‘My Zionism’: Israel’s latest unsuccessful PR advance | Israel-Palestine conflict

On June 1, Ashager Araro, an Israeli Army reserve lieutenant of Ethiopian descent, posted a video on Instagram titled “My Zionism”. In the nearly three-minute film, Araro denounces those who believe that Zionism is an “imperialist idea,” “actively” erasing “the history of brown and black Jews.”

He claims that this attitude ignores “our stories, struggles and survival” and “ignores what the Zionist cause has been.” [sic] he built a safe house for Jews like us. ” He explained that opposition to Zionism “is especially painful when your history is abandoned, when your heroes are not remembered, on the part of people who know how it feels.”

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the video is a harmless statement where a black Jewish woman shares her feelings, especially seeing the message of “peace” at the end. But the image appears to be part of an Israeli PR campaign that will try to fix its image after wild violence against Palestinians has sparked outrage around the world.

Israeli government officials, the military – including a video of Mohammad Kabiya defending the Israeli army – a Palestinian citizen of Israel – and several Israeli advocates have been active on social media trying to address growing pro-Palestinian sentiment in the West.

Araro’s video seems to focus on narratives that draw parallels between the Palestinian struggle against Israeli colonialism and the struggles of other local and oppressed people in the face of colonial and neocolonial forces.

It seeks to close the debate on Israeli colonialism by mixing guilt and affective language, which places Araro’s “lived experience” ahead of the Palestinian reality.

He advocates for the elimination of black and brown Jewish communities, in line with the political ideology based on the elimination of the Palestinian people. He directs Ethiopian Jewish migration to Israel in the face of anti-Semitic persecution to represent Zionism in a positive way, but does not mention that Jewish migration has resulted in the mass expulsion, death, and systematic oppression of Palestinians. He seems to be forgiving the savage dependence of an entire people for allegedly giving relief to another.

Araro’s identity policy that represents the hierarchy of harassment is based in vain. He frequently uses the word “white” to challenge arguments against Zionism and creates excitement by critics of the Israeli colonial project to turn white activists against the Black version of Zionism.

In fact, even the “safe house” that Zionism offered to Ethiopian Jews is, at best, inadequate. A brief look at the events confirms that the point he wants to argue for is the same: Israel is a European state, colonial-colonial and therefore racist, even for Ethiopian Jewish citizens.

Since the 1980s, more than 80,000 Ethiopian Jews have been brought to Israel in state-backed operations to save them from starvation and conflict. Although the Israeli religious authorities recognized “Judaism,” they continued to question it because the community was deeply racist in Israeli institutions and society.

In the 1990s, for example, Israel’s national blood bank was found to be destroying the blood results of Ethiopians, fearing they would be infected with HIV as Africans. In the 2000s and early 2010s, Israeli authorities injected contraceptives into Ethiopian Jewish women without their knowledge or with their full consent. Some of the transition camps also threatened to refuse access to Israel if they did not accept the injection. Others believed it was a drug to prevent disease.

Today, Ethiopian Jews continue to be discriminated against in education, employment and housing and suffer from high levels of poverty.

As a marginalized community, Ethiopian Jews and other people of African descent from Israel regularly suffer from police brutality. In recent years, when two young Ethiopian Jewish men, 19-year-old Solomon Tekah and 24-year-old Yehuda Biadga, were killed, Black Lives Matter protests erupted in Israel.

So many other “safe houses” given to Ethiopian Jews upon entering the Israeli borders. But is it really surprising that Israel, a state based on the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, their systematic expropriation, and their oppression, is spreading racist practices against black Jews?

Araro’s identity discourse, which elevates his individual experience above the evidence of the dependence of others, does not recognize that oppression does not exist in any isolated way.

Different exclusion structures are linked and reinforce each other. Ethiopian Jews are at the end of the pecking order of Israeli society, but are given the right to participate in the occupation and expropriation of Palestinians. The colonial state of Israel is responsible for both of these realities.

Israeli police arrest Palestinian protester against eviction of Palestinian families in occupied Sheikh Jarrah district of East Jerusalem on May 5, 2021 [File: REeuters/Ammar Awad]

While supporters of Israelis like Araro are trying to deny the oppression systems that affect people of the same society and the world as people of color, many are making those connections. This is why solidarity with the Palestinian cause has been growing in recent years.

For example, when the Black Lives Matter demonstrations plunged into the world last summer to warn of the oppression suffered by blacks, U.S. and European activists were actively working to show the links between racist treatment of blacks in the West and colonial occupation. In the Palestinian Middle East. This period of collective action gave the people confidence in what they demanded to speak in the face of dirt campaigns and institutional silences.

Likewise, the resistance and heroic struggles of the Palestinian people have served as a catapult to the action and have moved several activists to reclaim public space and demand an end to institutional complicity with Israel’s colonial project.

That is why Israel’s recent attacks on Israel’s Muslim and Christian religions, increased campaigns to expel Palestinians from Jerusalem, and the recent bombing of civilians besieging Gaza have elicited a tremendous international response.

Governments did not act, but people around the world appeared angry and rallied in solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle, as hundreds of thousands took to the streets.

Docker refused to handle Israeli shipments from Italy, South Africa and the United States, while numerous BDS motions were filed in the workplace. Public figures and celebrities who could hardly play on such an issue also expressed solidarity with the Palestinian people.

In the face of a growing wave of resistance and solidarity, Israel is seeking legitimacy within the “wake-up” platforms it has identified as a threat. As it is losing even the most central and liberal path in the middle, it is making a new face in despair.

The problem with Israel, however, is that it understands the problem primarily as a struggle to control public narratives – through the repression of free expression in Palestine or a carefully guarded public image as a savior state. What he doesn’t understand – and perhaps can’t deal with – is that the political order around Israel’s legitimacy and aid around the world is very tight.

As the mere language of representation, experience, and diversity ignores the mass mobilizations of the oppressed and exploited, the Zionist project is trying to mobilize these same tools to justify its continued oppression against the Palestinian people.

Sharp videos, carefully crafted scripts, and massive historical failures won’t backfire. Black, Arab or LGBTQ faces will not be more acceptable in apartheid in the world. They will only serve to expose the hypocrisy of the state of Israel and encourage those who are fighting.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the attitude of the Al Jazeera editorial.