Israeli channel airs call to expel all Palestinians

Ali Abunimah Media Watch 18 June 2019

The Israeli international TV channel i24 News last week aired a call for the total ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.

“There will never, ever be a two-state solution,” British far-right demagogue Katie Hopkins stated. “Israel will become the super force here. You will have to have a one-state solution.”

But she wasn’t talking about a single state with equal rights for all.

“There will not be peace in Israel until you remove the people who don’t belong there,” Hopkins asserted.

Another guest, former Israeli diplomat Daniel Shek, objected that they – the Palestinians – “are indigenous people, not migrants.” But Hopkins added that “it will be a one-state solution, and in so far as you will have to remove certain individuals, you would just take more land.”

Shek asked: “You mean 50 percent of the population will have to go?”

“Yes, they will have to go,” Hopkins affirmed. “If some of their population still stab you with knives, then I would say yes, the rest have to go.”

Palestinians constitute half – and likely a slight majority – of the approximately 13 million people who live in what is today Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Hopkins’ call for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians may even meet the international legal definition of genocide.

The Genocide Convention defines numerous acts as genocide if they are committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”

Indeed, prominent scholars of genocide argue that Israel’s policies towards the Palestinian people over decades constitute a form of genocide.

In recent years, Israeli political leaders have habitually advanced genocidal plans for the expulsion of the Palestinians and their destruction as a national collective.

“Natural home”

Hopkins is a notorious far-right racist who has caught the favorable attention of US President Donald Trump for her Islamophobic vitriol.

She has a well-documented record of using her high-profile media appearances to spread conspiracy theories and incite racial, ethnic and religious hatred.

Hopkins also used her i24 News appearance to claim that Muslims are “forcing the Jews out of western Europe,” as well as her “own population.”

And in perhaps one of her only credible statements – politically speaking at least – she called Israel her “natural home.”

Hopkins embodies the increasingly warm embrace between Israel, on the one hand, and far-right Islamophobes, white supremacists, anti-Semites and neo-Nazis in Europe and North America, on the other.

She has previously referred to migrants in Europe as “cockroaches.”

Hopkins was perhaps channeling Rafael Eitan, the army chief who commanded Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and once notoriously called Palestinians “drugged cockroaches in a bottle.”

That Shek challenged Hopkins’ call for the ethnic cleansing of millions of people in no way mitigates i24 News’ responsibility for airing dangerous racist incitement.

Would any channel defend as legitimate debate, say, a discussion on whether Jews should be expelled from Europe, or whether slavery should be reinstated in the United States? Even if free speech entitles people to hold such repugnant and abhorrent views, no media platform is obligated to give them space.

Some matters are beyond debate, and to provide their adherents with a platform in any format serves only to legitimize extremist viewpoints.

Yet i24 News is attempting to whitewash and downplay Hopkins’ comments as merely “controversial” – that is to say within the scope of acceptable debate.

EU embraces racist municipalities

The intense and arguably genocidal racism Hopkins expresses is all too common and normalized in Israel, an ethno-state where Palestinians are conceived first and foremost as a “demographic threat” to the violently gerrymandered Jewish majority.

A fresh example of that came last Saturday when the mayor and city council members in the northern city of Afula took part in a demonstration against the sale of a home to an Arab family.

Council member Itai Cohen told media the municipality would continue to “ensure that Afula preserves its Jewish character.”

“Anyone looking for a mixed city – Afula is not the address,” Cohen told Israeli army radio on Sunday. “We are a right-wing place with Jewish characteristics.”

The demonstration was joined by members of Lehava, a Jewish extremist group that agitates against mixed marriages and whose members habitually participate in violent rampages calling for Palestinians to be “wiped out.”

With the blessing of state-financed official rabbis and legislation, Israeli municipalities regularly act to prevent integration and equal housing opportunities for Palestinian citizens in Israel.

This systematic racism has done nothing to deter the self-declared human rights champions at the European Union from embracing Israeli municipalities.

Last month, Emanuele Giaufret, the EU ambassador in Tel Aviv, met the chair of the Federation of Local Authorities in Israel to “deepen cooperation between the EU and Israeli municipalities.”

There is no indication that the EU is requiring Israeli municipalities to end their racism against Palestinians and people from African states as a condition for such cooperation.

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Comments

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Zionism Is Not Judaism replied on

In that spirit she could dress up like a cossack, get stinking drunk and run amok. Not unlike the louts that forced my family to flee to the US.

The danger about someone like her is that she (and others such as her) threatens the human and legal rights of all. Apparently not having the wit to see that she basks in her cruelty and glories in her asininity. One asks what her reaction would be if she were the object of similar treatment (abuse).

If possible she may wish to reconsider her statements.

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Pat Mc Ginley replied on

Hate-monger Hopkins advocating genocide of Palestinians. Typical morally-bankrupt Zionist.

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Ali El Helou replied on

Certainly from the river to the Sea Israel will never be...and surely Palestine From The river to the Sea will be Free sooner than later From all filthy criminals Zionists..

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Freespirit replied on

If I, or any Journalist or reporter, stated such (as she does about Muslims) publicly about Jews, I would be charged with a "Hate Crime" so it is time that Ashkenazi , FAKE Jews,like her receive a taste of "their own medicine"-Charge her with a "Hate Crime"!

We will never win, if we don't start going on the attack.

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Daniel replied on

I agree! Why are we so obsessed with Defending against charges of anti Semitism? Why not put Zionists on the defense for once? Why not go after Jewish supremacism?

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tom hall replied on

Katie Hopkins has advocated in print the machine-gunning of refugees at sea. At the time she was employed as a columnist for the Murdoch-owned Sun "newspaper". She's perhaps the UK's most notorious racist- though there's plenty of competition for those honours- and the editorial decision to offer her a slot on Israeli TV is a clear indication if one were needed of how crazed and violent public discourse in the Jewish state has become.

We are in the run-up phase to Kushner's Deal of the Century. The outlines of this plan are already visible- to eliminate the Palestinian national cause through defunding of civil society, imposition of severe deprivation, rampant use of military force and infusions of Gulf State money to a private class of collaborators, ie local business elites. Under these conditions, the appearance of Katie Hopkins in an Israeli discussion program is neither shocking nor inexplicable. She's there to assure the audience that they enjoy the support of other racists around the world, and to urge them to redouble all measures leading to a Final Solution. By the way, that's a term she's used when urging action against Muslims in Europe.

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Jacob Tucker replied on

I am all for criticizing the current Israeli policy and its treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. But you have to admit that the title of this article is slightly misleading and very click-bait material. Yes it was an Israeli channel, but the person who said these disgraceful things was not actually Israeli herself, it was a disgraceful far-right British lunatic, who as a British person, absolutely despises as do most of the sane-minded British population. In fact, it was the Israeli who was challenging and disagreeing with her views. Katie Hopkins goes on many TV shows worldwide and spreads her hate and racist views, it is not just Israeli television which allows her on these shows, but British, American, Australian, and so on. So you can´t really position it as "Israeli Channel calls for Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians" - this is wrong and implies that Israelis are calling for this, which they are not. I must also remind you, that there are also many Palestinian television networks who allow people on the show who express vitriolic hatred for Jews, some even promote stabbings of innocent civilians, but does that mean that all Palestinians wish to stab and kill Jews? Of course not.

Anyway, that´s just my view, the conflict is super complex and it is the minority who are ruining it for the majority of both Israeli and Palestinians who simply want peace & quiet. I hope that there is peace soon, and that Palestinians can have their own state and get on with their lives.

Peace.

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Daniel replied on

Polls show that very large percentages of Israelis support ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Israel must be pressured to confront its ZioSupremacism

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tom hall replied on

In the first place, your assertion that the headline accompanying this article is misleading is itself misleading. You've altered the wording from "Israeli channel airs call to expel all Palestinians" to "Israeli Channel calls for Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians". That's hardly an honest characterisation. The station did in fact air a call to expel all Palestinians, forcefully put by one of the vilest racists in western journalism, Katie Hopkins. In doing so, i24News made a deliberate decision clearly based on her record of promoting hatred against Muslims to grant her a platform addressing a nation-wide Jewish population already inflamed by a lifetime of anti-Palestinian indoctrination and intoxicated by the Trump-Netanyahu alliance. You may reply that the channel did not overtly endorse her despicable statements- which incidentally would have produced a very different response from the authorities had she demanded instead the removal of the Jews. But you cannot plausibly maintain that Hopkins' intemperate remarks represent a viewpoint exclusively her own or that arranging to have another panelist express disagreement with this troll exonerates the program's editors from responsibility for promoting full-blown ethnic cleansing. Placing Hopkins in a spurious contention with someone who doesn't publicly advocate the eradication of Palestinians is simply a piece of broadcasting rhetoric, the familiar pro- and con- stagecraft by which monstrous positions are normalised. As for your argument that Hopkins pops up everywhere these days so why should Israel be singled out, I'll restrict myself to noting that on i24News she was addressing an audience with the power and the consolidated will to commit the crime she demands.

Finally, with regard to your even-handed empathy for both occupier and occupied, I'm prepared to accord that sentiment all the respect and consideration it deserves.

Ali Abunimah

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine, now out from Haymarket Books.

Also wrote One Country: A Bold-Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. Opinions are mine alone.