Shoks Mnisi Mzolo – Cii News | 26 Jumadal Ula 1436/18 March 2015

Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu’s victory in Israel’s parliamentary elections, this week, has drawn diametrically opposed reaction. From the Zionist and fascist angle, Netanyahu’s win was good as it entrenches the many decades of subjugation of the people of Palestine and affirms Israel as an apartheid state that exclusively caters for Semites of a specific streak. For those on the side of justice and human rights, this man’s win extend the dark reign that has turned Palestinians into sub-humans who should be ridded.

That should raise questions about the views of Israeli apartheid beneficiaries who dominated the electorate. In that case, the question would be why those voters continue to avoid the truth or, alternatively, how Netanyahu – the man who, in keeping with the teachings of Theodore Herzl and other extreme Zionists, prefers to deny Palestinians exist as a people – won them. The polls were precipitated by the collapse of the now-former administration after fascists in Likud tried to make Israel a more apartheid state where people of Jewish ancestry would be first-class citizens.

“It is clear that the politic of fear and war mongering and the way he’s using racist politics worked for him. Just in the last day before elections, Netanyahu said if he is going to be re-elected a Palestinian state will not come to being,” Yonathan Shapira, an Israeli citizen who is pro-justice and anti-apartheid told Cii. “The (Israeli) parliament is a parliament apartheid where even those parties that call themselves left are still Zionist and are still for Jewish superiority and the whole thing of two states that doesn’t exist.”

Netanyahu’s achievements include mowing more than 500 children, some of whom were shot while playing or cradled by their mothers, while searching for Hamas operatives. Hamas, like Islamic Jihad and other groupings, is a resistance movement fighting apartheid and what’s described as slow-motion holocaust in the Middle East. Under this prime minister, Israel has done an exceptional job to demolish houses and hijack the little of Palestinian lands. What’s more, he’s repeatedly vowed that there never will be a Palestinian state under his rule. With all of that being said, why wouldn’t he have won in a right-wing society that is filled with so much hatred for fellow Semites?

“He used the same tactics of the politicians in the south of the United States in the days of the struggle against the oppression of the black people in the United States when they always told that the (white section) that: ‘the blacks are voting for my opponents so if you want to protect yourselves vote for me’,” The irony is that when the butcher addressed Washington weeks ago, he borrowed from the Babylonian era to argue that the people of Jewish ancestry were persecuted – which is a historic fact – but said nothing about King Cyrus’s progressiveness and promotion of human rights.

In relation to the United States, which had its own version of apartheid (a crime against humanity) just last century, a legacy which is yet to be tackled, it’s apparent that the fascist leader took some history lessons to cement his own Herzlesque divide-and-rule reign. Shapira said Netanyahu is widening the ethnic schism and getting rewarded for it.

“Yesterday, he said, and it was broadcast on the radio, that the Arabs – the Palestinian citizens of Israel – are coming to vote in masses,” said the activist who rose to prominence when he and pilot colleagues, in the Israeli Air Force, refused to fly over the occupied territories. “They’re coming on buses from all around the country to vote to the joint list of Palestinian citizens of Israel. And, he basically continued his political fear using the racist sentiments, in the Israeli public, and fear. It worked for him big time.”

While it’s unclear when the tide will eventually turn, Netanyahu’s big victory signals more pain for the oppressed. “In the short term, many people that are suffering can suffer even more. So, it’s never something very clear what is better (for the oppressed),” Shapira told Sabahul Khair. “I think that the racist laws that we’ve experienced in the last years in the parliament will continue. I think there’ll be more and more racist laws that will try to prevent freedom of speech and different kinds of ways to protest in Israel and it’s definitely going to affect the people.”

Where to you from here? “It’s quite clear where this country is heading. It’s a clear message, I think, to the rest of the world to wake up and not to expect any positive change to come from within the Israeli system – from with the Israeli government, parliament. We’ll just see more and more practices of apartheid, who knows maybe another attack on Gaza,” the activist told Cii, alluding to the onslaught that wiped more than 2,100 Palestinian and prompted no threat of sanctions from Barack Obama or his democratic peers. “We just have to use this moment and utilize to the world that the solution will not come from within the Israeli political system.”

The Israeli activist argued that the solution will not come from within and, on that note, welcomed the promotion of the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanction (BDS). Tel Aviv’s violent reaction to the BDS suggests the movement is effective. But, Shapira worried that many government leaders were still complicit and supportive of Israel, which in a way meant there was no pressure for it to change its apartheid policies.

Shapira appealed to Cii listeners, and South Africans in general, to pressure Pretoria and other governments that are still doing business with Israel to sever ties. In so doing, whether atheist or Muslim or Jewish and so forth, they will be helping both the oppressed and the oppressor. In the end, he said, Semites (of all streaks, including the people of Palestine) and people belonging to whichever ethnic or religious background will live side by side. That is the only way out and will eventually materialize, Shapira said. “The only question is how many people will be killed before that.”