Jeremy Ben-Ami, the head of the liberal Zionist group J Street, was on WNYC this morning expressing hope that we have seen the end of the Netanyahu government. The Israeli election is a “change” election, he said, and if they are able to form a government, the Zionist Union of Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni would present a “radically different” policy on peace negotiations from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I think you would see a radical difference,” Ben-Ami said. What’s radical? Livni and Herzog would come out “with a proactive diplomatic initiative within a few months.” That initiative would be two states for two peoples, borders based on the ’67 lines with adjustments for the major settlement blocs, a resolution of the refugee issue, and arrangements for the Palestinians to have a capital in East Jerusalem.
In response to a caller, Ben-Ami said that a Herzog-Livni government would not be a leftwing government. “There’s no way that the quote unquote left will be able to form a government,” he explained. It would necessarily be a centrist government. Herzog and Livni would have to make a coalition with ultra-orthodox parties or even with Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beteinu party.
Host Brian Lehrer: Lieberman, a very right wing government official on foreign policy.
Ben-Ami: Absolutely, but somebody who is very open to negotiating a position and finding a way into a government that keeps him in a government post.
Neither man mentioned the fact Lieberman, who is Israel’s Foreign Minister, called for beheading Arabs who are disloyal to the Jewish state five days ago:
“Those [Palestinians] who are with us deserve everything, but those who are against us deserve to have their heads chopped off with an axe.”
Yesterday the State Department condemned the remarks, but the spokesperson did not know if it had expressed its disapproval to the foreign minister himself:
The statements are extremely disturbing and inciteful. We would reiterate our call to avoid provocative actions and rhetoric such as this. I can certainly check and see if we’ve been in direct touch. I don’t have that information.
Ben-Ami and Lehrer did not refer once to the Arab parties in the Israeli election campaign. Palestinian voters are very upset by Lieberman’s comments. And if Israel actually were a democracy in which Arabs were included in the governing coalition, how would policy change?
Ze’ev Chafets, the rightwinger who followed Ben-Ami on Lehrer’s show, also did not talk about Palestinian voters. This is truly lamentable bandwidth: liberal Zionist to rightwing Zionist, and no mention of Israel’s large minority population. I imagine Jim Crow media were like this too, back when black voters were excluded from the nominating process for the presidency.
Zev Chafets assured listeners that Livni (whom he’d known in Likud back in the late 70s) and Herzog (whose father he knew) were really no different from Netanyahu on core issues, including the peace process. “Rhetorically, yes,” he said. But he pointed out that “the Palestinian issue is not really on the table here anymore… Nobody here thinks the Palestinian issue is a live issue for the moment.”
When the matter does come up again, Chafets said, the Palestinians will have to give up the right of return to make a deal. Lehrer described the right of return as the “so-called right of return” and said that on this issue “wiser heads … tend to say… that the solution is really there… the so-called right of return… is something that the Palestinians have to give up and eventually will give up.” Lehrer said the right of return was the idea of Palestinians returning to “homes they used to hold in Israel– those families before 1948.” Well there wasn’t an Israel before 1948. And do I just “hold” my home? I own it, actually.
Again: I’m very curious how a Palestinian would respond to all of these issues. When am I going to hear one on Lehrer’s show?
It is apparent that Palestinians are invisible to many in Israel and in the US.
I just spent a good amount of time reading a very lengthy article by Eva Illouz in Haaretz that was published yesterday:
“What the death of my father taught me about the demise of Israeli compassion
The painful story of my father’s death is actually the story of a far more elusive topic: of an indifference to human distress and of the collapse of something fundamental that is unseen and yet pervasive in our society.”
http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/.premium-1.646583
It includes this:
“If, in 2014, Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin was vilified in an unprecedented manner for expressing compassion for the oppressed Israeli Arab minority, if compassion regarding the destruction and havoc in Gaza is an act of treason, then it means that compassion itself has ceased to be a part of our moral vocabulary. In Tunisia, a single young man’s self-immolation was enough to set the entire country ablaze, but in Israel the despair of the many people who have set themselves on fire since 2012 hardly made it to the news (it was argued that Moshe Sliman was mentally ill, and about Akiva Mafai and Theodor Zozolia no one even heard).
Why was a young man’s immolation in Tunisia the source of collective outrage, when here, it is met with indifference? It is because A growing part of the Israeli public has become numb to others’ suffering and to their own suffering. (I cannot help but wonder if there is a connection between the growing numbness to the pain of others and the rise in the last two decades of extreme right-wing parties, such as Habayit Hayehudi; Yisrael Beiteinu; Likud; and Yahad. In a recent meeting of the right-wing organization Im Tirtzu that represents a growing part of the Israeli public, an event attended by some highly respected professors and MK Ayelet Shaked, the tone of the discussion reflected precisely this analysis. A discussion about “infiltrators” was accompanied by comments such as, “What human beings? They are infiltrators!” An Israeli citizen, Liav Marmar, from Bat Yam, articulated it most clearly: “They [Supreme Court justices] have no Jewishness, so all their rulings are from the humane point of view.” (Haaretz, November 28, 2014). To this citizen, saying someone possesses a humane gaze is an insult and a deviation from the official creed that now organizes Israeli policy.
This is the moral and political climate that has eroded norms of compassion and humanity in our society. Indeed, the same gaze that makes us fail to see the humanity of infiltrators, of Sudanese refugees, of the vast population of Palestinian civilians terrorized by the fear of Israeli military strikes, jail, and expropriation, is the same gaze that makes us fail to register the suffering of an ordinary patient in a hospital.”
It does not bode well for Israel.
In the meantime, I wouldn’t hold my breath while waiting to hear from a Palestinian on Lehrer’s show.
*you’ll need to read the entire article in order to understand what I believe the author means when she writes about Israelis’ “own suffering”
There is no win-win scenario in this election (just as there will be no viable choices in our own 2016 elections). I sympathize with the Palestinians, however, the only desirable choice for us in this country is for Netanyahu to get reelected. There will be no decrease in the violence and mayhem he creates, but he will provide our government with the justification to torpedo the special relationship. His reelection will hasten the demise of the Israel lobby in this country – and that is a very good thing.
I know that sounds selfish, but once we fix things at home, we will be in a better position to help those outside of our borders.
So, go Bibi!
“Neither man mentioned the fact Lieberman, who is Israel’s Foreign Minister, called for beheading Arabs who are disloyal to the Jewish state five days ago”
Well, what’s a little beheading between friends.
“In response to a caller…” I’d be very interested to know if they were screening the callers.
Some say, like Gideon Levy, that things will be worse if the Labor “left” wins.
In the short run; probably. But in the medium to long run, it’ll be better.
Because it will destroy any last vesitiges of the illusion that there are any serious differences between the camps on Apartheid. They mainly differ on tactics, not on the main strategy.
Yesterday the State Department condemned the remarks
Not to split hairs but Psaki never ever uses the words “condemn” to refer to remarks or actions by Israelis. Her choice of words for Avigdor Lieberman’s remarks are “extremely disturbing”, “inciteful” and “provocative”.