When paranoia rules, everything seems so kosher!

Last Wednesday night Israeli (IDF) soldiers shot and killed a man they thought to be a terrorist in Jerusalem, after the man attacked them and tried to grab one of the weapons they were carrying.

According to police, the incident began when two soldiers boarding a bus near the entrance to the capital were asked for identification by an unknown man. When the soldiers, in response, asked the man to identify himself and submit to a search, he began physically assaulting them and tried to seize one of the firearms they were carrying, according to a police account.

The soldiers opened fire on the man, who was pronounced dead at the scene. The man, however, did not have a knife on him, as previously reported. A search on his body revealed an Israeli ID card, and reports indicated he was Jewish. But police said they were still working to identify him.

The incident occurred on Yirmiyahu Street, in the city’s Romema neighborhood, and came after another day of attacks against Israelis.

Hatred and paranoia are like cancer and take one to the point of no return. The Israeli society is now sick with these ailments. Until lately they have been killing Palestinians just on mere suspicion that they could attack them. All the civilized norms were abandoned in this new resurgence of hatred and paranoia. As the above incident showed, even their own Jewish people were insecure in the hand of trigger-happy security forces!

Illegal occupation is not an easy thing no matter how it is sanctified by an apartheid system and those in the business of selling religion for worldly purposes. Yes, for too long political Zionism has corrupted Judaism and made it subservient. That is why, I was not surprised to hear from the Israeli media reports that some Jewish Rabbis have declared the killing of Palestinian resistance fighters “a religious duty”. Israeli news website Walla reported that right-wing rabbis replied to questions including: “Am I allowed to kick the insurgent, hit him or shoot him in order to kill him after he has been arrested or is this prohibited?”

Rabbi Rav Benzion Mutzafi replied: “It is not only desirable to do so, but it is a religious duty that you hold his head down to the ground and hit him until his last breath.”

Fortunately, not all the Jews uphold Mutzafi's criminal views. Rabbi David said it is prohibited for people to attack a Palestinian perpetrator of an operation after he has been injured or when he is posing no danger. Mutzafi responded: “Do not listen to Staph because those who have mercy on the cruel will end up being cruel toward the righteous.”

Unfortunately, within Israel Mutzafi has major supporters behind his extremist views. Chief Rabbi of the city of Safed Shmuel Eliyahu is one such person. He called for all Israeli police officers and soldiers who allow Palestinian resistance fighters to live after their arrest to be tough, i.e., to kill them. “It is prohibited to keep the vandal alive after the operation, because if he is left alive, there is a fear that he would be released and then he would kill others,” Eliyahu wrote on Facebook.

Many of today's violent settler fanatics are often followers of (now dead) Rabbi Meir Kahane. The ultra-Zionist terrorists who burned a Palestinian baby to death with a fire bomb near Nablus are likely to be modern day followers of Kahane.

It is not difficult to connect the extra-judicial criminal activities of the Jewish settlers and the IDF against the Palestinian civilians with the toxic religious indoctrination that they have been receiving from hateful Rabbis. Let’s also not forget why they feel so untouchable for such crimes. They have their patron as the head of the government. Lest we forget most of the support for the rogue government of Benjamin Netanyahu actually comes from these extremist Jews who consider killing Palestinian a religious duty in the occupied territories.

Netanyahu’s apartheid regime is criminally silent on the crimes of his fellow settlers, and their Rabbis who justify violence against unarmed Palestinians.  Israeli "justice" minister Ayelet Shaked (who slandered Palestinian children in genocidal terms as "little snakes" during last year's war on the Gaza Strip) and a former deputy-speaker of the Knesset have openly called for genocide against Palestinians (he called for all Palestinians to be forced out of Gaza and put in "encampments," where they would be "concentrated."). And there are many more members within the government and the Knesset that have called for such extermination campaigns against Palestinians.

Netanyahu himself has been a very diabolical figure in Israeli politics, personally believed to be responsible for the murder of a former prime minister. His hatred of the Palestinians people is well known. To hide his crimes against them, he has always found something else to deflect public opinion. After his failed attempt to demonize Iran and its leadership, he has now found a new villain – Haj Amin.  Recently, he has publicly asserted that Adolf Hitler had no intention of exterminating Europe’s Jews until a Palestinian persuaded him to do it. His assertion was so outlandish even his greatest backers inside and outside Israel and the Jewish community had to chide him for distorting history.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, in a statement described Netanyahu’s remarks as “morally indefensible and inflammatory.” Erekat said that by “blaming the Palestinians for the Holocaust “ Netanyahu had completely absolved Adolph Hitler’s heinous and reprehensible genocide of the Jewish people…the leader of the Israeli government hates his neighbor so much that he is willing to absolve the most notorious war criminal in history, Adolph Hitler, of the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust.”

Through his absurd claim against Haj Amin, Netanyahu was basically escalating incitement against and demonization of the Palestinian people living under his country’s military and settler-colonial rule.

Under his leadership the Israeli democracy is sliding downwards towards an ultra-nationalist, racist, religious society. His fascist supporters can be heard on TV, with faces contorted by hatred, shouting "Death to the Arabs!" at soccer matches until they are hoarse, or demonstrating after each violent incident in the mixed Jewish-Arab towns "All Arabs are Terrorists! Kill them all!"

Under Netanyahu’s watch, unemployment of the Palestinian people has risen to an alarming portion, and more and more the occupied indigenous people find them cornered to a place of no hope and no future. Israeli crackdown on Palestinian unrest, particularly in occupied East Jerusalem, has left hundreds of people wounded. However, they face ever-growing restrictions of movement, even their access to hospitals is blocked by IDF soldiers. They are suddenly surrounded with checkpoints, and which Israeli security forces are heavily restricting access to. Even the doctors and other staff at these hospitals are struggling to get to work. For patients, in many cases, it’s nearly impossible, with people who used to live less than 10 minutes from the hospital finding waits of an hour or more just to get around a military checkpoint, and report Israeli troops firing live rounds at them as they try to get wounded relatives to receive care. Some Palestinian patients have died as a result of such harsh restrictions.

Add to that list of dehumanization of the Palestinians, the periodic evictions and demolitions of their homes. For instance, while the IDF and settlers were killing Palestinians unprovoked in the last few days, the Israeli police on last Monday helped settlers carry out the eviction of a Palestinian extended family in East Jerusalem, which has been occupied by Israel since the war of June 1967. “A large police force was deployed [Monday] morning to evict the Abu Nab family. Street was put under curfew,” Betty Herschman, the international relations and advocacy director for Ir Amin, a nonprofit advocacy group in Jerusalem that monitors settlement activity, told Al Jazeera.

“My family has been renting this house since 1948,” Abdullah Abu Nab told Al Jazeera after the court decision, noting that his family had been expelled from present-day West Jerusalem, which fell under Israeli control after the 1948 war that accompanied Israel’s creation.

In the last several weeks some three scores (I have lost count!) of Palestinians were murdered by the settlers and security forces of the Apartheid State of Israel. So serious was the deteriorating condition inside the Occupied Territories that the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had to visit the killing fields of the Occupied Palestine and tell Netanyahu that "the walls, checkpoints, harsh responses by the security forces and house demolitions cannot sustain the peace and safety that you need and must have."

Then came the pressure from the USA. Whether it is the pressure from the US Secretary Kerry or someone else, facts are that last Friday, after weeks of illegal restrictions, ultimately Netanyahu caved in and lifted the restriction on Muslims of all ages to come and pray inside the Haram al-Sharif, Islam’s third holiest site.

So, at the end, some calm has settled in the Occupied Territories.

My question is: what did Netanyahu achieve except the death of some 60 people? Well, what the rest of the world has learned is that the rogue state has two sets of laws: one for the occupied Palestinian victims and the other for the occupying forces and the settlers. The latter has the right to kill the former even when unthreatened. Netanyahu can arrogantly claim his state to be a bastion of democracy in an un-democratic region, a bastion of civilization in an allegedly uncivilized region, a model state where human rights are upheld and people are fairly and treated irrespective of their race and religion, the ugly fact that has emerged is that all those are bogus claims and nothing else.