Tzipi Hotovely, the Zionist regime’s ambassador, spoke at the London School of Economics on Wednesday night. She was met with a protest. The protest was condemned as antisemitic and compared to Kristallnacht by various racist grifters. Despite this chain of events being entirely unsurprising, ideological confusion abounds. To fight this, we present 10 theses:
- Protesting the ambassadors of the Zionist regime is a moral duty.
The Zionist regime is an Apartheid state in which millions of Palestinians are denied basic human rights and equality under law. Its military, police and paramilitaries attack, murder and maim Palestinian civilians every day. It is a regime built on ethnic cleansing that continues to dispossess Palestinian communities through home demolitions and land grabs. It commits the periodic mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza. Protesting such a regime’s representatives is morally upstanding.
2. Protesting the representatives of the Zionist regime is not antisemitic.
If such a representative is targeted, it is on account of their role in propagating that regime. This is true of protests against ambassadors of every state. Such protests are not racist against Jews.
3. Protesting Tzipi Hotovely, in particular, is a moral duty.
Before becoming an ambassador to the UK, she oversaw widespread ethnic cleansing in her role as Settlements Minister, promoted the violent anti-“Race Mixing” group Lehava and agitated for the de jure annexation of the West Bank. She is unequivocal in her belief that ‘Arabs’ (for she does not recognise the existence of a Palestinian people) do not deserve rights equal to Jews. She has incited settler violence and promotes attacks on the Al-Aqsa Mosque. She denies the Nakba. Tzipi Hotovely should be forcibly protested by all people of conscience.
[Shout out @LSEforPalestine for doing exactly that – read their statement]
4. Protests against Tzipi Hotovely are not antisemitic.
She is targeted, not because she is a Jew, but because of her role in crimes against humanity and the racism she espouses. Such protests are not racism against Jews. (Even Jews are doing it)
5. The demonstration against Tzipi Hotovely was a realisation of the freedom of speech of LSE students.
Many of Tzipi Hotovely’s defenders are now claiming to be defenders of Free Speech while actively arguing for the restriction of speech with which they disagree.
6. Calling the protest against Tzipi Hotovely “a Jew-hunting mob” is a complete lie.
This is a deeply cynical smear.
7. Equating this protest to Kristallnacht is an egregious falsification of history.
Kristallnacht was a nationwide terror campaign in which Jews were attacked, beaten and murdered, Jewish businesses were looted and synagogues were burned, perpetrated by fascists who saw Jews as racial enemies working to undermine the German nation. During Kristallnacht, Jews were targeted by racists for imagined crimes of which they were innocent. On Wednesday, a Jew was protested by anti-racists for real crimes of which she, and the regime she represents, is guilty. There is no equivocation that does not slander the victims of Nazi violence.
8. Conflating Jews and Zionism is factually wrong and politically cynical.
The same people extolling the IHRA definition of Antisemitism, which warns against conflating Jews and the Zionist regime, are claiming that protesting Tzipi Hotovely is protesting the Jewish community.
9. There is a deep inconsistency – We are told loudly that it is inherently antisemitic to compare Zionist atrocities and Nazi atrocities by the same people who are now equating Nazi atrocities and anti-racist protest. If anything should be compared to Kristallnacht, it is the fascist violence unleashed by people like Tzipi Hotovely against Palestinians in Jerusalem, Hebron and Gaza.
10. The debasement of Holocaust memory by Zionism is not accidental. Zionism is a bankrupt ideology that exists by pillaging everything in Jewish life for the service of a settler colony. Not even dead Jews are safe from it.
