Israel, the Lovely Democracy-for-Jews-Only on the Mediterranean

If you're an Israeli Jewish citizen who speaks against your government's genocide in Gaza, you're OK. Israel is a self-declared "democracy for Jews only".

If you're an Israeli Palestinian citizen who speaks against your government's genocide in Gaza, you're charged of inciting terrorism, arrested, dragged into the fine Israeli one-eyed justice system and sent to jail. 

If you're a non-Israeli Palestinian citizen, regardless of whether or not you speak against the genocide in Gaza, even as you are living under one of the most Naziesque brutal occupation by a foreign army that wants to kill you, expel you, steal your land, and essentially drive you out of your ancestral land, then  any other Fascist practice successfully tested throughout history that the Zionists have not yet brought to bear on you will be applied to you.

The "democracy" of Israel is applying such innovative Fascist practices against its own, but second-class, Palestinian citizens who managed to avoid the ethnic cleansing of 1948 by staying in their homes and villages. Those of them who speak out against the genocide  of their own Palestinian brethren in Gaza are self-censoring (like people under oppression do in totalitarian countries like China and Russia) out of fear of being jailed, tortured, or subjected to all manner of daily life repression.

When you argue with a Zionist, he inevitably regurgitates the question, "If you're not happy with Israel, would you prefer to live in Saudi Arabia or Iran?", suggesting that life in the Jewish fundamentalist theocracy is somehow better that other Islamic fundamentalist theocracies.  One such Palestinian citizen of Israel, one Ahmed Khalifa, put this scintillating argument to the test. He was charged with inciting terrorism for chanting in solidarity with Gaza at an anti-war protest in October 2023.

Mr. Khalifa is a lawyer and city counselor in Umm al-Fahm, Israel's second-largest Palestinian city, one of the 1948 Palestinian areas of Israel. He says he spent three difficult months in jail followed by six months detained in an apartment. He's waiting for a final verdict from the fine Israeli justice-for-Jews-only system regarding his guilt or innocence. Until then, he's forbidden from leaving his home from dusk to dawn.

Khalifa is one of more than 400 Palestinian citizens of Israel who, since the start of the war in Gaza, have been investigated by police for “incitement to terrorism” or “incitement to violence,” according to Adalah, a legal rights group for minorities. More than half of those investigated were criminally charged or detained, Adalah said.

“Israel made it clear they see us more as enemies than as citizens,” Khalifa said in an interview at a cafe in his hometown. Israel has roughly 2 million Palestinian citizens, whose families remained within the borders of the territory (now called Israel) that was invaded and ethnically cleansed by hordes of European Jews in 1948.  These Palestinians were part of one nation, Palestine, that included Muslims and Christians, before the Jewish invading hordes separated them from their families and cultural ties with Gaza and the West Bank.

Israel claims that its Palestinian citizens enjoy equal rights, including the right to vote, and they are well-represented in many professions. However, Palestinians are widely discriminated against in areas like housing and the job market, and the Israeli Jewish Fascist government has opened hundreds of "incitement to terrorism" cases against Palestinian citizens since the genocide in Gaza began.

According to the "democratic" practices of the Jewish Fascist rulers, just being charged with incitement to terrorism or identifying with a terrorist group can land a suspect in detention until they're sentenced.

In addition to being charged as criminals, Palestinians citizens of Israel, who make up around 20% of the country’s population, have lost jobs, been suspended from schools and faced police interrogations for posting online or demonstrating.

“Anyone who tries to speak out about the war will be imprisoned and harassed in his work and education,” said Oumaya Jabareen, whose son was jailed for eight months after an anti-war protest. “People here are all afraid, afraid to say no to this war.” Fear experienced by the Palestinians in Israel is the same fear experienced by Jews in Europe before they were ethnically cleansed and expelled to invade Palestine. Simply put, European Christians assassinated their own Jewish citizens, and those that survived were sent "gotten rid of" by sending them aboard ships to Palestine where they displaced and continue to torment another people, the Palestinians.

Shortly after the Oct. 7 attack, Israel’s ultra-religious terrorist government moved quickly to invigorate a task force that has charged Palestinian citizens of Israel with “supporting terrorism” for posts online or protesting against the war. At around the same time, lawmakers amended a security bill to increase surveillance of online activity by Palestinians in Israel. These moves gave authorities more power to restrict freedom of expression and intensify their arrest campaigns.

The task force is led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, the fundamentalist terrorist settler now National Security Minister of the Fascist state of Israel. He oversees the police and his task force has monitored thousands of posts allegedly expressing support for Palestinian resistance organizations. His police proudly arrested “hundreds of terror supporters,” including public opinion leaders, social media influencers, religious figures, teachers and others. Activists and rights groups say the Jewish Fascist government has expanded its definition of incitement much too far, targeting legitimate opinions that are at the core of freedom of expression. Just like in the United States, the home of the freedom of expression, where protesting for Palestine has become punishable as "incitement" and support to terrorism.

Palestinian citizens have been charged for seemingly innocuous things like sending a meme of a captured Israeli tank in Gaza in a private WhatsApp group chat. Another person was charged for posting a collage of children’s photos, captioned in Arabic and English: “Where were the people calling for humanity when we were killed?” The feminist activist group Kayan said over 600 women called its hotline because of blowback in the workplace for speaking out against the war or just mentioning it unfavorably.

Over the summer, around two dozen anti-war Palestinian Israeli protesters in the port city of Haifa were only allowed to finish three chants before police forcefully clubbed them and chased them, making several arrests. Yet tens of thousands of Jewish Israelis protest regularly for the same reasons in Tel Aviv and are ignored.

Khalifa, the city counselor, is not convinced the crackdown on speech will end, even if the war eventually does.The Fascist government is now trying to disbar him, and he faces up to eight years in prison. The double standard of the "democracy-for-Jews-only" and the "only democracy in the entire East" as Zionists keep trumpeting to credulous, ignorant and colluding Westerners who swallow the bullshit wholesale.