I am in Israel hoping to see the end of an era, the downfall of Benjamin Netanyahu. I hope that he is crushed in the election tonight. Many who care about Palestinians want Netanyahu to be reelected. They say that things must get worse before they get better, or that no one has done more to delegitimize the state of Israel in the eyes of the world than crude Benjamin Netanyahu the king of the Jews. True. Keep him in another couple of years, they say, and Israel will be discredited in more and more people’s eyes. I don’t support this view.
I look at everything Israeli first in terms of my interest, as an American who wants to end the Zionist captivity in the U.S. Wanting Netanyahu to stay in office is a little bit like saying, I want the neocons to stay in the thinktanks and influential posts and foment a war in Iran so that they will be fully discredited, and people will put their heads on pikes. That might be in my ideological interest, but it is nihilistic. The neocons have already done enough damage. If they aren’t discredited enough at this point, then you’re f’ing stupid. Walt and Mearsheimer’s worst charges against the Israel lobby have been proven, in the minds of reasonable people. I don’t want to win ideological battles at the price of a war that will hurt a lot of people I don’t know.
Another few years of Netanyahu will hurt a lot of people. It will hurt more Palestinians in the West Bank, force more people out of their homes in East Jerusalem, it will increase the likelihood of another Gaza war.
So you don’t think Labor Zionists will massacre Palestinians in Gaza? They have done so in the past, and the US Zionists have supported them. They cheered Cast Lead at J Street. And won’t a Herzog government just give the occupation a lease on life?
I’m a progressive and hope for reform. A Labor led government will be much more obedient to world opinion and to European opinion than Netanyahu. I was at Netanyahu’s rally in Tel Aviv the other night and saw fascist strains before my eyes, the racist binding of nationalists around a mythic past, people who were ready to spill blood and who deny Palestinian existence, let alone humanity. That’s not a healthy thing for any society. Their defiance of world opinion is dangerous. They have nukes (as William Greider reminded Nation readers the other day). They help to confirm everything bad we have ever said about Israel, but are you in this to win an argument? I’m in it because I want to end the Zionist ideology in the U.S. and free the Palestinians. And yes, the Zionist Camp in the context of the rise of the Joint Arab List is less likely to commit massacres.
Will they give the occupation another five years and sustain the myth of the two state solution?
These are the most important questions. Gideon Levy is certainly right that a Labor Zionist victory will cause dancing in the capitals of Europe and Washington too. At J Street’s conference next week they will be delirious. It will be the second coming. They will say Israel is great again, Israeli democracy has vindicated itself. And Look at the Arab List!!! OMG. A friend says we are about to see a great sickening wave of Israel-loving in the U.S.
There is no doubt about any of this.
But I will be happy because it is necessary that anti-Zionists be engaged with liberal Zionists, and let the better argument win. That is an important phase of this struggle. And that battle will be at hand.
Look at it like this: for years the liberal Zionists have said, Give Israel a chance. Israel can change, Israelis want a two state solution. They actually want a Palestinian state. You will see, just give us a chance.
Now they will have their chance. They will be in power at last, the moment they’ve been preparing us for will be here. The neoconservatives will have been driven from Washington. Bill Kristol will be thoroughly discredited. Not just wrong on Iraq and wrong on a war of civilizations, but wrong on everything that Netanyahu has done politically in the last couple of years and months. Kristol has the reverse Midas touch; everything he touches has turned to shit.
The neocon collapse will leave the anti-Zionists to battle the liberal Zionists at last. The liberal Zionists will have to engage the side that believes in equal rights. There will be an open debate. Jeremy Ben-Ami who had big public conversations with Jeffrey Goldberg (who served in the IDF and stoked the Iraq war) and Bill Kristol (who didn’t serve in Vietnam and stoked the Iraq war) and tried to pretend we did not exist will have to take us on. Because the rightwing Zionists will be irrelevant and Jeremy Ben-Ami and Peace Now will be the new AIPAC. They will be the lobby, they will inherit the crown. And they will have to engage us because we are inside the Democratic Party base now. There will at last be a real debate between these two sides. It will be Rebecca Vilkomerson versus Jeremy Ben-Ami. Ali Abunimah versus Lara Friedman. They won’t be able to marginalize us.
I write in good faith. The liberal Zionists will have influence in Washington at last and let us see what they can do. The first question Jeremy Ben-Ami will get at his victory bath next week in D.C will be, Well how much time do you give this government to make a deal? Two years, Jeremy? I am open to hearing what they have to say about ending the conflict. Myself I am not wed to a one-state or two-state program, and though I oppose religious states, I am tolerant, I don’t want to tell other people how to live. But we will demand that the liberal Zionists perform. And if they come up with a solution to end the occupation and give Palestinians sovereignty and resolve the right of return in a way that is acceptable to Palestinian refugees, I can imagine not fighting them. I want this conflict to be over and without massive bloodshed– as doubtful as that seems, given the Algeria-like materials that have been heaped up by the right wing that Netanyahu demagogued to in the last days of the campaign, and by all of Zionist Israel at Qalandiya crossing and the hateful wall.
We should be dubious about Herzog and the liberal Zionists. They’re not really liberals, actually (and how many years does Peter Beinart get to be in crisis before he resolves it?). And I will continue to support BDS because it is the only real pressure on a country that rubbishes Palestinian rights. But they will at last have their chance and depending what Herzog says in Washington, I might even wish him well. But they must produce.
So count me among those who can’t wait for the monster Netanyahu to be gone. Get him out of the picture, crush the Greater Israel lobby, put pressure on the settlement project, and clear the way for a debate between a “Jewish democracy” and equal rights. This will be an immensely clarifying moment. I can’t wait.
Phil, how likely is it that Netanyahu won’t be re-elected? That Herzog might win? What does your finger in the air say? (Don’t forget that Israel has no-confidence motions. A PM can be out in three (?) months via a call for an election.)
Wow. I feel the exact opposite because I am sure Herzog will extend the occupation and two-state illusion, and don’t want to see euphoric dancing at J Street. Yes, I’m an accelerationist. But this is extreme powerful and touches every right question, a real challenge to my way of thinking. In truth there is a way forward with either result. But I think 2 years of Obama in his current fearless mode – he’s at his peak – is too precious to squander on diddling with Herzog. Another Kerry process in which Abbas will look like the bad guy if he refuses to knuckle under to the “framework” and has to make good on his previous insane concessions that Netanyahu thankfully rejected could be a calamity for Palestinians. Israel needs to take a much harder hit in US public opinion than it has so far, and Herzog would be such a setback. But if he wins I’ll console myself with this logic here.
I’m going to talk about dying and death for a moment.
I’m pro-choice at both ends of life and, to me, Jack Kevorkian was a hero and decades ahead of his time. To me, his message was critically important but/and was absolutely the wrong messenger – or was he?
On the one hand, the man looked like a ghoul – the grim reaper incarnate sans robe, hood and scythe …Cabby Appleton, Snidely Whiplash, and Mr. Burns all rolled into one.
On the other hand, whether people loved him or hated him, agreed with his position or vehemently disagreed, his greatest contribution to the movement was getting the conversation started …and keeping it going.
He was a lightening rod.
(Inexplicably jettisoning the talent and support of Jeffrey Figer, lawyer and fellow advocate), JK landed in prison, came out without fanfare, and died quietly. Others who weren’t as vocal and provocative, had joined the movement and tried to take up the torch but without JK’s spark, the conversation lost momentum and slowed down to a near-halt. These days, very few people even know where things stand on the issue.
Similarly, Bibi got this conversation going — like a flashover, like squirting lighter fluid directly on hot coals. WHOOOMM!
Bibi is the lighting rod.
That’s why I hope he wins. His notorious recognizability – his name and his face are short-hand for a lot of people who have until very recently had no idea what’s been going on in the US, Israel, etc., and, even now, many have just a the beginning of understanding.
Unless Bibi wins, momentum will immediately drop to zero. More people will die and more destruction will occur as things drag on and drag on.
It’s not Bibi’s policies, beliefs, and values that are important, here, it’s simply what he looks like, purple comb-over, yellow skin, and all.
I agree that it would be a good thing if Bibi was gone. However, I disagree with the presentation of the antithesis.
Let me formulate an opposing opinion lauding Bibi’s accomplishments I’d deem more realistic:
So, as I said in the beginning, I’m happy if Bibi has to go today, because I think it will further splits in the US empire and thereby weakening it, but I’m deeply worried that it may all go the other way round.
Dear Phil,
You make a interesting and persuasive argument as to why the era of Netanyahu must come to an end. Yet I can think of a few significant issues that might preclude your
reasoned scenario from coming into fruition as you believe it will.
First: I don’t believe the end of Netanyahu will mark the end of AIPAC’s influence as the tip of the spear of the Israel Lobby. While it is true that AIPAC identifies more closely with Likudnik thinking, it is ultimately a bipartisan entity. Both labor and likud fully support the work of AIPAC in the United States even as AIPAC itself refuses to acknowledge that settlements are a key obstacle to Palestinian statehood, fail to denounce the settlement enterprise as illegal under international law, is highly unlikely to call for a removal of all settlements or a full withdrawal of the Israeli military from the West Bank and is dead set against the Right of Return. Moreover, the lobby’s money still remains extremely powerful in shaping the political discourse and legislative agenda of elected officials regarding Israel.
Second: The coming battle between liberal Zionists and anti-Zionists in the public sphere may not get the exposure it needs to seep into mainstream political discourse. Even now, whatever “debate” is allowed in the mainstream media on Israel is carefully circumscribed to AIPAC, a “mainstream” organization and J Street, which is often portrayed as “leftist” even though J Street is a center-right organization and differs from AIPC more in terms of style than substance, often ending up espousing positions that sound very much like AIPAC-lite. The Zionist gatekeepers in the MSM do a very efficient job of keeping the debate, when allowed, confined to the positions ascribed to those two “extremes”.
Third: the current framework for negotiations to “end” the Occupation is based around the so-called Kerry Initiative, which basically allows for the formation of a truncated, bantustanized political entity that would amount to, in the words of Shlomo Ben Ami, a “state minus”. The Israeli military would still have a detrimental presence in the PTs for “security purposes”, most of the settlers would remain in place and the issue of ROR will be killed for good. As sad as it sounds, the Palestinian Authority, which has become the de facto manager of the Occupation, is likely to go along with such a plan, despite the the fact that it would essentially be a capitulation of quintessential Palestinian rights under international law. I doubt such an outcome would be acceptable over the long term to those grassroots Palestinian organizations, movements and individuals that have worked and struggled so hard during all these years to bring a just solution to the conflict. To see the corrupt, opportunistic leadership of the Palestinian Authority be bribed or cowed into accepting this shameful deal would be a profound insult and disappointment to all those people whose blood, sweat and tears that have gone into making BDS an internationally potent movement against the occupation, oppression and dispossession of the Palestinians.
In short, like many folks here in this site, I do believe that the Netanyahu/Likud/Bennet/Lieberman axis is the greatest unifying and energizing factor for the anti apartheid, anti-Zionist, pro-equality, pro-human rights movement to have even more traction and exert even more pressure to bring about meaningful change in Israel/Palestine. I am doubtful that another round of labor/liberal Zionism will amount to any significant movement towards a just peace.