This Tuesday Israelis will go to the polls to elect a new government. While the primary focus in the US is the horse race between Livni, Netanyahu and Barak to be the next Prime Minister, the real story of the elections that has emerged is the success of Avigdor Lieberman and his party Yisrael Beitenu (Israel is Our Home).
Lieberman has run on an avowedly racist platform of forcing Palestinian Israeli citizens of Israel to take a loyalty oath to the state. Lieberman and his party (which includes former Israeli Ambassador to the US Danny Ayalon) have long advocated for removing Palestinian citizens of Israel (over 20% of the state) from the country into the West Bank. This call for ethnic cleaning has found a new and growing constituency in the wake of the war in Gaza. At this point Yisrael Beitenu is polling ahead of the Labor Party and is expected to be the third largest party in the new government.
This site often discusses Zionism. While there is a long history of Zionism as a political movement that has exhibited relative diversity of opinion during that time, its clear the Avigdor Lieberman is the current face of Zionism. He is not a new invention; the roots of his thought have been in existence from the beginning of the movement. At times this stream of thought wrestled with opposing Zionist viewpoints that valued notions of democracy and equality. That moment has long passed.
What is most alarming about Lieberman's rise is how is popularity reflects a growing consensus in Israel towards explicitly racist politics. The title of this post was taken from a Gideon Levy article, "Kahane Won", from today's Ha'aretz. Levy writes:
Rabbi Meir Kahane can rest in peace: His doctrine has won. Twenty years after his Knesset list was disqualified and 18 years after he was murdered, Kahanism has become legitimate in public discourse. If there is something that typifies Israel's current murky, hollow election campaign, which ends the day after tomorrow, it is the transformation of racism and nationalism into accepted values. . .
Now the instigator of the new Israeli racism will apparently become the leader of a large party once again in the government. Benjamin Netanyahu has already pledged that Lieberman will be an "important minister" in his government. If someone like Lieberman were to join a government in Europe, Israel would sever ties with it. If anyone had predicted in Kahane's day that a pledge to turn his successor into an important minister would one day be considered an electoral asset here, they would have been told they were having a nightmare.
But the nightmare is here and now. Kahane is alive and kicking - is he ever - in the person of his thuggish successor. This is not just a matter of disqualifying Yisrael Beiteinu; it is not even a matter of this party's growing strength to terrifying proportions, becoming the fulcrum that will decide who becomes prime minister. This is a matter of legitimization. All society bears responsibility for it.
And how is this being seen throughout Israeli society? Another illuminating article, "Lieberman's anti-Arab ideology wins over Israel's teens" by Yotam Feldman from this weekend's Ha'aretz makes that clear. The article begins,
The Yisrael Beiteinu youths gather for a final consultation as dozens of elderly party supporters slowly make their way into the white tent where the movement's conference is being held, behind the Plaza Hotel in Upper Nazareth.
The youths, ages 16-18, many of them good friends from school, had stood for a long time before the event began at the intersection near the hotel, waving Israeli flags and shouting "Death to the Arabs" and "No loyalty, no citizenship" at passing cars.
In the tent, they deliberate over what to shout when Lieberman enters: Calling out "The next prime minister" may sound a bit presumptuous with regard to the leader of what's likely to be the third-largest party in the next Knesset. But during a week when Yisrael Beiteinu won the highest level of support in mock high-school polls - the sky's the limit.
Read the entire article. [cited in an earlier post on Mondo today] One especially disturbing part is an interview with 18-year-old Edan Ivanov:
"This country has needed a dictatorship for a long time already. But I'm not talking about an extreme dictatorship. We need someone who can put things in order. Lieberman is the only one who speaks the truth." Adds Edan Ivanov, an 18 year old who describes himself as being "up on current events":
"We've had enough here with the 'leftist democracy' - and I put that term in quotes, don't get me wrong. People have put the dictator label on Lieberman because of the things he says. But the truth is that in Israel there can't be a full democracy when there are Arabs here who oppose it.
"All Lieberman's really saying is that anyone who isn't prepared to sign an oath of loyalty to the state, because of his personal views, cannot receive equal rights; he can't vote for the executive authority. People here are gradually coming to understand what needs to be done concerning a person who is not loyal."
Do these ideas fit with what you're learning in civics lessons?
Ivanov: "In my opinion, school doesn't tell it like it is. In school, you want to get a matriculation certificate, you need the grades, but you don't learn the truth there. The truth you learn from the neighborhood, from the street. I don't mean the street in a negative sense - I mean that you learn the truth from what's happening here."
What's happening here?
"We have a problem: Upper Nazareth is surrounded by minorities. There are lots of incidents with them. Women are scared to walk in the streets, and people are afraid they'll be stabbed. No one knows what to do about it at this point. There are people who live here and during a war they act as a fifth column. It will only be possible to make peace with them after we make war."
The article goes on to trace how this general lack of belief in democratic values is reflected in Israeli schools and Israeli society in general. Education Minister Yuli Tamir explains,
"Lieberman's growing strength indicates that there is deep confusion about everything related to democratic values, and this obligates the system to conduct a profound reckoning regarding its ability to instill these values. Civics studies are very technical, the children are not internalizing the profound values because, in the Israeli context, these values are perceived as leftist. If you go on the ministry's Web sites that deal with citizenship, you'll find all of these principles, but the teachers are afraid to talk about it, because there's a labeling that occurs when one makes statements about equality or civil rights."
The schools seem to be speaking in two voices. Is there a gap between democratic education and patriotic education?
Tamir: "Israeli society is speaking in two voices: We see ourselves as a democratic society, yet we often neglect things that are very basic to democracy. These things are not at the top of the Israeli agenda. If the students see the Knesset disqualifying Arab parties, a move that I've adamantly opposed, how can we expect them to absorb democratic values?"
It might be easy to try to dismiss these beliefs as the passions of impressionable youth. But how do you explain even the Education Minister of Israel admitting that equality is considered beyond the pale inside Israel? Is this not an explicit expression of the contradiction inherent in the Jewish and democratic state? Should it not be a surprise that that Jewish ethno-nationalist character of the state is winning out?
Lieberman is raising the same issues and "solutions" that Kahane did 20 years ago, and again the leaders of mainstream Zionism do not have a meaningful alternative to offer. Watch this fascinating debate between Kahane and Ehud Olmert from the mid-1980s on Nightline. Back then Nightline treated Kahane as a fringe character. His ideas are entering power today.
Israeli voters will go the polls on Tuesday to endorse a vision for their future. By all accounts it appears that future will be one ethnic nationalism and endless confrontation. The Feldman article ends with a quote from Prof. Ilan Gur-Ze'ev:
The Israeli reality can no longer hide what it has kept hidden up to now - that today no sentient mother can honestly say to her child: 'Next year things will be better here.' The young people are replacing hope for a better future with a myth of a heroic end. For a heroic end, Lieberman fits the bill.
Is this the best Zionism has to offer Israelis and to Jews? The opportunity to go out in a blaze of glory? Finding alternatives to Zionism has often been viewed as a project for its victims - for Palestinians and Mizrahi Jews - and their supporters. But these articles, and this election, show that this should also be a urgent call for anyone who cares about Israelis, or cares about peace. There needs to be another way. This is a cause for everyone. (Adam Horowitz)
But wait, i thought the Hamas platform meant nothing. Yet this one means everything. And all he wants to do is redraw the borders. Put has many Palestinians under their own government and take in the major Jewish settlements. What's wrong with the that. Surely the Arabs would rather live under their own leaders than in the belly of the zio-nazi beast.
Surely the Africans would rather live in their bantustans under their own leaders than in the belly of the apartheid South African beast.
Very interesting pieces. The final point is so key: "going out in a blaze of glory" is the best that Israel has to offer at this point. That's all extreme militaristic nationalism has ever offered anybody. There's a fast arc — a build up, a blaze of glory and the inevitable fall from grace. It resonates here in the U.S. because we just went through it from 2001-present — although it remains unclear how far into the "fall from grace" part we are.
Loyalty oaths are idiotic. Like someone who was disloyal wouldn't lie about it. Though we require one for naturalized citizens here, we don't require it for natural born citizens:
link to uscis.gov
Currently, all Jewish Israeli citizens must serve in the army for (I forget how many, 2?) years or do alternative service. I don't see why extending that obligation to Arab Israelis is a bad thing.
As for swapping majority Arab lands in Israel for majority Israeli lands in the West Bank, that seems reasonable, as long as the Arab Israeli citizens are compensated for the loss of property values and are allowed to retain their Israeli citizenship and move back within the new Israeli borders if they choose to do so within a reasonable time, say five years.
"As for swapping majority Arab lands in Israel for majority Israeli lands in the West Bank, that seems reasonable"
No it's not. Its just ethnic cleansing, and using racist settler colonialism as justification for that ethnic cleansing to boot. Two bigotries at once.
One would expect that the typical cultural high degree of honor required of Arab would lead them to actually take the oath and mean it. Or refuse it and leave.
It's all a matter of individual honor.
"At times this stream of thought wrestled with opposing zionist viewpoints that valued notions of democracy and equality."
Not really. I read Ilan Pappe's book, "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," a book so painful to read that I could only get through 5 or 6 pages at a sitting. There was a conscious decision to remove the Palestinians from the land, using whatever methods were required, antedating the creation of the state of Israel by a couple of decades. The founders of the state did not care how many men, women, or children had to be killed or terrorized as long as they achieved their goal: the maximum ammount of land with a minimal number of non-Jews on it. The founding of this state was a criminal act which had to be disguised with a good measure of propaganda, otherwise there would be little support for it, either from the international community or from diaspora Jews. That Israeli Jews are more open about their intentions now means that they are more confident of their strength and ability to finish the project. Diaspora Jews can't hide behind those romantic notions of zionism any longer since they have been demonstrated to be pure fantasy, meant to obscure the racist character of the endeavor and will need to take a stand, one way or the other, on this the most pressing moral issue of our day.
"Lieberman and his party (which includes former Israeli Ambassador to the US Danny Ayalon) have long advocated for removing Palestinian citizens of Israel (over 20% of the state) from the country into the West Bank."
That is false. Lieberman calls for removing citizenship rights from those who are not loyal to Israel, not removing people.
It is also absurd; those who want to expel Arabs would not move them to the Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria.
To chris berel, Thom, SOG, Seig Heil!
We knew you'd all come through. Can't wait for the hasbara troops
to chime in on how reasonable it all is. Israel ist Heimat. Volk warmth to you all.
Let's watch our MSM Bund's messages.
But wait, i thought the Hamas platform meant nothing. Yet this one means everything.
It doesn't "mean nothing." The point is not that you should close your eyes on what it says. The point is Hamas indicated publicly it was ready to negociate Israel's recognition along the 1967 borders, and according to a former Mossad head, that it had given up on its ideological objectives of killing all Jews. Lieberman, on the other hand, publicly says he's going to have Arab Israelis go through loyalty oaths, and his supporters publicly chant "Death to the Arabs."
Ana read a book. I'm amazed. And based on that one book has decided everything. Must be nice to know that by reading a novel you can determine the actual thought process of those who were saving the remnants of European Jewry.
By the way, Ana, what is Citizen whining about now?
"As for swapping majority Arab lands in Israel for majority Israeli lands in the West Bank…"
"majority Israeli lands? That's funny…
Israel Shamir with a different take on Lieberman and Yisrael Beiteinu, albeit from 2006:
"Even less substantiated is Makdisi’s weird claim that YB is a “racist party” and for them, “non-Jews are not welcome”. As a matter of fact, the YB is the least Jewish nationalist party in the Knesset outside the Arab block, as it is the party of the Russian, heavily non-Jewish community in Israel. At least half of the Russians in Israel, and thus many of YB voters, are just not Jews, and do not regret it. The voters of YB stand for equality of Jews and non-Jews, for civil marriages as opposed to the religious ones, for termination of Rabbinic dictat, for non-kosher restaurants, and they intermarry with the Israeli Palestinians at least as often as with the Israeli Jews. YB does not support the mad idea of “transfer” or mass expulsion of Native Palestinians, as Makdisi claims.
Makdisi makes much of Lieberman’s plan to correct the borders of Israel and calls it “ethnic cleansing”. He writes: “Lieberman proposes that the state's borders be drawn in such a way that Jews are placed on one side of it, and as many Arabs as possible on the other. Lieberman's solution may seem a little less inhumane [than expulsion], but it is just as racist.” He is apparently unaware that this was the idea of the partition of Palestine approved by the UN on November 29, 1947. In 1948, the Jewish state seized some parts of the proposed Palestinian state, including Jerusalem Corridor, Jaffa, Western Galilee and the Wadi Ara area. Lieberman called to return the Wadi Ara area to the future Palestinian state. Mind you: he did not call to expel the Arab dwellers of the area, but to surrender the whole area with its population to the neighbouring state. This is hardly “an ethnic cleansing” idea."
Note that in 2006, YB had 11 seats, and is predicted to get as many as 19 this Tuesday.
Oops! A response to Saree Makdisi’s The Rise of Avigdor Lieberman
Loyalty oaths sound good to me. Let's make American Jews take them, then prosecute them for treason the minute they advocate for a dime's worth of American tax funds going to Israel. Likewise, any advocacy of a war benefiting Israel should be sufficient to get a jail cell next to Pollard. Membership in foreign lobbies such as AIPAC would likewise be prohibited with draconian punishments. We should probably go with waterboarding for that offense.
Soo interesting, you need to sign an oath of loyalty to the state in order to receive equal rights, but, according to the laws of this theocratic state you will never receive equal rights. Man, so many retards, so little time.
Anyway, what's the use of loyalty oaths towards kol nidre praying paranoids who know by their own practices that there are some kinds of profit which can only come from exploiting the trust of the unaware. Pathetic.
Well, mondoweissians of old will know by now that american jews will rather see America drowning in black rain than use their unparalleled powers of strident collective indignation on behalf of civil and human rights enforcing in izzyland. That's because (as most people here are loathe to accept) to the organized-jew civil rights are but a competitive strategy employed to break the hegemony of other ethnic groups. The proof you see in izzyland, where the culmination of the civil rights movement jewish-style will be massacre and transfer. That's how ashkenazi judaism works where it rules: as an exterminationist strategy. And what so many years of forced philosemitism in Europe and willing philosemitism in America achieved is but the rising of the worst possible demon in this world, a racist theocracy, exterminationist nuclear terrorist entity disguised as a state.
Loyalty oaths to this aberration anyone?
Like LD, you merely prove the Jews to be right about people like you.
The founding of Israel was a criminal act which had to be disguised with a good measure of propaganda, otherwise there would be little support for it, either from the international community or from diaspora Jews. That Israeli Jews are more open about their intentions now means that they are more confident of their strength and ability to finish the project. Diaspora Jews can't hide behind those romantic notions of zionism any longer since they have been demonstrated to be pure fantasy, meant to obscure the racist character of the endeavor and will need to take a stand, one way or the other, on this the most pressing moral issue of our day.
Great stuff, Ana. Thank you.
I sense some of those creatures are trying to communicate with me. There's hope for them. According to Darwin some three million years of straight evolution (natural selection won't do for them in so little time) may help them become as evolved as someone able to perceive several years ago that this little Mondoweiss of ours would one day become one of the few pillars of truth in the midst of a crumbling down media erected over the rooting wooden piles of zionist deception. Come little vermin, time and toil will harden your bellies from the pain of slithering blindly amidst the rocks, being drawn towards our mondo, everytime dreading a close encounter with Metalepsis's feet and the sand of Slomo's desert that heavy creature carries on his nails. You will understand the mechanics of a straight backbone one day, be here as just man, or in hell heads down hung by your tail. The choice is yours. As for my time, it is mine, I don't waste with things like you unless I'm in a mood for fishing.
Whenever imperialists partition their colonies, bad outcomes should be expected.
Seems that Ana and Dan have become Tories 50 years after the end of the American Revolution.
2 viable states for two people, is a rational approach.
A single dominant state is a fraud.
The most important factor that I noted in the reporting about the Israeli election is the absence of substantive discussion, that the three parties are seeking to win by dissing the other parties.
The "fringe" parties, Israel Beitanyu, Shas, other religious parties, wait in the wings (and fight with each other. Shas leadership issued a statement that voting for Leiberman was a vote against God, strong words.)
FROM ADAM'S POST: AN ISRAELI YOUTH QUOTED IN THE "HAARETZ" ARTICLE – "We have a problem: Upper Nazareth is surrounded by minorities. There are lots of incidents with them. Women are scared to walk in the streets, and people are afraid they'll be stabbed. No one knows what to do about it at this point. There are people who live here and during a war they act as a fifth column. It will only be possible to make peace with them after we make war."
EXCERPT FROM THE HAARETZ ARTICLE OF 01/27/09 ENTITLED "Police arrest Jewish teens for allegedly assaulting Arab youth in Galilee":
An Arab youth from the Galilee village of Majd el-Krum was injured lightly on Monday night after a gang of Jewish teens beat him with sticks while he was walking along the promenade in Tiberias.
Police arrested eight suspects ranging from 14 to 16 years of age who are believed to have taken part in the assault.
The victim, Mohammed Mansur, was rushed to Poriah Hospital near Tiberias, where he was treated for injuries sustained all over his body…..
SOURCE – link to haaretz.com
/>
Sorry I don't care fot Israel, never did, never will. Israel is the continutaion of Rcist Europe elswhere, subcontracted to Jews, so while Germans snd French can sip cofee and regret the Holocaust in Berlin and Paris, Jews on their behalf can continue the Holocaust in other shape and forms in Gaza Haifa and Hebron.
Im fearful of Israel.
If i fear Israel going out in a big glorious explosion, it's not out of love for this shitty little country, but it's because I know that the millions and millions of its Victims would be non Israelis who will have to experience a Jewsih Hyroshima.
Anonymous. @ February 08, 2009 at 03:39 PM
If Avigdor Lieberman is Israel's Obama, the hope of its youth and future, then this paragraph describes how he got there. That and with US taxpayers emptying $10 billion a year from our pockets to give LIeberman and its young citizenry the sense that our largesse will last forever.
Wiitty:"2 viable states for two people, is a rational approach.
A single dominant state is a fraud."
Strange, this is exactly what the apartheid s afrikkaners wanted.
They lost to world coercion.
What's the difference, Witty?
Also is the USA a fraud too?
Anonymous @ 4:28 PM
True.
Chris,
Ana read a book. I'm amazed.
First of all, how old are you? You sound like you're seven.
Second of all, have you read Pappe's book? I agree with Ana — you can't get through more than a handful of pages at a sitting, so painful is the work, especially in light of what we've seen since. How has this fraud been allowed to last so long?
Chris, you should read the book. It's based on declassified military docs.
"True."
I tell you this, MRW, it was here of all places that I at last understood that the down-to-earth common sense of the american people shall one day be given the deserved status as one of the great values comprising western culture.
I come here almost everyday to learn how americans deal with a seemingly impossible to solve problem (I do not read the zionists, except Eurosabra because he's enough of a reference), and while I know not if you guys will find a non-violent or no-fireworks way to solve it, at least you show the gods right in trusting you to crack this nut of hell and bring humanity to a better future.
"The Authentic Voice of Israel": Avigdor Lieberman?
Chomsky saw this coming in 1983 (" The Fateful Triangle"):
______________________________________________________________
The Road to Armageddon 447
[...]
An unidentified settler in a Moshav–a well-established farmer, educated, of western origin, apparently a person of some distinction who speaks with a sense of authority–takes a rather different stand.* In his view, Israel should be "a mad state," so that people "will understand that we are a wild country, dangerous to our surroundings, not normal," quite capable of "burning the oil fields" or "opening World War III just like that," with nuclear weapons if necessary. Then "they will act carefully around us so as not to anger the wounded animal." Essentially, Richard Nixon's "madman theory." The Lebanon war was fine, but didn't go far enough ("it's a pity we didn't wipe that wasps nest completely off the ground," referring to Ain el-Hilweh; "we should have done it with our own delicate hands," referring to Sabra-Shatila, instead of leaving it to the Phalange–"can you call 500 Arabs a massacre"?). "We shall open another similar war, kill and destroy more and more, until they will have had enough." One great achievement of the Lebanon war was that it aroused anti-Jewish passions throughout the world, so that now "they hate all those nice Zhids" (an anti-Semitic slur) who write books and play music, all those now often derided in Israel as "beautiful souls." He is pleased with the designation "Judeo-Nazi" used by Professor Yeshayahu Leibovitz in a despairing indictment of what he fears Israel is becoming. This man's goal is "to kill as many Arabs as necessary, to deport them, to expel, to burn them, to make us hated by all, to make the ground unstable beneath the feet of the Jews in the Diaspora so that they shall be forced to rush here crying." He wants to imitate the Australians who exterminated the natives of Tasmania, or Truman who destroyed hundreds of thousands with two bombs. If instead of writing books, Jews had come to Palestine and "killed six million Arabs, or one million," then they would now be a people of 25 million, "from the Suez canal to the oil fields." It was a mistake that should not be made again. Afterwards, there will be time for culture and civilization. (5)
If things continue on their present course, within the constraints that are at least induced, if not imposed, by "support" from the United States of the sort tendered in recent years, there is reason to expect that these will sooner or later become the authentic voices of Israel. Note that contrary to many oversimplified accounts, these are not the voices of Sephardic slum-dwellers from the Arab countries, but of educated people of western orientation and origin.
______________________________
* This man's views are taken quite seriously by 0z and many others. See, for example, Boaz Evron, "The Nightmares of C" (as he is identified in Oz's interview), Davar, Feb. 4, 1983, a detailed point-by-point refutation of his arguments, which are by no means dismissed as idiosyncratic.
The irony of the article is that Lieberman and Kahane have very little in common. Lieberman advocates the withdrawal out of large portions of Judea and Samaria. Kahane believed that from the Jordan River westward was all Israel.
Lieberman had to cover up a bit of his continued intentions after
Kahane's group was declared a terrorist organization. The full Zionist state isn't built in a day.