Hamas and Islamic Jihad supporters chant slogans while another person holds a placard with a crossed-out photo of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a protest in support of Al-Aqsa Mosque and against the crimes of the occupation in the violation of Al-Aqsa and the holy places, after Friday prayer in front of Al-Hoda mosque in Rafah refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, Jan. 6. AP Photo/Adel Hana

Prospects for peace between the Zionist occupier state of Israel and the occupied Palestinian people are more distant than ever. A deadly cycle of Israeli aggression, state repression, and slaughter of Palestinians has sparked angry protests. And adding fuel to the tension is a new ultraright government angling to tighten its oppressive reign and denying  Palestinians their right to self-determination.

The new government is led by Benjamin Netanyahu, extreme by extremist standards, and is wasting no time proving so, observers say.  Mr. Netanyahu returned from a year-and-a-half on the sidelines after political foes outmaneuvered him at the polls in 2021. The 73 year old comes towing a far-right-wing band of ultra-religious idealogues and nationalists with histories of extremism.

“This is probably the most right-wing government that’s ever been in Israel. And that’s saying something,” said Muhammad Sankari of the Palestinian Community Network (USPCN)-Chicago.

 “It’s not as if they have a history of progressive governments in the country,” he added.

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Voices of resistance must rise up

For activists and change agents it’s a critical moment to ramp up pressure and work for the Liberation of Palestine, explained Mr. Sankari. Whether activism takes the form of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction Israel (BDS) movement, U.S. Congressional work or fighting in the public space around the proper narrative, it is critical that Israel is not the only one telling that story, he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting, Jan. 3, in Jerusalem. Atef Safadi/Pool Photo via AP

“Just showing Israel to be the pariah state that it is,” he said. “This is the crucial moment … when we can win,” added Mr. Sankari.

The story must be told that domestically Mr. Netanyahu and his allies are the most extreme and are calling for open genocide of Palestinians. It is becoming harder for the international community that usually defends Israel to remain silent now.

“When settler colonial states … ones that are built intrinsically on racism and apartheid, when they are reaching their death throes, they turn further and further and further, right,” Mr. Sankari said.

In that sense historically, the Palestinian experience is not a unique one, he said. Past settler colonies like South Africa, Zimbabwe and Algeria became extremely right-wing when faced with their existential death throes.

“And I believe … that’s what we’re rapidly approaching. … Israel is really losing on so many fronts, and they’ve lost legitimacy in the international community … they’ve lost the ability to control the narrative as to what’s happening,” Mr. Sankari added.

He told The Final Call the Zionist state is losing in some instances militarily, citing the uprising of the “Areen Al-Usud” (The Lions’ Den), a Nablus-based Palestinian resistance group. Unprecedented Israeli repression in blood and policy is to counter the success of unified resistance in Gaza and disturbances inside Israel itself. Israel is doing what other racist apartheid regimes have done. Become more racist and right-wing in response.

“This is the trajectory Netanyahu is taking the country on,” Mr. Sankari said.

Army raids and killings are being conducted under the banner of crushing Palestinian armed resistance in the northern occupied West Bank, reported Aljazeera. The bloodletting is spillage from 2022, which United Nations experts deem the deadliest year of Israeli violence since 2006. Israeli forces killed upward of 150 Palestinians, including more than 30 children in the occupied West Bank.

Disturbing evidence of Israeli forces frequently facilitating, supporting, and participating in settler attacks, makes it difficult to discern between Israeli settler and State violence, said the experts.

UN experts noted Israel’s “deplorable record” in the occupied West Bank will likely deteriorate further in 2023 if Israeli forces do not abandon this dominant settler mindset and rightfully treat Palestinians as protected persons.

“This government is practicing Zionism 101,” said Wafic Faour of Vermonters For Justice in Palestine. “Taking all the land … taking over Jerusalem … no respect to human rights … equal rights … no respect to international laws,” he added. 

As an activist and Palestinian refugee, Mr. Faour said Israel is an apartheid state where Jews and non-Jews do not share the same rights.

An analysis paper issued Jan. 10 by Adalah, an independent human rights organization and legal center, said regime policies show an intention to further systematic discrimination, segregation, and repression of Palestinians. Some of the policies include weakening the authority of Israel’s Supreme Court; pledging to formally annex Occupied Palestinian Territories and legalize unlawful settlements and adding new ones;  expanding forced displacement of Palestinians and legalizing segregationist policies; persecuting expressions of Palestinian identity and self-determination, including waving the Palestinian flag; enforcing separate economic systems to ensure Palestinians and Jewish Israelis not only live separately, but unequally.

The policies also include enlarging racial policing under the full control of law enforcement agencies now overseen by Itamar Ben-Gvir. He heads the ultranationalist Jewish Power party and was appointed National Security minister.

Notorious figures like Mr. Ben-Gvir, a convicted supporter of terrorism and instigator of anti-Palestinian racism, have consistently called for territorial expansion and Palestinian expulsion. Mr. Ben-Gvir was so extreme, he was legally banned by past Zionist governments from running for political office.

Palestinians inspect the site of a house that was demolished by the Israeli army in the West Bank village of Kafr Dan, near Jenin, Jan. 2. AP Photo/Nasser Nasser

Mr. Ben-Gvir is characterized as a career provocateur, who within one month of the new government has inflamed public outcry for a divisive visit to the grounds of Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the third holiest site of Islam. The contentious visit was seen as an encroachment, which similarly in the past incited violence. In 2000 a comparable visit by the late Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon while running for office sparked intense backlash known as the second intifada. The subsequent violence lasted four years and killed 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis.

Mr. Faour asked what the United States and the international community are going to do in reaction. The United Nations met in an emergency over the visit, which was against status quo agreements. Mr. Faour said there needs to be a courageous condemnation from the U.S. Congress acknowledging that Israel is an apartheid state.

“They are not hiding it anymore, that they are apartheid and they treat the Palestinians as if they don’t exist,” he argues. “When they were crying … ‘the Arabs are pushing us to the sea.’ We say no, they are pushing Palestinians out to the desert,” Mr. Faour said. “They want to make everything as Jewish as it gets.”

As a U.S.-based Palestinian, Mr. Faour told The Final Call it is essential to speak straight words concerning the situation. Israel is an apartheid state structured on racism and White Jewish supremacy. Many people close their eyes on that, he said, afraid to parallel the two. 

“There is no difference between White supremacy and the Jewish Zionist supremacy. It is clear and we need forces to say the truth as they see it without being scared about being labeled anti-Semitic,” he said.

Divine warnings not heeded

The problem is rooted in lying, thievery, and injustice involving multiple nations that supported Zionists implanting themselves in another people’s land.

Warnings concerning the consequences of European Zionists usurping Palestinian land came from the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and his teacher before him, the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad of the Nation of Islam. For decades they cautioned from scripture that every nation will be judged out of their own books and recorded deeds. Both their good and evil actions will be weighed on the scale of justice ultimately by the God of justice. Peace rests on the question of justice. Since the arrival of the European Jews, they have been disagreeable to live with in peace, they have warned.

“Some of your own scholars say you are not even connected to the land called Palestine,” said Minister Farrakhan in Part 19 of a yearlong lecture series called “The Time and What Must Be Done” in 2013. “That you, the Ashkenazi Jewish people are Europeans; and the ‘Ashkenazi’ name comes from the Hebrew language, which roots back to German. You didn’t speak Hebrew! You spoke Yiddish—a dialect of German!”

The Minister was answering false charges by Jews on anti-Semitism, which is often levied at critics of Israel’s or Jewish misbehavior. Minister Farrakhan explained these were Europeans from Khazaria—in southern Russia—who converted to Judaism.

“Now look at your behavior since you have taken land from the Palestinians who have been there,” Minister Farrakhan said. “They’ve been there for centuries. They’re the real Semites … look at how you’ve treated them.”

In his illuminating book, “The Fall of America,” Minister Farrakhan’s teacher, Elijah Muhammad, warned about the terrible consequences of imposing Israel on Palestine. “America and England deposited their little brother, Israel, on foreign soil, Palestine, which is Arab land. They deprived the Arabs of their own land and sent them into exile,” wrote Mr. Muhammad. “This injustice against the Arabs is now costing America the power and authority that she once exercised in the East. She is on her way out of the Near East. This means bloodshed and plenty of it.”

The events on the ground bear witness that Mr. Muhammad spoke the truth. Mr. Netanyahu’s extremist government has placed punishing measures on the Palestinian Authority (PA). Controversial figures in key positions of control over Palestinians are upping the likelihood of more eruption on the ground.

Zionism has a schizophrenic-like existence with itself consisting of two faces in one body. One face voices liberalism and the other face voices extremism. The liberal face speaks a language of victimhood that must be protected at all costs—including an unwavering yearly money bag of neatly $5 billion from America. The extremist face speaks with its hands, bullets, and its near eight-decade nightmare of usurping land of the Palestinians.

Now, a world community complicit through silence or in America’s case, protection, and cover against the cries for justice must acknowledge what their actions, or lack of, has produced. Critics argue that America and the chorus of complicity must reevaluate its praise of Israel as a “vibrant democracy” in a neighborhood of rabid autocracies.  

Failed peace and disunity of Arab world

“We have to separate Arab governments from the Arab people,” Mr. Faour said. There is a disconnect between the politics of governments and the Arab street concerning Israel. “We know 100 percent of the public and the Muslim world, and the people who respect freedom are with us.”

Arab governments since their inception including the Arab League are beholden to Western powers like America, France and Britain.

People are mixed up because Israel said it was an ‘Arab-Israeli conflict,’ but that narrative is a misnomer, Mr. Faour said.

There wasn’t for one moment a conflict between these Arab regimes and Israel. All these regimes, their histories and their relationships go deep with the creation of Israel because it was a condition by America and Britain to support and protect them as regimes, he said.

Now the relationships that existed secretly under the table have come above the table with the U.S. brokered Abraham Accords of Arab and Israeli normalization. It is not normalization and acceptance to the Arab people.

Even after two major peace treaties during the last century between Israel and Egypt, at Camp David in America, and with Jordan later, the Arab people in these countries rejected normalization with Israel.

Mr. Faour pointed out, even during the World Cup games in Doha, Qatar, the Arab street rebuffed Israel’s presence and showed Palestinian support for a whole month.

The Arab people, Muslims and the international community see the agreements won’t be fruitful as long as Israel still occupies Palestinian land, building settlements and using its military against the people over there in Palestine and the surrounding areas, still occupying Arab land. “I don’t believe these treaties will be fruitful, because it is with regimes and not with the people,” Mr. Faour said.