One puzzle of the Israeli elections last week was the failure by the losing Zionist Camp to raise the Palestinian issue. Yitzhak Herzog, the leader of the camp, promised to go to Ramallah and negotiate with Mahmoud Abbas; but that was about all he said, his agenda was economic issues. Then in the last days of the campaign Benjamin Netanyahu made a huge issue of the Palestinian question, saying that Herzog was going to give away lands to Palestinians, and Netanyahu won going away. So Netanyahu defined the debate. Herzog ran scared.
This abdication was a theme at J Street’s conference yesterday. Guy Ziv of American University said that the situation was reminiscent of 1992, when centrist Yitzhak Rabin had defeated rightwinger Yitzhak Shamir by supporting the Madrid peace process. But Herzog had shown none of Rabin’s leadership. Stav Shaffir, a young Labor member of Knesset, made a similar point: “we [Zionist Camp] didn’t say what we believed loudly enough.” Herzog had failed to frame an urgent political manner in urgent terms: that Israelis need to “separate” from the Palestinians, Shaffir said, because a Palestinian majority between the river and the sea will undermine the Jewish state. Of course many Zionists have warned about this before; the Jewish state will be delegitimized by apartheid, or by democracy. But Herzog failed to make that case to his own people when he had a chance.
Why did Herzog fail? I believe he was afraid of his own people. A week ago I was in Rabin Square for a rally by the Netanyahu forces, and they were terrifying. The people I met in the street said racist and foolish things about Arabs, both Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett made religious statements bordering on lunacy about the Jewish right to the land, and they were preceded on the dais by Daniella Weiss, a settlement leader who has supported “pricetag attacks,” Jewish violence aimed at deterring the Israeli government from uprooting settlers.
I wrote then that Netanyahu’s base contained “fascist” strains, and at J Street yesterday, that theme was taken up by Nabila Espanioly of Hadash, who appealed to Americans to help Israel fight fascism. We need to build a global network “against fascism and against racism inside Israel,” she said. “I know that’s a hard word…. We should be working together against the fascism, because it’s coming and it’s [at] our door.”
Noam Sheizaf issued a similar appeal. He called out intolerant statements that Israeli politicians had expressed that very day at J Street; Yoel Hassan of Zionist Camp had described Netanyahu as “very gentle” in the war on Gaza last summer. Then Sheizaf warned:
“We’re headed for a very difficult four years…The American progressive community will have a role to play… We expect you to be there.”
While Sam Bahour explained today that Netanyahu had succeeded by cultivating “radical” elements in Israeli society. Those radical elements joined by Netanyahu are the very same mix that incited against Rabin when he spoke of giving up land 20 years ago– and then was assassinated on the site of that rally I attended. The lesson is surely not lost on the leaders of Zionist Camp. Israel is a violent society, and right-wing assassinations have played an important role in its evolution.
The terrible thing about fascism is that it works. People respond to fascistic appeals, and politicians who might take fascism on quail at the prospect. Herzog ran scared because he was afraid to take on these elements in his own society.
I believe that fascism is inherent when a society is constituted as Israel is, with Jews having the rights, and Palestinians, naturally, refusing to accept the order. The best antidote is a real democracy.
In the US main media on cable tv it’s nothing but how wonderful a leader Bibi N is, and how Israel has our values, is our great ally. Obama is dissed as being petty, picking fights with Bibi N for personal reasons,
Cruz opened his campaigned today by declaring we have nothing to fear but fear itself and America must stand with Israel forever. So who does Cruz fear, and educated American public? Why? Our main media won’t educate them, and neither will the US government, especially Congress.
Phil, you are right on about fascism. Don’t forget, either, that American presidents too have been assassinated and at least one — Kennedy — may have been assassinated by political activists (call them fascists) rather than by individual madmen.
We are in a moment of possibility, today, with Obama in a two-year window without personal electoral needs and Israel out-and-out opposed both to relinquishing occupied land (no to 2 states) and to allowing an influx of non-Jewish voters (no to Israel’s own 20% of Palestinians and NO! NO! NO! to a democratic 1SS).
Sadly, Obama would have to act alone (in America) and solicit help from others (EU?) to get a UNSC resolution with sanctions to force Israel to do anything of a peaceful nature.
I’ve written about it here
For all the optomists–From Eric Margolis very succint: Who is going to force Israel to follow this sensible, two-state solution to the misery of the Palestinian people? Obama could not even stop Netanyahu from coming to Washington and humiliating him before Congress. Is Obama going to force Israel and its 650,000 armed settlers out of the West Bank?Not so long as Israel and its American advocates control both the Congress, the Republican and Democratic parties – and Hillary Clinton. The late Israeli PM Ariel Sharon reportedly said to an aide concerned about a negative US response, “don’t worry about the US, I control the US.”
Link to full article:
http://www.unz.com/emargolis/mideast-peace-is-buried/#comments
From Norman Finkelstein’s place:
“It’s afraid of Arabs, Iranians, Africans and leftists. The Islamic State, Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are synonyms. Israel also fears anti-Semitism, the Europeans and the Muslims. In fact, it fears the whole world, and that’s why it hates it.”
with reference to Gideon Levy’s March 19th article:
“Israelis praise the conductor of the fearmongering orchestra
When every tunnel is an existential threat and every centrifuge a holocaust, Israelis need Benjamin Netanyahu.”
http://normanfinkelstein.com/2015/03/21/its-afraid-of-arabs-iranians-africans-and-leftists-the-islamic-state-hezbollah-hamas-and-palestinian-president-mahmoud-abbas-are-synonyms-israel-also-fears-anti-semitism-the-europeans/
And, “Bibi’s back, feat. Norman Finkelstein” interview on RT’s Crosstalk:
http://normanfinkelstein.com/2015/03/20/bibis-back-feat-norman-finkelstein/
It is very interesting to read the reactions of Liberal Sabras now the monster is out in daylight and baring its fangs . Pandora’s box has been opened.
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/routine-emergencies/.premium-1.648369
“Yarrow, older and visibly more fragile, was undeterred, and had returned to Israel for a concert at the Jerusalem YMCA. Nobody anticipated the circumstances in which the show would take place, as the performance, scheduled more than a year and a half in advance for March 18 and 19.
Between songs, Yarrow reminisced about the original Selma march for civil rights, which he participated in, and the recent commemoration of the event, where he performed at a synagogue. Standing below a banner that proclaimed “Celebrating Respect and Acceptance,” he spoke of love, peace, and decency and warned “if we do not protect freedom and justice, it will go away.”
At the very moment he was speaking, critics in the U.S. were comparing Netanyahu’s “hate speech” to race-baiting politician George Wallace – the symbol of all that the marchers at Selma opposed.
If any of this was going through the mind of the host, Ambassador Dan Shapiro, he didn’t let it show. After praising Yarrow’s program, he told the audience of how both Peter, Paul and Mary and David Broza were the soundtrack of his childhood and adolescence and young adulthood.
Shapiro is a liberal American Jew fluent in Hebrew who attended Reform movement summer camp and spent a college year abroad in Jerusalem. He and his wife Julie Fisher wear both their personal connection to Israel and their support for progressive causes on their sleeve.
Shapiro, a close advisor to President Obama, who would soon harshly criticize Netanyahu’s racial rhetoric on Election Day, saying that “ Israeli democracy has been premised on everybody in the country being treated equally and fairly … If that is lost, then I think that not only does it give ammunition to folks who don’t believe in a Jewish state, but it also I think starts to erode the meaning of democracy in the country.”
As I watched the Shapiro-Fisher couple swell in pride as their young daughter joined Yarrow singing his most famous song “Puff the Magic Dragon,” I mused that the 40-something couple, who met in Reform movement summer camp might be members of the last generation of American Jews to grow up feeling that their deeply-held liberal beliefs and an attachment to the state of Israel are in any way compatible. All signs point to a future in which the little girl who was singing would live in a world where she would have to choose between one or the other. “