The other day I wrote a hopeful– and wrong– article saying that the smashing success in the Israeli election of the Palestinian Joint List might spell the end of the Netanyahu era, because the Jewish party Blue-White would be able to put together a “minority government” with the support of the 15 Palestinian legislators.
Within hours that hope was smashed by the refusal of three Jewish lawmakers in the opposition to Netanyahu to be part of any government that is dependent on Palestinians. The conventional wisdom is that Netanyahu will stay prime minister. Even as he puts up billboards that spread hatred against Palestinians.
The manifest racism has been a big event in Israeli politics. “Two Refined Racists From [Benny] Gantz’s Party Foil His Chance at Replacing Netanyahu,” Haaretz headlined an article. In the Jerusalem Post, former PM Ehud Olmert repeatedly called out the politicians for “racist policy” and said intolerance was putting the entire country at risk. “Racism Is Fueling Israel’s Paralysis,” Mitchell Plitnick writes at Responsible Statecraft. While our own Jonathan Ofir titled his account, “Israel’s electoral struggle for racial purity.”
Even the New York Times finally covered the story. Though the Times story plays down the politicians’ racism, it can’t avoid the central fact: “Netanyahu could be ousted if Jewish lawmakers accept Arab support. But to many Israelis, that is unthinkable.”
This is not a new trend. The same electoral racism got Israel to a third election following the deadlock in the election last September, when the Joint List had only 13 seats; and today’s racist deadlock involving 15 Joint List seats may lead to a fourth election.
The most disturbing thing about the impasse is just how acceptable racism is in Israeli Jewish politics. An op-ed writer in a leading paper says that the Palestinians’ success is democracy “run amok,” and Benny Gantz attempted a “putsch” by trying to work with them. “This is an educated, buttoned-up, cultured racism,” Yossi Verter writes in Haaretz of the two refined racists in Gantz’s own Blue-White party. “[Yoaz] Hendel… comes from a culture of ‘concerts in Vienna.'” But the idea of serving in a government supported by Palestinians gives him “chills.”
As for the third crucial racist, Orly Levy-Abekasis was elected to the Knesset in a partnership of her party with Labor and Meretz. Meretz is the most leftwing Jewish party there is. The Meretz leaders have attacked Levy-Abekasis for her betrayal, but so what. Why did they throw in with this rightwing politician in the first place? Why did they build that political alliance by demoting a Palestinian legislator, Issawi Freij, so that he wasn’t reelected?
Meretz’s collapse demonstrates that there is no vitality in the Jewish Zionist left. The Palestinian Joint List is the only address for progress in Israel. “There is no life, no existence for the Israel left and even center without the partnership with the Israeli Arabs,” an Israeli politician told J Street in a video conference.
Ehud Olmert also says that Palestinian politicians are all that can save Israel, but it’s an uphill battle in a society that doesn’t see Palestinians as equals.
It’s time for change. It’s time for everyone to change their mindset and accept that Israeli Arabs have changed their strategy. They are bona fide citizens of Israel and they are finally ready to exercise their rights and take an active role in the legitimate and democratic political process that is the lifeblood of Israeli society.
This tragedy is also an American one. The racism gets very little coverage among liberals in the United States. The New York Times leaves Levy-Abekasis and Meretz out of its story.
Imagine if the Democratic Party elected politicians who refused to work with black leaders. The outrage would be neverending here.
Liberal Zionists are accountable because Meretz leaders are always stars at their events, showing American Jews the good face of Israel. But liberal Zionist organizations are not decrying the racism. I have seen no denunciations of Zvi Hauser, Hendel and Levy-Abekasis– let alone formal statements on the crisis of bigotry — from Americans for Peace Now, J Street, or the Israel Policy Forum. They are putting their energy into trying to elect a “progressive” slate to the World Zionist Congress. Fiddling while Rome burns.
American liberal Zionists are Jewish nationalists, so they seem to accept that this is the price of having a “Jewish democracy.” At Israel Policy Forum, Michael Koplow is in favor of Blue-White making a new government with the “outside” support of the 15 Joint List votes, but he also includes arguments against their inclusion:
There are plenty of reasons to oppose the Joint List’s inclusion in a coalition, from questions about their MKs’ past behavior and statements to Balad’s ongoing refusal to recognize the legitimacy of Zionism to MK Heba Yazbak’s paeans to terrorists such as Samir Kuntar….
If you think the Joint List should not be part of Israel’s politics, that is your right to believe and to express. Some of the Joint List’s policy positions are obviously objectionable
By Koplow’s standard, few Jewish politicians of Israel would survive the cut… But Koplow says that American Jews should celebrate the fact that Israeli Jewish parties hold “all of Israel’s political power.”
Israeli Jewish parties hold all of Israel’s political power and have thoroughly defeated any attempt to erase Zionism and eradicate the Jewish state. We should all be grateful for that and celebrate it wholeheartedly.
There is good reason that the Joint List is not Zionist. Palestinians have been ethnically cleansed by Israel for more than 70 years and the process continues merrily along today in the West Bank. It is inarguable at this point that second- and third-class status for non-Jews is in the very constitution of the idea of Jewish democracy. Liberal Americans who support Israel can’t afford to face that truth. They are hanging on to a romance about the country, even as it is roiled by racism.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-education-minister-to-speak-at-confab-honoring-rabbi-who-praised-hebron-massacre-1.7619653
“Education Minister to Speak at Confab Honoring Rabbi Who Praised Hebron Massacre” Haaretz, August 9/2019 by Shira Kadari-Ovadia.
“Rafi Peretz and Bezalel Smotrich will be guests of honor as Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, seen by many as a spiritual figure for violent settler extremists, receives prize.”
“Education Minister Rabbi Rafi Peretz and Transportation Minister Bezalel Smotrich are set to give speeches at a conference which will also honor a rabbi who praised the 1994 Hebron massacre and was previously charged with inciting racism.
“The ministers, who are both running in the United Right political alliance in the September election, will speak at a Thursday event during which a prize will be awarded to Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh.
“The U.S.-born rabbi is known for publishing a pamphlet praising the actions of religious extremist Baruch Goldstein, who in 1994 carried out the massacre in the Tomb of the Patriachs, in which he killed 29 Muslims at prayer. Ginsburgh is also among the rabbis who endorsed the book ‘The King’s Torah,’ which discusses circumstances in which Jews may kill non-Jews according to Jewish law.
“The prize will be awarded under the auspices of an institution called the ‘Cathedra for Torah and Wisdom,’ which received approximately 25,000 shekels ($7,162) in 2017 and 2018 from the Education Ministry’s department for Jewish culture.
“In response to a query from Haaretz, the Education Ministry said it would not be funding this institution in 2019. Peretz’s spokesperson said the minister is proud to attend the event, but added both he and the ministry were not involved in choosing the recipients of the awards.”
1. The rejection of Balad is justified. Not all of the parties that are part of the Joint Arab List are as righteous as Odeh. Certainly much too many Israeli Jews reject making common cause with Odeh, but there is a reason why a partnership with Balad is more than merely difficult.
2. American support for Israel with a carte blanche which was accomplished by whoever went to Barak Obama in 2012 and set him “straight” is clearly the wrong tack regarding Israeli flexibility.
3. Israelis are pretty united against Obama’s treaty with Iran.
4. Neither the one state solution nor the two state solution is ideal. The one state would start as it is now and would evolve over time into a one man one vote. (This evolve over time is a vision rather than a plan. It is not clear how the role of the PLO and Hamas, who are not willing to concede Palestinian ownership over the West Bank to this one state, how can they play a role in this one state evolution. This is unclear.) The two state solution (without a blank check right of return to Israel ’48) will leave much reconciliation in the deficit column. Also some major settlement blocs are problematic. But it is mostly “impossible” because the Jewish Israeli voting public is opposed to it and will remain opposed to it, unless and until it would be forced down their throats.
Leftist American Zionists who assume that a 2 state is achievable without heavy US pressure are either lying to themselves or to everyone else. It is not easy to change from “as much American support as Congress is willing to provide” to “as much American pressure as will be required to get Israel to change”. These are opposite states of mind and a leap is involved.
“Imagine if the Democratic Party elected politicians who refused to work with black leaders. The outrage would be neverending here”
If there was a black nationalist party that favored either turning America into a Black majority party by importing millions of Africans or which said America was fundamentally immoral and needed to be disassembled, then all but the worst fringe elements of the Democratic party would oppose it.
There should be no “Arab” party in Israel just like there is no Hispanic party in the USA. Israeli Arabs can vote for any party but there should be no anti-Zionist party at all, just like the Nazi party is banned in Germany.
@jw500: ” There are no secular democratic Arab states. Why would you assume an Arab Palestine would be the exception?”
As Mondoweiss and other news sources point out (ad nauseum), Israel is quasi-democratic and quasi-secular. As far as treatment of minority citizens goes, and as far as Israel’s adherence to commonly held human rights standards, it’s pretty bad. Every third article here is about some outrageous human rights violation committed by Israel’s government, have you noticed?
Here’s an informative article from the Intercept titled “The Truth About Islam and Democracy”:
https://theintercept.com/2019/02/14/the-truth-about-islam-and-democracy-with-anwar-ibrahim/
(spoiler alert: ” Now, I have a lot of problems with this rather lazy and simplistic narrative, which completely and conveniently overlooks the role played by Western governments in propping up Muslim dictators like the President of Egypt or the King of Saudi Arabia, but here’s my biggest one: it’s factually inaccurate. Right now, in 2019, hundreds of millions of Muslims, possibly the majority of the world’s 1.7 billion Muslims, live in democracies of some shape or form, live in countries where they have the right to vote, the right to choose and to change their own governments — from Indonesia to Malaysia to Pakistan to Lebanon to Tunisia to Turkey, not to mention the tens of millions of Muslims who live in Western countries, in Germany, France, the UK, Canada, the United States. The mayor of London, last time I checked, was a Muslim. And in fact, the country which is on course to have the biggest Muslim population in the world in the next couple of decades is India; which also happens to be the world’s biggest democracy.”)
@jw500
” Jews are indigenous to Israel longer than Arabs are”
“Indigenous peoples, also known in some regions as First peoples, First Nations, Aboriginal peoples or Native peoples, or autochthonous peoples, are ethnic groups who are the original or earliest known inhabitants of an area, in contrast to groups that have settled, occupied or colonized the area more recently. Wikipedia”
Zionists are masters (or victims depending on your viewpoint) of overwhelming self delusion specifically when challenged about their colonising, blatant land theft ethnic cleansing,ethnic massacres and ongoing daily brutality and inhumanity.
As has been pointed out repeatedly since the dawn of Mondoweiss Judaism is a religion not a “race”.
Are Catholics also indigenuous to Palestine ( your ephemeral Israel)? They too were by your logic “indigenous” 600 years before Arabs arrived.