Call Israelis "the strongest democrats in the Middle East." Call
them complex and fractious. Call them militarized tools with racist
streaks who expand their territory at the expense of peoples they
consider inferior. Only don't call them Nazis, because they will totally
throw you in jail!
.
Israel was founded, in part, to give Jews of
the world a safe haven from the sort of anti-Semitism that found its
lowest expression in the Nazis' extermination programs. Since then, what
with their universal military service and wars and secret assassination
squads and crazy settlers and bizarre policing practices of
Palestinians and their own Arab citizens, Israelis have had to suffer
through every undergraduate activist's discovery of reductiveness,
dramatic irony, and shock value: "The Nazi-haters are acting like
Nazis!"
.
It's a provocation the Jewish State is one step closer to banning entirely, the New York Times reports:
.
Parliament
gave preliminary approval on Wednesday to a bill that would make it a
crime to call someone a Nazi - or any other slur associated with the
Third Reich - or to use Holocaust-related symbols in a noneducational
way. The penalty would be a fine of as much as $29,000 and up to six
months in jail.
.
Weirdly, Israelis who actually have some experience with Nazis are
not so sure that "Never Forget" and "Don't Fucking Say That or We'll
Arrest You" are entirely compatible:
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