What the Israeli Corona Virus Repression Machine Can Tell Us About Where the World is Going
Israel was the first country to block all flights from landing.
[Photo credited to null on kivitv.com. Video further below via MiddleEastEye].
3.4.2020
By Joshua Tartakovsky
Usually, when one wants to see where the world is heading, one can look at Israel.
The divide there between the Left and the Right, (though the Left is not truly a left due to being Zionist), the neoliberal regime, the military dictatorship, the naked excercise of power, all these render Israel a microcosm of processes that take place around the world.
Today, a very interesting video came out of Israel.
In the video, Israeli police can be seen attacking Palestinian-Israelis in Jaffa who came to the defense of a Palestinian teenager who was arrested. His crime was walking beyond the 100 meters or so alloted to him by the new anti-coronavirus regulations.
A short reminder on how the war against coronavirus has been unfolding in Israel, and how the wider process took place around the world:
The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is indicted of three charges of corruption by the Israeli court, decided to declare an emergency regime due to the virus, locking people in their homes. His loyalist, Yuli Edelstein (one of those who did a career out of supposedly being an anti-Soviet ‘refusnik’ but not as bad as Nathan Sharansky who really made a killing out of it, my father used to say), as a chairman of the Israeli parliament, dissolved it, supposedly on anti-corona virus grounds. After the Supreme Court ordered him to reconvene it, he resigned. Then Netanyahu, in a master-stroke of the cunning man that he is, got Benny Ganz, the leader of the Blue-and-White opposition party, to join a coalition under Netanyahu, and to serve, as a guarantee, as a chairman of the parliament in the interim.
To clarify, an anti-Netanyahu vote was expected to be held in the parliament, but this did not happen for those reasons (Edelstein dissolving the parliament, and then his resignation).
At the moment, Israel has the strictest supposedly anti-corona virus regulations. Indeed, ‘a light unto the nations’ as the Zionists like to claim. Israelis are monitored on their phones, every location of there whereabout is known to the police and to the state security services (Israel’s FBI or KGB), as well as who they met.
Israelis who go more than 100 meters from their home are violating the law, and may indeed meet the police.
This video shows what happened today to those who dared to walk beyond the limit alloted to them.
Some may argue that these intense security regulations are needed and necessary. Otherwise, they say, the virus will spread. And tough time require tough measures.
They have a point.
However, there is no guarantee that just because people walk a few more kilometers alone, they will infect someone or be infected.
Israel is basically following the logic of Jewish law, only using violence to enforce it: impose the most strindent measure, just in case, and severely punish anyone who makes the slightest error.
The logic of the anti-corona virus regime does make sense to some extend. But it should also be reminded, that this is the first time, as far as reading what others wrote on the subject, that the healthy are confined, and that an entire population is being locked up for health reasons. There are other ways. Germany has been doing wide spread testing and keeping the count low.
Also, when, if to quote from US Presiden Donald Trump, does the cure become worse than the disease? When people are beaten and made to bleed, is that a suitable and proportionate solution to teach people a lesson so as not to walk outside, even though they may not even be carriers of a virus, since they may spread or catch a virus that does not cause death in the majority of cases?
An important caveat: Even if locking up people in their homes, monitoring them,and prohibiting their freedom of movement is needed, and even if beating up people who violate health regulation is the solution, this is a dictatorship. And should be recognized as such.
Also, interesting that the Zionist regime enacted violence against Palestinian Israelis and ultra-Orthodox Jews, both not part of the Zionist mainstream, but outsiders’ groups. The regime may have enacted violence against ‘typical’ mainstream Israelis but I have not seen videos of it yet.
An important point to remember is that in the current stage of the collapse of neoliberalism, as capitalism is in a structural crisis, we can expect the montioring regime and the ensuing state violence to not go away after the virus is rid of.
What is taking place in Israel, is likely to be seen in other parts of the world over time.
