This is a translation of Yossi Gurvitz’s post published in Hachaverim shel George (George’s Friends) blog.
I guess there is no debate about “scum.” But is Ayelet Shaked a neo-Nazi?
Yesterday (Monday) the earth trembled: Hebrew University Professor Ofer Cassif published a Facebook status calling Minister of Justice, Ayelet Shaked, “neo-Nazi scum.” Cassif, to his credit, refused to retract his statements. Therefore, we should examine: Is Ayelet Shaked is a neo-Nazi scum?
The scum part is fairly easy. The answer is clearly yes. Shaked lives off of spreading hate. In 2014, as a Knesset member, she published a status claiming that Muslims had set fire to a Jewish cemetery. It was a lie. She was forced to erase it and half-heatedly deny the blood-libel. Notice the timing: early July 2014, just before Operation Protective Edge, but after the three boys and Muhammad Abu Khdeir had been murdered. Everything was burning and Ayelet Shaked had to stoke the fire.
To be sure, Shaked has not learned from her mistake. In August 2015 – now as Minister of Justice, she published a video clip which, according to her showed a “Sudanese refugee attack a girl in the center of Tel Aviv.” Again, the timing is crucial: this was the day before the High Court – the top of the legal pyramid that Shaked, as Minister of Justice, is responsible to defend – issued its ruling on the third version of the concentration camps for refugees Law. Once again, Shaked published a blood libel: the video which allegedly was taken in the center of Tel Aviv was in fact filmed in Turkey. Shaked erased it, but neither apologized nor explained.
We should remember that Shaked began her career disseminating photos of the Fogel family massacre. The Yesha Council did not want to dirty its hands with these photos, so it contracted Shaked’s advocacy group My Israel (Yisrael Sheli) to do the dirty job for it.
So, Ayelet Shaked is a serial distributor of hatred, and as such the nickname “scum” is certainly suitable to describe her. But is Israel’s justice minister a neo-Nazi?
It is time to conduct a public debate about this question. I believe she is a neo-Nazi, but it is plausible to imagine decent people who think otherwise. Let us present prosecution exhibit No. 1.
On July 1, 2014 Shaked posted on her Facebook page an article Uri Elitzur had written a dozen years earlier a post. The timing – the day before Abu Khdeir’s murder. Why did the article provoke such an outcry? Because it included the following text: [Original Translation: Electronic Intifada]
And in our war this is sevenfold more correct, because the enemy soldiers hide out among the population, and it is only through its support that they can fight. Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. Actors in the war are those who incite in mosques, who write the murderous curricula for schools, who give shelter, who provide vehicles, and all those who honor and give them their moral support. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.
On its face, this article calls for genocide. Uri Elitzur had enough sense to shelve it. Shaked had to publish it in early July 2014.
As usual, Shaked erased the post after the outcry began. But it was nonetheless saved.
So, once again, at the epic of tension, when any sane person would try to lower the flames, Ayelet Shaked published a call that smells of a call to genocide. She attributes it to Uri Elitzur, but concedes that he had shelved the article and in any case, it was (not) published 12 years prior.
So is Ayelet Shaked a neo-Nazi? I do not know, but if the term “neo-Nazi” means “a person who holds Nazi-like views after the Nazi party had been outlawed,” Ayelet Shaked seems suspiciously fitting this definition. It is certainly unpleasant, perhaps embarrassing, but if this is true, we should be honest about it.
By the way, one more remarkable argument. Recently Shaked expressed dissatisfaction that the Hilltop Settler Wedding video was broadcast. It doesn’t make us look good in the world, she said.
You know what, Ayelet, there are other things that make us look bad in the international arena. For example, the speech of an Irish lawmaker quoting Israel’s Justice Minister speaking about what suspiciously sounds like call for a genocide. Watch minute 4:24
So please do inform me Ayelet about damaging Israel’s image abroad. But before that, if you may, please answer one question: Are you a neo-Nazi?
[su_youtube url=”https://youtu.be/jHejuqu1o4c” width=”500″ height=”200″]
I must admit a strong disinclination to characterizing contemporary figures as Nazi or neo-Nazi, unless they so self-identify. While I appreciate that the general tone of political discourse these days is not particularly elevated, this certainly doesn’t help matters. Rather like stoking the fires at a moment of high tension, which the author properly criticizes in his comments on Shaked.
I think our vocabularies are rich enough to properly castigate Shaked without resorting to this language, which also serves to legitimate other troublesome uses of these labels.
I’m not understanding any of this. Where is she calling for genocide? Her statements are factually correct and corroborated by numerous videos of Arabs teaching children to hate and kills Jews, and rewarding those that do so.
Neo-nazis are those that support the movement of the nazi Haj Amin al Husseini, as well as those that slander the ones that resist it.
http://forward.com/news/israel/170451/palestinian-textbooks-dont-vilify-jews-new-study-r/
and Husseini was a British Stooge and regarded as such among Palestinians.
If you can’t see the incitement to genocide, you need to read again.
Well — though I reject calling Israeli politicians “Nazis” because it white washes the perpetrators of the Holocaust — I agree with the sentiment behind Professor Ofer Cassif’s statement that Shaked is a liar, a narcissist, a racist, a demagogue who irresponsibly and cynically stokes violence and hatred (all traits she shares with Nazis and with many other disgusting, destructive, racist and sadistic demagogues). Perhaps, Professor Cassif, we could create a new term: Shakedism to mean: “Lying, narcissistic, violence and hatred-mongering, racist, demagogues”.
Sorry to the many other people whose last name is Shaked, though!
I hold with Alan on this neo-Nazi label. But in her callous disregard of whom she labels “terrorists” deserving of death, Shaked appears to be advocating war crimes.
What more appropriate term is there for modern, fascistic state practitioners of genocide, (as defined in Article 6, Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court) ?
Please note : genocide, being a crime, has its definition found in law books, not in dictionaries of common useage, no matter how convenient they are for accomplices of state practitioners of genocide.
Psychopathy must be unmasked. Let this not turn Professor Cassif’s courageous move into a linguistic discussion. Unmasking psychhopathy is the first and essential step in dealing with it. So whatever name we call Ayelet Shaked’s actions, positions and manipulations, they are psychopathic. Politicians can be psychopathic as politicians without being diagnosed as such by a clinician. People can be psychopathic in some areas of their lives and appear not to be that in others through the primitive psychological defense mechanism of compartamentalism (a term which is also used to speak of a normal defense mechanism but I am using it here to mean the primitive one). This is what enabled concentration camp guards and officers commit unspeakable crimes during the day and then go home and have a “normal” dinner with their families.
So, by whatever name we want to call it, I think it is time to recognize that narcissists and political psychopaths have conquered the positions of power in Israel, and that is not just Shaked , but it is from Netanyahu and on to the politicians to his Right, the settler movement, their funders, ideologues and cultic leaders. The silent majority are demoralized and resigned to the constant corruption. It is easy to see psychopathic politics when they were in Uganda or Argentina, but it is hard to look in the mirror and see that in Israel, it is not only Shaked. It is pervasive. It needs to be unmasked. I am glad that Professor Cassif did it and is sticking to his position. Yes we need to stop bandying the term Nazi (which the Right in Israel always hurls against humanist Israelis, by the way). Neo-Nazi rather fits but continues to encourage the use of the word “Nazi”. However, “psychopathic” “fascist” and “mafia” seem to me appropriate words to describe what Ayalet Shaked is doing and promoting. I think that calling her Minister of Justice is a perversion of that office. But it is the Israeli electorate that is at fault for voting for such parties and allowing this to happen. It is the opposition leaders of all types who have the responsibility to unite powerfully and denounce Israel’s slide into fascism — and replace it with a humanistic and democratic government.
[…] Ms. Shaked, as a member of the Knesset, had, among other things, likened Palestinian children to “little snakes”, claimed “all” Palestinians were to be viewed as “enemy combatants”, and subsequently […]