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Last update - 22:11 13/07/2009
Will Israel grant asylum to fascism?
By Bradley Burston, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: African refugees 

Click here for more articles by Bradley Burston

One of the great strengths of fascism is its ability to persuade a society to simply invite it in.

So what sound does fascism make when it tries to get you to open the door?

Sometimes it sounds like a headline. A drumbeat of shrewd fear-mongering, a little something to set the stage.

"Thousands of African immigrants illegally entering Israel," a banner topping the Jerusalem Post's front page announced last week. "Our neighborhoods have been conquered by infiltrators," the subtitle quoted Eilat's mayor as saying.

The piece went on to warn of unspecified crime, violence and alcohol use among Africans who fled Sudan, Somalia and other nations, risking their lives in crossing the Sinai desert and stealing into Israel.

What the article did not mention, was that the blast at African refugees coincided not only with the launch of a mass round-up campaign against asylum seekers lacking permits to stay in Israel, but also with the re-emergence of one of the most monstrously worded of bills ever submitted to the Knesset.

The Prevention of Infiltration Bill is proof that fascism can be made to sound every bit as dull and dusty and proper and necessary as the law of the land. Fascism can be as quiet, ordinary, and cosmetically democratic as the sound of 59 hands being raised at once.

Last month the bill, with its Orwell-worthy name, sailed through its first Knesset plenum reading by an astounding 59-1 vote. The legislation ran to 24 pages of microbial font print - verbose enough to persuade overwhelmed legislators to vote for it rather than read it.

Many of the 59 discovered only afterward, to their horror, what the bill actually says:

Refugees, among them families which fled genocide in the Sudan and murderous border police in Egypt en route to Israel, may be sentenced to up to seven years in prison for crossing the border illegally. And if the Bedouin coyote who led the refugee through the Sinai happened to be carrying a knife, the refugee's sentence could be 20 years.

In a country founded as a shelter for victims of violent persecution, this would certainly seem injustice enough [See Israel's own version of Holocaust denial ].

But the moral red line that borders fascism is crossed later on, in a short clause marked "Assistance to Infiltration."

"The punishment of one who aids the person who commits a crime according to this law, in order to ease his infiltration or his illegal stay in Israel, will be as the punishment designated for the principal commission of the crime."

In other words, if doctors or nurses abide by their professional oaths and administer medical treatment to a refugee lacking permits to stay in Israel, their prison sentence could be the same as that of the refugee - five, seven, even 20 years.

This is the way fascism begins, not with a bang, but with a Knesset vote.

Like policemen or prison guards who come to resemble the criminals they are meant to battle, the bill, ostensibly aimed at preserving the integrity of Israeli society, has for 15 months been quietly infiltrating its way toward passage, and, in the process, threatening to undo the most basic of the moral underpinnings of the Jewish state.

Fascism takes root where decent people have given up. Fascism gains a foothold when moral, caring people have fought far too many necessary battles in their lives, and, facing the crossing of a crucial red line, have no more fight left in them.

Fascism thrives on legality, it lawyers up every chance it gets, the better to use any institution of democracy to quietly and methodically corrupt and demolish every institution of democracy.

At root, fascism feeds on apathy and despair, the sense that a society so fundamentally dysfunctional, so paralytically broken, cannot be set right.
Can anything be done now? In fact, now is precisely the time to act. At present, the bill is in committee, awaiting revisions ahead of the next plenum vote, which will decide on final passage.

Now is the time to write to the two men who, more than any other, will determine the fate of the bill, Ehud Barak, [e-mail: ehudb@knesset.gov.il], whose Defense Ministry has overseen the measure from its introduction in April, 2008, and Benjamin Netanyahu , whose coalition must approve it before it becomes law.

The issue is one which extends far beyond our borders. The responsibility to respond should as well.

____________________


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  1.   Israel is already on the slippery slope to hell 15:33  |  Chanalau, Tova 13/07/09
  2.   Bradley, drink some cold water 15:52  |  J. Frank Mortimer 13/07/09
  3.   Bradley... 16:00  |  Yosemite 13/07/09
  4.   Jewish excellence - our idiots are without competiotion 16:02  |  17 13/07/09
  5.   Medical care to illegals 16:20  |  Anonymous 13/07/09
  6.   Learn your history 16:20  |  Mark Lincoln 13/07/09
  7.   Insult to Tikkun Olam 16:44  |  Josh 13/07/09
  8.   Huh?! What?! 16:50  |  M. Kips 13/07/09
  9.   Thank you, #6 17:11  |  Rosie 13/07/09
  10.   If this is not a big band, I do not want to know WHAT one is! 18:10  |  Kris Lazar 13/07/09
  11.   OK, Bradley. Israel should merge with Sudan 18:39  |  judith 13/07/09
  12.   M. Kips @# 9 18:46  |  Akiva P 13/07/09
  13.   May I ask...??? With so many conflicts all over 20:43  |  Ines 13/07/09
  14.   Crazy bill... 21:02  |  Moises 13/07/09
  15.   Fascism in Israel? 21:09  |  Rigoletto 13/07/09
  16.   Re # 1 Tova... do you know ... 21:14  |  Ines 13/07/09
  17.   No country in the world accepts 21:18  |  Ines 13/07/09
  18.   Bradley Burston so fascims is already all over 21:24  |  Ines 13/07/09
  19.   In canada we allow illegal kids to go to school 21:29  |  matan 13/07/09
  20.   Revisionism Is A Lover of Fascism 22:19  |  Yaakov Sullivan 13/07/09
  21.   illegal immigrants 22:33  |  zoe 13/07/09
  22.   Israel is not a social services!! They should all 23:18  |  Abu 13/07/09
  23.   Sympathy with refugees is a good thing 23:24  |  Hanna Bard 13/07/09
  24.   Sdom and Amorrah 00:00  |  Tamara Gottstein 14/07/09
  25.   #8 huh?! what`s THIS, m. kips?! 02:18  |  eric 14/07/09
  26.   To no 1 Tova, Europe is slipping into enslavement and londonstan 02:25  |  openeyes 14/07/09
  27.   Learn Your history Mr Lincoln.Israeli roots lie deep in Socialist 02:44  |  PETER SM 14/07/09
  28.   Facts 07:47  |  Alex 14/07/09
  29.   #13 Hello PeterSM. Just heard the news... 09:59  |  Maureen Ann 14/07/09
  30.   White illegals do worse and are not targeted 10:06  |  5th generation 14/07/09
  31.   @J. Frank Mortimer 10:09  |  Kilminster 14/07/09
  32.   Learn your history, Peter SM 10:26  |  Daniel IL 14/07/09
  33.   Mark Lincoln 10:51  |  Roo 14/07/09
  34.   Kips #8 is right 11:18  |  Hastaroth 14/07/09
  35.   Mark Lincoln 11:30  |  Roo 14/07/09
  36.   Switzerland and US 11:48  |  Copha Hautschocolade 14/07/09
  37.   "Crossing border illegally is a crime." 12:06  |  Andreas 14/07/09
  38.   if you cross into a country illegally it is illegal 13:45  |  JO 14/07/09
  39.   INES Using law/logic how quaint.Anti Israel incitement is 13:49  |  PETER SM 14/07/09
  40.   I am speechless 13:50  |  Sam 14/07/09
  41.   Refugee Convention 13:58  |  Marilyn 14/07/09
  42.   Missing the point 14:10  |  Rosie 14/07/09
  43.   to Zoe #21 15:25  |  Hastaroth 14/07/09
  44.   Need to Find a Way - "Never Again" 16:49  |  Jane 14/07/09
  45.   May I Remind You - Jews Crossed Illegally in Holocaust 16:53  |  Jane 14/07/09
  46.   bradley on how to split a horsehair? 17:10  |  v hardman 14/07/09
  47.   The question is the answer 19:33  |  Fred 14/07/09
  48.   # 37 19:38  |  Fred 14/07/09
  49.   to sam, jane and the others 21:31  |  zoe 14/07/09
  50.   Refugees are not illegal migrants , article #31 22:20  |  de 14/07/09
  51.   mARYLIN then you had better tell Indonesia & the Arabs who shoot 00:27  |  PETER SM 15/07/09
  52.   MAUREEN you do not like spelling changes? 00:30  |  PETER SM 15/07/09
  53.   #6, Mark Lincoln, you think Burston doesn`t know all that? 00:42  |  newageblues 15/07/09
  54.   The meaning of fascism 00:56  |  The Word Smith 15/07/09
  55.   Too Jewish to be a Zionist 03:38  |  Isaac 15/07/09
  56.   more skewed material... 05:13  |  don muntean 15/07/09
  57.   R U Kidding me/ Israel is already a 05:37  |  Mike the American 15/07/09
  58.   nationalism(nation building) is new to Jews; 14:02  |  Dina 15/07/09
  59.   Mark Lincoln #6 No, Buddy - You Better Learn History 00:20  |  Tim R 16/07/09
  60.   Is this page infected with malware? 01:28  |  W 16/07/09
  61.   Darfur Genocide 19:15  |  Fikret Bocek 17/07/09
  62.   anyone can submit a bill, whether it passes is another story 03:37  |  chill out 18/07/09
  63.   Refugees have status and help, it is the economic illegal migrant 18:38  |  Jo 18/07/09
  64.   Does using loaded words like fascism advance your argument 01:48  |  tom p 22/07/09
  65.   To PETER SM 11:29  |  David 27/07/09
  66.   Good to know we live in a democracy... 18:31  |  Allegra 27/07/09
  67.   To Fred from Leiden (47 and 48) 23:52  |  Shoshana Thomasson 27/07/09
  68.   Harbouring Africans is a Risky Business eh? 22:28  |  Si Kelly 28/07/09
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