Columnist in official PA daily: Netanyahu is “modern Shylock”

Columnist in official PA daily:

Netanyahu is "modern Shylock"

"Israel lives on... acts borrowed from the Nazis"

 by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the "modern Shylock," according to a regular columnist in the official Palestinian Authority daily. Netanyahu, he wrote, is "legalizing the illegal, legitimizing the illegitimate, presenting history in a one-sided way, and howling like mad wolves - this is what Netanyahu is doing at the head of his present government." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 21, 2014]

Columnist Yahya Rabbah also stated that:

"Israel lives on... illusory biblical maps, hallucinations from the time of the Babylonian or Roman exile for which not a single proof exists, and on acts borrowed from the Nazis."

Palestinian Media Watch reported earlier this year that the same columnist accused Netanyahu of "imitating Hitler's racism," which he acquired "genetically from the days of the Nazis and the Aryan race." 

The columnist concluded:

"Who believes Shylock's false claims? But there is one essential difference, which is that the modern Shylock doesn't lend [money] to anyone, but rather owes everyone - without exception - his ability to survive."

Click to see more PA demonization of Jews and Israelis.

The following is a longer excerpt of the op-ed referring to Israel as a "modern Shylock":

"Perhaps not many remember Shylock the Jew, the main protagonist of Shakespeare's play, The Merchant of Venice. Shylock was a usurer, who lent a sum of money to a bankrupt man, on the condition that if he could not repay [the debt], he would take a pound of the debtor's flesh instead of the loan...

The judge found a very important loophole in the contract, which previously had seemed binding. The loophole was that while the contract demanded a pound of flesh, it did not mention even a single drop of blood - and how can flesh be cut without spilling blood?

The current Israeli government is continuously accusing the PA of incitement, of a rise in Antisemitism and of harming Israel's image! Let us quickly analyze the situation, and we'll discover that no one in the world harms Israel's image more, reveals its racism, and its contempt and provocation of world public opinion more than Netanyahu and his ministers, especially those from the Likud, Bait Yehudi and Yisrael Beiteinu...

Israel lives on an extensive system of British Mandatory laws, illusory biblical maps, hallucinations from the time of the Babylonian or Roman exile for which not a single proof exists, and on acts borrowed from the Nazis, which the Israelis are now imitating against the Palestinian people - as several Israeli thinkers, writers and historians have explicitly admitted in recent days.

Naturally, there are millions of examples of how Israel lives in contradiction with itself. It demands recognition of a Jewish state, even though the entire world knows that its two biggest waves of immigration at the end of the last century, from Russia and the former Soviet Union, and (Ethiopian Jews) from the region of the Falash Mura ... included hundreds of thousands of Christians, Muslims and pagans, who have no connection to the Jewish state. Furthermore, important and highly reliable contemporary historians have proven that the most important Zionist activists, especially in Eastern Europe, were of Khazar origin, with no relationship to the so-called 12 Jewish tribes! ...

Legalizing the illegal, legitimizing the illegitimate, presenting history in a one-sided way, and howling like mad wolves - this is what Netanyahu is doing at the head of his present government, in an insane race against time, clearly loathing everyone and misanalysing what is happening in the region and in the world. So how can the world believe this? How can the world relate to this? Who believes Shylock's false claims? But there is one essential difference, which is that the modern Shylock doesn't lend [money] to anyone, but rather owes everyone - without exception -his ability to survive."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 21, 2014]