Jew World Order

The new Israeli government has provided great hope to Israel’s friends in America that its image is about to improve in American politics. The Bennett-Lapid government is historic in that it includes three votes from a Palestinian party– “the most inclusive government ever, with Arabs, women, and Jews of color holding vital cabinet ministries,” as Democratic Majority for Israel, a conservative lobby group, puts it. And liberal Zionists are happy because their allies in Israel, the Meretz and Labor parties, are back in government after more than a dozen years in exile, and the orthodox parties are on the outs, a real shift in Israel’s political culture.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz says the “diverse, inclusive coalition” gives her new energy to battle Israel’s enemies.

“We will never waver in our commitment to Israel’s security and defending Israel from those who aim to weaken or destroy to those who would spirited Jewish democratic and critical ally.”

Neoconservatives are also proud. Bret Stephens in the New York Times:

Israel’s new government must be a puzzle for anyone who thinks of the Jewish state as a racist, fascistic, apartheid enterprise.

Daniel Sokatch of New Israel Fund calls the new government “revolutionary” in the historic inclusion of the Palestinian Ra’am party.

This is a precedent that cannot be undone… Their inclusion in this coalition is a major victory for the legitimization of Arab citizens as full participants in Israel’s political process, and a win for democracy. it also contains the seeds of real change…

While Natan Sachs expressed pleasure in a Carnegie talk that Naftali Bennett said the word “bipartisan” in English in his first speech as Prime Minister, meaning that he won’t continue Netanyahu’s “terrible” decision to politicize Israel support in the U.S. J Street also hopes the “partisan wedge” goes away.

I’m a glass-half-full person but I think these hopes are misplaced. Israel’s p.r. problems, aren’t going away with the new rightwing PM, and are sure to continue once the honeymoon is over. “No, we’re not celebrating the Bennett-Lapid government either. Still apartheid and we still must organize,” the young Jewish group IfNotNow says. Last night Israel bombed Gaza again. “New government — same apartheid.”

Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch made the same point, apartheid.

If the new Israeli coalition government wants really “to repair Israeli ties with the US Democratic Party and the Jewish diaspora,” it could start dismantling apartheid in Occupied Palestinian Territory that the Netanyahu government did so much to build.

So, prominent figures in the U.S. establishment and the Jewish community and the left are committed to the discourse of “apartheid.” And despite the best efforts of the Israel lobby, this talk will not go away.

In her report on the new government for NBC Nightly News Sunday, Kelly Cobiella went to Sheikh Jarrah to highlight the protests against the evictions of Palestinians to make way for Jewish settlers. “Palestinians, under occupation for decades, are fighting for their homes and demanding freedom,” she said.

Cobiella gave the mic to protester Munjed Keloti who called Israel an anachronism:

What the hell is going on. Really we are in 2021– and this injustice is still happening? And supported by so many official entities… the U.S.A. for an example.

Rashid Khalidi made the same point about anachronism in a call last week with Jim Zogby of the Arab American Institute, in which he said Israel faces a “decolonized future of equality.”

It’s out of time. They missed the boat. They could have gotten away with it in the 1800s. But not in the 21st century. Especially when they are so dependent on democratic countries.

Khalidi’s remarks are reminiscent of Tony Judt’s piece urging one democratic state back in 2003 that unleashed a firestorm of criticism from Zionists. Judt said then that Israel was an “anachronism: “the very idea of a ‘Jewish state’—a state in which Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive privileges from which non-Jewish citizens are forever excluded—is rooted in another time and place.”

Benjamin Netanyahu’s “biggest achievement” was that he was able to defuse the delegitimization discourse for 12 years, Anshel Pfeffer said on a Carnegie call Tuesday. The diplomatic “paradigm” was that “Israel will not have prosperity, will not have a western style of living, will not enjoy normal or good relations with the rest of the world if it does not solve the Palestinian issue.” But Netanyahu “reversed” that thinking. Israel did everything it could to destroy the possibility of a Palestinian state and limit Palestinian freedom, and it paid no price.

Now Joe Biden and Naftali Bennett share the desire to see the Palestinian issue go to sleep for another four years, Natan Sachs said on that Carnegie call yesterday. But that won’t happen.

Too many voices in Palestine and the U.S. are now pushing for Biden to do more. Human Rights Watch issued its “apartheid” finding because Israel had destroyed the two-state solution.

And it is now OK to use the word “apartheid” in criticizing Israel, just not if you are in mainstream politics. Segue to the outrage over Rep. Ilhan Omar’s statement that Israel and the United States are no more accountable for war crimes than Hamas and the Taliban. The “Jewish community” and the Democratic leadership and the pro-Israel media are all up in arms, and there is a push to remove Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

But Omar has gotten a surprising amount of support for her comments a few steps away from the leadership. Mainstream folks are daring to support Omar in ways they would not have in the past. “A lot of my colleagues overreacted to her remarks,” Rep. John Yarmuth of KY said yesterday. Yarmuth said Omar is singled out for censure because she is Black, female, and Muslim. Elizabeth Bruenig has an excellent piece in the Atlantic describing the Omar outrage as a “ridiculous controversy” in which party leaders try to cement the donor base of the party by bashing Omar for comments they know to be true.

Omar has been a passionate ally of Palestinians embattled by Israeli assaults on Gaza, a position that has won her as few friends in the donor class as her steadfast advocacy for the poor, if not fewer. For the Democrats, who seem to believe that their midterm fortunes rest as far from the left as they can possibly tack, knocking out Omar is just a convenient electoral move, and this ridiculous controversy merely a pretext. Maybe all they wanted was to bully her a little, remind the viewing public who’s behind the party’s wheel, in case anyone had worried that it would ever, in any universe, be somebody like Ilhan Omar.

Jeffrey Goldberg is the editor of the Atlantic… And David Harris of the American Jewish Committee is complaining that leading voices in the Jewish community are no longer defending Israel. It’s a Humpty Dumpty situation…. one that Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid will be able to do nothing about.

h/t Donald Johnson, Michael Arria, Adam Horowitz, Allison Deger, Scott Roth, James North.

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