The thrilling Naftali Bennett

The news from Israel is that on Sunday Naftali Bennett, the rightwing former tech entrepreneur, is likely to ring out the Benjamin Netanyahu era by becoming prime minister with a very diverse “change” coalition of 61 seats in the parliament, including a rightwing Palestinian party, Ra’am.

Israel lobby groups such as AIPAC, Israel Policy Forum and Democratic Majority for Israel love the new government because it will be easier to sell Bennett to Democrats than Netanyahu, a despised figure.

Liberal Zionists are secretly exultant over the change for the same reason, they hope it will end the open politicization of Israel among Democrats. “For all those who care about Israeli democracy and still believe that a better future is possible, Netanyahu’s fall from power is a cause for great relief — even as we recognize that the political defeat of one dangerous man will not magically bring about all the change we still yearn for,” J Street declared.

Already you can feel that Bennett is being sanitized for an American audience. A political aide/Israel lobbyist on MSNBC says that Bennett has “evolved” since the days that he taunted a Palestinian politician, “when you were still swinging from trees, we had a Jewish state here.” And when he said, “I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life and there’s no problem with that.”

On NPR today, the host left out both those quotes when she referred to Bennett as a “gentleman.”

Can you imagine Dwight Eisenhower or Jimmy Carter bragging about all the people they’d killed in the military in order to ascend to the White House? Rashid Khalidi asked last night on an Arab American Institute appearance. Oh, but this is Israel, which excels at delivering racist violence. Another member of the Change coalition is Benny Gantz, a centrist who ran a campaign ad saying he’d bombed Gaza “back to the stone age.” And Bennett himself said three years ago that Israeli troops should have a “shoot to kill” policy for Gaza protesters, including minors.

But let’s look at the main ray of hope that a Bennett government represents for liberal Zionists. Bennett will help restore bipartisan political support for Israel in the U.S., including from Democrats, because: he will lower tensions between Jews and Palestinians, won’t shove settlements/Jerusalem on to Biden’s plate, and because he has made that historic partnership with a Palestinian party.

Certainly Bennett’s deal with Ra’am is historic. Israeli governments have always excluded Palestinians. This one will have some conservative Palestinian membership.

No doubt Mansour Abbas, Bennett’s Palestinian coalition partner, has thrown his political weight around in a jawdropping manner. Under the deal Ra’am cut, Bennett will legalize some Bedouin villages and develop Palestinians areas. “They are talking about a new Arab city. Israel never had a new Arab city built in its history!” Tal Schneider said, gushing over Abbas’s media savvy on an Israel Policy Forum briefing.

But Ra’am’s participation is not redemptive. Israel is now officially an “apartheid” state, according to a long list of experts. Ra’am’s token inclusion really only highlights the degree of Palestinian exclusion in the Jewish state. “This is a democracy?” Rashid Khalidi exclaimed during his discussion with James Zogby last night. Five million Palestinians are “under Israel’s boot for 50 years”– and every important decision regarding their lives is made by a parliament they can’t vote for.

Consider the famous photo of Abbas and Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett signing the coalition agreement last week. Two of these men will be alternating prime ministers in the new government: Lapid won 17 seats and will become P.M. in two years, after Bennett, whose Yamina (rightward) party won only 7 seats.

Abbas, with 4 seats, was the last guy to sign on, which ought to give him the strongest bargaining position. But of course he isn’t considered as prime minister material.

Let alone Ayman Odeh, the leader of the other three Palestinian parties, which won 6 seats. Odeh is the most appealing/inspiring/leftleaning “change” politician in the country; but his party didn’t sign on to this government.

Of course, it’s a good thing that Abbas is getting some small victories for Palestinians. But the presence of one conservative Palestinians serves to highlight the persecution and nonrepresentation of millions of Palestinians to Abbas’s left.

“This is not about names but policies,” Sami Abou Shehadeh of the Joint List writes. “No matter how the new Israeli government looks like, we’ll continue demanding the same: Equality, respect for Int. Law, ending the occupation. … You cannot continue ignoring us.”

So back to the question. Will Bennett make life easier for Joe Biden inside the Democratic Party, by removing the dead weight of Netanyahu? Will he slow down the delegitimization of Israel around the world and in the United States, where polls show a large chunk of the Democratic Party has more sympathy for Palestinians than Israelis and cares about human rights?

Liberal Zionists are clearly chuffed about this possibility. “[F]or the first time in many years — Israeli leaders and society could have an opportunity to change course,” J Street says. While Gabi Mitchell gave a J Street talk saying it’s time for U.S. and Israeli leaders to have a serious dialogue and agree, “We are in this together,” albeit with different interests.

Let’s acknowledge that a Bennett government will be a signal improvement in one respect: it won’t actively try to stop Biden from reentering the Iran deal.

But when it comes to the core issue here, Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, Bennett is to Netanyahu’s right on issues like annexing portions of the West Bank and will in the end hasten American alienation.

“I think Bennett et al will make the problem worse for Israel here in the US, because its behavior won’t improve even after Netanyahu is gone and it might get worse,” writes a foreign policy friend. “Instead of blaming it all on one obnoxious guy who overstayed his welcome, people will begin to realize the problem is intrinsic to the system as a whole.” 

For instance, the West Bank– which Bennett, a religious Jew, invariably calls “Judea and Samaria.” Biden and Bennett will try to reach an understanding to make the issue go away, Barak Ravid said on an Israel Policy Forum call.

I don’t think anyone with a clear mind thinks there’s any point in relaunching peace talks…. [So] how do we put the two state solution in a box, so we freeze the situation, we don’t take it forward, but we don’t make things worse? I think some deal will have to be worked out about that.

Good luck. Biden and Bennett are just two actors. The global outrage over the evictions in Sheikh Jarrah and the courage/celebrity of Mohammed and Muna El-Kurd shows that Palestinian solidarity is growing rapidly and that movement is demanding actual human rights for Palestinians rather than persecution. Last night Khalidi hailed unprecedented demonstrations in Germany and Lebanon. The recent explosion of the Sheikh Jarrah evictions into an Israeli invasion of the Noble Sanctuary in occupied Jerusalem and a shooting war with Gaza shows how inevitably discriminatory are the policies of the “Nation State of the Jewish people.”

Yair Lapid is a liberal Zionist’s dream. He is a former TV host and is to be Foreign Minister. The government will also have a Palestinian face in Issawi Frej of the left Zionist party Meretz, due to be minister of regional cooperation (Ravid says).

But if these politicians seem enlightened, they are outweighed by rightwing forces. Israeli politics remains overwhelmingly rightwing– about 80 of the 120-member Knesset are far-right to center-right. Gideon Sa’ar and Avigdor Lieberman are settler advocates in the new government, and Naftali Bennett is an ardent advocate of the exclusive right of Jewish self-determination in the land.

Just look at Bennett’s hateful video from 9 years ago that advocates as a solution to the Palestinian issue the annexation of Area C in the West Bank and granting of limited rights to Palestinians in the remaining land. Bennett puts forward a variety of unconscionable goals that I’ve snipped out with the images below: so that Israel can continue to steal half its drinking water from the West Bank, so that it can maintain a Jewish majority in its land and staunch the “demographic” pressures of too many Palestinians, so that it can crush the right of return of Palestinian refugees even to the West Bank, and so that it can mute “apartheid” accusations.

Notice Bennett’s use of blue paperclips for Jews and brown and black and ones for Palestinians. Classy. This is what Bennett’s friend Mark Mellman of the Democratic Majority for Israel will be selling to Democrats!

Bennett’s rhetoric may have evolved but his bottom line remains: “The establishment of a Palestinian state based on the ’67 borders is impossible… because it puts Israel in danger.” As he told the Guardian in 2017, there will never be a Palestinian state on his watch. “It’s just not going to happen. A Palestinian state would be a disaster for the next 200 years.” Or as Sami Abou Shehadeh tells the Guardian, A Bennett administration is “light years away from democratic change” and “supports the settlements and the continuation of the siege on Gaza, and sanctifies the institutionalised mechanisms that perpetuate Jewish superiority and the marginalisation of the Palestinian citizens.”

Apartheid is a hard sell, and Americans are beginning to grasp the reality. Today even the Brookings Institution is questioning how a country can be Jewish and democratic.

And that puts the thrilling Naftali Bennett on a collision course with a lot of people in the United States.