Fascism in the Middle East

We often have to heed the past to sort out the present. The urgency of “now” demands it.  We need historical wisdom to survive.    

The collective wisdom of the past flowed from a letter published on 4 December 1948 in the New York Times, protesting the upcoming visit to the United States by Polish Zionist, Menachim Begin. It was signed by a number of Jewish dignitaries, including theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein, and political theorist, Hannah Arendt.  In addition to protesting the visit, the 27 signatories denounced Begin’s

Herut (Freedom) party on the grounds that it was as they wrote:  

“Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the

emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the ‘Freedom Party’

(Taunt Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods,

political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties….It is

inconceivable that those who oppose fascism throughout the world, if 

correctly informed as to Mr. Begin’s political record and perspectives, 

could add their names and support to the movement he represents.  Today 

they speak of freedom, democracy and anti-imperialism, whereas until 

recently they openly preached the doctrine of the Fascist state.”

The signers were outraged over reports of war crimes committed by Zionist forces during the 1947-48 war.  They were particularly disturbed by the account of the massacre of hundreds in the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin by Irgun and Lehi (Stern Gang) paramilitaries in April 1948.  

It should be noted, that following Israel’s declaration of statehood in May 1948, all terrorist groups like the Irgun, commanded by Menachim Begin (future prime minister, 1973-83) and the Lehi under another prime minster, Yitzhak Shamir, (1983-84;1986-1992) were absorbed into the brutal Israel “Defense” Forces (IDF).

What Arendt, Einstein and the others recognized in the Zionist state was in their words, the “latest manifestation of fascism.”  The violent ideology and conduct of the Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang did not vanish when the 1948 war ended.  It has flourished and ultimately has metastasized into the right-wing fascist Israeli regime of today.      

The currents of imperialism, ethnonationalism and racism that pervaded Nazi Germany have found firm ground in present-day Israel.    

Decades ago, Moroccan Jewish political activist, Abraham Serfaty, in his prison essays on Palestinian liberation observed that there is a “fascist logic at the heart of the Zionist settler-colonial project of dispossession, domination and displacement.” Fascism is embedded in the ideology and logic of Israel’s colonial expansionist erasure project.    

Zionist Israel, aided and abetted by the United States, has resurrected the savagery the world wanted to save future generations from after World War II.  

Israeli expansionism, for example, looks much like the extreme ideology of Lebensraum (German for living space) that became the principal foreign policy goal of the Nazi regime.  The establishment of a Greater German Reich was its ultimate aim.  

The Nazi master plan for the East specified that Germany required Lebensraum for its survival.  To meet its need for living space and resources, most of the non-Aryan indigenous populations (Slavs and Jews) of Central and Eastern Europe would have to be removed, enslaved or exterminated.  Seized land would then be repopulated with “superior” Germanic colonists.    

Israel, like Nazi Germany, has been committed to territorial expansion, grabbing land to establish what they call “Eretz Yisrael,” a “Greater Israel.”  

The similarities between Lebensraum “Greater Germany” and Zionism’s “Greater Israel” are unmistakable.  Both encompass ethnonationalism, ultranationalism and aggressive military expansionism and genocide.   

Since it illegally established itself on inhabited Palestinian land in 1917, Israel’s long-term project to annex vast areas of neighboring sovereign states has never ceased.  In his diaries (kept from 1895 to 1904), the father of modern political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, recorded his vision of Eretz Yisrael—land that as he wrote would stretch from “the brook of Egypt to the Euphrates” in Iraq.    

Hence, Israel has never established defined borders.  Purposely vague in declaration, but clear in its mission, it continues to aggressively expand its boundaries.  It has committed genocide in occupied Gaza, has illegally occupied, colonized and annexed the West Bank and East Jerusalem, destroyed much of southern Lebanon, bombed Yemen and has invaded and occupied Syria.  It is now working at weakening and partitioning Iran.  

Believers in the Greater Israel concept claim that all of Palestine, Lebanon and Syria belong to the Zionist state.  Some interpret Greater Israel to encompass dominion over not only all of Palestine, Lebanon and Syria but parts of Egypt, most of Iraq, Jordan, a large area of Saudi Arabia and parts of southern Türkiye.  

Over the past 21 months, Israel and its imperial backers have waged a devastating campaign of war and genocide in pursuit of their goal of creating a “New Middle East.” 

Almost two years ago, on 22 September 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood before the United Nations General Assembly, held up a crude map titled,“The New Middle East,”and touted the growing normalization of relations between Israel and Arab countries. He presented a Zionist vision of regional transformation that involved the erasure of Palestine and the legitimization of “Greater Israel.” 

Tel Aviv has counted on the Arab oil families of the Persian Gulf to remain passive actors and submissive to the will of the United States, and by extension Israel. It sees no threat from Egypt. The flagship of the Arab world, ruled by a brutal authoritarian regime, is weak, corrupt and economically dependent on $1.3 billion in annual aid from Washington. Jordan, ruled by a repressive monarchy, has been an American client and pillar of U.S.-Israeli hegemony for over 75 years; dependent on U.S. foreign aid estimated at $1.5 billion annually.  Turkiye, another significant Muslim state, has bound its success to the West and to its defense treaty with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).  

Almost all the countries in the region have been checkmated—leaving only Iran and Yemen. On the evening of 21 June 2025, the United States launched an unprovoked attack on Iran to help Israel checkmate it.  

Hubris drives the agenda of Washington and Tel Aviv.  They are convinced that they can create a region submissive to their hegemonic agenda.      

The term “fascist” is a political label that has been used by Jewish historians, former and current Israeli cabinet members, as well as critics inside Israel.  It is one, however, that others are afraid to utter.  Following are just a few among many examples:

+ Israel’s oldest daily newspaper, Haaretz, has written often that “Israeli neo-fascism seriously threatens Israelis and Palestinians.”  It has described Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich and Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir as fascists and racists.  

+ Finance Minister Smotrich has referred to himself as a “fascist homophobe.”

+ Former Israeli prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert both warned of fascism.

+ Former Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, has called Israel’s killing of Palestinians “a messianic, nationalist and fascist ideology.”

+ Minister of Culture Miri Regev proudly stated, “I am happy to be a fascist.”

+ The Communist Party of Israel (Maki) and Hadash (new) party wrote on 7 October 2023 that “The fascist right-wing government’s crimes to perpetuate the occupation are leading to a regional war that must be stopped.”

+ Far-right historian, Ze’ev Sternhell, wrote of “the growing fascism and a racism akin to early Nazism.”

+ The late journalist/peace activist, Ari Avnery, stated that, “the discrimination against the Palestinians in practically all spheres of life can be compared to the treatment of Jews in the first phase of Nazi Germany.”

+ On 24 April 2025, noted historian, Avi Shlaim, stated that “Israel is on the road to fascism.” He argued that the political attributes of the Israeli state resemble those of the far-right in the 1930s.  

Lamentably, the characteristics of fascism that Dr. Shlaim has used to describe Israel also defines the United States under the Trump regime:  “the belief that might makes right, the reliance on militarism, unabridged militarism, indifference to international law, total indifference to world public opinion.” 

Prime Minister Netanyahu pridefully proclaimed in June 2021, “We are changing the face of the Middle East. We are changing the face of the world.”  Change in the Israeli mind has always meant the violent removal of all opposition to its continued expansion and domination of the resource-rich region, no matter the cost.    

Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, Smotrich and their ilk are not anomalous.  They are the products of a racist and fascist colonial system that has evolved since 1917 when Israel was planted in the heart of Palestine. M

Much like their intellectual counterparts who were concerned about Zionist atrocities that had begun in Palestine in 1947-48, professors at Birzeit Univer. Rsity in occupied West Bank, Palestine felt required to use their words—as they said, however futile—to expose over 80 years of Zionist brutality and to record Palestinian determination to live, resist and not be silenced.   

 Birzeit Union of Professors and Employees, in an open letter of 12 October 2023, wrote:

“2023 will be recorded historically as the year Palestinians stood boldly in the       face of colonial fascism and screamed in defense of their homes, humanity and  lives….It is our duty to record this moment not as its victims, but as the people who will remember, record, survive and resist it [Zionist barbarity].  We remain attached to our land and to our humanity as Palestinian Arabs—no need to prove our humanity to those who have lost theirs….” 

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