Israeli mob chants for genocide in Jerusalem

Tamara Nassar Rights and Accountability 16 June 2021

A large group of flag-carrying Israelis gathers outside Damascus gate

Israelis shouting racist slogans rally at Damascus Gate to assert their control over occupied East Jerusalem, 15 June.

Baraah Abo Ramouz APA images

Thousands of Israeli Jewish nationalists marched through Jerusalem chanting racist and genocidal slogans against Palestinians on Tuesday.

This was part of an annual “March of the Flags” by far-right Israeli Jews to celebrate Israel’s occupation and colonization of East Jerusalem.

Like in previous years, the mob waving Israeli flags spewed racist and genocidal slogans against Palestinians and denigrated the Prophet Muhammad.

The march was originally planned for 10 May, Israel’s so-called Jerusalem Day, but was canceled due to the strength of protests by Palestinians which forced Israel into a humiliating retreat.

Rescheduled for Tuesday, it was kept to a highly restricted route.

While the fanatical mob danced and chanted at Jerusalem’s iconic Damascus Gate, the route approved by police did not allow them to enter the narrow alleys of the Old City’s Muslim Quarter as they have in previous years.

Nonetheless a few dozen did enter the Old City.

Palestinians hailed the severe restrictions imposed by Israel as victory for the deterrence they established when resistance factions in Gaza fired rockets towards Jerusalem last month.

The rocket fire was intended to defend the city’s Palestinian population against escalating Israeli attacks and ethnic cleansing.

“The brave positions and decisions of the Palestinian resistance forced the Israeli occupation to change the path of the route away from al-Aqsa mosque, change the civil air routes and beef up the deployment of the Iron Dome,” Hamas said in response to Tuesday’s march.

Genocidal chants

Videos shot by journalists documented the genocidal slogans that the mob – many apparently teenagers and children – chanted.

On Tuesday, as Israelis have on many previous occasions, the mob chanted mavet la aravim – “Death to the Arabs.”

Participants also chanted “Shuafat is burning” – a reference to a Palestinian neighborhood – and “May your village burn.”
Expressing their religious, as well as their ethnic hatred, participants frequently chanted “Muhammad is dead,” to denigrate the prophet of Islam and the faith of Muslims.
They were also heard singing a genocidal song documented in previous Jerusalem Day marches.
Some in the mob shouted filthy expletives at journalists, including Suleiman Masudeh, a reporter for Israel’s state broadcaster Kann.

Masudeh documented the participants shouting homophobic slogans at journalists, and telling them to “Go work for the Arabs.” He said the crowd was particularly vile towards Arab journalists.

When Palestinians tried to raise their own flag, they were attacked by Israeli forces and their flags confiscated.

Participation of politicians

Israeli police deployed around 2,000 officers to protect and guard the racist mob.

Israel’s new government supported holding the march and several prominent Israeli politicians joined it.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, an extreme-right Israeli lawmaker, was warmly greeted by the mob as he arrived.

Israeli media recently circulated 1995 footage of Ben-Gvir dressed up for the Jewish holiday of Purim as Baruch Goldstein, the Jewish settler from Brooklyn who shot to death 29 Palestinian men and boys as they prayed during Ramadan the year before.

Oren Hazan, a Likud Party lawmaker who once released a campaign ad depicting himself killing a Palestinian lawmaker, was seen at the march:

PR damage control

Scenes of the racist mob circulated rapidly on social media, embarrassing Israel and its lobby.

Avi Mayer, the global communications chief for major Israel lobby group the American Jewish Committee, tried to limit the damage by acknowledging the “despicable hate” on display.

This is a notable change of tune for Mayer, whom The Electronic Intifada previously documented personally attending and whitewashing at least one “Death to the Arabs” rally.

Yair Lapid, Israel’s alternate prime minister and foreign minister, said the march “had to be approved” and applauded the “excellent” management of the event.

Lapid then attempted to whitewash Israel by lamenting “that there are extremist elements for whom the Israeli flag represents hatred and racism” – as if racism and violence against Palestinians are not foundational to Zionism, Israel’s state ideology.

Israel bombs Gaza again

Israel’s 11-day bombing campaign in Gaza in May came amid similar provocations by Israeli forces and settlers in Jerusalem.

While Israeli police approved Tuesday’s march, they rerouted it so that the mob would not enter the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Hamas, the political and resistance organization running the interior of the Gaza Strip, had warned that renewed attacks on Palestinians in Jerusalem could endanger the fragile ceasefire.

Its military wing, the Qassam Brigades, urged Palestinians in Jerusalem to confront the march and defend the city.

Following confirmation that the march would take place, Palestinians in Gaza burned tires near the boundary fence with Israel and launched incendiary balloons in protest.

Israel bombed what it said were several Hamas targets in the southern Gaza Strip late Tuesday night, presenting its renewed attacks on the besieged enclave as a response to the incendiary balloons.

As Palestinians attempted to clean the Damascus Gate area after the march, Israeli forces attacked them and confiscated their brooms.

Israeli media reported that more than a dozen Palestinians were arrested by Israeli forces.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society reported almost 90 Palestinian injuries on Tuesday, more than half of them in and around Jerusalem.

Ali Abunimah contributed reporting and translations.

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Comments

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Frank Dallas replied on

This kind of fanaticism is the product of years of indoctrination. What are these people defending? As ever, they uphold the myths which the followers of Herzl can't let go; but these myths are allied to an intense and irrational hatred which can lead nowhere but self-destruction. Nothing could be more disheartening than to see Jews hailing racial hatred as triumph; they who have suffered at the hands of the very unhinged racism they now embrace. Hatred of this kind has no natural cause. It has to be deliberately cultivated and thinking has to be channelled into perversity in order to maintain this level of baseless loathing. That these marchers imagine there is a rational cause of their attitude betrays the efficiency of the Israeli propaganda machine. Amongst them are children who haven't been permitted to question and to evolve their own view of the world. What is exhibited is the opposite of thinking. All this is appalling for the Palestinians but disastrous too for Israelis. No society which insists on controlling thinking to this degree can elaborate democratic institutions and intellectual openness. Israel is turning itself into a closed society where the hatred in engenders is returning in fierce and bitter internal rivalries. Held aloft by its apologists in the rich countries as an example of democracy and modernity, it is on the one hand a handy site for capital investment and on the other a sham democracy whose fear of free debate will destroy it. Thinking is natural. Sensible cultures encourage it and have no fear of questioning. A culture grows stronger by being able to withstand criticism. A culture which can subsist only by generating murderous hatred, is a culture with no future.

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blue prince replied on

The mobs are just as bad as the Nazis in the 1930's and '40's that sent Jews to the death camps in Europe. Genocide is genocide no matter who commits it and no matter who advocates it.
Israel's never ending war in Gaza is an attempt at genocide. It will only end the war with the USA pressuring Israel to end it but the US will not do that and will keep funding Israel's military and economy.
The USA's never ending wars in S Asia and the ME are also attempts at genocide. The US and Israel will keep killing people there and settle there unless the environment there is so damaged that it is ninhabitable.

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Peter Purich replied on

Wow. Killing children and now confiscate brooms. Brooms! Bombing - under cover of darkness, no less - because of balloons.

Steadfastness Palestine!

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blue prince replied on

They can't kill anyone with brooms. They know witches won't come out and use them to fly and cast spells.

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Stefano R. Baldari replied on

What is being written in this article by Tamara Nassar, and seen on video, is the undiluted, unvarnished, wholly exposed face of fanatical white supremacist "...Israeli Jewish [Zionist] nationalists...." These types of demonstrations, though they're never reported or seen on U.S. sponsored corporate MSM media, are fairly typical occurrences and not unusual at all.
The spewing out of hate, violence, mayhem, murder, and genocide by these demonstrators is what Zionism is--a pathological ideology. Occupied Palestine (Israel) was, is, and will always be an extremely sick and twisted society. This is a society/illegitimate nation that will one day implode of its own sickness and when it does the world will be far better off.

Tamara Nassar

Tamara Nassar is an assistant editor at The Electronic Intifada.