… rogue state .. terrorist state .. apartheid state .. racist state .. Jewish supremacist state .. genocidal state … colonial settler state … beachhead for imperialism in the middle east .. As judgments on Israel go, these are all fair and accurate.
(Though as Noam Chomsky reminds us, unlike apartheid South Africa, which needed its black subjects for their labour power, the now nakedly revealed mission of the settler state is the eradication of the indigenous people whose land it occupies. So “apartheid state” actually praises Israel with faint damnation)
But none of these descriptors – with the part exceptions of Chomsky’s, and the beachhead of Stephen Gowans coinage – shed light on the political economy of Israel. Which is where Shir Hever comes in. Born and raised in Israel before renouncing citizenship there, and married to a fellow Jew whose public support for Palestine saw her targeted by a German State intent on atoning for one genocide by abetting another, Shir is an expert on the subject. His measured contempt for the Zionist project is unmistakeable, but he exudes a maturity and calm beyond his years in reply to Ali Abunimah’s on-point but prolix questioning, and the pithier but sadly less frequent interjections of Ali’s Electronic Intifada colleague, Nora Barrows-Friedman.
The gripes of a grumpy old man aside, this 69 minute video is packed with compelling detail, while at no point losing the bigger picture of a racist state hurtling towards its own collapse.
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