How would black Americans feel if they voted and knew that no black person would serve in the U.S. Cabinet?
Well, Israel is undertaking just such an exclusion with an even larger segment of its population and the Obama administration is celebrating the process.
We’re talking about the Joint Arab List, the coalition of four parties that are chiefly Palestinian, with some Jewish support. The List won a historic 14 seats in the Knesset last March, and back then everyone was talking about it as a sign of a healthy democracy. The New York Times even likened the List’s charismatic leader Ayman Odeh to Martin Luther King Jr in his commitment to “coexistence with the Jewish majority.”
But as Benjamin Netanyahu scrambled to form a government coalition in the last couple of weeks, with all kinds of combinations, no one has mentioned the Joint Arab List. Today the New York Times has a big article about Netanyahu’s coalition. There’s not one word in it about the parties that represent nearly 20 percent of Israel’s population. The big question mark in the story is whether the rightwing government can attract Yitzhak Herzog of Zionist Camp to become Foreign Minister.
Why is Herzog a prize and Odeh chopped liver?
Simple. Because Herzog is Jewish and Odeh is Palestinian.
So Israel tells 20 percent of its population that even if they vote, they will never have even minority representation in government. This is why many regard Israel as an apartheid system, and why we have compared the Israeli political system to Mississippi’s famously-segregated delegation to the Democratic convention in 1964. And by the way, Palestinians are a larger percentage of the Israeli population than blacks in the U.S. population.
You’d think that liberal Zionists would at least mention this flaw in the Jewish democracy when they were attacking the new government. They don’t notice either.
The New Israel Fund is devoted to “Advancing democracy and equality for all Israelis,” but its long editorial attacking the new government for undermining the “soul of the country” leaves out the racism: “the most right-wing and ultra-religious in the history of the state.”
J Street has retweeted this criticism from the JTA:
“For first time in over a decade, no parties in Israel’s governing coalition support two states”
And J Street has called on the government to make clear its commitment to two states, but again, not a mention of the Joint Arab List or Palestinians not being included in the government.
Israel calls itself a Jewish democracy. Critics and some supporters too say this means it’s actually an “ethnocracy.” In an ethnocracy, Palestinians just don’t count to make up the government leadership. Only once has an Israeli government depended on Arab parties, Yitzhak Rabin in 1992, but when the next Labor Government formed, in 1999, Ehud Barak made it a point not to include Palestinians.
Shouldn’t the press in the United States — which desegregated the military in 1948 and broke up southern Jim Crow in the 1960s — be telling us about this? Only our colleague Allison Deger has even brought up the question.
The State Department has welcomed the new government. The White House fell over itself to congratulate Netanyahu:
the United States does congratulate the Israeli people, the Prime Minister, and the new governing coalition on the formation of Israel’s new government. The President does look forward to working with Prime Minister Netanyahu and his new government.
The Israeli people. Yes, and how many are left out by this government?
You’re right, gentlemen~ Allison’s is the only article I’ve found that mentions the Joint List. From your link:
“Head of Israel’s third largest party and leader of the Joint Arab List Ayman Odeh told Mondoweiss, “The Netanyahu-Bennett coalition is a social disaster and danger for democracy. This coalition buries down all hope for a peace agreement and solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.” He said the new government would cause deep rifts between Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel, promoting “racist laws which will harm the most the Arab citizens in the country.”” – See more at: https://mondoweiss.mystagingwebsite.com/2015/05/netanyahus-coalition-whos#sthash.TNf3Gm1t.dpuf
It’s all rather part and parcel of US enabled Apartheid though, isn’t it?
As for the WH reaction, I read this from Shalev today:
“It’s true that the White House announced on Thursday that Obama was “looking forward to working with Netanyahu and his new government” but given the perception in Washington that Netanyahu has put together a narrow right wing coalition that would be even more unmanageable than the outgoing government, Obama’s “looking forward” was probably meant in the same sense that one anticipates root canal.”
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/west-of-eden/.premium-1.655539
The NYT is worse than fish wrap, birdcage liner, bog paper…
I noticed that the Arab List was never mentioned in any of the newspaper, magazine, or wire service articles I read about all the machinations of trying to get a majority in the new government. I noticed it, and it was especially obvious in the American press where the big headlines are about racial strife and and the police. Also, considering that the Arab List was the third biggest winner in the election, it’s hard to explain why they were ignored by the new government and why the press failed to point this out. I guess the racism is just assumed and accepted by reporters and it’s not worth mentioning.
Just me or has the NYT veered from centrist to right-wing on Israel?
They had a left-wing phase around 2009-2011. Then came the centrist phase.
Those days are long gone. Now you get much better coverage from even the supposedly right(ish) Washington Post from their Jerusalem correspondent.
Can you imagine the Pinkwashing Op-Ed that ran in the NYT a few years ago to run today? Impossible, right? That’s how far right the NYT has shifted. It’s like the whole Sodastream affair. When the heat goes real, the masks are slipping and the true face reveals itself. All those “liberal” Zionists all lined up for Sodastream, one by one.
P.S. For those unfamilliar with the Pinkwashing Op-Ed, here’s what I mean:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/opinion/pinkwashing-and-israels-use-of-gays-as-a-messaging-tool.html
Again, it’s very hard to imagine that Op-Ed to run in today’s Times. That’s how far right – or even hard-right – that they have moved in defence of Jewish apartheid.
Just four years. Amazing how fast it changed. What explains it?
Here is the usual show of condemnation from the US regarding those East Jerusalem ILLEGAL settlements, the usual blowing of hot air, a pretense, when we all know nothing much will be done to stop these ridiculous land thieves from Hell.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-condemns-planned-construction-in-east-jerusalem/
Heh. On the bright side, and I do believe it IS a bright side, this chaotic crumbling of Israeli politics is akin to building a giant hollow rabbit (yes, Monty Python allusion), filling it with massive political firepower (Herzog as pig lipstick), directing that firepower to attack whatever it sees when it comes out of the rabbit, and hauling it into your own city.
A) If Herzog, the Prize, joins the coalition, Odeh is opposition LEADER. Somebody posted here a few months ago that that confers very specific legal rights and responsibilities to him to meet with foreign reps (including Kerry and Obama) and to get policy/security briefings. By law.
Maybe that will magically change if Odeh becomes opposition leader. As of now he may be excluded from coalition deliberations, but if Jewish-Israeli pols succeed in making the GoI look less fascist to the world by including Herzog as the “rational Face of Israel”, Odeh gets fronted internationally, right along side Herzog. Even to Obama and Kerry. An embedded paradox. Decisions, decisions.
B) Who cares what Liberal Zionists think? Given the above scenario, it’s a done deal. Their thinking has been done for them, not that they did much of it anyway. Their irrelevance is nearly solidified. Odeh may well become the other, non-Jewish face of Israel — officially.
I suppose the question becomes (with some thinking involved), will J Street and the like invite Odeh to speak in his official capacity (should this unity effort unfold) or will they simply ignore him. Will Obama insist of briefing him during state visits? TBD.
Interesting stuff.