Merav Michaeli may think she is the polar opposite of fascist Itamar Ben Gvir but he has a simple message for her Labor Party base — I’m like you, we all want Jewish supremacy. 

The Gaza attack has heightened Israel’s rightwing political tilt as it approaches its next election. “The only place where you can see real energy is on the far right among young people,” Chemi Shalev says of the surprising support among the young for the fascistic racist Religious Zionism party.

Merav Michaeli, leader of Israel’s Labor Party, taunts two million Palestinians who are under siege in Gaza: “No sovereign state would accept a siege on its residents by a terror organization.” She is showing that the “change” government in Israel can be as good at “mowing the lawn” — which means killing civilians who have nowhere to flee in Gaza– as Netanyahu so that it can hold him off in the November election.

Israel’s rightwing parliament overwhelmingly passed a permanent law barring the naturalization of Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza married to Israeli citizens yesterday. The law in earlier forms has been cited as an “apartheid” law by human rights organizations, but even Israeli centrists voted for it with “a heavy heart.” While the Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked celebrated the law as a triumph of the Jewish state.

Israeli author Einat Wilf tells the Democratic Party how to give the bad news to Palestinians. “I had to wrestle with the fact that I’m not a nice person. And I accepted it,” she says. So Americans must give “not pleasant” messages to Palestinians, that they need to accept that Zionism is a legitimate “indigenous” movement for Jewish liberation in the Middle East.

Israeli Labor leader Merav Michaeli on the ICC move to investigate Israel for war crimes: “It is a very, very problematic decision. It does not promote peace in any way. It does not promote a solution for the two state solution. It escalates the conflict.” Though Michaeli says the two-state solution is “completely not on the agenda” for voters in the March 23 election.

The Never Netanyahu parties in Israeli politics only get to about 50 seats in polls for the March 23 elections, which likely leaves Netanyahu in power because opposition won’t work with Palestinian votes! Netanyahu sees a path to a majority of 61 with a deal he forged between Bezalel Smotrich and Otsma Yehudit, or Jewish Power, a racist fascistic party with Kahanist roots.

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.

The role which the Labor Zionist movement has played in establishing apartheid in Palestine/Israel, and the irrelevance of today’s Labor Party in Israel’s right-wing drift, reveal something important about Israeli society.