I Wish I Was Wrong

Credit: Amir Levy / Getty

By Jonathan Kuttab | FOSNA website | June 6, 2023

The current crisis within Zionism and the Israeli state is merely the logical extension of long-held policies and that it is impossible for the result to have been other than what we are witnessing today.

When the current right-wing Israeli government was formed, I wrote that this was predictable, inevitable, and irreversible. I wish I was wrong.

What I meant by this is that the current crisis within Zionism and the Israeli state is merely the logical extension of long-held policies and that it is impossible for the result to have been other than what we are witnessing today. I also predicted that Israel had embarked on a path that necessarily resulted in it being more openly racist, discriminatory, fascist, and brutal, and that there is no way for that not to have happened. The current situation is not an aberration but simply a logical extension, and there is no way to return somehow to a gentler, kinder Israel that is both “Jewish and democratic.” There has never been such an Israel in the experience of Palestinians. All that happened is that the mask has been removed.  The current government no longer feels the need or even has the ability to hide reality. In fact, every week brings us new actions and legislation that both reveal and openly promote such bigotry and fascism. Once the mask has been removed, it can no longer be worn again.

The latest legislation to be proposed speaks clearly of the desire to permit larger and larger communities the ability to openly exclude Arabs, including Israeli citizens, from living in Jewish communities. The law speaks openly of “judaizing the Galilee, the Negev, and Judea and Samaria,” making it abundantly clear that apartheid is practiced not only within the Occupied Territories, where different systems and laws apply to Arabs and Jewish settlers, but also within the boundaries of “Israel proper.” One minister in the new government linked this to the need to appoint new judges “who know that Jews do not want Arabs to live next to them and in their communities.”

Read the full article here →https://www.fosna.org/the-fosna-blog/iwishiwaswrong