In her youth, over two consecutive summers, an Argentine filmmaker friend traveled to work as a volunteer on an Israeli kibbutz. Her leftist parents had sent her there to learn socialism, firsthand. She stopped going after to her surprise, the socialism she found in Israel was different from the one they’d imagined and talked about at home.
This is not an isolated case. In Europe and Latin America, there are plenty of leftist politicians who volunteered in their youth, for a few months or years, on Israeli kibbutzim.
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Zionism shares with Nazism the claims of building what they call “National Socialism.” Both projects are based on the idea of establishing a new homeland, large and dominant, in which its superior citizens are equal among themselves.
However, nationalism in both models always takes precedence over socialism, limiting it to using some tools that appear to be socialist, as they are effective in building its first gatherings and basic cells, and most importantly, building the personal glory of those in power, without canceling the savage capitalist character of the two models and their colonial nature.
Aesthetic of death
While watching the 2023 Oscar-winning film The Zone of Interest, I noticed that Zionism not only shares with Nazism the discourses of national socialism, but also inherited its aesthetic.
The film presents aspects of the life of the family of the head of the Auschwitz concentration camp, in the part of Poland that Germany annexed after occupying and settling it. The family home shares a wall with the camp. As we hear the screams of the detainees while being tortured or taken to the gas chambers and burned, we contemplate the daily, “ordinary” details of this family of Nazi settlers.
The filmmakers often do not realize the similarity in details between the lives of Nazi settlers and Zionist settlers. However, viewers of the film, who have watched Israeli films or filmed investigations in its settlements, and who have intellectual integrity, will notice this similarity.
The house has a small farm attached to it that can be expanded, and the large wall that separates it from the camp, which brings to mind the apartheid walls in the West Bank, built to isolate Palestinian villages — where sometimes the Palestinian house turns into a detention camp surrounded by walls and an electric gate, its keys held by the settlers surrounding it. They live off the remains of the victims, stealing their belongings and benefiting from them as if they were the property of the settlers.
The meeting of Nazism with Zionism and extreme Judaism in the aesthetic may seem like a funny paradox, but, in addition to the ideas of socialist nationalism that unite them, it expresses the current reality in a direct and blunt way that is fit for the 21st century. For this emerges in the growing ties between Israel and the European and American extreme and racist right-wing movements, including the Nazi and Neo-fascist movements that are historically anti-Semitic at their core.
Let’s differentiate between admiration and identification.
A recent investigative report, published on June 2 in the Salto news outlet, documents how the State of Israel, not just its government or Benjamin Netanyahu or the Likud Party, is changing its strategic alliances, moving closer to the European extreme and racist right, and breaking from the centrist political forces.
Right-wing project
At the same time, Israel is taking violent positions against the European governments that have recognized the State of Palestine, and against any criticism directed at it.
Let us quickly differentiate between admiration and identification. The admiration of the extreme right-wing racist movements and forces for Israel stems from the collapse of the illusion of its democracy itself, the exposure of its reality as a state with a foul odor, and its ability to do whatever it wants without abiding by any international charters, treaties, or norms.
This converges with the essence of the European and American extreme right-wing project, which rejects the democratic heritage and dreams of ending it.
The identification with the model of the State of Israel, especially in recent years, is the result of a complex racist foundation. This European and American far right remains deeply anti-Semitic, and its ranks at the European level include parties and forces that deny the Holocaust and still glorify Mussolini and Hitler.
These are movements that, on the one hand, do not want the Jews to return to their European countries of origin, and on the other hand, share with Israel, as a state and a society, its racism towards Arabs and Muslims, and consider them a fundamental enemy.
Walls against the “Moor”
“Moor” is the old racist pejorative term for Arabs in Spain. Although its use is condemned, Santiago Abascal, the leader of Vox party that has Francoist fascist origins, raised the slogan: “Let’s build walls to keep out the Moors” in his campaign in the latest European elections. The Israeli lobby in Europe classifies the party as the most loyal European friend of Israel.
I am not exaggerating when I say that these walls that Abascal wants are, in his imagination, a modern image of the walls of the Auschwitz camp against the Jews, mixed with the apartheid walls in the West Bank against the Palestinians.
The day after the Spanish government recognized the state of Palestine, Abascal visited Israel to take pictures with his friend Netanyahu.
The reaction to this visit was not limited to the walls of the Spanish parliament, when several parties described Abascal as a “friend of the butcher of Rafah” in the session following his return from Israel. Spain has also applied to join South Africa’s genocide lawsuit against Israel in the International Court of Justice.
Will Israel be able to regain its former traditional allies?
This shift of the traditional European powers moving away from unconditional support for Israel could have a new impact on Israel in the medium-term, just as the intensification of right-wing and extremist tendencies that have reached the point of criminality within Israeli society.
It suggests “substitution,” that is the rejection of Netanyahu, his government, and his Likud being replaced by a rejection of the practices of Israel as a state. So that Netanyahu and his government will be sacrificed at a moment of necessity, so that Israel can regain its international acceptance and re-establish rapprochement with its traditional allies.
Palestinian choices
The results of the European Parliament elections did not produce any surprises, but rather were in line with expectations and opinion polls; a decline for the left, a relative stability for the forces of the traditional right in most countries of the European Union — and, of course, the continued rise of racist and extremist right-wing movements, Israel’s new ally.
But at the same time, it cannot be ignored that the rise of the far-right in Europe has a limit, which will decline after reaching it, in favor of the centrist forces in line with the European mood that hates adventures after World War II. That’s particularly true of top business leaders, encouraging voters not to vote for the far-right, which is harmful to their interests linked to a unified Europe.
The question is, will Israel be able to regain its former traditional allies? And if so, how?
This issue is not only related to Israel’s own capabilities, or the degree of tolerance of traditional European political powers after the genocide stops and the extreme right declines in the future, but also to two basic factors:
The first is the ability of leftist and liberal forces that historically side with the Palestinian cause, and Arabs residing in Europe, to expand new European positions critical of Israel, including recognition of the Palestinian state, so that it does not remain merely symbolic. That will deepen the divide between European governments and the project of the State of Israel.
This process has several paths, including pressure for a complete and effective arms embargo on Israel; economic sanctions similar to those taken against Russia after the invasion of Ukraine; a boycott of all Israeli cultural bodies and universities; suspending diplomatic relations, and much more.
The second factor is the Palestinians. It is related to this wall (Israel) that grows ever more fragile, but will or won’t collapse depending on what Palestinians will do.
At the moment the wall collapses, who will control all the dust and rubble that will be left? Who is the party capable of forming an alternative to fill the void?! And what is the actual project of this party, directed first to the Palestinian people, second to the remaining Jews who have no other place to go, third to the Arab peoples of the region, and fourth to European and American public opinion.
The displacement projects and emptying of the West Bank and Gaza have not been completely buried. So we await the emergence of this new Palestinian political force, which will have to confront the whims of the region’s rulers and defend the rights of the Palestinian people, and all peoples.
