Benjamin Netanyahu’s radical rightwing ministers’ agenda is the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. And yet high Biden officials are meeting with Netanyahu today, and Secretary Blinken is due out within a couple of weeks, all to give Biden’s blessing to the new government — and perform what the State Department admitted yesterday is “triage” on the failure of the two-state solution.
Israel is facing mass protests over the authoritarian government’s plans to override supreme court rulings so as to exonerate Netanyahu from corruption charges. But U.S. Ambassador Tom Nides praises Netanyahu as a sober leader, and he appeared to side with the government over any protesters this week, stating repeatedly that the government has a mandate from the public. He even characterized Israel’s move against the supreme court as “judicial reform.”
Hillel Halkin moved to Israel from the U.S. 50 years ago because he believed in the Zionist vision. Now the author confesses that the project failed because it could not deal with the central question, Palestinian demands, and he was naive when anti-Zionists made that argument to him years ago. Today the country is going off a rightwing-religious “cliff” — a quarter of all nonreligious Israelis between ages 18-24, and half of all religious ones, think Israel’s Palestinian citizens should be stripped of the right to vote!
Calls for sanctions and BDS against Israel in the wake of its new government’s “bold” actions against Palestinians are causing that government to dig in. Netanyahu ally Danny Danon called on the United States to block any UN Security Council resolution against provocative Israeli actions at the holy sites in Jerusalem. While Netanyahu minister Amichai Chikli accused Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid of being the “spearhead of the BDS movement.”
The news from Israel is the job of explaining Israel to America — hasbara, Hebrew for propaganda– just got a lot harder. The government’s nakedly fascistic politics are a wakeup call to American Jews. We are enabling apartheid. We are the political lifeline for racist zealots who are going to hurt a lot more Palestinians this year. Supporting them goes against Jewish traditions. And American Jews will finally say Enough.
The longest serving Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in a rush to name his new government before January 2 and first order of business will be an override bill that allows the parliament to set aside Supreme Court overturnings of laws as mere “recommendation.” That’s one way Netanyahu plans to sidestep his corruption trial. Two of his ministers are convicted criminals.
The new Israeli government shows that Zionism is finally a nightmare for Jews. Israeli leftwingers report that they are “under attack,” “afraid,” and blacklisted, and that anti-occupation activists will be subject to violence of the sort Palestinians have always faced. And the “Reform movement is enemy number one” for the new government.
The Biden administration is giving Israel’s new radical right government the thumbs up. “Bibi Netanyahu is in charge of this government, okay? He’s made it very clear that his hands are on the wheel, and we’ll work with him. And most importantly, Joe Biden has a strong working relationship with Bibi Netanyahu,” says US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides.
Longtime leaders in the U.S. Jewish community, including Abe Foxman, Thomas Friedman, Rick Jacobs, and Dan Kurtzer, express fear that the new Israeli government will break the supposedly unbreakable U.S.-Israel relationship. Or as David Makovsky and Dennis Ross wrote a few weeks back in the first major sign that American Zionists are panicked by the plans, the new government will arm Israel’s “fiercest critics,” including progressives who seek to end U.S. aid and distance the U.S. from Israel. Not all these leaders are concerned about Palestinian rights. Indeed, Abe Foxman doesn’t question Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, but is upset that Israel might change the definition of Who is a Jew?
The shocking success of the racist-fascist party Religious Zionism in the Israel election three weeks ago has caused an earthquake inside the pro-Israel lobby in the United States. And that earthquake has allowed Joe Biden to take unprecedented –for him– baby-steps to confront the Israeli government.