Jew World Order

Reading the tea leaves– and polling — for the next Israeli election in late March, experts say that Israel will elect an even more rightwing government than Netanyahu’s rightwing coalition.

Israel watchers are predicting a government led by former Netanyahu ally Gideon Sa’ar, openly committed to one “Jewish” state between river and sea, with no interest in allowing even a shadow of Palestinian sovereignty in the occupied territories. Indeed, the Israeli “center” and “left” are shattered, and the possibility exists that the Labor party that founded the state will disappear from the parliament in the next election.

As for the Joint List of Palestinian parties, which gained a record 15 seats in the last election last year, it too is in disarray, due in part to demoralization of its voters after the Joint List recommended a Jewish prime minister in 2020, Benny Gantz of Blue and White, and Gantz then refused to accept the Palestinians’ backing. (Come on, it’s an apartheid state, even CNN has the news.)

Of course Joe Biden could maybe tilt the table depending on his actions. (I’ve been hopeful). But before considering the U.S. responses, let’s hear the very strong consensus of the experts.

Yossi Alpher at Americans for Peace Now describes a rightwing flood.

Netanyahu and the Likud are now seriously challenged by fellow right-wingers Gideon Saar (New Hope), Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beitenu) and Naftali Bennet (Yamina). They seek to unseat him; they condemn his egomaniacal behavior and Trumpist tendencies. Their political positions are to the right of Netanyahu. Polls currently favor their chances of forming a coalition without Netanyahu after March 23.

Alpher has no illusions about where these forces are taking Israel– “our ongoing descent down a slippery slope together with the Palestinians toward an apartheid reality.” Because the rightwingers all believe strongly in one Jewish state.

Bear in mind that the rightist opposition campaigning persuasively to remove Netanyahu from office and restore honor to Israeli politics is more annexationist and broadly more messianic than [Netanyahu].

Hadar Susskind of Americans for Peace Now bears the same news, but like other liberal Zionists, wants Netanyahu gone:

Anybody who can look at the polls… there’s going to be a rightwing government after this next election. There’s perhaps a real chance that somebody else [than Netanyahu] will lead it… Personally if it’s somebody else, I will wake up and smile to that new morning, regardless of who it is, just the fact that it is someone else.

Evan Gottesman at Israel Policy Forum describes a process in which the Israeli right now dominates the political discourse. “Labor is poised to fall below the electoral threshold” of four seats, or 3+ percent of the vote. And Netanyahu is trying to pick up former Laborites to join his Likud Party to make the new center!

[T]he center-left [is] increasingly non-existent, the prime minister’s leading rivals are coming from the hard-right, represented by Likud defector Gideon Sa’ar’s Tikvah Hadasha and Naftali Bennett’s Yamina…

The next Knesset is also likely to be less ideologically diverse, with the right and further-right continuing to edge out what remains of a discredited center and left. With just two-and-a-half months to go before the election, the prime minister’s challengers have yet to recover from a series of decisions made in the aftermath of the 2020 Knesset election that have rendered the Israeli opposition a far less cohesive and less viable political force than ever before.

Gottesman says Gantz’s centrist party of Blue White is competely scattered and even though other centrist politicians have come forward (Tel Aviv mayor Ron Huldai, former Mossad chief Danny Yatom), the centrist-Israeli poll numbers aren’t growing.

Barak Ravid of Walla News also told Israel Policy Forum last week that Israeli politics are more rightwing than ever.

“The center-left camp that managed just a year ago to get 65 seats– the majority… is comletely disintegrated, it is disoriented, leaderless, and in a very, very deep crisis.”

As for policy, Ravid said, no one is debating settlements in Israeli politics, and the country is pursuing a policy of “creeping annexation.”

And Daniel Levy told Americans for Peace Now that even if Netanyahu is defeated, he is “sickened that we havent managed to build an alternative so it’s ready to run on the morning after Bibi.”

[Will] Yair Lapid or Ron Huldai emerge as these figures around which a whole new movement can coalesce and mobilize to bring on peace? Not at all– there’s nothing very hopeful in that respect!…

The best the left can hope for is that the “fluidity” in Israeli politics is such that what remains of the Jewish left will finally form a partnership with Palestinians or it will cease to exist, Levy says. “No leftleaning government won’t include Palestinians.” And so the big question is when such a partnership is formed. Meretz has been trying; but centrists Lapid and Huldai are not willing to extend themselves.

Former Reform Jewish leader Eric Yoffie writes in Haaretz that American Jews, overwhelmingly Zionist, have little idea about these developments because our media aren’t informing them, but they won’t like this Israel.

[I]f American Jews finally wake up and pay attention to Israel’s upcoming election, they are not going to like what they see. The great majority — the moderate center — loves and supports Israel, but wants policies that keep the settlers in check, leave Israel a Jewish and democratic state, and stop the never-ending capitulation to the Haredim that has become deeply embedded in Israeli politics.

As happy as American Jews may be about a possible Netanyahu defeat, on all of these fronts, they will see that they have ample reason to worry.

Yoffie sees a likely Gideon Sa’ar government, which means: A government that affirms the idea of one Jewish state in a land that is very diverse.

Sa’ar….actually believes in a Jewish state from the Jordan to the sea, and would likely be more supportive than Bibi has ever been of the right wing’s vision of a single state in Eretz Israel.

Sa’ar’s one-state credentials are disturbingly comprehensive. He began his political career as an activist for the pro-settler Tehiya party. He has warned American Jews against a two-state solution and has spoken openly of his intention to annex territory.

His political platform rejects withdrawals of any kind, and the number two on his party list is Zeev Elkin, an unbending settler and Land of Israel extremist who was chairman of the Likud bureau, which is the Likud’s ideological body.

As prime minister, Sa’ar would face constraints, to be sure, from the Biden administration and from Morocco, the UAE, and the other partners to the recently signed normalization agreements. But at the very least, Sa’ar would likely ratchet up Land of Israel rhetoric, build as many settlements as he could get away with, and in the process inflame relations with every country in the region and with allies of every stripe…

To be clear, there is only one “Jewish and democratic” state now between the river and sea: Israel controls those lands and makes all the decisions and denies the Palestinians critical human and civil rights. The drama of this election is that it will so expose this reality that it will make it harder for US liberal Zionists who are a critical part of Biden’s coalition to deny it, and continue to support endless US aid to an apartheid regime.

Daniel Levy says that Biden is going to have to cashier the Trump plan/illusion early in his presidency and issue a kind of ultimatum to Israel, saying:

“We also want to make clear.. ttat if it’s not two viable sovereign states, on the 67 lines, then you have to guarantee the full and equal enfranchisement of everyone in this new political space that you have created.” I think that’s not a bad starting point.

Palestinians have been trying to deliver this news for some time. The Israeli election may finally do that.