Jewish thug, nothing less

If not fascism, what is it? Without censure, a growing current in Israeli politics is calling for the outright killing of Palestinians

Many Israeli intellectuals dub Lieberman as the secular equivalent of Meir Kahana, the slain founder of the Kach terrorist group who advocated genocidal ethnic cleansing of non-Jews in Israel-Palestine. Kahana was assassinated in Manhattan, New York, in 1990 shortly after giving a speech in which he called for the annihilation and expulsion of Palestinians from "the Land of Israel".

A nightclub bouncer-turned-politician, Lieberman formed the Yisrael Beiteinu Party in 1999 when he was first elected to the Knesset. Without controversy, Lieberman's political and social ideas can be described as racist, even genocidal. In recent weeks, he was quoted as suggesting that Israel should use nuclear weapons against the Gaza Strip.

"The time has come to shock the Gaza population with actions thatuntil now have nauseated us -- actions such as killing the politicalleadership, causing hunger and thirst in Gaza, blocking off energysources, causing widespread destruction, and being less discriminatingin the killing of civilians. There is no other choice," he wrote.

In 2002, Lieberman called on the Israeli government, under Ariel Sharon, to blanket-bomb Palestinian population centres in order to force Palestinians to flee to Jordan. The Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot quoted Lieberman as saying during a cabinet meeting that the Palestinians should be given an ultimatum: "At 8am we'll bomb all the commercial centres... at noon we'll bomb their gas stations... at 2pm we'll bomb their banks... while keeping the bridges open."

In 1998, Lieberman called for flooding Egypt by bombing the Aswan Dam. In 2001, as minister of national infrastructure, Lieberman proposed that the West Bank be divided into four cantons, with no central Palestinian government and no possibility for Palestinians to travel between the cantons. In 2003, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Lieberman called for thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel to be drowned in the Dead Sea and offered to provide buses to take them there.

Further, Lieberman has proposed that a "loyalty test" be applied to those "Arabs" who desire to remain in Israel. Those committed to making Israel a state of all its citizens, including the Palestinian minority, would be stripped of their voting rights. In April 2002, Lieberman stated that there was "nothing undemocratic about transfer".