Yesterday, Israeli premier Naftali Bennett’s razor-thin coalition majority crumbled as coalition whip Idit Silman, also from Bennett’s Yamina (“Rightwards”) party, defected, leaving the coalition at 60 members out of the 120-seat parliament.
“I can no longer bear the damage to values and causes that are essential and right”, Silman wrote in her resignation letter to Bennett, adding that she “will not abet the harming of the Jewish identity of the State of Israel and the people of Israel.”
But what is the danger to “Jewish identity” from a government headed by the most right-wing, Jewish supremacist and religious fundamentalist premier in Israel’s history?
We are being told it’s about matzos. Health minister Nitzan Horowitz (from the left-Zionist Meretz party) has instructed hospitals to allow patients to have leavened bread with them – in accordance with a High Court of Justice ruling on the matter. Leavened bread is not kosher during the Jewish holiday of Passover, and that was the source of the recent spat between Silman and Horowitz, where Silman said the instruction crossed a “red line”, although even Religious Affairs Minister Matan Kahana (also from Yamina) pointed out that the order has been in place since 2020 and that “nothing has changed”. That’s apparently how the cookie crumbles in Israel – oh, sorry – the matzo.
There is of course more going on behind the scenes. Since the government, based on the singular value of “just not Netanyahu,” was sworn in last June, Netanyahu’s Likud has been waiting for an opportunity to poach lawmakers to their side. They have been mocking the government for joining forces with Palestinian lawmakers (although the United Arab List is a conservative Islamist party, and although Netanyahu came up with the idea of joining up with them first). They campaigned for Silman’s defection and camped in front of her house. They knew her weakness.
Silman is a Jewish religious fundamentalist who donates together with her husband Shmulik to the anti-abortion organization Efrat. Shmulik is a Netanyahu supporter who has expressed support for raising funds to assist Netanyahu in his ongoing corruption trials, and he has been calling upon his wife Idit to “return home” – to the Likud, that is, or the “national camp.” On a radio show preceding her defection announcement by a day Shmulik announced:
If Idit returns home, she would grab a great position at the Health Ministry. Everything’s good. Nothing has happened, and it’s not the end of the world.
Shmulik Silman has been holding talks with opposition MK Bezalel Smotrich from the extreme-right Religious Zionism (which brought in the Jewish Power Kahanist Itamar Ben Gvir into the parliament), and it seems Smotrich has facilitated a deal with Likud whereby Idit Silman would be guaranteed the 10th slot in a prospective Likud government and a ministerial position as health minister.
It’s still unclear at this point how Netanyahu could form a coalition, with so many rivals also in the right-wing. For now, Likud’s clear bloc is still only at 52. If Silman joins Likud it is 53. There’s another Yamina member, Amichai Chikli, who has refused to back the government since the start – if he moves to Likud or to another Likud bloc party, he could also strengthen it. But then the Likud bloc would still need another 7 seats. It looks somewhat unlikely, but the current coalition is also a rather unlikely one. In the past, Bennett has swayed and not ruled out a government with Netanyahu.
What seems quite clear, is that Likud has now spotted a path towards revival. Netanyahu was elated at Silman’s defection. In a video statement he called it a “courageous move”, adding:
I was very moved to hear MK Idit Silman’s statement, and I congratulate her on behalf of the masses of the people of Israel who yearned for this moment… I call on all those elected by the national camp to join Idit and come home, you will be received with complete respect and with open arms.
It seems likely that Israel will be thrown into new elections – all it needs is a no-confidence vote, which may pass since the nominal support for the government is currently at a minority. The two year period preceding this apparently short-lived government has seen four elections in less than two years. If Netanyahu becomes desperate enough, he might even try to entice the United Arab List again, which might become kosher once again, even kosher for Passover.
Oh the irony!
We’ve had an entire US administration tip-toeing around this “fragile coalition” for over a year now, not wanting to upset the precious little snowflakes in the Knesset, even when they’re slaughtering innocent civilians in Gaza, demolishing houses, uprooting olive farms, building and protecting more settlements, ethnically cleansing occupied East Jerusalem, trying to belligerently torpedo global nuclear negotiations with Iran, and openly opposing the reopening of the US Consulate in East Jerusalem.
What has all this pandering got them? Sweet sod all! The razor thin coalition that was doomed from the start is collapsing anyway. Not because the US decided to show an ounce of backbone on a laundry list of war crimes, occupation, annexation, and human rights violations, but because the racist, ethno-supremacist, religio-facist, Apartheid state of Israel simply couldn’t tolerate leavened bread in hospitals during Pesach.
The sad thing is that they have learnt absolutely nothing in the last year. The New “All Inclusive” Coalition© government was no better than ANY of the previous governments. Equally and “inclusively” willing to commit war crimes, exact collective punishment, and practice Apartheid. New government, same Zionist Apartheid regime. Period.
And there’s simply no future government that will EVER change this simple nature of Israel. Not without external pressure, which will basically never come from the US, especially when they can’t even bring themselves to openly condemn a single action of Israel, let alone take action on any of these actions.
The administration will simply and immediately pivot away from their spineless appeasement schtick about caution in light of a “fragile coalition” and straight back to the same old schtick of appeasement in light of not wanting to cause unnecessary tension or pressure before a national election, and then straight on to the same old schtick about not wanting to cause tension or pressure AFTER a national election… rinse and repeat. Ad nauseam.
We can expect Crooked Bibi to be salivating over this opportunity to get back to power again. Corrupt or a war criminal, Israelis will still want him back. The world will be once again be putting up with Bibi’s dramas, chest pounding, and endless lies. The Palestinians will continue their suffering despite any change in the Zionist leadership. Thinks never improve for them.
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Well worth noting:
https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/chicago-synagogue-officially-designates-itself-anti-zionist-1.10715005
“Chicago Synagogue Officially Designates Itself ‘anti-Zionist’”
“Tzedek Chicago already defined itself as ‘non-Zionist’ and was explicitly established to attract Jews disenchanted with communal support for Israel and skeptical of Zionism at large”
The Forward, Arno Rosenfeld. Haaretz. Apr. 2/22
“Tzedek Chicago was founded seven years ago, in part, to create a Jewish community free from a strong attachment to Israel. The congregation went beyond its original ‘non-Zionism’ this week to become what is likely the first synagogue in the country to be affirmatively ‘anti-Zionist.’
“’I’m so proud of the thoughtful way we engaged with each other in this process,’ Scout Bratt, the shul’s president, said in a statement Wednesday announcing the decision. ‘While we knew individual members would have their own personal opinions, we ultimately treated this as a communal decision, not an ideological litmus test.’
“The decision to add a statement decrying the creation of Israel as an ‘injustice against the Palestinian people – an injustice that continues to this day’ was taken by a vote of the congregation’s 200 member families after the board unanimously endorsed it in December. Seventy-three percent of households voted in favor of the motion.
“There is little data on how many American Jews identify as Zionists, or support Zionism, but many establishment organizations point to proxy questions to argue that the vast majority of the community is sympathetic to the tenets of Jewish nationalism. For example, the Pew Research Center found in May that 82 percent of Jews said ‘caring about Israel’ was essential or important to being Jewish, and 81 percent told the American Jewish Committee that it was antisemitic to say that ‘Israel has no right to exist.’
“Some pro-Israel activists assailed Tzedek Chicago’s announcement on social media.
“’I don’t think they know what Judaism even is,’” Daniel Koren, director of Hasbara Fellowships Canada, wrote on Twitter. (cont’d)
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“Establishment groups have long shunned Tzedek Chicago, with JTA reporting in 2019 that the congregation was not listed in the local Jewish federation’s directory of synagogues.
“Others noted that it was an incremental move for a congregation that was established with an explicit eye toward attracting Jews who felt alienated from synagogues and other Jewish institutions that celebrate close ties to Israel. Rabbi Brant Rosen, who founded Tzedek Chicago, has long described it as a community for Jews skeptical of, or opposed to, Zionism.
“’There are increasing numbers of Jews out there, particularly young Jews, who don’t identify as Zionist and resent the implication that somehow to be Jewish today one must be Zionist,’ Rosen told Religion News Service in 2015. Rosen, who was ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, had previously helped found the rabbinical council of Jewish Voice for Peace, which is itself anti-Zionist.
“But while Rosen told RNS that he believed Tzedek Chicago was the first congregation to intentionally eschew positive attachment to Israel, the synagogue is in fact one of at least half a dozen congregations to take similar positions, according to a Forward analysis.
I thought that once Netanyahu was out of power he would be put in prison…