Blatant racism by three Israeli pols, including one allied with the leftwing party Meretz, has stymied the effort to knock Netanyahu out of the premiereship. Sadly, American liberal Zionists are too busy pushing a “progressive” slate to the World Zionist Congress to denounce the racism among their allies. magine if a Democratic Party politician refused to work with black leaders?
“There is no life, no existence for the Israel left and even center without the partnership with the Israeli Arabs” — a J Street expert interprets the rise of the Palestinian Joint List as the only real resistance to Netanyahu’s racebaiting.
The big surprise of the Israeli elections was the lead that Likud got over centrist Blue White, 36 to 32. ALthough just short of a right-wing majority for Netanyahu’s bloc, the lead spells hope for Israeli rightists out from the deadlock of the past year.
Israel’s third election inside a year shows the rightwing continuing to gain ground. This is what Jewish nationalists want. A society governed by an authoritarian leader, no matter how corrupt. Just so long as there are no Arabs anywhere near power. The only hope politically is the burgeoning Joint List of Palestinian parties, which reject apartheid and discrimination.
A rightwing Israeli rabbi secretly taped his spiritual meeting last week with an adviser to Netanyahu’s chief rival, Benny Gantz, and the tape was publicized by a Netanyahu media mouthpiece. Now a second tape has emerged showing that Netanyahu and the rabbi discussed the secret tape before it was released. The scandal broke too late to have much impact on today’s election.
In a humorous video intended to dispel the rumors about intense tensions within the “cockpit” of four leaders of the Blue and White party – Benjamin Gantz, Yair Lapid, Moshe “Bogie” Yaalon, and Gabi Ashkenazi – Lapid is heard telling Ashkenazi that “Bogie was quite a murderer in the army, in his military career.”
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.
Condemnation for the recently-published UN list of companies doing business in illegal Israeli settlements has been across the Zionist spectrum in Israel, and it’s pretty much the same in the US Congress.
Today, the extreme right is a wholly acceptable idea in the Israeli mainstream. Supporting illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory has shifted to being a centrist policy.
Benny Gantz support for annexing the Jordan Valley shows that the left is completely feckless in Israeli politics, and the only liberal hope is in Palestinian politicians. American liberal Zionists should accept that the two state solution is dead, and they should abandon the ideology that created apartheid: Zionism.