Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could well be on his way out if two opposition parties manage to form a coalition government and oust him from power. Naftali Bennett, a hardliner who heads the Yamina party announced his plans on Sunday to form a coalition government with another Opposition party, the Yesh Adit led by Yair Lapid.

At present Netanyahu’s Likud party is in power, but Bennett and Lapid have until Wednesday evening to get together 61 seats to stake claim to form a government in the 120-member house. It is learnt that Bennett and Lapid have agreed to take turns as Prime Minister with Bennet going first.

On Sunday, Bennett, a 49-year-old former tech entrepreneur and millionaire who is known for his extreme right-wing views announced, “I will work together with my friend Yair Lapid to form a unified government so that we can pull the country out of chaos.”

Bennett wants to bring about a change in leadership in Israel as he strongly disapproves of Netanyahu’s handling of the Gaza crisis among other policies. His inclinations first became apparent on May 23 when he made a lengthy social media post saying that while he had previously “refrained from speaking out against the government and sharing advice in the studios and on Facebook while the soldiers and police endangered their lives on the ground” he now feels compelled to share his views. “I do not remember such a period of weakness, lack of function and national embarrassment,” he said about the Gaza crisis.

Bennett is known for his liberal views on business and economy, but a very hardline stance on religion and especially his open dislike of Palestinians. He has previously called Palestinian children “terrorists” and has also supported gunning down of Palestinians should they try to cross over into Israeli territory from Gaza. He has remained unsympathetic to their plight despite the fact that many of the casualties during the recent Gaza conflict were women and children, something that sparked global outrage.

Benjamin Netanyahu who has now been prime minister for 12 years, responded to Bennett’s announcement saying, “There is not a single person in the country who would vote for Naftali Bennett if he knew what he was going to do. This is the scam of the century! Instead of forming a dangerous left-wing government, immediately after the end of Lapid’s mandate, it is possible to form a good right-wing government for Israel.”

All eyes are now on Wednesday evening.

Related:

Plight of Palestinians in an unequal fight
Israel faces both a military and political defeat
ICC to probe war crimes in Palestinian territories

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“The whole Jewish race is the greatest human capital, and the smartest and the most understanding,” Miki Zohar said Wednesday. The member of Knesset for Likud was debating the Benjamin Netanyahu corruption scandals together with Haaretz journalist Dan Margalit, on the 103 FM radio station (owned by the centrist Maariv daily).

Here Miki Zohar went into unabashed race-supremacist talk about Jews. He literally referred to it as the Jewish race (not nation or people). The Hebrew term he used is “GEZA”. It’s the literal parallel of ‘race’ in English, no doubt there.  

The thing is, that there was hardly any interruption to it, nor any rebuttal or expression of shock or anything. Not even from Dan Margalit who was representing a ‘leftist’ point of view. Here is the section of the interview, which I have translated:

Miki Zohar: I’ll tell you one basic thing, so that maybe someone who’s sitting there at home would listen to me well, and maybe those who are sitting at the studios and at editorials would listen well to me:
The public in the state of Israel is a public which belongs to the Jewish race [sic], and the whole Jewish race is the greatest human capital [sic], and the smartest and the most understanding, and sometimes also the most educated…
(Host) Anat Davidov: No no, this is not serious…
Zohar: And that’s why you can’t fool us, the Jews, you can’t, and it doesn’t matter what you’ll write in the media, and it doesn’t matter what you’ll report all day. The public knows what the Prime Minister is doing for the state of Israel, how excellent a Prime Minister he is, and how this state is prospering and blooming…
(Host) Yinon Magal: Dan Margalit, a final statement.
(Dan Margalit talks about Netanyahu corruption scandals).

Dan Margalit
 

Now, you would think there would be a big storm about such unabashed racist talk. But there isn’t.

The settler outlet Israel National News (Hebrew) says in its headline that “Miki Zohar causes a storm” and quotes a small part of the above, but the article doesn’t say what the storm is, it’s focused on Netanyahu. Zohar’s quote is buried, and it’s just a line. Maariv did the same. No ‘storm’.

I asked journalist David Sheen if he saw a storm. “Barely a breeze”, Sheen tells me. He went on to tweet:

This same Israeli lawmaker from Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party states that Israel is not a democracy, and that democracy is in fact “an existential threat” to Jews. Combine that with his recent comments about race, and you can decide for yourself what his political ideology is.

The Radio 103 podcast page says journalist Anat Davidov was amazed by Zohar’s words. “It’s not true”’, is the subtitle.

Miki Zohar, with the leader of his party, Benjamin Netanyahu
 

But Anat Davidov actually said, “no no, that’s not serious”, and she didn’t sound particularly amazed. The racist words are a mere sentence in a long discussion.

So let’s face it: – this is not really a storm. And that’s the story. This was very clear from the interview itself. This talk does not cause any real stir. It’s like a bit of political incorrectness. There’s no shock-horror response really – and wouldn’t you expect something like that from a “leftist” journalist like Dan Margalit at least? But then again, Margalit is the one who recently opined that mass shooting of Palestinians is good for them.

What Zohar was really doing, was voicing a perception of Jewish racial supremacy in a way that you’re not supposed to, because it’s too overt. You’re not supposed to use the word “Jewish race”, it can be watered down to “Jewish nation” or “Jewish people”. But truth be told, the application of ‘Jewish’ in Israel is a racial one. The consideration of whether Jews should be called a “race” or a “people” was present already a century ago, as seen in the final draft of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 – the draft before the final version actually called Jews a “race” rather than a “people” (the wording was “His Majesty’s Government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish race”…). But it was changed to “people”. Perhaps they thought it more politically correct already at that time.

Yet Zohar was saying race. And he was making it utterly clear that this is a superior race. And that perception, unfortunately, is one that is central in Zionism. It’s the one that allows the utter dehumanization of “others”, it’s the one that allows ‘liberals’ like Dan Margalit to say that shooting people is good for them – and to be silent when the most explicit racist bile is uttered. 

This article was first published on Mondoweiss.net.

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Protest March against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s India visit was organised in Delhi by the Left Parties. The March took place in the larger context of atrocities committed by Israeli government in Palestine and illegal occupation.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in

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An excerpt from From India to Palestine, published by LeftWord Books

 
Benjamin Netanyahu is set to visit India next week. India and Israel are closer than ever before. In light of the Donald Trump’s announcement that the United States of America (USA) will officially view Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Netanyahu’s visit becomes an even more open endorsement of Israel’s crimes against Palestine. This comes at a time when the rest of the world is isolating it. Here, we publish an extract from Sukumar Muralidharan’s essay “Parallel Trajectories: Zionism as Conquest, Hindutva as Exclusion”, first published in From India to Palestine (LeftWord Books, 2014), edited by Githa Hariharan. This essay draws the historic connections between the ideologies Hindutva and Zionism. These connections cement the growing alliance between India and Israel.

Image courtesy Kashmir Monitor
 
As Hindu nationalist ideology moves into its more extreme fringes, its inherent paradoxes stand out with similar starkness. Early pioneers of the ideology articulated these in the confident belief that minor doctrinal inconsistencies would be of no consequence in the mission of facing down a common enemy in Islam. As India under colonial rule lurched from the bitter aftermath of the collapse of the Khilafat agitation into an extended phase of communal estrangement, the notion of a country inhabited by two nations became widely accepted, crystallised especially in two political vehicles: the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). A text published in 1939 by M.S. Golwalkar, a year before he took over the leadership of the RSS, remains one of the most authoritative statements on Hindu nationalism, offering rich insights through its comments on contemporary world events into the ideological pantheon it drew sustenance from.

Golwalkar’s statements lauding Nazi Germany for its virulent manifestation of “race pride”, which led to the expulsion of the Jews despite the world recoiling in horror at the enormity of the deed, are widely cited. These offer eloquent testimony in themselves, but only tell the full story when juxtaposed with the observations on Zionism that the same text offers. Golwalkar identifies India as one among the early nations that afforded sanctuary to the Jews after their country passed into Roman tyranny. This was obviously a bond in his rather twisted historical imagination, which persisted into that moment in history when the greater dispersal of the Jews took place, with the “engines of destruction… under the name of Islam” being let loose in the land.

M S Golwalkar | Image courtesy The Wire

Palestine, in Golwalkar’s sense, suffered much like India did, losing its culture and traditions on account of the intrusions of Islam: “Palestine became Arab, a large number of Hebrews changed faith and culture and language and the Hebrew nation in Palestine died a natural death.” But hope was not lost, since “the attempt at rehabilitating Palestine with its ancient population of the Jews is nothing more than an effort to reconstruct the broken edifice and revitalise the practically dead Hebrew National life.”

Nationalism for Golwalkar was a compound of religion, culture and language, which he found lacking in Palestine. All three attributes, though, were on display among the Jews, who, unfortunately, lacked a territory. It was entirely appropriate then, that “in order to confer their lost Nationality upon the exiled Jews, the British with the help of the League of Nations, began to rehabilitate the old Hebrew country, Palestine, with its long lost children.” “The Jews,” said Golwalkar, “had maintained their race, religion, culture and language: all they wanted was their natural territory to complete their Nationality.”¹

Golwalkar’s attitude towards India’s Muslims is well-known and recorded. They could either adopt the Hindu religion and all its customs, learn to glory in its heritage, or live on sufferance, “wholly subordinated …claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment – not even citizen’s rights”.² India did not quite take that path, though Guruji, as he is referred to in RSS circles, should be credited with a remarkably accurate forecast of how life for the Palestinians would be after the Zionist takeover of their land.

Sukumar Muralidharan is a senior journalist and currently teaches journalism at O.P. Jindal Global University.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum
 

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Naftali Bennett, leader of the Jewish Home party, recently boasted that the national-religious camp, though only a tenth of the population, held “leadership positions in all realms in Israel”.

Rightwing Jewish leader Naftali Bennett, Israel’s education minister and head of the Jewish Home party, saw unequivocal meaning in the Trump victory:

Trump’s victory is a tremendous opportunity for Israel to immediately announce its intention to renege on the idea of establishing Palestine in the heart of the country – a direct blow to our security and the justice of our cause.

This is the president-elect’s outlook as it appears in his platform, and that definitely should be our way. Salient, simple and clear. The era of the Palestinian state is over.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu published big hopeful hugs statement:

“I congratulate Donald Trump on being elected the 45th President of the United States of America.

President-elect Trump is a true friend of the State of Israel, and I look forward to working with him to advance security, stability and peace in our region.

The ironclad bond between the United States and Israel is rooted in shared values, buttressed by shared interests and driven by a shared destiny.

I am confident that President-elect Trump and I will continue to strengthen the unique alliance between our two countries and bring it to ever greater heights.”

Yaacov Friedman, editor of the Jerusalem Post, reports:

Spoke to David Friedman, @realDonaldTrump’s Israel adviser. Says US-Israel relationship will completely change. Will be better than ever.

Friedman said that @realDonaldTrump plans to keep promise to move US embassy to #Jerusalem. Hostility b/w DC-Jerusalem will also end.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat also said he is confident this means that the U.S. will move its embassy to Jerusalem.

Yehuda Glick, a leader of the Jewish zealots who want to colonize one of the holy sites of Islam in Jerusalem, can’t wait for Trump to come to Jerusalem and have a vision:

Glick expressed hope that Trump would “ascend the Temple Mount and lead from the source of light and energy a dialogue of world reconciliation and peace.”

A Hebron settler leader says the era of bad feelings between the U.S. and Israel regarding the colonization of the West Bank is over. Yochai Damari:

I hope that this governmental turnover will also lead to a revolution in the attitude and practical actions of the United States toward the settlement movement in Judea and Samaria…

The difficult days of Obama are over for the settlement movement. If we work correctly, this could be the dawn of a new day for the settlements and for the entire State of Israel.

The view of opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog, as reported by New York Times’ Isabel Kershner:

Ofer Neiman provides a translation of Herzog’s statement:

Warm greetings to the president of the biggest strongest superpower of the world, Donald J. Trump!

The American democracy has voted today to place at its helm an American leader, who has taught the commentators and the skeptics that we are in a new era of change and the replacement of old ruling elites!
You have done the unexpected against all odds, polls and studies and the prophets of the old era.

I am convinced that the security and economic alliance with our strong and important ally will continue and be strengthened under your presidency.

Good luck to you, Donald J. Trump.

Ali Abunimah observes at Electronic Intifada that Clinton would have been an “anti-Palestinian extremist” as president, and panderer to her donors, and while no one is sure what Trump will do,

The Israeli counterparts of these vile American racists are celebrating Trump’s victory today.

Jewish Insider quotes several pro-Israel voices saying that President Obama will now do nothing to advance the so-called peace process at the United Nations. For instance centrist-setttler Zionist Yossi Klein Halevi:

“If Obama does go to the UN, it will be a fit of pique that will have no positive consequences. It would be Obama throwing a temper tantrum. If I were Obama waking up to the news today, the last thing on my mind would be the Palestinian issue. Obama is looking at the ruin of Obamacare, at a very shaky Iran deal, and some other of his key initiatives. If he goes to the UN, he will just be compounding his failure on the peace process.”

As for the Iran deal, which Trump has promised to rip up, the conventional wisdom is already forming that Trump will not be able to undo the deal, in its many international dimensions anyway. Aaron David Miller at Jewish Insider:

[A] Trump Administration will adopt a kind of if ‘it ain’t broke don’t try to fix it’ mentality to any relationship that isn’t in need of immediate attention. Relations post Obama are likely to improve as Trump’s hostility to the Iran nuclear deal increases and any pressure on Israel with respect to the Palestinian issue diminishes, Expect Netanyahu to come to the White House before Passover.

Rebecca Vilkomerson of Jewish Voice for Peace issued a statement of solidarity with those who feel threatened by Trump.

Peter Beinart offered a related message at Haaretz, he doesn’t trust America:

As an American, a white one, I’ve always felt safe. I’ve always assumed my country would be stable… I’m not leaving America. It’s my country. I have to fight – every American Jew has to fight – to protect the American Muslims who right now must be terrified beyond belief… I still love America to my core. But I don’t trust it in the same way.
 

This story was first published on Open Democracy.

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A clash of cultures in the holy land

It wasn’t the first time that Doron Matalon had been verbally harassed on the way home. A young soldier, she had boarded a bus on December 28 (2011), not far from the military base where she served. Shortly before reaching her stop, a 45-year-old man accosted her and demanded that she move to the back of the bus. The man was demanding that Matalon comply with unwritten rules prescribed by ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel, decrees which require women to sit at the back of the bus or use different pedestrian routes or sidewalks than men do.

Matalon however had no intention of abiding by the edicts and refused to move – out of principle, as she told the Israeli daily Haaretz. And because the back of the bus was stuffy. The man immediately began insulting Matalon, calling her a whore, and others quickly joined in the harassment. The bus-driver stopped and called the police. The man, a father of 11, was arrested and charged on December 29 before being released against a bond worth the equivalent of Rs 2.5 lakh. He is not allowed to ride the bus until his court date.

It is just a single incident but it shows a growing rift in Israeli society. Just 10 per cent of the six million people in Israel are ultra-orthodox and a percentage of that group is extreme and militant. It is a small minority but extremely vocal and becoming more so. Whereas Tel Aviv is almost radically western and secular, the ultra-orthodox are attempting to impose their world view – a primary element of which is gender separation – on the public life of an ever greater number of places within the country.

On December 29, the Haredi, as the ultra-orthodox are known, had planned a demonstration in the town of Beit Shemesh, just west of Jerusalem, in order to promote their brand of social order. When it was cancelled at the last minute, riots ensued. Garbage dumpsters were lit on fire, several demonstrators threw stones and three were arrested. No injuries were reported.

It is a small minority but extremely vocal and becoming more so. Israel’s ultra-orthodox are attempting to impose their world view – a primary element of which is gender separation – on the public life of an ever greater number of places within the country

Even prior to this incident, the town had become something of a symbol of the societal clash. On December 27, thousands of Israelis took to the streets in protest against a recent incident in the town which saw an eight-year-old girl spat on and insulted by ultra-orthodox men on her way to school because they considered her clothing to be insufficiently modest. “Israel is not Tehran”, read some of the signs held by the protesters. Prior to the protest, President Shimon Peres had urged widespread participation.

Incidents of harassment have not been limited to the Israeli hinterlands. Women in Jerusalem too have been bombarded with stones or spittle for not wearing long enough skirts or for not covering their heads. Indeed even religious Jews have begun to resist the trend. Just a few weeks ago a rabbi called Uri Ayalon began a media campaign after he noticed that even modest advertising campaigns have been altered such that women are no longer shown – replaced either by objects or by male models.

“It is the first time in the history of the Israeli state that something like this has happened,” Sergio DellaPergola, a professor of demography and Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told Spiegel Online. In recent days Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said that such intimidation of women is unacceptable. Israel, he told the country’s Parliament, will take action “against anyone who harasses women, anyone who harasses people in the public sphere”.

The recent clashes however put Netanyahu in a difficult position. Religious parties are a key part of his conservative governing coalition and his political survival depends in part on the ultra-orthodox. DellaPergola calls the extreme religious the “decisive 10 per cent”.

Furthermore, the ultra-orthodox were granted a protected status when the state of Israel was founded. In order to secure their support for the establishment of the country, they were granted broad privileges by the first Israeli prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. They were exempted from military service and receive substantial financial support from the state so that they don’t have to work and can devote their time to the study of religious texts.

Experts have different explanations for the most recent wave of radicalisation. Rabbi Uri Ayalon says that the ultra-orthodox are in crisis. “The Internet, the labour market and the media have exposed youth to tremendous influences from which their parents want to protect them. Their weakness makes them more militant,” he says.

Mordechai Kremnitzer, from the Israel Democracy Institute, says however that the recent problems have come as a result of demography and a relative growth in the power of the ultra-orthodox. On average, the Haredi have three times as many children as other couples. And though they represent but 10 per cent of the population, roughly a quarter of all first-graders come from ultra-orthodox families. Because of this, says Kremnitzer, they have “more influence than ever before” on the Netanyahu coalition.

Ayalon and Kremnitzer agree that progress made in the negotiations with the Palestinians as well as the 2005 clearing of settlements in the Gaza Strip also radicalised the orthodox. Both have made clear to them that their vision – that of a Greater Israel achieved through settlements – is no longer possible. “The return to a supposed authentic Judaism has become a replacement ideology. The various religious currents are now wrestling over who is the more puritan,” say the experts.

DellaPergola fears that more violence and aggression could be on the way unless Netanyahu clearly shows where he stands. Already, tougher penalties against the discrimination of women have been promised. But Israel’s head of police fears that won’t be enough. He would like to see Israeli rabbis join together in denouncing such radicalisation. For the moment however that appears to be unlikely.

(This article was published on Spiegel Online, the online version of the German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel, on December 30, 2011.)

Courtesy: Spiegel Online; www.spiegel.de

Archived from Communalism Combat, January 2012. Year 18, No.163 – Gender Justice
GIL YARON

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