“Israel’s ex-prime minister has warned that his country is “infected by the seeds of fascism.”
Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister and defense minister, said in an interview on Israeli TV on Friday night that fascistic, extreme right-wing politics are on the rise in his country, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported
“What has happened is a hostile takeover of the Israeli government by dangerous elements,” he cautioned. “And it’s just the beginning.”
Barak’s comments come just weeks after Israeli Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan compared Israel to Nazi Germany in the 1930s, in a Holocaust Remembrance Day speech on May 4.
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon resigned on Friday, after hard-line right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he would be offering the defense minister position to Avigdor Lieberman, one of the most extreme figures in Israeli politics.
Lieberman was compared to ISIS in March 2015 after publicly calling for beheading disloyal Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Explaining his decision to immediately step down, Ya’alon, who is a fellow member of Netanyahu’s staunchly right-wing Likud party, warned that “extremist and dangerous elements have taken over Israel.”
Former Prime Minister Barak, from Israel’s centrist Labor party, said Ya’alon’s resignation is “the end of a chain that began with the case of the soldier who shot” a wounded Palestinian assailant who was lying on the ground incapacitated, killing him in an incident in the illegally occupied West Bank that was caught on camera.
In the interview on Israel’s Channel 10, Barak cited ultra right-wing legislation that is being pushed by members of the ruling coalition, adding, “This government needs to be brought down before it brings all of us down.”
“There are no serious leaders left in the world who believe the Israeli government,” the former Israeli prime minister said.”
Now I have seen from experience instances where legitimate critics of Israeli government policies have been tarred as anti Semites. Some surely were; but not all. This has the affect of silencing criticism.
Additionally use of the word fascism or comparison of Israeli government policies with 1930s Nazi Germany would be, from a gentile, Arab. a European or American, highly inflammatory and bring immediate condemnation.
The above comments however are from the former Prime Minister of Israel after the resignation of the Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and Major General Yair Golan.
It was reported in Israel’s largest newspaper Ha’aretz.
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.720715
toritto 
When I have criticised Israel in the past, something I have done frequently, I have always been accused of being anti-Semitic. Even though it is well-known that I have close friends who are Jewish, that accusation is always aimed at me immediately.
Being opposed to the actions of the Israeli government, which in many cases are little better than the Nazi regime the Jewish peoples suffered under, is not the same thing as being against the Jewish religion. Everyone knows that, but the old cry of Antisemitism is an easy out, in an argument that cannot really be countered.
Best wishes, Pete.
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