This week Israel held national elections for the fifth time since 2019. Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party was triumphant and will be forming the next government with the help of the real winners of this latest round – the messianic, fascist Religious Zionist List that electrified the electorate and is terrifying Israel’s supporters in the United States.
Phil Weiss reported on the surge of support for new far-right kingmakers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir on the streets of Jerusalem in the run-up to the election. Ben-Gvir is the political heir of the infamous Rabbi Meir Kahane whose Kach party was declared illegal in Israel in the mid-1990s but is now going to be a central inspiration in the next Israeli government. Writing about the election from Haifa Yoav Haifawi said:
In the 80s the late racist rabbi Meir Kahane used to say to Israelis: “I say what you think”. Now it is Israel’s coming out party. It is time to throw away the masks and declare itself the Apartheid state – based on racism, settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing – that it always was.
After the election, Phil filed another story from Jerusalem and said it was like “witnessing the death of hope,” as liberal voters were despondent in the face of the fascist ascendancy. Phil rode with a cab driver who had previously voted for centrist Benny Gantz but voted for Ben-Gvir this time around. The cab driver summed up the bloodcurdling worldview that is perhaps animating this new Israeli government when he told Phil, “You must kill the Arab with the knife. No talk to him, kill him.”
The election results now create a political crisis for the Biden administration, liberal Zionists, and the broader Israel lobby in the United States. Although the media here continues to whitewash the extremists coming into office, the new government has already lost one notable media figure who is usually the first to tow the Israeli line — Thomas Friedman.
This is not going unnoticed in the Biden administration which is clearly panicking. The administration is reported to be “very upset” at leaders of the American Jewish community for not speaking out against Ben-Gvir. In return, the Israel lobby is already sending signals to the administration on how it can support a government run by unrepentant racists. Either way, the lobby knows this new government is a gift to activists who will accurately be able to point to it as the enthusiastic face of Israeli Apartheid.
As notable as these election results were, there was of course much more news from Palestine this week. The Israeli onslaught on the West Bank continues and we profiled a harrowing case where high school students in Ramallah are rallying to help their classmate who was beaten and abducted by Israeli forces and remains in custody. In a poignant denouement to the story, Mariam Barghouti captures a debate between the students as they try to determine what to do despite feeling helpless in the face of the Israeli behemoth:
“We don’t need more hashtags,” Walid said. Listening to her classmate, Noor interjected: “but hashtags and sharing his story is a bare minimum that we, young ones, can do.”
“We need to create pressure to bring our friend home,” she added.
Finally, please take the time to read this incredible profile of the Nablus-based Lions’ Den, which has gained a hero-like status across Palestine for leading a revival of armed resistance against Israeli colonialism.
