Perhaps you have heard about the strange campaign ad recently released by Israel’s Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked. It describes her favorite perfume
called Fascism. But she believes it smells like Democracy.
I am posting a copy of the ad with accompanying English translation below. Take a look:
Throughout her political career, Shaked has objected whenever the Supreme Court has (periodically) defended the civil rights of Israel’s Palestinian citizens.
She despises “liberal” activists who condemn Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and described all Palestinians as inherently violent people who deserve to be eradicated.
She was a prominent advocate for Israel’s recently approved Jewish Nation-
State Law which explicitly defines Israel as a state of, for and by Jews and Jews alone.
In other words, Shaked’s ad is mocking anyone who fails to understand what has, in fact, always been the truth about Israel — Israel’s political Zionism provides democracy for its Jewish population and no one else.
At least Shaked has the cajones to discard political double-speak. Unlike most politicians, she says what she means.
George Orwell once wrote that “political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Nothing embodies Orwell’s maxim on the political abuse of language more graphically than Zionism’s stranglehold on the definition of “acceptable discourse” concerning Israel.
Take, for instance, Israel’s insistence on referring to itself as the only democracy in the Middle East.
Shaked believes in that lie as much as any successful politician in Israel. It’s a given. What sets her apart however is her willingness to say what she actually means, what in fact every Zionist politician means by those words.
Israel has never been a democracy for all its citizens. But that stark reality has always been obscured by the smoke and mirrors of Zionist propaganda and its successful redefinition of words like democracy.
Shaked, on the other hand, is a rare phenomenon: she is an honest Zionist.
She has publicly declared that if genuine democracy (e.g. equal treatment for everyone before the law) happens to threaten Zionist Israel’s status as an exclusively Jewish state populated and governed by a Jewish majority (which it certainly does), then Israel must give up its pretense of democracy.
That is the point of her ad. And, even though few will admit to it, that is why her ad has caused such a stir within Israel and around the world.
Shaked is not playing the traditional Zionist word-games. And for that, at least, I admire her.
She presents the ugly face of political Zionism for what it is: a mask.
It may be a lovely mask for Israel’s Jewish majority – just as Shaked could be a model if she wanted a new career – but for Israel’s Palestinian minority, Zionism has always meant fascism.
year, in order to celebrate the anniversary of their Great March of Return rallies protesting their 12 year confinement.
Over the past twelve months, the Israeli army has murdered 194 people, including women, children (41), medics (3) and journalists (2).
Israeli self-defense.
almost. The United Nations recently released 
arsenal. If you can’t dispute the facts, attack the messenger knowing full well that your fellow bullies will eagerly join you in the fray.
failed. I say this not because of any glaring flaws in any of those ideas (in theory any of them could potentially work in an alternate universe), but because we are hurtling towards extinction in the fairly near future, and none of them have saved us.”
America where false teachers like Robert Jeffress (pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, TX and ‘spiritual advisor’ to the president) parade themselves on national television spouting the false gospel of Christian nationalism, and the church’s identity with Republican party politics. (You can watch his most recent 9 minute appearance on Fox News 
forces around the world.
delicate negotiations with the Palestinian Authority (the group that governs the West Bank) to form a unity government. Jeopardizing those negotiations with such a senseless stunt, knowing that it would bring down the wrath of Israel, made no sense at all. (By the way, Israel’s government at that time hated the idea of a unified Palestinian government.)
transportation to Hebron, but every effort failed. Reports were circulating about gangs of Jewish settlers roaming the streets, together with the soldiers, attacking Palestinian cars and pedestrians. No one was willing to drive us.
shredded. All foodstuffs were torn from their bags or containers and strewn everywhere.
both families were forced to watch their belongings go up in smoke. Once the soldiers left, they were free to put out the fires as best they could.
Imagine that you are awakened late one night by soldiers kicking down your front door. Your children are pulled out of their beds and everyone is made to sit at the kitchen table.
not in the media.
LGBTQ people in the same way that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination against African-Americans.
debate:
people they don’t like, or don’t agree with, or see as the unclean enemies of their beloved Christian civilization. Let’s get real – many evangelicals are homophobes (though I do not like that term). They don’t want anyone telling them that they must accept gay/transgendered people as equally human with the same dignity as anyone else, whether in the workplace, at school or anywhere else.
discrimination against the surrounding community. Why should the church’s neighbors be required to pay more for their community services (which is what happens) in the way of a public subsidy for the tax-exempt churches, which most of them don’t attend anyway?
I recently discovered a CNBC interview and a short film in which she argues for the importance of higher taxes on the top 1% of Americans. This, obviously, includes her and her family fortune.
