IN not so many words but quite clear in what she meant, Israeli Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked has said Zionism stands in opposition to not only human rights but also universal justice.

Shaked had been critical of the Israeli High Court of Justice’s recent decision in which it ruled that illegal aliens refusing to be transferred to a third African country cannot be detained indefinitely. In her speech organized by the Israeli Bar Association in Tel Aviv, she criticized the court for giving insufficient attention to Zionism and the country’s Jewish majority. “Zionism... will not continue to bow down to the system of individual rights,” Shaked said, considering national and Zionist values as an “absolute truth”. “The Jewish majority and not human rights,” said Shaked, “should be taken into consideration.”

Shaked thus revealed the real face of Zionism. What she declared is what the world has been saying for years, that Zionism and human rights are ideologically incompatible.

Many people would naturally balk at this contempt for human rights. But for Israeli leaders, what was outrageous was not Shaked’s disdain for a global principle but that the court was too liberal. For nearly a decade, Israel has struggled to deal with tens of thousands of non-Jewish Africans who entered the country illegally, seeking asylum or work. African asylum seekers comprise 0.5% of Israel's population. Many have learned Hebrew and fill jobs in restaurants, hotels and other services, which aid groups say most Israelis do not want to do.

If Israel treats them as refugees, why does it then refuse them asylum? Although most African migrants are generally regarded to be legitimate asylum seekers by various human rights organizations, many Israelis want them out. That is at direct odds with Israel’s history; a country built by refugees should be more accepting of those fleeing war, poverty and oppression.

So the Zionist goal is preserving a Jewish majority in Israel at the expense of human rights for asylum seekers. In that case, Shaked’s statement implies that Zionism will trample upon every single human rights and universal law. And in that sense, Zionism is morally repugnant and is, above all, a right-wing ideology that negates human rights.

Zionism seeks to Judaize the occupied Palestinian territories, remove its occupants and preserve its Jewish majority and Jewish character. Zionism has been used to justify all the injustices, the racism, the occupation army and its regime and the apartheid system over decades.

Shaked prefers Zionism to human rights, the ultimate universal justice. She believes that Israelis have a different kind of justice. Zionism is not just; it contradicts justice, but Shaked and company shall prefer it to justice because it’s their identity, their history and their national mission.

No nation has the right to spurn universal principles and re-invent principles so as to call the occupation just and discrimination equality. The only goal of the Zionist is to take over the land of Palestine and get rid of as much Palestinians as possible. The Palestinian people are victims of a racist movement.

Israel is not a democracy as it claims. It discriminates its non-Jewish inhabitants because of not being Jewish. The Israeli political establishment pretends that Israel is a “Jewish and democratic” state but that is an oxymoron, a contradiction in itself.

Even some hardline-Zionists have never gone so far as to say that they would disregard universal principles in order to maintain Zionism. But Shaked belongs to Naftali Bennett‘s nationalistic Jewish Home Party, which together with the right-wing settler movement harbors a racist and fascist ideology.

In 1975, UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism with racism, was later revoked. The Israeli justice minister has now admitted the truthfulness of that resolution. Shaked said the truth loud and clear: Zionism contradicts human rights, and thus is indeed an ultranationalist, colonialist and racist movement.