Israel’s far-right ascendancy
Richard Seymour looks at the Israeli election results, and isn’t optimistic.
By Richard Seymour on Friday, February 13th, 2009 - 668 words.
Before I start, I thought you might like to see this picture taken as students at UCL flew the Palestinian flag from the building yesterday:
It seems that the spirit of 1968 is being awakened in the student body, and not before time. As John Rose points out in the Indy report, what is striking about this wave of radical activism is that the students are mainly winning. (More details here). Apparently, similar protests are also sweeping US universities. Trade unionists, from Belfast to Durban, are also continuing the solidarity actions.
Now, the Israeli elections have confirmed that the country has taken a radical shift to the right. Labour, the main part of the ‘left’, got its worst ever result, and was taken over by the explicitly racist Ysrael Beiteinu party. The ‘centrist’ Kadima got one more seat than Likud, but in terms of any future coalition, the right-wing will dominate and the hammer of the Israeli Arabs, Avigdor Lieberman, now has the role of kingmaker. Actually, if Kadima and Labour were prepared to govern alongside the Arab parties, they could form a coalition but – well, letting Arabs anywhere near the levers of power is taboo in Israel. Most Jewish Israelis don’t even want to share a street with Arabs, and the main parties did all they could to stop the main Arab parties being allowed to stand. And at any rate, why would the Arab parties work with the butchers of Gaza?
So, in all likelihood, it will be a Netanyahu government, with Zippy and Lieberman in coalition. The rapidly escalating colonization of the West Bank will now be an explicit policy of the government, since Netanyahu has openly stated that he intends to expand the existing settlements and make no territorial concessions to the Palestinians. It may mean war with Gaza again soon, since Netanyahu also stated that Operation Cast Lead ended too soon (and note that Israel’s repeated provocations of late have prepared the ground for this). Bear in mind that Netanyahu was part of a rightist revolt against Sharon’s government after the strategic ‘withdrawal’ from Gaza. If it were up to him, the prosperous Gush Katif settlements would still be peering down over on dirt poor Palestinian towns and villages. Who can say they won’t be rebuilt in short order?
According to Juan Cole, this is the final nail in the coffin of the two-state solution. He maintains that there are now only three options: ethnic cleansing/genocide, apartheid, or one state. I don’t know that Cole has ever taken such a position before and my feeling is that it signifies part of the ongoing change within the liberal-left in the United States. Glen Greenwald also thinks the election results make a two-state solution much less viable. Even the centrist Stephen Walt who – contrary to some of the things said about him – has always been relatively sympathetic to Israel’s ‘right to exist’ as a Zionist state, has concluded that the two-state solution is dying in plain sight. If Walt, who is a respected and well-placed figure among US foreign policy elites, represents a significant strand of opinion among the political class, then another kind of change may be taking place as well.
Of course, I appear to be missing the most important story here, which is how dashed inconvenient these results are for Obama. But Obama can always shut off the money fawcet, or just threaten to do so. One thing Israel can’t survive is a serious chilling in its relations with the United States. So, if Obama really wanted to stop the colonies, he could just defund them and tell the Israelis to play ball. Oh yes, the wretched Lobby would so something to him – like what? Say mean things in the papers? Bribe a few Congressmen? The only thing that would stop Obama from disciplining Israel, if he wanted to, would be his innately conservative disposition and his tendency to flatter and comfort existing power, even where he doesn’t have to.
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"Richard writes the most popular left-wing blog in the UK."
And would the most popular news program for the "left-wing" happen to be anchored by Homer Simpson?
At least Homer might try to learn something about the subject he speaks about. This writer apparently hasn't.
"If it were up to him (Netanyahu), the prosperous Gush Katif settlements would still be peering down over on dirt poor Palestinian towns and villages."
Netanyahu once supported the disengagement and once was against it. He's just a politician, not a significant danger to anyone. In contrast, Livni has not only demonstrated incompetence in her role as foreign minister, she has stated her aim toward a two-state solution which is very dangerous to the Palestinian people living in Gaza today.
[Take note: The two-state solution was proposed by Saudis and is a measure to affect two entities - 1. to wipe out the Jewish state, and 2. keep the Palestinian people down. In other words, it is a hoax. Nobody wants two states. The Palestinians do not want two states. After 15 years of negotiations, the road map to peace has resulted in hundreds of Israeli deaths and thousands of Palestinian deaths that would not have occurred had Israel maintained complete control over the region and not experimented with letting Arafat and Abbas have authority.]
"Gush Katif settlements would still be peering down over on dirt poor Palestinian towns and villages."
How could they peer down? Or is there a Palestinian village that is below sea level that this writer is aware of (or has fantasized) that nobody else knows about?
The above comment is blatantly rascist, by the way. It suggests that the Palestinians, in spite of their having lived in their towns and villages for however many millenia they claim, never had the brains to do what the Gush Katif settlers managed to accomplish in a matter of years. While there is some truth to this, I wouldn't state it in such a rascist fashion as the writer … because:
1. If there are any dirt poor towns and villages that pre-date the settlements, those same villages and towns contained people who worked with the Jewish settlers, were friends with the Jewish settlers, and did pretty well for themselves and their families while the settlers were still there. Some still grow and export flowers today, having learned from the Jewish settlers how to make things grow in the desert.
2. Most of the people in Gaza live in communities of hundreds of thousands of people – not quite the definition of a village.
3. The poorest towns have not been there very long. Their inhabitants took advantage of refugee status while Israel was in charge – and they did pretty well with that. Now that their own elected leaders are in charge, they are still refugees for political and media purposes, and the benefits they once enjoyed as refugees are gone, or confiscated by the leaders they elected.
It's sad that "left" has come to mean anti-Jewish and anti-democratic, and anti-truth. I used to favor the "left" because it seemed progressive and humanistic. This is why I favored Obama in the U.S. elections. I am still hopeful that he will have the wisdom to see past the current "left" stance, and see that the two state solution is not workable or desirable, and that trying to work the same deal that Bush and Clinton have tried will result in hundreds more Israeli deaths and thousands more Palestinian deaths, and won't be good for anybody (except perhaps for effete left-wing and right-wing journalists who will complain, speculate, and aggravate the situation by proliferating ignorance, and will gain recognition and wealth by doing so.)