Facing Up To Jewish Nationalism & Racist Violence

By Max Blumenthal and Joseph Dana,
3 March 2011
Courtesy Of "The Electronic Intifada"



When we released the now famous and censored video Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem, we were widely attacked and dismissed for daring to publicize footage of college-age Jewish kids behaving like racist fanatics while intoxicated. We argued that our footage revealed a deep sickness within Israeli society and among diaspora Jews who defined their Jewish identity according to extreme Zionist ideology ("Censored by the Huffington Post and Imprisoned By The Past: Why I Made 'Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem,'" 6 June 2009).

We insisted that Jews should focus their outrage not at us, but at the statements the subjects of our video made, and recognize the extent to which they echoed the rhetoric of leading Israeli politicians, military figures, pundits and rabbis.

In response, Ben Hartman claimed in Israel's Haaretz newspaper that we were "on a mission to humiliate the Jewish people" ("Jews gone wild: Why camcorders and booze don't mix," 11 June 2009).

American-born Israeli author Gershom Gorenberg argued on his blog that the statements of "a drunken kid in a bar" have no journalistic value, and therefore we were unprofessional ("Racism, Amalek and Videotape " 13 June 2009).

Gorenberg even asserted that because some of the people who appeared in our video were American, their racist opinions had no little or no connection to the Israeli situation. At the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Ron Kampeas, who has disclosed that he purchased an apartment with an Israeli-government subsidized loan in a Jewish colony in occupied East Jerusalem, wrote that it's "time for [Blumenthal] to grow up and put [his talents] to good use." ("Best take so far on Blumen-journalism," 5 June 2009).

Meanwhile, YouTube and Vimeo banned Feeling the Hate, while the Huffington Post's Roy Sekoff refused to allow us to publish it, claiming in an email that it had no "real news value," as though the soft core porn that accounted for the content on his and Arianna Huffington's (now AOL owned) site each day did.

A year and a half later, hate crimes carried out by Jewish youths against random Arabs are increasingly common in Jerusalem, and throughout Israel ("Never again? Elderly Palestinian women called "whores" on Yad Vashem tour, while racism explodes across Israel," 30 December 2010).

The most recent attack occurred on 11 February on King George Street, just blocks from the warren of seedy bars where we filmed Feeling the Hate. There, a group of drunken religious nationalist youths attacked Hussam Rwidy, a 24-year-old Palestinian from East Jerusalem, stabbing him while they allegedly chanted "Death to Arabs!" Rwidy and his friend, Murad Khader Joulani, staggered into a nearby restaurant drenched in blood and begging for help. Hours later, Rwidy was pronounced dead ("The final moments of the martyred Husam Rwidy," Wadi Hilweh Information Center -- Silwan, 20 February 2011).

What happened next was eerily familiar to us. After a media blackout imposed by the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security police, the Israeli media produced a series of articles dismissing the gravity of the murder ("Did Israeli media sideline racist motives in killing of Arab youth in Jerusalem?" 23 February 2011).

"A drunken brawl gone bad" was how several reports described the killing of Rwidy, parroting statements by the Jerusalem police that his death was the result of a fight. The two main assailants were initially indicted for manslaughter before overwhelming evidence forced Israeli government prosecutors to charge them with premeditated murder. As with the reaction by prominent Israeli media figures to Feeling the Hate, the racist behavior of Jewish nationalists was downplayed as a product of intoxication, if not dismissed altogether, while the incident was portrayed as an aberration. Any reflection about the trend of racial murders inside Israel was officially discouraged ("Murder of Palestinian highlights Israeli judicial discrimination," 972mag.com, 23 February 2011). And so the band plays on.

With Feeling the Hate, we edited an hour of footage into a four-minute video that focused on the hatred many Jewish nationalists in Israel and the United States felt towards President Barack Obama. Our unreleased footage contains statements by the same kids about Palestinians. The political science major who said "I know my shit" but didn't know who the Israeli prime minister was told us that the Palestinians should all be transferred to a small corner in the West Bank and kept there in a virtual cage. The boisterous young man with the mesh hat who remarked, "We don't want any Nazi shit, Obama!" defended Israeli Foreign Minister Avidgor Lieberman's proposal to strip citizenship from "disloyal" Palestinian citizens. These drunk kids in bars had a coherent, if very simplistic, ideological basis for their racism. It is called Jewish nationalism.

Because Jewish nationalism is an exclusivist project that defines everyone who exists outside the Zionist spectrum as a potential threat and an obstacle to the ultimate ambitions of Israel, racism directed against Obama and anti-Palestinian racism form a seamless thread. This thread connects automatically to the African and Asian migrant workers who Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called "a concrete threat to the Jewish and democratic character of the country" ("Netanyahu: Illegal African immigrants - a threat to Israel's Jewish character," Haaretz, 18 July 2010).

It is no coincidence that migrant workers in Israel are increasingly targeted alongside Palestinians in racist vigilante attacks. They are seeking a place in a country that views the removal of non-Jews from as much territory as it can gain control over as a national goal ("Police: Sudanese men stabbed by Israeli gang," Ynet, 12 February 2011).

While young rightists attack migrants in the street, the government may warehouse some migrant workers in what Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin has called a "concentration camp" in the Negev Desert (planners from the Israeli Prison Service described the camp as an "accommodation center" in official material) ("Knesset Speaker: Racist rabbi's letter shames the Jewish people," Haaretz, 9 December 2010).

Though Rivlin condemned the plan, he has simultaneously endorsed a $1.5 billion shekel proposal to build a wall along the border of Egypt. "The goal is to ensure Israel's Jewish and democratic nature," Netanyahu said about the proposed wall.

Tzipi Livni, former foreign minister and leader of the opposition Kadima Party, recently warned that an "evil spirit has been sweeping over the country" ("'Evil spirit' sweeping over Israel, warns opposition leader Tzipi Livni," The Guardian, 10 January 2011).

Her words rang hollow, not only because her party had co-sponsored many of the racist and anti-democratic bills winding their way through the Knesset (see "Can't we all just get along -- separately?" -- David Sheen's disturbing 24 February 2011 interview in Haaretz with Kadima lawmaker Shai Hermesh on the "Communities Acceptance Law"), but because she has personally fanned the flames of extremism through her words and actions.

After the Israeli assault on Gaza in winter 2008-2009, Livni boasted, "Israel demonstrated real hooliganism during the course of the recent operation, which I demanded" (I Lost Everything," Human Rights Watch, 10 May 2010).

She also praised the Israeli army for "going wild" in Gaza, as The Independent, reported on 13 January 2009 (Israeli cabinet divided over fresh Gaza surge").

Now that some Jewish Israelis are "going wild" against Palestinians inside Israel, and demonstrating "real hooliganism" in racial attacks, does the opposition leader think she has the moral authority to condemn them? If the hooliganism starts in Gaza, where will it end?

Last summer, while living off of Jerusalem's Ben Yehuda Street, we regularly taped interviews with locals. After the murder of Rwidy, we decided to compile some of those clips into a short video so viewers could get a sense of the atmosphere we lived in. Now everyone can meet a few of our neighbors, like the Birthright Israel alum who believes that if Palestinian resistance becomes too acute, "you gotta just annihilate them." Or the Canadian lone soldier who joined the Israeli Army's Kfir Brigade, a notoriously abusive unit that serves exclusively in the Occupied Territories, who believes he's defending the Jews "from terror, and such," and that there is no such thing as the occupation ("Kfir brigade leads in W. Bank violations,"Haaretz, 11 May 2008).

Living among droves of heavily indoctrinated extremists on Ben Yehuda Street was not always a pleasant experience. But then again, had either of us been a Palestinian, it might have been impossible. Though many might want to ignore this fact, after Rwidy's murder, it is increasingly hard to dismiss.

Joseph Dana is a writer based in Jaffa who has published in The Nation, Le Monde, The National, Alternet, Huffington Post, Haaretz and Al Jazeera English.

Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author. His articles and video documentaries have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Beast, The Nation, The Huffington Post, Salon.com, Al Jazeera English and many other publications. He is a writing fellow for the Nation Institute. His book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party, is a New York Times and Los Angeles Timesbestseller.