If there was one case which demonstrates why Israel is a racist state and why Zionism is a racist endeavour, then this is it. You don’t need to have a great understanding of Israel’s laws, policies or regulations. Nowhere in Israeli law is it written down that a lynch mob that brutally murders a defenceless asylum seeker should receive a community sentence or a derisory prison sentence but Israel’s ‘justice’ system doesn’t need to be told what to do.
It comes automatically for Israel’s courts to sentence someone according to their ethnic origin and to make excuses for attacks on Palestinians or non-Jews. That is, after all, what a racist state is all about. When Palestinians are murdered they are just a statistic. When a Jewish settler is killed, note I don’t say murdered, then we hear about their family, their children, how wonderful they were, their sense of humour etc. Palestinians however do not have children or personalities.
Palestinian attacks on Israeli occupiers of their land are acts of ‘terrorism’ for which life sentences of 30 or more years are passed, but the brutal slaying of someone whose only crime was to have escaped repression in his home country of Eritrea, falsely believing Israel’s claims to be a democratic state, is dealt with as if it were a traffic misdemeanour.
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However when a year ago, Ahed Tamimi, a 16 year old Palestinian girl, slapped a heavily armed soldier who entered the grounds of her house in Bi’ilin, moments after her 15 year old cousin had nearly had his head blown off by a plastic bullet, she was given 8 months in prison by a military court.
No doubt the Zionists will find some base propaganda reason for the disparity in sentences. Adam Langleben of the Jewish Labour Movement will no doubt treat my criticism as ‘anti-Semitism’ as will Jack Mendel of the Jewish News.
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After all it well understood in Israel, because the Rabbis have often given expression to it, that a Jewish and non-Jewish life are not the same. In the wordsof Rabbi Dov Lior, the Chief Rabbi for Kiryat Arab and effectively the Jewish settlers, a Jewish fingernail is worth more than a thousand non-Jewish lives (for some rabbis it is a million to one ratio). According toformer Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu "the life of one yeshiva boy is worth more than the lives of 1,000 Arabs.”
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| Momentum's racist head Jon Lansman is obsessed by a non-existent anti-semitism whilst ignoring a state based on lynch law and entrenched discrimination |
In prioritising ‘anti-Semitism’ which barely exists over the very real situation of Apartheid violence in Israel Lansman is doing no more nor less than what the Labour Party has done historically, which is to give a free pass to the British Empire and colonialism. The Labour Party’s opposition to Apartheid in South Africa was very recent and its opposition to colonialism was even more recent. Lansman stands in a rich, racist tradition as do supporters of his in Momentum.
Lansman and the Jewish Labour Movement will dismiss all this as ‘anti-Semitism’ but we all know the smell of Apartheid. The veterans of the Apartheid struggle in South Africa certainly do.
Labour’s National Executive and the 150+ Councils up and down the country, to say nothing of the SNP government in Edinburgh are all accomplices in Israeli Apartheid and that should be our message for the coming year.
Tony Greenstein
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Defendant admitted to abusing a helpless person as part of plea deal reached last month. Nine people assaulted in 2015 an Eritrean asylum seeker they mistook for a terrorist who opened fire at a bus station
An Israeli man convicted of assaulting an Eritrean asylum seeker mistaken for a terrorist in 2015 was sentenced on Tuesday to four months in prison.
Haftom Zarhum died following a beating at the central bus station in the southern city of Be'er Sheva, but an autopsy of his body showed that he died of gunshots and not of the assault by nine people.
Be'er Shvea District Court sentenced the attacker, Evyatar Damari, who admitted to abusing a helpless person as part of a plea agreement reached last month and approved by the court.
At a hearing in the case last month, Damari told the court that he regretted his actions and would not repeat them.
On October 18, 2015, a gunman later identified as Muhannad al-Okbi, a Bedouin from the Negev town of Hura who is an Israeli citizen, opened fire at the Be'er Sheva central bus station, killing a soldier and wounding 10 other people. Damari and eight others attacked Zarhum, mistakenly thinking he was the terrorist.
Security camera footage showed Damari kicking Zarhum after he had been shot. The prosecution in the case had initially sought to have Damari tried for aggravated intentional infliction of personal injury, which if convicted, could have had him sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.
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Haftom Zarhum, who was killed by a mob wrongly suspecting him of terrorism on Monday, Oct. 19, 2015. |
Damari is in a poor emotional state and has deteriorated while his case has been pending. Two months ago, he threatened a member of the prosecution team in his case, prompting additional charges against him and an order that he remain in detention until that case is disposed of.
His lawyer, Moshe Sorogovich, had asked the court to limit his client's sentence to just over a month at most and cited the case of another of Zarhum's assailants at the bus station, David Moyal, who in July was sentenced in a plea agreement to 100 days of community service. Moyal had hit Zarhum with a bench. In addition to Damari and Moyal, two others were charged with assaulting Zarhum: A Golani brigade soldier by the name of Ya'akov Shamba and a prison service employee, Ronen Cohen.
The cases against Shamba and Cohen are still pending. At the trial of Shamba's case last month, two former Israeli army major generals testified that under the circumstances, in the midst of a terrorist attack, Shamba had acted in a level-headed manner as would have been expected of a combat soldier.