The speed of Israeli racism has greatly increased in all Palestine, including the 48 territories after Al Aqsa uprising in 2000. The further the Israeli mentality moves to the far right religiosity that upholds the racist doctrine of “the chosen people endowed with divine entitlements”, the further the Judaisation increases the negation of Palestinian rights and presence throughout historical Palestine. As a result, budgets of all municipalities of Arab Palestinian towns in Israel were cut and the life of Palestinians became full of adversities and hopelessness meant to encourage them to migrate and seek a better life elsewhere. Most young Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are faced with unemployment and unequal opportunities. Along these lines, a public poll taken by the Israeli Ono College revealed that “83 per cent of companies owned by Jews are afraid to employ Israeli Arabs despite their high educational qualifications”. To add to the steady Judaisation process targeting the Higher Galilee and the vast territories in the Naqab, in addition to the demolition of Palestinian homes coupled with a ban on permits to expand existing properties or build new ones to accommodate the natural expansion of Palestinian families, the Israeli racist agenda to ‘purify’ historical Palestine of any Palestinian presence, thus, becomes an official agenda.

It is very clear now that the Judaisation of Israel has become the official policy, regardless of some notable Israeli personalities who strongly believe that “Judaisation and democracy contradict each other”. A proposal presented recently to the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) by Yariv Levin, defining the “the national state”, gives supremacy to “Judaisation over democratisation in Israel”. A recent report by Haaretz newspaper revealed absolute opposition by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a proposal by Justice Minister Tzipi Livny that looks for balance between Judaisation and democracy. A few months earlier, Avi Dichter, the former Shabak (intelligence) chief introduced a measure in the Knesset which declared Israel “the national homeland for the Jewish people” and that the “self determination doctrine in Israel is an exclusive right for the Jewish people”, asserting that the Land of Israel is “the historical homeland for the Jewish people”, negating any right for the non-Jewish population, meaning the Palestinian people.

Netanyahu intends to proclaim “the Jewishness of the state” to give it a legitimate national status to make it “the national Jewish homeland” for all Jews, regardless where they are in this world. He claims that Palestinians oppose such a move to deny “the right of return of the Jews to their ancestral homeland, despite the Jewish historical fact asserting that the ancestors of the western Jews or the Ashkenazis were never in the Holy Land of Palestine, but in Europe where they came from.

It is vital to note that adopting the Judaisation of the Zionist state negates not only the Hebrew national identity, but also the Israeli one. To them, the reason for a Judaisation drive is extremely vital to maintain the ‘legitimacy’ of the Zionist doctrine which is based on “the right of return of the Jews to their historical homeland”! Negating the Hebrew and Israeli identities from the national status in the Zionist state is essential to them because the Hebrew national identity depicts the Ashkenazi Jews as foreigners who are not related by either blood or history ‘to the Israelites of the Tor’, according to the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia which strips them of ‘the right of return’.

The same Encyclopedia confirms that only the Arab Jews are the true Israelites, the Hebrews, as they are the Arab Bedouins who crossed over the desert from Arabia to Palestine way before the European Khazars (the western Jews) converted to Judaism in the fifth century. The only way for the Ashkenazis to maintain their claimed legitimacy in the Zionist entity is to negate the Israeli and the Hebrew identities because they are neither Hebrews nor Israelis. Transforming the spiritual message of Judaism into a national identity, thus, makes the Jewish nationality the legal status of citizenship in the Zionist entity and consequently, the only way to maintain legitimacy for the western Jews.

Fabricating a history that is not only self-deceiving, but will never convince anyone who takes time to read the Jewish history as written by Jews themselves. Printing books to teach students in Israel that “Jews never stopped praying to return to the land of ancestors to attain liberation” does not change the Jewish fact that the western Jews have no right, whatsoever, to claim the ‘right of return’ because their ancestors were never in Palestine to start with. Forcing the Palestinian students to learn the lies of a fabricated history, which is negated by the original Jewish history, only underscores the illegitimacy of the state of Israel if it bases its legitimacy as a political state upon ‘the right of return’ and ‘the divine entitlements’ associated with it. In other words, the religious far-right in Israel has really no choice, whatsoever, but to enhance the racism of the apartheid doctrine to create ‘a Jewish state’ annihilating the democratic principle within it, in order to give legitimacy to a fake ‘Jewish national identity’ instead of the ‘Hebrew identity’, which is a Jewish historical fact, according to the Holy Torah and the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia.

Professor As’ad Abdul Rahman is the chairman of the Palestinian Encyclopaedia.