Where does this Israeli far right, whose members serve in the Netanyahu government and perpetrate genocide, originate? An overview of these movements, their histories, their connections in the colonial metropolises, and their relationship with Zionism. ---- At the origins of the Zionist right lies Vladimir Jabotinsky, a Russian Jew who joined the Zionist movement in 1903. During the First World War, he founded Jewish battalion divisions where he served as a lieutenant, and was later elected to the World Zionist Organization in 1921. He opposed the exclusion of Transjordan from the "Jewish national home"[1]zone, which was designated to accommodate Jewish settlers, a decision ratified by Chaim Weizman, then head of the World Zionist Organization (WZO). In 1923, he left the leadership of the OSM and theorized the creation of a "wall of steel," namely an armed Jewish legion to oppose the Arabs, convinced that land purchases would not be enough to achieve dominance and that the Palestinian population would resist. He founded the Revisionist Party in 1925 in the Latin Quarter, which advocated for the creation of a Jewish state on both banks of the Jordan River, as well as economic liberalism and democracy.
The First Fascist Groups
It was from the ranks of the Revisionist Party that the Irgun (precursor to Likud) was created during the Palestinian uprising of 1936-1939. Around the party, movements and militias with fascist tendencies began to emerge, such as the Brit HaBirionim group, a Zionist group created in 1931 whose leader, Haba Haimer, believed there was some "good" in Hitler. Jabotinsky, despite this, never broke with him. Torn between rejection and admiration for Mussolini, Jabotinsky, with the Duce's approval, created the Betar Naval Academy in 1934, which participated in the Italo-Ethiopian War.
Caption: The Jewish Defense League (JDL) is an anti-Arab, Islamophobic, racist, and fascist organization.
Source: Wikimedia/Zantastik
The Irgun and Lehi/Stern Group (a splinter group of the Irgun) militias fought against the British during World War II to oppose the 1939 British White Paper, which restricted immigration to Palestine. To this end, Lehi adopted some of the tenets of the British White Paper and even went so far as to meet with emissaries of the Reich to propose collaboration with the Nazis against the British.[2]They committed numerous attacks, the 1946 King David Hotel bombing being the deadliest, and assassinations such as that of Count Bernadotte (while their leader Yitzhak Shamir, future Prime Minister, and all their successors would later proclaim themselves champions of the fight against terrorism). During the Nakba, the Irgun and Lehi militias participated in numerous massacres, notably that of Deir Yassin, which contributed to accelerating the expulsion of Palestinians. The Irgun always considered the withdrawal of Transjordan from their territorial ambitions as a trade that already constituted the creation of a Palestinian state...
Gradual Conquest of Power
Since the Six-Day War and the beginning of the colonization of the occupied territories, the religious Zionist movement, previously a small group, has steadily grown, supported by left-wing Zionist governments to drive colonization.
Caption: On July 22, 1946, during the British Mandate for Palestine, members of the Irgun, disguised as Arab hotel employees, entered the King David Hotel with explosives hidden in milk cans and detonated them.
Source: DR
Current far-right tendencies are divided between secular and religious factions. They share a common demand for the transfer of the Palestinians of 1948 (who are Israeli citizens), perceived as a fifth column, a demographic threat. In the early 2010s, Yisrael Beytenu ("Israel Our Home"), a secular far-right party led by Avigdor Lieberman, participated in several governing coalitions with Netanyahu, and its leader became Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2016. He favors transferring territories to Palestinians to maintain the Jewish population. This is not the case with the "Jewish Home," the party of religious Zionist settlers, which merged into the "National Religious Party," from which Bezalel Smotrich, the current Minister of Finance and Defense, hails. Smotrich is supported by those who have always opposed the 2005 Gaza withdrawal ordered by Ariel Sharon. It is the supporters of all these movements who are waging the genocidal war in Gaza and who have blocked humanitarian aid convoys. They subscribe to the ideal of "Greater Israel," which includes the annexation of Gaza and the West Bank, as well as the transfer of Palestinians. The "Jewish Power" movement, which emerged in 2012 after a surprise victory in the 2022 elections, allied itself with Likud, and its leader, Itamar Ben-Gvir, became Minister of National Security. He emerged from one of the most radical movements, Kahanism (named after its founder, Meir Kahane), the same movement that produced Baruch Goldstein, responsible for the 1994 Hebron massacre, which left 29 dead. Some of the most fundamentalist members consider Eretz Israel to extend from the Nile to the Euphrates, following the biblical settlement area, a perspective sometimes adopted, including by Netanyahu...
The Zionist far right outside the West
Meir Kahane founded the Jewish Defense Leagues (JDL) in the United States in 1968. These groups are considered terrorist organizations and are banned in both Israel and the US. The one founded in France has never been banned and has sometimes collaborated with the Jewish Community Protection Service (the CRIF's security service)[3]. Many of its members participate in ongoing genocides, voluntarily perform their military service in the IDF in occupied territories, or settle in the settlements. In France, the LDJ forged links in the 2000s and 2010s with the Identitarians, Riposte Laïque, and the National Front...
In the United States, Christian Zionists (historically a Protestant movement known as "restorationist," which included important figures in the development of the Zionist project such as William Hechler[4]and Lord Balfour), stemming from conservative evangelical currents, have long maintained ties with Israel, dating back to the 1970s, notably the televangelist Jerry Falwell with Menachem Begin, former Prime Minister. These Christian Zionist communities, themselves antisemitic, were very active around Bush in the early 2000s, during his alliance with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the "war on terror," echoing the clash of civilizations theory still used by Netanyahu today, and facilitating connections between the right and far right worldwide. Trump's alliances with these Christian Zionist movements are part of this continuum.
Fascism, always with colonial roots
But as we have seen, the matrix of all these fascist tendencies stems from initial colonial Zionism. While they may oppose left-wing tendencies on economic choices or methods, the same colonial foundation is shared: that of a state where Jews must remain the majority, which sees itself as the vanguard of civilization, and where colonial settlements are not questioned. The Labor Party and the right wing have often collaborated in the same crimes throughout history (the repression of the 1936 Palestinian general strike[5], the Nakba, etc.) and continue to do so today (Yair Golan, leader of the Labor Party and a general, is participating in the current genocide and declared on October 13, 2023, "As long as the hostages are not released, you can starve to death; it is perfectly legitimate").
Caption: The Betar Naval Academy is a Jewish naval school established in Civitavecchia in 1934 by the Revisionist Zionist movement under the leadership of Vladimir Jabotinsky (center, holding a cane), with the support of Mussolini.
Source: Government Press Office Israeli
The Israeli far right is therefore not only the result of conservative ideologies but also of a political regime, Zionism, which has a free hand with Western imperialists. If French members of the Jewish Defense League (LDJ) can settle in the colonies and serve in an occupying army for decades, it is thanks to the tolerance of the French state. If religious evangelicals can finance a colonization on a larger scale than the Israeli state itself, it is thanks to imperialist laissez-faire.
Fascisms must be fought with an avowed anti-colonial and anti-imperialist solidarity. Anti-Zionism stems from this anti-colonialism: Zionism is not a project of self-determination or liberation, as is sometimes heard on the left, but a colonial, nationalist, and racial regime. The problem is not solely the Israeli far right, but the colonial and apartheid regime of which it is a product-its most brutal form, not an anomaly.
Nicolas Pasadena (UCL Anti-Racism Commission)
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[1]Decreed during the Balfour Declaration of 1917 by the British Foreign Office.
[2]"1940-1941: The Dubious Philosophy of Mr. Itzhak Shamir," Le Monde diplomatique, December 1983.
[3]"We are the hardline version, they are the softline version[...]people like the vice-president of the CRIF are very close to us. They even help us financially." "The LDJ, a Controversial 'Militia'," Dernières nouvelles d'Alsace, July 30, 2014.
[4]A Christian restorationist, friend and advisor to Theodor Herzl, this multilingual missionary used his diplomatic network to meet with various European potentates (Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Tsar of Russia, etc.) in order to "sell" them the Zionist project.
[5]The Histadrut, a Zionist trade union created by David Ben-Gurion, in conjunction with the Irgun, attempted to break the Palestinian general strike of 1936.
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Israel-Aux-racines-de-l-extreme-droite-sioniste
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Link: (en) France, UCL AL #367 - Antifascism - Israel: At the Roots of the Zionist Far Right (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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