In a
post remembering the Holocaust, Gil Kopatz called for the extermination of
Palestinians and described the war on Gaza as an essential ‘pesticide’
A Palestinian child eats his portion of a hot meal at a free food
distribution point at the Nuseirat refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, on
19 April 2025 (AFP/Eyad Baba)
An Israeli
screenwriter said he backs “exterminating Gazans” as he compared sending aid to
Palestinians to “feeding sharks”.
In a Facebook
post earlier this week, Gil Kopatz, a screenwriter and actor, wrote: “If you
feed sharks, they end up eating you. If you feed Gazans, they end up eating
you.
"I am in
favour of shark extinction and in favour of exterminating Gazans.”
He concluded
the post with: “Reflections on Holocaust Day 2025.”
The comments
provoked outrage online and across political circles. Ahmad Tibi, a Palestinian
politician with Israeli citizenship, sharply criticised Kopatz.
“This is how
this Jewish individual marks Holocaust Remembrance Day. Gil Kopatch, you are a
neo-Nazi degenerate,” Tibi wrote on X.
In a follow-up
post, Kopatz appeared to double down on his remarks.
“I don’t have
even one drop of compassion for Gazans. For Arabs in general, yes. For humans
in general, yes. For sharks, no. And not for human animals either,” he said.
Despite the
inflammatory language, Kopatz described himself as a “humane, liberal and moral
person”.
“I don’t treat
those who grew up in Gaza and have been fed, since childhood, murderous racist
hatred towards my family and my brothers and sisters, as human beings,” he
added.
“And to wrap
up, it is not genocide, it’s pesticide, and it’s essential to do it.”
Since the start
of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza in October 2023, Israeli officials and
commentators have faced criticism for using increasingly inflammatory and
dehumanising language to describe Palestinians in the besieged enclave.
As the ground
invasion began, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referenced the biblical tale
of Amalek - a move critics described as a “genocidal invocation”.
Former Defence
Minister Yoav Gallant referred to Palestinians in Gaza as “human animals” as he
announced plans to cut electricity, water and food supplies to the territory in
the early days of the war.
Other Israeli
ministers have suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza and called for
“erasing” the Palestinian enclave “from the face of the earth”.
H. Scott Prosterman
Oakland, Ca. (Special to
Informed Comment; Featured) – On April 15, the venerable Jewish Council on
Public Affairs (JCPA) issued an eloquent statement stating their objections to,
“the false choice between confronting antisemitism and upholding democracy.”
antisemitismhas traditionally been used as a right-wing tool to appeal to a
primitive, nativist sense of exclusion. Now the motivations are more varied and
complex. Many on the left fail to distinguish between Judaism, the religion;
and Zionism; the political dynamic that led to the creation of Israel in the
aftermath of the Holocaust, preceded by a 1000 years of pogroms. antisemitism
has been convicted felon Donald Trump’s guise and cover for suppressing
academic freedoms, and deporting politically active students, faculty and
organizers. Thankfully, this consortium of thoughtful Jewish organizations has
countered this travesty with a united effort and lucid arguments.
These organizations
represent a broad spectrum of Jewish Americans, and includes the Religious
Action Center of Reform Judaism, National Council of Jewish Women, American
Conference of Cantors, Central Conference of American Rabbis, Hebrew Immigrant
Aid Society, Rabbinical Assembly, Reconstructing Judaism, Reconstructionist
Rabbinical Association, and the Union for Reform Judaism. The only branch of
Judaism not represented in this consortium has been the Orthodox community.
While many Orthodox Jews endorse the JCPA point of view, their voices are often
suppressed and intimidated in their congregations.
That 10 major Jewish
organizations came to agreement on anything is a semantic and polemical
miracle, when one considers the diversity of social and spiritual divisions
among American Jews. The notion of so many Jews agreeing on ANYTHING is so
ludicrous, it’s become a basis of satire and dark humor. The myth that Jews
were capable of controlling things by a conspiracy was always as silly as the
notion of Jewish space lasers. The notion was fictionalized to support tropes,
stir fear and resentment.
The JCPA statement says,
“In recent weeks, escalating federal actions have used the guise of fighting
antisemitism to justify stripping students of due process rights when they face
arrest and/or deportation, as well as to threaten billions in academic research
and education funding. Students have been arrested at home and on the street
with no transparency as to why they are being held or deported, and in certain
cases with the implication that they are being punished for their
constitutionally-protected speech. Universities have an obligation to protect
Jewish students, and the federal government has an important role to play in
that effort; however, sweeping draconian funding cuts will weaken the free
academic inquiry that strengthens democracy and society, rather than
productively counter antisemitism on campus.” They conclude, “These actions do
not make Jews—or any community—safer. Rather, they only make us less safe,” as
they bring additional sources of resentment against Jews.
The politics of convicted
felon Donald Trump has fueled this misuse of the charge of racial bigotry in
numerous ways, and his use of it is
disingenuous on many levels. 21st Century antisemitism is more complex and threatening
that any time since World War II, as it now comes from both sides of the
political spectrum. There’s also an argument that the Israel Likud government
under PM Benjamin Netanyahu (Bibi) has fueled antisemitism with its brutal
genocide in Gaza. The tragedies in Gaza have prompted many thoughtful Jews to
divorce political Zionism from their practice of Judaism. Under Bibi and Likud,
Zionism has devolved 180 degrees away from its original, late-19th century
ideals. It began as a secular, agrarian movement with no pretense of Jewish
supremacism.
Trump’s claim on Jewish
support is limited to the far-right fringes in the US and Israel, who fail to
recognize that friends don’t let friends commit political-economic suicide.
Presidents Carter, Clinton and Obama were those kinds of friends. Trump is happy
to encourage Bibi’s path of self-destruction. Supporters and financiers of
Israel’s illegal settlement movement don’t mind being used in this manner. Nor
do American Jews whose knowledge of Israel-Palestine history is willfully
limited to the whitewashed Temple Sunday School myths. Most of them don’t want
to know any more than they don’t already know, and are quite stubborn about it.
Counterintuitively, Trump’s
2019 Executive Order, declaring that Jews are a race and nationality was the
first salvo in a campaign to USE antisemitism as a cover for attacks on
academic freedom. I noted then, “Packaged as an extension of Title VI, the order
reads (in the language of this Brave New World), “Discrimination against Jews
may give rise to a Title VI violation when the discrimination is based on an
individual’s race, color, or national origin.” The semantic and rhetorical
problem here is that we Jews have never considered ourselves to be a group with
a single national origin; we come in many colors, and from many national
origins. This Executive Order also solidified the myth that Judaism and Zionism
are one and the same. Outside of the devoted far-right camps of the MAGA-Likud
alliance, most Jews object to seeing charges of antisemitism used as a machete
to shred the Constitution.
Most significant is the
JCPA’s qualified dissociation from Israel’s ruling Likud Party under PM
Benjamin Netanyahu, characterizing it as a “foreign government.” It states,
“Jews are being targeted and held collectively accountable for the actions of a
foreign government.” As a result of Israel’s genocidal acts in Gaza and the
West Bank, “Jews are being pushed out of certain movements, classrooms, and
communities for expressing a connection to their heritage or to the Jewish
homeland.” While Israel is considered the “Jewish homeland,” and a focal point
of modern Judaism for many, this also expresses recognition of how Bibi’s
MAGA-inspired strategy has alienated many Jews from Israel, and escalated
global antisemitism.
The JCPA statement
continues, “We reject any policies or actions that foment or take advantage of
antisemitism and pit communities against one another; and we unequivocally
condemn the exploitation of our community’s real concerns about antisemitism to
undermine democratic norms and rights, including the rule of law, the right of
due process, and/or the freedoms of speech, press, and peaceful protest. It is
both possible and necessary to fight antisemitism—on campus, in our
communities, and across the country—without abandoning the democratic values
that have allowed Jews, and so many other vulnerable minorities, to thrive.” It
concludes, “Our safety as Jews has always been tied to the rule of law, to the
safety of others, to the strength of civil society, and to the protection of
rights and liberties for all.”
April 24, 2025
Caitlin
Johnstone
The
Irish-language hip hop trio Kneecap is being investigated by British
counterterrorism police following a controversial appearance where the group
performed in front of the words “FUCK ISRAEL, FREE PALESTINE” during a music
festival in the United States.
Zionist outrage
over the incident led to a video being shared on Twitter by a man named Danny
Morris who works for Community Security Trust, a British organization dedicated
to supporting Israel in the name of fighting antisemitism. The video apparently
shows Kneecap chanting “Up Hamas, up Hezbollah” at a London concert last
November, which is the official reason the group is now under investigation.
By designating
Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations and then passing laws against
support for proscribed terrorist groups, the British government has effectively
given itself the authority to stomp out any speech which can be deemed
supportive of armed groups opposing Israel’s abuses in the middle east today,
and has been using this authority to persecute journalists and activists in the
UK.
This is just
one of the latest incidents in the steady assault on free speech rights we’ve
been seeing in the western nations that have aligned themselves with the state
of Israel during the Gaza holocaust.
In Michigan the
homes of pro-Palestine demonstrators are reportedly being raided by the FBI and
by state and local police, with numerous activists detained and electronic
devices seized under search warrants.
A new policy
unveiled by the Trump administration’s National Institutes of Health bans
researchers and university employees from participating in any activism
involving boycotts or divestment from the state of Israel, or even advocating
such measures.
New York Police
Department officers are reportedly attending training on combatting
antisemitism which teaches them that keffiyehs and watermelons are antisemitic
symbols, and that phrases like “settler colonialism” and “all eyes on Rafah”
are examples of antisemitic hate speech.
On Thursday a
judge ruled that Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk shall be transferred
to the state of Vermont as the Trump administration fights to deport her.
Öztürk’s sole offense is having written an op-ed in the university paper mildly
denouncing Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.
This all comes
as a new poll finds that a majority of Americans oppose the Trump
administration’s new policy of deporting foreigners for expressing wrongthink
about Israel. They’re taking away the right of US citizens to hear what
Israel’s critics have to say, and they are doing so directly against the will
of the US citizens themselves.
There’s a video
that Israel apologists are sharing around which they claim shows pro-Palestine
activists blocking Jewish students from walking through the campus of Yale
University, and it’s just so illustrative of the fake “antisemitism” crisis
we’re being told necessitates the elimination of free speech rights throughout
all of western civilization.
If you watch
the clip you can see a student wearing a kippah being filmed by someone behind
him and demanding to walk directly through what appears to be a relatively
small group of activists in the midst of an anti-genocide demonstration. The
demonstrators are heard telling him to walk around them, which is what any
normal person does when they wish to be on the other side of a physical human
body (or indeed any physical object), and you can clearly see people walking
around them in the background of the video.
This is like
walking up to a cheer squad in the middle of a human pyramid, demanding to walk
through them, and then claiming they refused to do so because they hate your
religion. It’s just so transparently bat shit insane, but it’s being shared
around in all seriousness by Zionist pundits and politicians as a sign of an
antisemitism crisis at a prominent university. This is the kind of evidence
that’s being cited for the need to stomp out free speech in our society.
I’m going to
keep saying it and saying it until the message gets through: Zionism is the
single greatest threat to free speech in the western world today. Nothing is
eroding people’s rights to free expression faster than the support that western
governments have for the apartheid state of Israel and the atrocities it is
committing.
This isn’t just
about Gaza now. It’s not just about some strangers in the middle east. It’s
about you. It’s about your rights. It’s about your right to tell the truth,
even if the truth makes your leaders feel uncomfortable.
Even if you are
not a sufficiently moral and compassionate person to oppose a genocide on its
own merit, at this point you should at least be opposing the erosion of your
own personal liberties for your own sake.
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