[News] Israel election: Extreme right in Netanyahu's government won't dent western support

[Anti-Imperialist News]

middleeasteye.net
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-election-extreme-right-western-support-wont-end>
Israel election: Extreme right in Netanyahu's government won't dent western
support
Jonathan Cook - November 4, 2022
------------------------------
[image: image.png]

*Israel is not suddenly a more racist state. It is simply growing more
confident about admitting its racism to the world *

The most disturbing outcome of Israel
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel>’s general election this
week was not the fact that an openly fascist
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-election-far-right-triumph-threatens-future>
party won the third-biggest tally of seats, or that it is about to become
the lynchpin of the next government. It is how little will change, in
Israel or abroad, as a result.

Having Religious Zionism at the heart of government will alter the tone in
which Israeli politics is conducted, making it even coarser, more thuggish
and uncompromising. But it will make no difference to the ethnic
supremacism that has driven Israeli policy for decades.

Israel is not suddenly a more racist
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/racism> state. It is simply growing
more confident about admitting its racism to the world. And the world - or
at least the bit of it that arrogantly describes itself as the
international community - is about to confirm that such confidence is
well-founded.

There will be no statements calling for the Israeli government to be
ostracised as a pariah, nor moves to sanction it

Indeed, the West’s attitude towards Israel’s next coalition government will
be no different from its attitude towards the supposedly less-tainted ones
that preceded it.

In private, the Biden administration in the US
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/us> has made plain to Israeli
leaders its displeasure at having fascist parties so prominently in
government, not least because their presence
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-elections-herzog-calm-us-fears-far-right-power>
risks highlighting Washington’s hypocrisy and embarrassing Gulf allies. But
don’t expect Washington to do anything tangible.

There will be no statements calling for the Israeli government to be
ostracised as a pariah, nor moves to sanction it or to end the billions of
dollars in handouts <https://www.bbc.com/news/57170576> the US provides
every year. In a Washington still wracked by the fallout from the 6 January
riots <https://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/node/196831>, there will be no
warnings that Israeli democracy has been sabotaged from within.

Similarly, there will be no demands that Israel commits to more rigorous
protections for the Palestinians
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/palestine> under its military
rule, and no revival of efforts to force it to the negotiating table.

After a little embarrassed shuffling of feet, and maybe a token refusal to
meet with ministers from the fascist parties, it will be business as usual
- the “usual” being the oppression and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Dead and buried

None of this is to play down the significance of the results. Meretz
<https://www.israelhayom.com/2022/11/02/left-may-see-2nd-party-fail-to-enter-knesset-as-vote-couting-nears-end/>,
the only Jewish party that professes to favour peace over the rights of
Israeli settlers, appears to have failed to make it over the electoral
threshold. Israel’s tiny peace camp looks dead and buried.

The secular far-right, the settler far-right and the fundamentalist
religious right have secured
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-elections-ben-gvir-real-winner-new-era-jewish-supremacy>
70 of the parliament’s 120 seats, even if internecine feuds mean not all of
them are prepared to sit together. Enough will, however, to ensure that
disgraced former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-netanyahu-era-not-over-four-reasons>
returns to power for a record sixth time.

All but certain to be at the heart of the new government is Itamar Ben-Gvir
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-itamar-ben-gvir-five-moments-most-outrageous>,
whose party represents the brutish, nakedly supremacist legacy of the
notorious Rabbi Meir Kahane
<https://www.britannica.com/biography/Meir-Kahane>, who wished to expel
Palestinians from their homeland. Netanyahu knows he owes his comeback to
the astonishing rise of Ben-Gvir and the Kahanists - and he will need to
suitably reward them.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-election-far-right-triumph-threatens-future>

Israel election: West must turn back on Netanyahu's neofascist government

Several dozen more seats in the Knesset are held by Jewish parties that
belong to the largely secular, militaristic right. Their legislators
reliably cheer on what now amounts to a 15-year siege of Gaza
<https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2022-07-20/ty-article-opinion/.premium/gaza-has-been-under-siege-for-15-years-it-cant-go-on/00000182-1cc1-da36-a3ee-fcfb90440000>
and its two million Palestinian inhabitants, as well as the intermittent
bombing
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/only-the-strong-survive-gantzs-new-campaign-videos-laud-his-idf-bona-fides/>
of the coastal enclave “back to the Stone Age”.

Neither Jewish Party nor any of these parties prefer a diplomatic solution
over the permanent subjugation of Palestinians, their gradual ethnic
cleansing from Jerusalem, and the entrenchment of settlements in the
occupied <https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/occupation> West Bank.

Those militristic right parties who achieved victory at the polls 19 months
ago oversaw what the United Nations recently predicted
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-west-bank-october-deadliest-month-year-palestinians>
to be the “deadliest year” for Palestinians since it started compiling
figures in 2005. While in government, they shut down six notable
Palestinian human rights groups, claiming without evidence that they
were terrorist
organisations
<https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/10/22/israel/palestine-designation-palestinian-rights-groups-terrorists>
.

Nonetheless, western capitals will now pretend that these opposition
parties offer the hope - however distant - of a peace breakthrough.

Awash in this sea of unmitigated Jewish supremacism will sit 10 legislators
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/2-of-3-arab-factions-predicted-to-enter-knesset-vow-to-oppose-far-right-fascism/>
belonging to two non-Zionist Arab-majority parties representing a fifth of
Israel’s population. If they can raise their voices loudly enough to break
through the din of anti-Palestinian racism in the parliament chamber, they
will be the only ones advocating a cause the international community claims
as dear to its heart: a two-state solution
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/most-israelis-do-not-support-two-state-solution-new-poll-shows>
.
Moment of clarity

The success of the coalition of Jewish Power and Religious Zionism, which
has won 14 seats
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-elections-ben-gvir-real-winner-new-era-jewish-supremacy>,
should be a moment of clarity. In this election, political Zionism,
Israel’s state ideology, broke cover. It has revealed itself as a narrow
spectrum of ugly ethnic supremacist beliefs.

In particular, the ascent of Ben-Gvir and his party will tear the mask off
Israel and its supporters abroad, who claim that Israel is the only
democracy
<https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/netanyahu-israel-elections-palestine-middle-east-otzma-yehudit-a8817701.html>
in the Middle East, with the barely concealed implication that it
represents an outpost of western civilisation in a morally backward,
primitive Middle East.

Ben-Gvir and his allies in government make it only too evident that western
support for Israel was never conditional on its moral character or its
democratic pretensions. From the outset, Israel was sponsored as a colonial
outpost of the West - “a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of
civilisation as opposed to barbarism”, as Theodor Herzl, the father of
Zionism, termed the role
<http://historymuse.net/readings/HerzlTHEJEWISHSTATE.htm> of the future
Israel.

[image: Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of Israel’s far-right Jewish Power
party, addresses supporters in Jerusalem on 2 November 2022 (AFP)]
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of Israel’s far-right Jewish Power party,
addresses supporters in Jerusalem on 2 November 2022 (AFP)

[image: image.gif]The central goal of Zionism, replacing the native
Palestinian population with Jewish incomers who claim an ancient
birthright, has been the same, whoever has led Israel. The dispute within
Zionism has been over the means necessary to achieve that replacement,
based on concerns about how outsiders might perceive and respond to
Israel’s state-sponsored racism.

Over time, liberal Zionism has generally concluded that the best it can
hope for is to herd Palestinians into ghettoes to secure Jewish dominion
over the land. This is the apartheid model
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-apartheid-amnesty-report-walls-crumbling>
that the international community tried for three decades to formalise into
a two-state solution.

But liberal Zionism failed to subjugate Palestinians, and has now been
effectively swept from Israel’s political scene by the triumph of
Revisionist Zionism. This is the ideology to which a clear majority of the
new parliament subscribes.

In the face of Palestinian resistance
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-gaza-war-palestine-resistance-prevails>
and liberal Zionist failure, Revisionist Zionism offers a more satisfying
solution. It prefers to make explicit Jewish supremacy, divinely ordained
or otherwise, over an enlarged territory. It concludes that, if
Palestinians refuse to submit to their status as third-class guests, then
they forfeit any rights and create the grounds for their own expulsion.
Change within Israel

For Palestinians, Ben-Gvir will differ from legislators in the other
parties he will sit alongside in government chiefly in terms of how boldly
he will be prepared to embarrass the West - and Israel’s liberal Zionist
supporters - by flaunting what can fairly be described as racist views.

Insofar as Ben-Gvir represents a change, it will not be in terms of
Israel’s actions in the occupied territories. They will continue as before,
though he may prove a thorn in Netanyahu’s side on the issue of annexation
<https://www.npr.org/2020/06/18/878305307/netanyahu-plans-to-annex-parts-of-the-west-bank-many-israeli-settlers-want-it-al>,
like many in Netanyahu’s own party.

Rather, Ben-Gvir’s impact will be inside Israel. He wants
<https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/article-721004>
the public security portfolio
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/24/israel-appoints-settler-as-army-chief-in-occupied-west-bank>
so that he can begin turning the national police force into a militia in
his own image, replicating the settlers’ earlier success in penetrating and
gradually taking over
<https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/for-first-time-settler-becomes-chief-of-staff-of-israels-military>
the Israeli military.

What will happen, as has happened so many times before, is that Israel's
shift further rightwards will quickly be normalised

This will accelerate a trend of closer cooperation between police and armed
settler groups, legitimising even greater use of formal and informal types
of violence
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/palestinians-israel-face-far-right-attacks-backed-state>
against the large minority of Palestinian citizens living inside Israel. It
will also allow Ben-Gvir and his allies to crack down on “deviants” within
Jewish society: those dissenting on religious, sexual or political matters.

The fascist parties in Netanyahu's future government will seek to build on
the existing inciteful discourse against Palestinian citizens living inside
Israel to characterise the minority as a fifth column, and to publicly
justify its expulsion. And this is not unprecedented: previous leaders and
ministers have suggested
<https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2002/06/13/camp-david-and-after-an-exchange-1-an-interview-wi/>
that Palestinians are inherently treasonous
<https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/how-netanyahu-s-campaign-against-israel-s-arab-citizens-backfired-n1056826>,
comparing <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/18/israel2>
Palestinian citizens
<https://www.wrmea.org/005-january-february/special-report-israel-washes-away-the-sins-of-former-army-chief-of-staff-rafael-eitan.html>
to “cancer” or “cockroaches” and calling for their expulsion
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/we-will-have-kill-them-all-effie-eitam-thug-messiah/8555>
.

Meanwhile, Avigdor Lieberman, a minister in several governments, long ago
set out a plan for redrawing
<https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2015-02-14/ty-article/.premium/liebermans-dangerous-scheme/0000017f-db72-d3a5-af7f-fbfed29e0000>
Israel’s borders to deny parts of the Palestinian minority citizenship.

In the summer, Ben-Gvir touted an opinion poll showing that nearly
two-thirds of Israeli Jews favoured legislation he proposed to expel
“disloyal” Palestinian citizens from the state and strip them
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/elections/2022-08-29/ty-article/kahanist-lawmaker-touts-poll-showing-broad-support-for-deporting-disloyal-israelis/00000182-e8cb-dcde-a9d6-ecef280e0000>
of citizenship. Other Jewish parties, subscribing to their own versions of
ethnic supremacism, will struggle to find a way to credibly counter
Ben-Gvir’s rhetoric.
Difficult test

All of this will prove a difficult test for Israel’s supporters in Europe
and the US. Most identify as liberal Zionists, even though their wing of
Zionism was eradicated inside Israel some time ago.

Jewish liberal Zionists invariably argue that Israel is central to their
identity
<https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2022-10-26/ty-article-opinion/.highlight/do-american-jews-really-know-what-zionist-means/00000184-0f30-d1a0-a1ee-cf7e0e120000>.
They have even insisted on redefining anything but the most bloodless
criticism of Israel as antisemitism. An attack on Israel is an attack on
Jewish identity, they argue, and therefore constitutes antisemitism
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/antisemitism>.

It was precisely that logic that was reflected by the International
Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) when it drafted a new definition of
antisemitism
<https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definitions-charters/working-definition-antisemitism>
- one that has been widely adopted by western political parties, local
authorities and universities.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-elections-ben-gvir-real-winner-new-era-jewish-supremacy>

Israel elections: Ben-Gvir the real winner in a new era defined by Jewish
supremacy

The IHRA’s examples
<https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definitions-charters/working-definition-antisemitism>
of antisemitism include labelling Israel a “racist endeavour”, comparing
its actions to those of the Nazis (presumably even if real-life fascist
parties are dictating Israeli policies), or requiring of Israel “behaviour
not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation” (begging the
question: what more does Israel have to do to stop qualifying as “any other
democratic nation”?)

Those demurring, such as Britain’s former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/jeremy-corbyn>, have felt the full
force of liberal Zionist wrath - as have those campaigning
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-54999010> for boycotts of
Israel to curb its excesses. It was liberal Zionists who shut down boycott,
divestment and sanctions (BDS <https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/bds>)
activism.

Will Israel’s supporters repudiate the IHRA definition or Israel, when
Ben-Gvir is sitting in government, representing a large chunk of the
Israeli population? You can bet they won’t.

If Ben-Gvir forces Israel’s cheerleaders to choose between the ethnic
supremacism of their Zionism and their liberalism, most will stick with the
former. What will happen, as has happened so many times before, is that
Israel’s shift further rightwards will quickly be normalised. Having
fascist parties inside government will soon become unremarkable.

Worse, Ben-Gvir will serve as an alibi for the other far-right politicians
alongside him, allowing the US and Europe to present them as moderates; men
and women of peace, the adults in the room.

*The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.*
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