A neo-Nazi cell in … Israel? To which one can only add: Oy vey!

Actually, this is not all that surprising. After all, Israeli nationalist ideology has evolved into a form of national socialism—albeit without the anti-Semitism. The socialist part of the equation is easy: Israel was founded by socialists of the left-wing variety, and yet their utopian experiment eventually morphed into a militantly nationalistic, expansionist creed based on ethno-religious exclusivism. The rise of the Israeli ultra-right, typified by the career of Avigdor Lieberman, planted the seeds of Israeli fascism in some very fertile soil. These neo-Nazi thugs, with their tatoos and their swastikas, who preyed on “religious Jews, foreign workers from Asia, drug addicts, the homeless and gays,” are the mutant sprouts, living embodiments of the biblical injunction “as ye sow, so shall ye reap.”

If Israel’s neo-Nazi teenagers want to rid the world of “foreign” undermen, then their more “mainstream” elders are openly discussing the mass expulsion of Palestinians from the land of Israel: indeed, an entire political movement has grown up around this idea, which can only be described as fascistic. Benjamin Netanyahu, very likely the next Prime Minister, plays to this crowd, and his Likud party is formally dedicated to the vision of a “Greater Israel,” i.e. a new Hebraic empire in the Middle East. (Even better, that empire will be defended, not by the IDF, but by American GIs. Indeed, that is what is happening, today, in Iraq.)

Nazis in Israel? What else are we to expect now that we live in a Bizarro World universe, where up is down, right is left, and morals are turned on their heads?

UPDATE: Reuters has the video.

UPDATE II: More video, this time from Youtube, showing that the Israeli skinheads have been arouind since at least last year. Some guy from the blog “Brave New World Watch” disagrees with my prognosis of this apparently counter-intuitive concept of neo-Nazi Israelis, but this video here shows how Israeli ultra-nationalism and the punk-neo-nazi movement, such as it is, cohere. No, these model citizens aren’t just ordinary “nationalists,” who espouse an “ordinary concept of nationhood”—they’re fascists, who glory in militarism, violence, and conquest. There’s your “brave new world” for you, my friend …