Max Blumenthal, author of Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party, discusses how the Carmel wildfire reveals Israel’s singular focus on militarization at the expense of basic public services like firefighting (necessitating humbling assistance from Turkey and the Palestinian Authority); how millions of trees hide the evidence of razed villages and the mass expulsion of Palestinians in the 1948 Nakba; touring the new bohemian village of Ein Hod where the mosque of the displaced Palestinian population was converted into a bar; how the evangelical Christian GOD TV network is funding the Jewish National Fund to plant a million trees in the Negev desert (displacing Bedouin residents) to advertise the second coming of Christ; and why the Israeli settlements can’t be undone while the government is staffed with, and controlled by, former and current settlers.
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