Benny Gantz plays into Netanyahu’s racist attack, and says he will refuse to have the Palestinian Joint List as participants in a government, preferring the rightwinger Liberman, as if the math makes sense. It doesn’t. Gantz needs the Joint List. He spurns Palestinians because of primal Israeli Jewish fears that by welcoming the other into the Zionist community, Jews will want to leave the fold.

The exclusion by Labor/Meretz of a Palestinian lawmaker in the next election list is a reminder of the racism in Israeli politics. The main reason Israeli politics are stalemated and the country is going to its third election in a year is Palestinians don’t really count in election totals; and the leading Jewish party is happy to cut a deal with other Jewish parties but refuses to deal seriously with the third largest party, the Joint List of Palestinian parties.

Benny Gantz was unable to form a “minority” governing coalition in Israel because members of his own party refused to work with Palestinian legislators. This racism ought to be widely known and denounced in American liberal Zionist circles, where Gantz is a hero. But it’s not. Israeli racism is sanitized once again.

The same paper that dissects every bigoted innuendo by Donald Trump somehow loses that ability when it comes to the political leaders of Israel. 

Netanyahu’s political calculations in attacking Gaza are no secret in Israel. So why do they hardly get mentioned in the American mainstream media?

Benny Gantz’s best hope of becoming Israeli PM is to threaten to make a center-left minority government with outside help of Palestinians. The threat would cause Netanyahu’s defense line to crumble at last, and Likud members would join Gantz. So Palestinians are just a pawn in the game, never allowed near real power.

Asaf Calderon writes, “Netanyahu’s carefully cultivated stagnation can only be disrupted by his removal. The change will not come from a Gantz administration, but by the end of the Netanyahu administration.”

Benny Gantz is “bad,” but Netanyahu is “the worst,” says Ayman Odeh of the Palestinian Joint List in Israel. But Odeh told Time magazine that 10 Palestinian legislators endorsed Gantz because they want to stop Trump’s deal of the century and the annexation by Israel of West Bank lands.

Gazans do not approve of Joint List leader Ayman Odeh’s endorsement of Benny Gantz in the Israeli election because Gantz led attacks on Gaza. No one here, says Ayman Moin, “can easily forget a beloved who has been killed, or jailed for years, nor a house demolished by the same perpetrator.”

The success of the Palestinian Joint List in the Israeli election has given hope to liberal Zionist groups for a post-Netanyahu era of non-discrimination and a better international image. Though there is little in Israeli Jewish politicians’ conduct to support the hope, Ayman Odeh of the Joint List will be speaking to J Street next month.