Israel held its third election in a year yesterday and once again the right wing is on top. Netanyahu won a large plurality though he is indicted and about to go on trial on corruption charges. The new “left” bloc of three parties including Labor and Meretz got all of seven seats.
There is now just one address for liberal and leftwing politics in Israel: the Joint List of Palestinian parties, the third largest vote getter with a whopping 15 seats, up from 10 last April. It is said that the Palestinian parties drew Jewish voters. That is something the Joint List wanted: Joint List for a Joint future!
There is no real resistance to policies of annexation and apartheid except from the Joint List. Netanyahu’s chief rival, Benny Gantz, hurt himself among Jewish voters by suggesting and then withdrawing the possibility that he could form a government with the help of the Palestinian parties (Oren Kessler said on i24 News just now). While Trump’s “peace plan,” which cements apartheid, was supported by Gantz’s party and Netanyahu’s: so an overwhelming percentage of Jewish parliamentarians — over 90 by my count — back the destruction of plans to divide the land and measures to annex portions of “Judea and Samaria.”
Let’s be clear about what we see in Israel. This is a “Jewish democracy,” the advancement Israel’s supporters in the U.S. are constantly crowing about. It is a country where the worst fears of Arabs are stoked by politicians, even as the government ethnically cleanses Palestinians. It is a country where any Jewish politician who says he is going to work with Palestinians is quickly marginalized.
The Jewish democracy demonstrates just what liberals and lefties always warned you about nationalism. It is intolerant and racist and paranoid and blindered and fascistic, it builds a security state armed to the teeth against multiple enemies. And three elections inside a year in Israel offer indelible proof that This is what Jewish nationalists want. A society governed by an authoritarian leader, no matter how corrupt. Just so long as there are no Arabs anywhere near power.
Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian leader, said the election was a victory for annexation and apartheid, and Yossi Alpher at Americans for Peace Now says that’s the sad math of the Israeli electorate:
Gantz stumbled. He knew a large majority of Israeli Jews were enthusiastic about Trump and his policies. A dove at heart, Gantz tried to persuade voters that he, like Netanyahu, would annex territories, but only “after consultation with the international community”. Too many potential Gantz supporters got the message: when the smoke clears, he won’t really annex because the international community and the Arab world have made it clear that they vigorously oppose annexation.
By the same token, Netanyahu repeatedly hammered away with the argument that without the Joint Arab List, Gantz would have no coalition and that the Arab MKs are a traitorous fifth column. Gantz denied unconvincingly that he would need the support of Arab MKs. Yet he could never point to alternative support… Anti-Arab voters did the math.
This political trendline has been in place for 50 years now, since the 1967 war at least: The secular social democrats who founded the state (Labor Zionists) have lost out to the right wing of Revisionist Zionists. Even Meretz cast its Palestinian Knesset member overboard to run this time, in that three-way “left” coalition that included a rightleaning leader.
The definition of insanity is said to be ignoring the same result when it happens again and again, and we must ask all liberal Zionists: What is your vision of a “Jewish democracy”? How will it come about?
For years now liberal Zionist organizations have been working against Netanyahu, to their credit; and what do they have to show for it? As a panel at AIPAC’s policy conference said yesterday, Israeli voters don’t care what American Jews have to say about their elections. No, because in the end those American Jews have been completely docile, supporting the “Jewish democracy” no matter how xenophobic, murderous, and discriminatory. Even liberal Zionist organizations have embraced extravagant aid to Israel and bipartisan political support for Israel and condemned the nonviolent boycott movement as “antisemitic.” With that sort of acceptance, why would Israelis ever care about some mild demurrals?
Last night’s election is yet another wakeup call to American progressives… There is only one way forward for a true left/liberal democrat. To recognize that the only hopeful signs in Israeli society come from the Palestinian politicians. They are the leaders who envision a pluralistic society and who hate Jim Crow. They head the third largest party and who knows what they could become — if only non-Jews were allowed to vote in territories where Israel is sovereign?
There is a small price to pay for such a political alliance. To stick the idea of Jewish democracy in the dustbin of history.
H/t Scott Roth and James North.
Phil asks “…and we must ask all liberal Zionists: What is your vision of a “Jewish democracy”? How will it come about? ” This is a relevant continuation of that whole discussion, I think:
The Tablet – which I view as a discount outlet for cheap hasbara – just ran a review of Ian Lustick’s “Paradigm Lost: From Two State Solution to One State Reality”, a book which has also been discussed here. I think the author gives a basically fair and sympathetic review and comes to the same conclusion as Lustick:
https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/299324/two-state-solution
“The two-state-solution mantra of liberal Zionism is becoming more and more dangerous, and liberal Zionists are wasting precious time by their attachment to it. Like the American Jewish leader cited at the outset all but admitted, the belief in two states is arguably more a crutch of one’s Jewish identity than a real assessment of the one state that exists between the river and sea, called Israel.”
The New York Times pulls back the curtain on “Israel.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/01/world/middleeast/israel-election-issues.html
“Israel, ‘Start-up Nation,’ Groans Under Strains of Growth and Neglect” New York Times, March 1,2020, by David M. Halbfinger and Isabel Kershner
“The election on Monday might break a yearlong political deadlock. But huge challenges in health, education and transit are decades in the making.”
EXCERPTS:
“Even as Israel has matured from a small, desert nation fighting for its survival into a regional power with an enviable high-tech industry, it has neglected the transportation, education and health-care systems that experts say are vital to its prosperity.”
“As the country holds its third election in a year, major challenges in each of those areas have drawn precious little attention. Experts warn that without investing heavily, Israel’s ability to keep up with the rest of the advanced world faces a reckoning, and they question whether the country’s fractured political system is even capable of addressing such long-term problems.”
“Thousands of patients a year are dying from infections in Israel’s hospitals, the most overcrowded in the developed world.”
“Billions of dollars in economic output — more than Israel’s yearly gains — are going up in fumes as motorists sit in traffic, with no other way to get to work.”
“And test scores show the schools are failing to prepare students for a modern work force. The achievement gap between rich and poor children has only widened, and an accelerating brain drain is causing some of Israel’s most valuable scientists, doctors and innovators to take their talents overseas.”
“But investment in health, transportation and education had been declining since the 1970s, when critics say Israel began to prioritize tax cuts, welfare for ultra-Orthodox Jews who study in religious institutions rather than work, and expanding settlements in the West Bank.”
“The 1970s now look like a crucial pivot point.”
“Hospital capacity, 3.3 beds per 1,000 residents in the 1970s, has fallen to 1.7 beds now. The number of senior research faculty per capita is half its 1975 peak. Congestion on the roads was about as bad as in Denmark or Belgium; it’s now four-and-a-half times worse.”
“Per capita economic growth also plummeted: After averaging more than 5 percent a year, it fell to about 1.8 percent in the 1970s, where it remains, according to Dan Ben David, a Tel Aviv University economist who, through his Shoresh Institution, has long advocated investments to turbocharge productivity.”
“’There’s a huge iceberg ahead,’ he said. ‘And we need to shift the entire course of the ship back to the trajectory that we once were on.’”
“Israel needs to spend billions to catch up to other advanced countries, studies show. But the projects underway — a first light-rail line in Tel Aviv, an expanded light-rail network in Jerusalem — only scratch the surface.
“Planned projects, a comptroller’s report said last year, are ‘not expected to address the foreseeable problems in the foreseeable future.'”
“Starved for too long”
“Israel’s hospitals are dangerously overcrowded and understaffed. Citizens who grimly count the toll of wars and terrorist attacks now share battle stories of surviving the health-care system.
“Victoria Duek, 97, languished for 48 hours in a crowded Haifa emergency room after falling and having trouble breathing. A Tiberias hospital has a two-year wait for tonsillectomies. The Nahariya hospital was so overcrowded it asked for donations of blankets.
“The ultranationalist politician Avigdor Liberman said his 91-year-old mother-in-law was told she would have to wait for months for an urgent MRI.”
“’After four months, a person does not need an MRI,” he told a radio station. ‘Either they’ve recovered or, God forbid, they’re dead.’
“Israelis are guaranteed basic coverage under a national health system and are often happy with the care they eventually get. And the country spends a remarkable 7.5 percent of its economic output on health care, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, far below average for advanced economies.
“But critics say that statistic has become a cruel joke.
“Dr. Erel Buchinsky, former head of the medical residents’ association, compared his frequent 26-hour shifts to ‘working in a mass-casualty event,’ prioritizing patients who might live over those more likely to die. ‘It’s a horrible reality, and it doesn’t have to be this way,’ he wrote in a viral Facebook post.
“The 94 percent average occupancy rate in Israeli hospitals is by far the highest in the developed world. The logjam extends throughout the system: Geriatric centers, rehab facilities and local health clinics are all overbooked.
“A six-minute doctor’s exam, with any eye contact, is a luxury. Specialists make appointments as far as a year in advance. Israel’s doctors are aging out, there aren’t enough medical-school graduates to replace them, and many aspiring doctors are moving to Europe to study, never to return.
“At Hillel Yaffe hospital in Hadera, Rotem Novoselsky is head nurse in an internal medicine ward built for 36 patients; it often handles 60. Patients there are routinely discharged while still sick.
“She arrives some mornings to find patients overflowing on gurneys end-to-end in the halls, even in a dining area. With just three nurses on the overnight shift, she said, she sometimes discovers patients who have died unattended.
“’We work in a state of frustration all the time,’ she said, briefly standing still.
“With I.C.U. beds scarce, patients on ventilators are left in ordinary wards, and those recovering from surgery often languish in corridors. Experts say the overcrowding is causing the rate of infections to skyrocket: The mortality rate from infections, 38 deaths per 100,000 patients, is by far the worst among economically advanced nations, according to the OECD. (The United States, at 22, is second.)
“’People are losing their dignity,’ said Dr. Zeev Feldman, a pediatric neurosurgeon. ‘And it kills people. There is no other way to say it.’
“Government funding has failed to keep pace with a growing, aging population, falling from about 75 percent of total health expenditures to about 65 percent. That erosion has worsened inequality and undercut efficiency, Prof. Nadav Davidovitch, a public-health scholar at Ben-Gurion University, testified last year.
“’That’s the whole story in short,’ he said.
“Dr. Feldman say it will cost Israel $6 billion more a year to catch up to the developed world, but Israelis are too willing to count their blessings rather than lobby for change.”
“Poor teachers, failing schools”
“Israel now spends more on education than on its military. But the schools are failing, experts say, with ominous consequences not far ahead.
“Scores on the latest international assessment test, which measures reading, math and science, were among the worst in the advanced world — and they don’t include ultra-Orthodox boys, who barely study those subjects.
“A key reason is teacher quality. Israel’s teachers score near the bottom of international tests of literacy and numeracy. Starting salaries in elementary schools are around $21,000, about half what American schools pay.
“Continuing education for teachers is poor and subject to the whims of each new education minister, insiders say. And teachers are increasingly subjected to violence — from students and parents — with little backup from superiors.
“Worse, the country’s attempts to fix the schools have tended to dumb them down, experts say. English is required, but many students graduate with too few English credits to enter a university. Matriculation tests are not calibrated year-to-year, so politicians wanting to show improvement have just made them easier.
“Teachers and principals complain of a lack of autonomy, with national officials dictating lesson plans down to the hour, said Ram Shmueli, a long time education activist. Four out of five new teachers leave the field within five years.
“’They know the salaries are low,’ he said. ‘They come to be teachers because they want to influence society. But if we don’t give them any freedom, they will run away.’
“The test scores also show widening disparities between Hebrew- and Arabic-speaking pupils, and among Hebrew speakers from different socioeconomic strata.”
“Economists warn that Israel is splitting into two economies — the booming high-tech sector, which accounts for about 9 percent of jobs, and everything else, which is dragging down productivity rates.”
Magid in his review of Lustik`s book sums the 2SS farce neatly:
“Talk of a realistic two-state solution is akin to talk of a flat earth”
Jon s says “Two states is the only realistic way to go.”
People are missing the point: there is in fact, in reality, only one country that controls everything essential from Jordan to the sea. Believing that this country is going to break off a piece of itself for the Palestinians is like imagining that the U.S. will give Texas back to the Mexicans; it’s theoretically possible and highly unlikely. It’s just that the only country that exists in this area has first class citizens, second class citizens and serfs with no political rights.
“Israeli voters don’t care what American Jews have to say about their elections”
That’s trauma. Maybe it’s time to talk about why Israel is authoritarian, why it worships violence and why Sabra kids are educated to hate.
Israel is a settler-colonial project driven by the survivors of genocide. That is a gruesome starting point. Liberal US Jews have been fed bullshit about Israel from the get go. Nobody on Madison Ave understood group trauma.
Israel is going to get a lot worse before it gets worse.
« No matter how well written or delivered, a speech cannot divert whole societies from a well established course of action. Policies in motion tend to stay in motion ; to change the trajectory of a deeply embedded set of initiatives requires the application of political forces of equal motion » Steve Walt
Maybe there will be something worth building on when Zionism collapses.