For anyone following the Israeli elections from afar, the polling this week has been very dispiriting indeed. The country prefers Netanyahu as leader. And though the opposition party will likely surpass Netanyahu’s party next Tuesday, what kind of opposition is it anyway?
The opposition refuses to break bread with the “Arab” parties. It runs to Netanyahu’s right on Gaza. No one even debates withdrawing from the occupation, after 52 years. And rightwing parties dominate the path to the premiereship.
One liberal Zionist prepares his American flock for the Israeli spring that isn’t:
my hunch is that Netanyahu is ultimately going to be at the head of a far right-wing government after everything shakes out
Here is something even more dismal to consider. The polling on young/old Israelis. The young love Netanyahu.
That’s the opposite of idealism. You might even say it’s fascism: the identification of the young with a strongman. So things are only going to stay rightwing for a while…
As an anti-Zionist, these numbers don’t surprise me. We have long contended that “a Jewish state” established in a land that is half-Palestinian, whose Palestinian subjects have unendingly resisted the project, is not a good idea. And not just for Palestinians. Hannah Arendt long ago said that by so openly defying the will of its neighbors, Israel faced an inevitable and unenviable fate: it would become a Sparta state, a garrison of a country, worshiping force. This election only demonstrates the accuracy of Arendt’s prophecy.
The endless talk about Israel’s “tough… brutal neighborhood” is also a fulfillment of Arendt’s prophecy. Israelis have a bunker mentality, seeing never-ending threats from non-Jews in their midst.
On the one hand, it’s impossible/a-pipe-dream to imagine Palestinians being fully enfranchised in that country. But if they were, do you think Netanyahu would have a ghost of a chance?
The ultimate challenge of our work here is to Americans. What you see is what you get: This is Israel, this is what the ideology of Jewish nationalism has made, a government and society isolated from its own region and many of its own people. A society whose failure to separate religion and state means that the isolation has only gotten worse.
Marilyn Neimark said it eloquently, and kindly, in a synagogue on a spring night six years ago:
Has Israel ever been a democracy? And if we add the reasonable caveat that no country lives up to the best ideals of democracy, then maybe it’s better to ask, over these 65 years has Israel been tracing an arc that bends toward justice, speaking of Martin Luther King, of course. If the answer is No, could it be because no matter the potential merits and good will of the founding plan, the effort to establish and sustain the Jewish character of the intended Jewish democracy doomed the democratic character from the start, and it’s been spiraling downward ever since? For whatever the starting point was, I think we mostly agree that Israel has become less democratic in recent years, and every time the separation between religion and state dwindles, free speech is curtailed, or minority rights are trampled, it is … in the name of preserving the state’s Jewish character– that is, Jewish hegemony.
Americans have been able to deny this reality for many years. Just listen to Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and Cory Booker groveling at AIPAC last week. Or Pete Buttigieg after taking an Israel lobby trip to Israel. Everything’s great over there.
Liberal Zionists know better, of course. They struggle with how hard it is to preserve a “Jewish democracy.” They are the ones now caught in the middle. Years after declaring that the Jewish democracy faces a crisis, the crisis only gets worse, the democracy only gets less representative. They have tried to argue that Netanyahu has hijacked Israeli society. But even if Netanyahu is gone next week, Jim Crow is stronger than ever.
This election is reminding us that Netanyahu’s policies represent an overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews. They don’t give a damn about Palestinians. Americans must ask themselves, Do we?
H/t Scott Roth.
(Geographic) Palestine was entirely (geographic) Palestinian.
Zionism’s plan was (and remains) Jewish supremacism in/and a religion-supremacist “Jewish State” in as much as possible of Palestine. Whatever the “potential merits and good will of the founding plan” were, they had (and still have) nothing to do with justice, accountability and equality.
You are absolutely right Phil, it is disheartening. You feel there is no hope for the Palestinians.
It seems the majority of Israelis don’t care if Netanyahu is corrupt, on the verge of being indicted, has lied, and they do not want peace with their neighbors. They seem to WANT to prolong the occupation, keep breaking international laws and build illegal settlements, and their hatred for the Palestinians is so deep, they don’t give a damn that many kids are killed by the “brave” IDF, because after all all Palestinians are terrorists (snakes, beasts etc) even the babies, and deserve to be killed.
Nothing Netanyahu does seems to make them turn away from him (like the Trump supporters),
He has brainwashed them into thinking that he can control America, twist arms, collectively punish, and take care of them. Netanyahu has made an ass of himself in the international arena, but it does not make them ashamed. Netanyahu has made Israel one of the most disliked nations in the world, but they don’t care.
Netanyahu has also formed a coalition with Jewish supremacists, called terrorists by the US State Department, but that does seem to concern them either.
So what does that say about the majority of Israelis?
‘We have long contended that “a Jewish state” established in a land that is half-Palestinian, ‘
Half? Which half?
The whole land was the land of the Palestinian Arabs.
“tracing an arc that bends toward justice, speaking of Martin Luther King, of course.” While this quote is often attributed to King (he did say it), he was quoting the American Transcendentalist and abolishinist Theodore Parker:
Parker predicted the inevitable success of the abolitionist cause this way:
I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.
A century later, Martin Luther King, Jr. paraphrased these words in a prepared statement he read in 1956 following the conclusion of the Montgomery bus boycott. He would later use a similar paraphrasing to great effect in two famous speeches and his final sermon: “How Long, Not Long”, delivered in March 1965 on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol; “Where Do We Go From Here?”, delivered in August 1967 to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; and his “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution” sermon, delivered in March 1968 at the National Cathedral.In each instance, King’s paraphrase included the words “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”.
Phil- Reading this, I am reminded of my thought which must have been articulated better by others. Perhaps the Palestinians are de facto hostages – not just the ones in Gaza, but also those living within Israel. As formidable as Israeli weaponry and Zionist zeal can be, they may be less a deterrent to any outside military action against Israel than the risk of some kind of a Palestinian holocaust. Not only from Israeli retaliation, but also from inevitable Palestinian casualties among those in Israel proper. Israel may have to collapse through its own economic and political developments before there is any hope for the Palestinians. Very sad for all…