The fascists have arrived

“In their fight against the “rotten” Israeli democracy, the settlers have adopted the Holocaust symbols. They are ostentatiously wearing the Yellow Star that was imposed by the Nazis on the Jews before their extermination, only substituting orange for yellow. They inscribe their forearm with their identity number, like the numbers the Nazis tattooed on the Auschwitz prisoners. They call the government the “Judenrat”, after the Jewish councils appointed by the Nazis in the ghettoes, and liken the evacuation of the settlers from Gush Katif to the deportation of the Jews to the death camps. All this live on television.”

Welcome to Israel, 2005. Uri Avnery warns that the current protests, intimidation and violence by fanatical settlers is “an attempt to overturn by force the democratic system itself.”

Let there be no mistake. This is the result of nearly 40 years of governmental support for a movement based on racial superiority, discrimination, hatred of Arabs and a God-given right to the land. Let’s not say we have no idea from whence this comes.

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