When you walk into this forest, as your correspondent, Lia Tarachansky did in her upcoming documentary, Seven Deadly Myths, you literally trip over the ruins of Historic Palestinian homes = Kind of image Israel tries to project to the outside world, especially to USA

BLUMENTHAL:  What Goliath tries to do is get inside the forest and talk about what lies beneath these pinecones and these mountains of lies.

JAY: Lieberman represents the far right of mainstream Israeli politics = Ideology policies of expulsion and ethnic cleansing.  But Israeli supposed centrist figures like Tzipi Livni, also have a policy of expulsion NO different from Lieberman’s as defined by the Israeli center and the policy of ethnic cleansing in Israel.