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Netanyahu is working hard for racist party of ‘David Dukes’ so as to hold a rightwing majority in Israeli parliament

Today Barak Ravid, the senior diplomatic reporter for Haaretz, published a series of tweets about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts at coalition-building on the far right. Here is the entire thread:

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been spending much of his time making sure a racist, xenophobic, Homophobic Ultra-Right wing fringe party which is the Israeli version of David Duke passes the electoral threshold [of four seats] & makes it into the Knesset in the April 9th elections.”

“The name of this party is ‘Jewish Power’ & its members are followers of Meir Kahana – former leader of ‘Kach’ party which was banned from running in the elections in 1988 and was designated as a terror organization in Israel, the U.S., Canada and the EU.”

“The leader of ‘Kach’ Meir Kahana managed to get elected in 1984 and was boycotted by all the other parties in the Knesset. He tried to pass a law for stripping non-Jews from their citizenship, a law for separate beaches for Jews and Arabs and other racist laws.”

Meir Kahane

“Back at the time senior members of Likud attacked Kahana’s draft bills and said they were similar to the Nuremberg laws passed by the Nazis before the Holocaust. It was actually a quite accurate comparison.”

“The members of ‘Jewish Power’ are all followers of Rabbi Kahana and his racist ideology. Some of them even said it on the record. Baruch Marzel – a senior member of ‘Jewish Power’ — was the chairman of ‘Kach’ after Kahana was assassinated.”

Leader of the far-right Israeli group Lehava, Bentzi Gopstein (L), seen at a press conference with his lawyer Itamar Ben Gvir, in Jerusalem on August 11, 2015. (Photo: Miriam Alster/Flash90)

“Itamar Ben Gvir – a senior member of ‘Jewish Power’ – was convicted numerous times including for support for terror organization & incitement to racism. Michael Ben Ari – former MK from ‘Jewish Power’ – was denied entry to U.S. due to membership in a terror organization (‘Kach’).”

Michael Ben-Ari, photo by Yossi Gurvitz

“Netanyahu is making a lot of efforts to get those guys elected. He is pushing privately and publicly all the different factions in the radical right in Israel to unite with “Jewish Power” and form one radical right party.”

“Netanyahu wants a united radical right party with the ‘Kahanists’ in order to make sure no right wing votes go to waste and to make sure the right wing block in the Knesset get at least a 61 members majority.”*

“Inside the Likud – the same party which boycotted ‘Kach’ and Kahana in 1984 – nobody is sounding even the smallest bit of criticism against Netanyahu’s actions. Some in Likud are even supportive of Netanyahu’s efforts to get the Israeli David Dukes into the Knesset.”

*The Knesset is 120 seats. The prime minister will hold his seat if he can forge a majority coalition. 

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Genuine anti-Semitism has always been a phenomenon of the Right. Always.

But Israel’s government hates people from the left because the Left honors Western traditions of rule of law, democratic rights, and human rights.

Why? Because Israel’s policies directly contradict these Western traditions. Therefore, the Left is hated for the fact that they keep bringing them up.

And, by the way, where will you find a more Right-wing government in violation of all our best traditions than Israel?

Search as you may, you won’t.

Burston has a pretty detailed opinion piece on this today:

“I Thought Bibi Was Amoral. He’s Not. He’s Evil. Thanks to Him, Kahane Lives

Netanyahu is looking to a viciously supremacist party called Jewish Power to put his re-election campaign over the top …

It’s not just that, as defense minister, he has repeatedly and unprecedentedly divulged state secrets, in the process goading and humiliating Israel’s primary enemies, all for presumed electoral gain, and to assuage the pangs of his chronic Iran obsession. In doing so, he has placed Israeli military personnel at risk and walked a course of escalation which could lead to the outbreak of war.

It’s not just that as prime minister, he has enabled, countenanced, courted and endorsed white nationalists, homophobes, and ultra-right anti-Semites on three continents, often to the horror and betrayal of Diaspora Jewish communities.

Nor is it just the extent to which he is wielding cruel and far-reaching collective punishment against the Palestinians as a campaign tool, dragooning the Trump administration to join him in choking off aid to the West Bank and rendering the insufferable hell of the power-down, water-starved Gaza Strip only that much more unlivable.

Nor is it just the fact that Netanyahu doesn’t even bother to hide it anymore. Despite – or because of – a flood tide of international condemnation and his own attorney general’s reported warning that the International Criminal Court could construe it as a war crime, the prime minister told right-wing journalists last week that “it would certainly help” if the Bedouin village were forcibly evacuated and demolished before presumably approving voters went to the polls on April 9.

No. This is the one that tells you more than you want to know about evil: Netanyahu’s relentless campaign to bring into his future governing coalition, the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, led by disciples of the vicious, unabashedly racist, rabidly Jewish supremacist ideology of the late Meir Kahane.

Netanyahu has openly expressed his deep concern that as many as 100,000 or more far-right votes could be cast in vain, if extremist parties like Otzma fail to clear the minimum electoral threshold.

Netanyahu, backed by the media resources of Sheldon Adelson’s mass-circulation Israel Hayom, has spent much of his time and energy pressing leaders of other right-wing parties to merge with Otzma, which would then form a key part of a post-election Netanyahu coalition. …

There is Itamar Ben-Gvir, attorney for a long list of Jews suspected of anti-Palestinian terrorism and anti-Arab hate crimes, and who prior to the Rabin assassination held up an emblem from the then-prime minister’s car, declaring “we got to his car and we’ll get to him too.” …”

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-i-thought-bibi-was-amoral-he-s-not-he-s-evil-thanks-to-him-kahane-lives-1.6954722?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Yep, he wrote “anti- Palestinian terrorism” ! I read the piece just looking for the T- word, and there it was. It should have, of course, been littered all over, but such is life.

From the Forward:

https://forward.com/opinion/419676/netanyahu-just-invited-israels-kkk-to-join-the-government-american-jews/

“Netanyahu Just Invited Israel’s Equivalent Of The KKK To Join The Government”

The Israeli election cycle currently underway has been awash in anti-Arab racism for a while now. But things just got much, much worse….

“Netanyahu boosts racist far-right party with pre-election deal”
By Barak Ravid of Israel’s Channel 13 news | 6 hours ago
LINK – https://www.axios.com/netanyahu-deal-jewish-power-israel-election-be6b4501-fa62-472a-ad93-f73bb68a5cbc.html