Witnessing the death of hope in Jerusalem

It was hard not to witness the death of hope in Jerusalem on Tuesday night. Those who held out hope that the Israeli system would somehow resist the right, and exhibit tolerance — that hope was dashed by the Israeli election, in which the fascistic messianic right declared its grip over the Israeli Jewish psyche.

Exit polls show the explicitly-anti-Palestinian party Religious Zionism at 13 or 14 seats in the parliament, making it the third largest party. When official votes are released, the party will likely be in position to put the largest vote-getter, Benjamin Netanyahu, whose right-wing Likud Party polls at about 31 seats, back in the prime minister’s job after 18 months absence.

“There will be a third intifada,” a shopkeeper in East Jerusalem told me. “This is a very bad night, Balad doesn’t look like it will make it,” a bookdealer said, referring to the anti-Zionist Palestinian party that is currently below the 3.25 percent cutoff for representation in the parliament.

The left-wing Zionist party Meretz is also balanced on the cutoff in the polls, and could lose its six current seats. Actual vote counts don’t come out till tomorrow.

“All we can hope for is a sixth election,” a young Meretz voter told me at a polling place in the German Colony in West Jerusalem. “But it looks like Netanyahu will get back in. The young voters feel that the right-wing will make them safer.”

And when I said that I was leaving the country in two days, she said, “Good for you.”

“I’m in shock. Looks like a total wipeout,” Mondoweiss contributor Yossi Gurvitz, a Balad voter, texted me from Petah Tikvah.

Walking through the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah near midnight on election night, I heard the fireworks and sirens from the Jewish settlement nearby as they celebrated Religious Zionism’s power. Later I saw videos of young men throwing rocks at Palestinians, in joy.

Because Itamar Ben-Gvir, a leader of Religious Zionism, has said, “This is our house,” and Palestinians are mere guests in it, and the young right-wing Jews thrilled to his unapologetic Jewish supremacy. Ben-Gvir has waved his gun at Palestinians and repeatedly brought Jewish worshipers to the Haram-al-Sharif in violation of religious rules.

Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu’s political message was that the current Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s policy of killing 260 Palestinians this year in response to resistance was too soft; and I heard that fascistic message resonating among Jews on election day. “Gantz pulled the army out of Binyamin and Shomron, and Jews there are getting hurt,” a young voter in the German Colony told me in reference to Jewish communities in the occupied territory — a term she rejects. Because the West Bank is “our house,” as Ben-Gvir says.

“The Arab is not afraid of us, so the Arab will stab and stab,” a cab driver said in Petah Tikvah. “You must kill the Arab with the knife. No talk to him, kill him.”

The driver had voted for Gantz and Netanyahu in previous elections. Now Ben-Gvir. “Ben-Gvir is eating Gantz’s vote,” Gurvitz says.

Six years ago colleagues Adam Horowitz and Scott Roth told me that we would look back on Netanyahu as the nice guy, and I thought they were wrong. Last night demonstrates they were right.

Of course this is now a political crisis for the United States, and liberal Zionists– everyone who has been lying to us about apartheid and democracy and telling us Israel is an idealistic fulfillment of Jewish sovereignty and shares American values. They are in agony today. There will be official pressure in days to come on Netanyahu not to make a governing coalition with Religious Zionism. Gurvitz says the U.S. embassy will pressure the Labor party and Benny Gantz to go back on their word and join a national union government that includes Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman’s right-wing bloc, and the orthodox Jewish parties– to keep the fascists out and “save the country.” Netanyahu will be caught between his base and his desire to maintain international status — not to become a pariah like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Gurvitz says.

All that drama will unfold in days to come, as the actual vote totals emerge, and the Israeli president taps someone, surely Netanyahu, to try to form a government. Balad says today it is hoping for a “surprise” to make the cut….

Meantime, anti-Zionists are being vindicated. Everything we have said about this society’s right-wing arc is being proved true before our eyes. The nonviolent corrective we have long sought, BDS, or boycott, divestment and sanctions, the tool used against the Jim Crow south and apartheid South Africa, is the only answer to Israel’s lurches. Last night a liberal Zionist writer Sara Yael Hirschhorn tweeted in anguish, “Now, if ever, is collectively the time for the #Jewish and #InternationalCommunity to bring all their pressure to bear against Ben-Gvir in the Knesset.”

And Scott Roth responded, “All their pressure, so like BDS?”

Good question. You can be sure that young disillusioned Zionists at J Street’s conference next month will be saying the same thing.

Meantime, a friend in East Jerusalem texted me, “No expectations for anything good so let’s have the unpolished truth.”

A bitter lesson, but an inarguable one. The fulfillment of Zionism has only produced bitterness for non-Jews. And today feels like a good time for the world to acknowledge as much.