Earlier this month, the Israeli Knesset identified a ‘systemic pattern of action’ in Ofer Cassif. The Jewish parliamentarian, who has represented the communist-led coalition Hadash as an MK since 2019, was investigated by the ‘ethics committee’ over his support for South Africa’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) case against the Israeli government, and for referring to Palestinians resisting Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank as ‘freedom fighters’.
In the end, Cassif’s colleagues on the dubiously titled committee found him guilty of ‘encouraging bloodshed against [Israeli] soldiers’, as well as ‘undermining the State of Israel’s ability’ to counter allegations of genocide. His suspension for six months was only the latest attempt of Israeli politicians to gag him; an unprecedented move to impeach him earlier this year fell by a handful of votes, while he was suspended for 45 days in October 2023.
The arbiters of ‘ethics’ in Israel’s parliament were right about Cassif and his ‘systemic pattern of action’. Throughout his entire adult life, the 59-year-old has never flinched from opposing the occupation and subjugation of the Palestinian people, being the first Israeli soldier to refuse to serve during the First Intifada, for which he served four jail sentences.
Now, on a European speaking tour which saw him speak to huge crowds in London’s Marx Memorial Library and the Indian YMCA this past weekend, Tribune Associate Editor Marcus Barnett met with Cassif to discuss Israel’s descent into fascism, the current repression of socialists in Israel, and his own resources of hope.
MB
Firstly, Ofer, I’d like to begin by discussing your background. You were born in Rishon LeZion in the early 1960s and were brought up in a Labor Zionist family. You completed your national service in the Nahal, but in 1987, during the First Intifada, you refused your call-up orders on political grounds.
OC
As you said, I was born into a classic Labor Zionist family — my parents, my grandparents, all of them. My father was a Labor activist. When I began to develop my social consciousness, I noticed my views were more to the left. They weren’t exactly well-formed or manifested — I was only 14 years old or something. By the age of 15, I joined the leftist youth movement. First, I joined Sheli [the Left Camp]. Then I joined Hashomer Hatzair, the youth movement considered to be the most leftist.
MB
The ‘Marxist-Zionist’ youth movement.
OC
Yeah, something like that, ‘Marxist-Zionist’. Now, I understand there’s a contradiction in terms. But when I was 15 or 16, I didn’t. So I found myself there. In my national service, I was in the Nahal, a group that combines military service with kibbutz work. I was also partly in the paratrooper brigade. Throughout military service, I gradually moved more to the left.
After my service, I went to university for my first degree, when the First Intifada began. I was called up as a reservist to serve in Gaza, and I refused. I was the first imprisoned refusenik during the First Intifada. When I was released, I joined Hadash — the democratic front for peace and equality, which is part of a coalition based on the Communist Party — and began this process of breaking out of the Zionist brainwash.
I considered myself to be a victim of brainwashing throughout my youth and childhood. I came to the point where I understood that there is an immense contradiction between socialism, humanism and Zionism. I decided that my way should be the socialist, humanist one rather than the Zionist one, that it wasn’t enough not to be a Zionist, but that I had to be an anti-Zionist and actively oppose the ideology and practice of Zionism, given my basic socialist beliefs.
I was imprisoned another three times — so altogether, four times for the same thing, for refusing to serve in the occupied territories. Before they had the chance to imprison me again, I accepted an offer to study for a PhD in England.
MB
Around this time, you were also invited to work as a parliamentary assistant to Meir Vilner, a unique figure in the global communist movement and Israeli history.
OC
That was during the First Intifada. It was towards the end of his political career as a member of the Knesset, though he continued his political activities afterwards. I worked for him for just one year, just before the collapse of the Soviet Union, when everything was in turmoil. So many things changed for the communist and socialist movements in the world, including in the Communist Party of Israel, and it was very tough on our comrades. There were divisions and intrigues, which was natural after such an earthquake.
But working with Meir was definitely fascinating, especially for a young person — I was 22 or 23. It was very emotional. It was thrilling to work with someone with such a history because he experienced so many historical events. I mean, he was there before the establishment of the State of Israel. He was a member of the Knesset from 1948 onwards.
Meir knew so many important figures — the good and the bad. He knew communist leaders from all over the world. He knew Israeli leaders, Zionist ones, which we obviously have a grudge against, but still, you cannot ignore their influence. To talk to him, to hear stories about the history he experienced personally, it was fascinating. It was one of my favourite experiences — I think the only better experience is living with my wife.
MB
That is some endorsement! I wanted to mention Meir Vilner because he was this embodiment of an anti-racist, anti-Zionist presence in Israeli politics that, despite never gaining massive influence, seemed to have received a greater tolerance than what similar voices are met with in today’s Israel. In recent years, there has been such a seismic shift in Israeli society, which seems to be in the grip of a genocidal mania.
OC
You not only may believe that, but you should say so if you like to tell the truth. Unfortunately, I’ve been suspended from the Knesset for telling the truth. But it’s very unfortunate that that’s the truth.
It’s not that it was easy before; Meir Vilner himself was seriously wounded in an attempt to kill him for opposing the 1967 occupation and calling for the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state. I mean, he was stabbed. And the judge, I remember, said in the trial of the person who attempted to murder Meir that [Vilner] was lucky the knife didn’t tear his lung.
So Meir and other comrades have always been under serious threat. I wouldn’t say they necessarily had a much easier era than we have. But on the macro level, yes, it’s something else. It is important to emphasise that Hadash are the only parliamentary movement which has pursued a real, profound Jewish-Palestinian partnership, which is nowadays even less popular, not least because of the aftermath of the October 7th massacre by Hamas.
MB
How intense is the repression of the Left as we speak?
OC
We are under daily persecution. The police recently shut down Hadash’s club in Haifa for 10 hours to prevent us from screening a film and holding a meeting against the genocide. In the first months of the genocide, it was totally illegal to hold demonstrations in Palestinian cities and villages within Israel — I’m not talking about the occupied territories, but within Israel, it was totally prohibited. Many comrades have been arrested and interrogated solely for social media posts and tweets. People have lost jobs and students have been expelled simply because they expressed their opposition to the genocide.
This is the tip of the iceberg. There’s an upcoming bill that will bar Hadash and other Arab parties from participating in elections, which means that 20 percent of the citizens of Israel won’t be able to have a list they can vote for. It is important to emphasise the abolition of the basic rights to be elected, but also the abolition of the voting rights of a fifth of Israel’s population.
So within Israel, too, there is an increasingly successful process of turning Israel into a fascist dictatorship. We are already there. I just mentioned one law, but there are many other bills; there’s a list of more than 100 bills and laws that are going to eliminate even any shred of the potential of democracy.
We are the main target because if there’s something Netanyahu, his ministers and the fascists fear — if a cause terrifies them more than the Palestinian resistance — it is the partnership of Jews and Palestinians. They want to destroy that cause as part of destroying the Palestinians as a people, to eliminate all civil rights, and turn Israel into a definite dictatorship.
That’s the reason that I am suspended before my comrades is because I’m the only Jewish member of the Knesset with Hadash, which is a coalition. But since I’m the only Jew among five, they’ve been targeting me especially because of that.
MB
In terms of wider Israeli society, many people in the West seemed to be watching the recent attempt at a general strike, with many willing to make the generous assertion that this was some sort of anti-Netanyahu mass uprising. But it didn’t seem to go anywhere at all, which raises uncomfortable questions about the potential of Israeli civil society.
OC
I have to say here two things. Firstly, most Israeli workers are not organised. There’s a huge history that would take hours to explain, but the history of the working class in Israel is quite depressing because the Histadrut, the largest so-called union, was always not only Zionist but dedicated much more to nation-building than class struggle.
Until the 1960s, Arabs could not be Histadrut members. After the establishment of the State of Israel, Palestinians who were not deported or forced to flee massacres were citizens in Israel, although under military rule until 1966, but they were not allowed to join the Histadrut.
I mention all this as a background to understand why the Histadrut, as a reactionary organisation, hasn’t done anything against the fascist coup the government has been pursuing even before October 7th. Under the sugar-coated term ‘judicial reform’, Netanyahu wished to transform Israel into a fascist dictatorship. That was not an end in itself; it was a means in order to realise a plan by [far-right minister Bezalel] Smotrich to annex, expel, dominate and kill Palestinian people in the occupied territories.
So they didn’t actually do anything against the coup. It took them months and months to call the strike. After a few hours, they had to stop because the courts ordered them: according to Israeli law, workers’ organisations may only strike for reasons directly connected to working conditions. Once Histadrut announced that they were going to strike because of the coup, government negligence and the sacrifice of the hostages, it was illegal. And so, the court ordered them to stop it. It was a premeditated fiasco.
MB
If there can be no effective pressure from organised workers, and what appears to be an unlimited tap of American aid pouring into Israel can alleviate major issues like the Port of Eilat’s financial collapse, what can the vision for any potential change be? Where are the resources of any future rupture going to come from?
OC
There must be a combination of three elements. First, there are demonstrations across the country all the time. Before October 7th, it was against the coup. Afterwards, it began to be not against the genocide, but against the government’s policy vis-a-vis the hostages, because those hostages have been knowingly sacrificed by Netanyahu and his government.
From the beginning, in these huge demonstrations — particularly over the sacrifice of the hostages — we in the Communist Party, in Hadash and the anti-genocide movement have raised slogans that call for the hostages to be released, but at the same time call the ongoing situation in Gaza what it should be called — a genocide.
We call to stop it, not only because that’s the only way to release the hostages, although we do support that. We have close relations with some of the hostages’ families, with some murdered ones. Not all of them, of course, but many are quite close to us politically. Even before October 7th, some of the victims were associated with Hadash and the anti-occupation movement. Some personal friends of mine associated with us were killed by Hamas.
So we need to see many more people in the streets. Every Saturday evening, sometimes in the week, there are thousands of demonstrators across the country. We need millions, but some people are afraid — people have been fired, lost their place as students, or faced police violence because of their involvement in such struggles.
The second element is that we need international pressure. The ICC arrest warrants are a huge step forward, it’s immensely important. Most of the opposition stood with Netanyahu, including the so-called alternatives to Netanyahu — they aligned with him against the ICC and the international community.
Hadash are the only ones who have explicitly issued a public statement in support of the ICC. I personally posted on social media that I support the ICC, and that it might be a game changer if those states who are supposed to respect the ICC decision will do so. We need the international community to pressure the Israeli government to end the genocide, release the hostages, reconstruct Gaza, and ending the occupation and establishing a Palestinian independent state. That is a must.
The third element is to have a real parliamentary opposition, which currently doesn’t exist. Apart from us, there is no opposition. It’s not only the fanatic fascists in the opposition, like [Avigdor] Lieberman, it’s not only individuals with guns who are sometimes very close to fascist ideas. It’s also cowards who are afraid to challenge the genocidal government because they are afraid to be unpopular, who are led by the arch-cowards [Yair] Lapid and [Benny] Gantz, who are also, I must say, basically rightists. I wouldn’t like to say they are fascists, but they are rightists and cowards.
We need those three elements. Under the circumstances, the easiest element is international pressure. If there is real international pressure by, for example, boycotting Israel, stopping arming Israel, respecting the ICC decision — if that is respected, that will definitely influence the ongoing situation, and may reduce the desperation of those Israelis who support the anti-genocide camp.
In Hadash, we have already succeeded in forming a coalition that includes more than 60 anti-occupation, anti-war, pro-peace and human rights organisations. But we need the international community. If we do not have real international support, then sooner or later, we are going to lose. It’s not only that the genocide and the death toll among the Palestinians is going to be even greater. But there’s a risk of regional war, and a serious risk of civil war within Israel and rivers of blood in the streets of Israel. That’s only a matter of time.
MB
This seems to be an emerging concern — that Israel’s current path is so volatile that a collapse into internal conflict is a distinct possibility. It wasn’t hard to consider when seeing the recent scenes of mobs of armed Israelis physically confronting the military over what was, essentially, the right to rape Palestinian prisoners.
OC
Let me begin by saying that in Israel, there are no police anymore. Of course, the police like any other institution, serves the ruling class. But nevertheless, there was once the pretension of serving the people. The high ranks, and especially the high commissioner of the police, are totally committed to the government in general and to Itamar Ben-Gvir, the ultra-fascist, racist minister of so-called ‘national security’. They are devoted and committed to him in person. That is not to say that every individual police officer is a fascist. But as an organisation, it does not serve the public anymore. It serves the government and Ben-Gvir.
I will give you two examples: you have mentioned one of them. The turmoil wasn’t over Israeli soldiers torturing Palestinian detainees, because that happens all the time. There was a specific incident of a Palestinian person who was raped by Israeli soldiers and seriously wounded. The military police began to investigate, which it doesn’t normally do, and they entered a military base to arrest the suspects. When they got there, the fellow soldiers of the suspects tried to prevent the military police from taking them. If that’s not enough, a fascist mob entered the base, including at least one minister and Knesset members, to join those soldiers and to attack the military policemen.
Those military policemen in this base called the police to assist them. The police didn’t attend; later, a newspaper discovered they didn’t go because Ben-Gvir’s secretary told them not to. They sacrificed Israeli soldiers to protect suspected rapists. On the same day, another mob — again accompanied by Knesset members — tried to invade the military court to attack those investigating the suspects, even perhaps to release the suspect. Again, the police didn’t attend until too late. That’s to show the fascist attitude of that militia called the Israeli police.
Why fascism? One of the most important academic experts on fascism was my former teacher Ze’ev Sternhell, who once wrote that ‘fascism doesn’t begin when people begin to shoot one another — it begins when the establishment of the state begins to discriminate against the Left in comparison to the Right.’ Those associated with the fascists can do whatever they like. There’s no law.
It is an almost natural invasion of the occupation mentality from the occupied Palestinian territories into the State of Israel; what I just mentioned occurred time and time again in the West Bank. When Palestinians are attacked or even killed by settlers, the police don’t investigate, don’t arrest — only in very rare incidents. Now those who invaded those military bases in Israel a few months ago, there is still no investigation or arrest of a single person.
On the other hand, the very same police brutally attack demonstrators against the government who oppose the genocide. Probably the most famous leader of the hostage families is Einav Zangauker, a very impressive woman — who was originally a supporter of Netanyahu, by the way. Not anymore. She is a very sympathetic, clever, and brave woman, and I admire her.
She and her daughter are intentionally targeted by the police at every demonstration. Her daughter was chased by a horse, arrested, beaten — and so have many other demonstrators and many other families of the hostages. Compare this treatment with how the police treat right-wing mobs who invade military bases.
My Knesset suspension is another layer. I’ve been suspended for six months for speaking up. I was supposed to enjoy immunity. I’m supposed to represent a huge public. They didn’t succeed in impeaching me — they ran short by four votes. They needed 90, they had 86 — for an unlawful motion, according to the legal counsellor of both the Knesset and the government.
Still, they voted against me. Once they failed in impeaching me, they suspended me for calling the genocide as it should be called and for signing a petition in support of the South African appeal to the ICJ.
This is the situation in Israel — alongside genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, atrocities, occupation, and persecution of Palestinians in their territories, there’s also fascism growing stronger in Israel by legislation and by the persecution of citizens, arresting people, beating people, etc. Israel is on the verge of a full-fledged fascist regime.
MB
What gives you hope?
OC
One quotation from Antonio Gramsci I try to adopt as a motto is that a socialist must cling to the pessimism of the intellect with the optimism of the will. It’s not an abstract slogan but a real guide. It’s very easy to be very hopeless, but it’s a privilege we cannot afford.
When I open my eyes in the morning, I have a deep feeling of desperation and pessimism. But it takes me a few seconds to wake up, literally and metaphorically, and go on to our struggle. We cannot do otherwise.
More personally, I do not compare the ongoing situation in Gaza to the Holocaust. I do compare it to what happened in Germany during the 1930s, but absolutely not what was going on during the 1940s. I hope I won’t have a reason to compare the two in the future.
But the family of my grandparents on my mother’s side were all butchered by the Nazis. All of them were killed. Nobody survived apart from my grandparents, who left Poland before the war. I often ask myself what could have happened if there had been many more people who spoke out against those crimes. Perhaps they could have saved millions of people, including my family.
It’s almost a personal legacy, as if my grandparent’s family was speaking to me. It does not give me hope, but it does give me the motivation to struggle, with all the prices I pay. I simply cannot do otherwise. It’s a socialist, humane decree, but it’s also a family decree, if you like.
But I do have hope, because I do believe that we’re going to make a change. I don’t know if I will be here to see it. But I know we are going to win. It’s not an abstract or childish hope, it is something I learned from history. Would anyone have believed Nelson Mandela would become the President of South Africa just months before he was? Would someone have believed at the time that the Ku Klux Klan in the Deep South of America could be reduced to almost nothing?
So many changes occurred that no one could believe. So that’s part of my hope. But if we don’t struggle, we have no hope, because change won’t automatically come from nowhere. It will come if we continue and enlarge our just struggle, based on these three principles I mentioned before. That’s my hope.
Israeli society is also mine, and I want my society to be a just one. This is part of the struggle. They want to silence us, and me in particular, because they don’t want that. They are smearing us as anti-Israeli, as antisemites, and me personally as a self-hating Jew. All those lies are because they want to silence us. And they want to persecute us because they don’t want us to tell the truth in order to amend reality. I shall never surrender.
Ofer Cassif is an Israeli politician who represents Hadash in the Knesset.
Marcus Barnett is associate editor at Tribune.
Tribune was established in 1937 as a socialist magazine that would give voice to the popular front campaigns against the rising tide of fascism in Europe. For eighty years it has been at the heart of left-wing politics in Britain, counting giants of the labour movement like Aneurin Bevan and Michael Foot among its former editors. Tribune was relaunched as a print magazine and website with the support of Jacobin in 2018, and its new team is committed to reviving this great tradition on the British left. Our mission remains, as Michael Foot wrote on the magazine’s 21st birthday, “to sustain the old cause with the old weapons.”
