It’s been almost four weeks since Israel held its fifth parliamentary election in three years and as is usual when it comes to reporting the unpleasant truth about Israel, the mainstream media in the United States is largely absent. Apparently the facts that Benjamin Netanyahu has tapped Israel’s equivalent of the Grand Master of the Ku Klux Klan to be the next minister of internal security and has broken with prior practice and handed him control of the border police (formerly under military command) aren’t enough to warrant mention in the New York Times.
Less surprisingly, the continued slaughter of Palestinians by the Israeli military remains a forbidden topic, which makes sense because if the Times reported the news it would have to report that as of this writing at least 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israel this year alone, and 51 of them were children. As the situation deteriorates ever further, outgoing prime minister Yair Lapid’s message is that Israel’s reach will find all terrorists “from the Casbah of Nablus, the refugee camp in Jenin, to arenas near and far..” And this from the so-called moderate.
The incoming government is by far the most right-wing and racist government in Israeli history, and that’s saying a lot. And so far the messaging from the Biden administration seems to be that its policy towards this new government will be one of benign neglect. In fairness to the administration, we will have to wait until the next Knesset is formally seated before we can gauge how it will react but there is not much reason to be optimistic. It is largely American acquiescence to the worst of Israel’s policy and behavior that has enabled Israel to devolve into a fascist nightmare.
