If Bradley Burston is any indication, the Israeli left is feeling pretty demoralized and quite angry this morning.
This week, push came to shove.
This week, we saw how things really work. How our prime minister really thinks. What he’s willing to do, how far he’s willing to go, how many of us he’s willing to sell out, slander, abuse, for the sake of hanging on to the thing that matters to him more than anything: his job.
After this week, we can never again say that we didn’t quite know who Benjamin Netanyahu is.
As an Israeli, I am ashamed that my prime minister is a racist.
Likud defied expectations and the polls and did much better than expected in the elections yesterday. But there’s no question that Benjamin Netanyahu went into panic mode and resorted to extremely nasty tactics. Most significantly, he promised never to resuscitate the two-state solution. He also did his best to scare his voters into going to the polls by complaining about high Arab-Israeli participation in the election process. Most discerning people never believed that Netanyahu supported a two-state solution, but there was some value in that being his “official” position. I don’t think anyone is really surprised that Netanyahu doesn’t see Arab-Israelis as legitimate citizens, but he broke the seal by coming out so openly against them on Election Day.
So, Mr. Burston is correct to write that the elections were revealing, even if they only revealed what most people already suspected. Even the outcome of the elections were a validation of what most people already thought, which is that the old Israel is gone, killed off by demographic change. It’s no longer really a European colony, as the Ashkenazi have lost their dominant cultural position.
And this means that the divide between Israeli Jews and American Jews is going to grow. The partial boycott of Netanyahu’s speech was a canary in the coal mine. Netanyahu’s promise to kill the two-state solution was a mine explosion.
Just look at how silly this looks:
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini released a statement congratulating Benyamin Netanyahu oh his election victory Wednesday.
“Yesterday, the Israeli people voted in general elections. I congratulate Benyamin Netanyahu for his victory. I look forward to the formation of a new government,” the statement read.
It continued by noting “The EU is committed to working with the incoming Israeli government on a mutually beneficial relationship as well as on the re-launch of the peace process.”
The re-launch of the peace process? That’s a total detachment from reality, but it shows that Israel is now completely alienated from its European roots. It will have to go it’s own way from now on as a fully Middle Eastern country, and its traditional Western friends will drift away.
It’s more and more clear to me to never believe a word any English-speaking exile says on anything ever. They’re always wrong. People need to stop trusting Haaretz and the NYTimes op-ed page. Haaretz is basically an exile newspaper at this point.
English-speaking exiles were wrong about Iraq. They were wrong on Libya. They were wrong on Egypt. They were wrong to elevate Hamid Karzai. They were wrong about Russian democracy. They’re wrong about Netanyahu. It’s the only thing in the world that gives me pause about the global effort to exonerate and rehabilitate Iran (well, that and all the ethnic cleansing and terrorism and sectarian civil wars). Whatever the exiles swear will happen, definitely doesn’t happen.
The Israeli election results seem to me to be a pretty genuine expression of the prevailing political sentiment in that country. If Bibi wasn’t such a thin-skinned plutocrat and provocateur, maybe he would have won in a landslide all along? And maybe he’s right that peace with Palestine is a bad idea right now. Maybe that’s just another wrongheaded exile fixation.
Palestine is essentially a failed state with half its territory swarmed by terrorists scuttling over rubble and devastation, its leadership is all undemocratic septuagenarian relics, it doesn’t control its own finances nor could it sustain itself without international subsidization. And in general, it seems like the entire Arab political economy is flawed and self-destructing. Maybe Palestine is just another South Sudan in the waiting. How many Israelis genuinely want to be the one to divide Jerusalem forever and risk that chance? “Peace” is an abstraction with rapidly eroding indigenous support on both sides of the separation wall.
Right. The problem with a two-state solution is those dirty Palestinians for some reason not getting their act together rather than deliberate israeli policy to systematically destroy their ability to function as a state or even as a people.
They’re forced into ever shrinking, isolated ghettos as israel steals their land to expand it’s settlements. So, israeli policy creates the conditions which destroy palestinian society and when, predictably, those conditions cause a palestinian to lash out with violence, that’s taken as an excuse to tighten the noose just a bit further.
It’s been pretty obvious for quite some time that netanyahu has no interest in a peaceful or two-state solution, he’s just looking to make the destruction of the palestinian people slow enough and easy enough to ignore as to not provoke a strong international (or US) response.
What you’re fighting for is just as important as what you’re fighting against.
The reds and the communists always had a great justification for their cause. But their fight always proved wrong, their governance always abhorrent, and they proved themselves unworthy of support.
I’ve run out of patience for political Islam. I’ve run out of patience for Russians. I’ve run out of patience for Confederates. They’re all fueled by endless resentment and petty vengeance and it never gets any better.
That’s always the case. Those English-speaking exiles are always either (1) delusional academics/journalists who went to school in Britain or the US and have spent more time in London or New York than in Jerusalem or Tehran, or (2) cynical shitbags who want us to open the door for them to take power in that country.
Iran is a good example of that, because we’ve been spoonfed, for decades, the notion that college kids and young professionals in northern Tehran who like Marlboros and iPhones are somehow representative of the country as a whole instead of socially-conservative, working-class people in the oil, agricultural and manufacturing industries. That’s why everybody was stunned when Ahmadinejad beat Moussavi.
Personally, I’m for the rehabilitation of Iran, not because I believe it’ll change much there politically, but because I think we and Israel ought to be a lot more comfortable, culturally, with Iran than we should be with that colossal powder keg on the Arabian peninsula we’ve been bff with since the ’40s.
…adding:
And I say, “we and Israel” there, not because I really give a damn about Israel given the governments it continues choosing, but because the reality is the US establishment isn’t going to shift unless those lunatics go along with it.
I don’t understand why you blame it on “English-speaking exiles.” Why not blame it on Tom Friedman? By which I mean, the many home-grown pundits and policy makers that have the same view of the world as Tom Friedman.
Because the Tom Friedmans of the world are idiots who write columns based on the statements of those exiles.
It’s the other way around. They go looking for people that say what they want to hear, or whose words they can cherry-pick and claim they’re saying they want to hear. Many of them are cab drivers, apparently.
A lot of the intellectuals in question are probably funded, whether knowingly or not, by the CIA.
Tom has conversations in his own head with cab drivers who are figments of his imagination.
With the rise of a billionaire Zionist set, monies from the CIA are chump change but the flow is steady.
The topic was raised by the OP in much broader terms than just Israel. As a matter of fact. Friedman has always been comparatively moderate on the Palestinian question, and he’s not a fan of Bibi. But in so many respects he is a political moron. That latest column about ISIS and Iran is a good example.
Mr Burston seems a trifle naive if he is just now realizing how rightwing nationalist authoritarian movements operate.
Yes, the Israeli electorate has made its vision and wishes very clear, they are set in stone, and the ball is now in everyone else’s court. It would seem logical that “traditional Western friend will drift away”, but somehow logic, morality and strategic analysis don’t seem to operate in this instance.
For the US, continued unconditional support and massive financial aid for the New Israel is both deeply immoral and a strategic disaster (assuming an endless series of military operations and quagmires is seen as undesirable…) But of course there has to be a political party that would begin to utter such thoughts and begin to make the case.
In the US, there is no such party. Indeed, our current opposition party quails from even explaining why our American Taliban majority party (whose supporters have no love of American Jews) so fervently supports the Israel of its apocalyptic prophecy. Unconditional support is the only articulated American policy position.
As for the old Israeli left, the writing is on the wall, and it is indelible. Netanyahoo’s blathering that Europe’s Jews should be fleeing to the New Israel seems especially comic now….
So in a previous thread, when I said my gut was telling me Netanyahu would win and things would continue as usual, I was hoping I’d be wrong. Sigh.
Bradley Burston is full of shit.
He says:
Bullshit.
If he is an “Israeli” he should be ashamed not that Netanyahu is a racist but that the majority of Israelis are racists. Netanyahu didn’t force…or even trick…people into going to the polls and voting for him. He just flat out stated his racist views and most Israelis agreed with him.
End of story.
And you’re full of shit too.
Bullshit twice.
Barring a totally revolutionary change in the political process in the U.S. and its NATO allies, the next elections will replace the present governments with clones of themselves, just as has been happening since the JFK coup. Different names and different brands but the same basic policies, including the propagation of yet more Blood-For-Oil tensions in the Middle East. Keep the heat on so’s the various governments in the area are never able to really unite. And who’s the most effective ongoing burr under that particular saddle? Israel is. Bet on it.
Divide and conquer.
As old as political and military/diplomatic history.
Israel is the divisor.
Bet on that as well.
Watch.
The next preznit? As I said above…unless something truly drastic happens?
Just like the previous preznit.
Rebranded.
Same ol’ bad beer, different can.
Watch what they do, not what they say.
Watch.
AG
No more divorced from reality than all the other re-launches of a peace process. A continuing process to appease western governments/populations but never had peace with the Palestinians as an objective.
Hmm, no more divorced from reality than watching and applauding our second term presidents cynically launching end of presidency peace processes again and again.
Tiresome observing all the applause, isn’t it?
Everybody learned the lesson from Carter well. Don’t touch in a first term because then you won’t get a second.
Atrios edits Friedman and saves others time:
Palestinians will be asking future second term presidents to please not bother as they often get clobbered as a pretext to kill the process.
Apparently the “shorter Tom Friedman” didn’t fully capture the insanity and ignorance of his own words:
Hey bozo, just because the dumbfuckery in Iraq that you were all in with didn’t hurt Iran, none of the bloody warmongers in this country were screaming that we had to help Iran by taking out Saddam. Quite opposite — Saddam first and then on to Tehran.
he’s saying we should think about fighting on the side of ISIS instead of working with Iran against ISIS?
For the health of one’s mind, the country, and the planet, best not to attempt trying to figure out what Friedman’s saying. Atrio’s “shorter Friedman” is the generic version of most of Friedman’s ravings.
Thank you. what I paraphrased is so truly bizarre.
Bizarre, but you paraphrased exactly what he said.
What is Israel’s endgame with the Palestinians? Maybe John Kerry will have the guts to manup and ask this basic question.
Much like the original Hitler/Nazi endgame wrt to those deemed “other” in their homeland. Self-deportation.
Self-deportation…Luntz outdid himself on that one.
Yes, he/they did. But doubt they had any historical awareness of what they were proscribing. And if we’re to be honest, Hitler/Nazis weren’t original. Liberia was established as a US self-deportation relocation site.
So it was.
Dream on. He hasn’t “manned up” for 50+ years. Maybe longer. Why would you expect him to start now?
AG
I have no argument with this analysis:
How does the US extend its US veto at the UN under these circumstances unless the executive is Republican?
At least in the US we have the excuse that the fascistic result of our 2010 and 2014 elections was due to an archaic election configuration that favors the right wing. It’s still not a good excuse for the country, but our population isn’t quite that bad.
Israel, on the other hand, has demonstrated to the world that their people love them some fascism.
If you think Israel has a better electoral system than we do, then I think you need to learn more about the Israeli electoral system.
Not exactly.
Consider this. Jerusalem went strongly for Bibi. Tel Aviv went strongly for Herzog.
http://forward.com/articles/216950/jerusalem-backs-bibi-while-tel-aviv-votes-for-left/
Bibi won through a clever political tactic, not really through garnering more votes. He told Israeli right-wing voters, that is, voters that were already committed to the right, that he would lose the election if they voted for the smaller parties that some of them usually vote for, but that only if they switched their votes to Likud could he win.
In other words, smaller RW parties like the ultra-religious parties, are accustomed to getting their own people in and then forming a government WITH Likud, which allows them to horse-trade for things they want. This time he pleaded with them to vote directly for Likud, otherwise he would lose, which was the truth. And that’s just what they did, and that’s the only reason he won.
If I’m not mistaken, all the other right-wing parties except Kulanu lost seats in this election. Kulanu is a special case because it is brand new and its leader Kahlon is a pragmatist and also does not get along with Netanyahu.
I’m not sure what you mean when you say Israel is alienated from its European roots, Booman. Isn’t Europe the place where Jews were oppressed, massacred and ultimately annihilated? Haven’t the Ashkenazis been in charge this whole time, from the founding of Israel, through the decision to push Palestinians off their lands into ghettos, through the building of nuclear weapons and through the confiscation of those slices of land formerly set aside for Palestine? I don’t see where any of this falls at the feet of the Sephardim. Zionism is an idea that arose in Europe, essentially based on racial biases of the time that remain in place to this day.
By contrast, in the middle east, Jews and Muslims for the most part interacted peacefully for centuries, sharing teachings and knowledge and allowing each other to live freely. I won’t say that all the blame lies on one side of the divide or the other. There are sincere and insincere Jews and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians. I’m just not seeing the connection between “peace” and “Europe.”
you raise a good objection.
What’s changed is that Israel no longer shares the values of their American brethren. You can see this mostly plainly in a simple left/right shift. This election was fought largely on fear vs. traditional Jewish values on how society should be structured on the economic/social sphere.
Along with that, though, there has always been a place in Israel for its Arab minority, and that’s consistent with the European values they brought with them. That’s been eroding in recent years, especially with more and more talk of Israel being a Jewish state and how to codify that in law.
Obviously, the annexation of the West Bank coincided with the rise of Likud, and that’s a process that has been ongoing for decades now. But it’s been agonizing and controversial. The debate is basically over now, and that’s a split with Europe that cannot be repaired, which will also change how Israel is viewed by American Jews in ways that will hurt Israel’s traditional relationship with the US.
Until American Jews stop bankrolling Netanyahoo I’m going to be skeptical of this position.
I still maintain American Jews who have lived and were raised in America all their lives should cut ties with a foreign state halfway round the world that really has nothing to do with them.
I know a lot of American Jews and it’s pretty rare that Israel has nothing to do with them. Even assuming that they have virtually no affinity for the country, they have family members who do have that affinity, or they have relatives in Israel, or they know that how they are treated here and especially abroad is impacted by what Israel does and how it is perceived.
But, honestly, if you go talk to Jewish Americans today, I’ll bet many of them are agonizing over the election results and reevaluating how they feel.
I have nothing against personal connections, how many immigrants in the US send money to families or try to get them here etc. If they otherwise cut political ties it might lessen conflating them with Israeli actions as well especially in America which is what I am specifically talking about. This also applies more towards elites or religious leaders since the average Jewish person probably does not have the same effect/interaction with Israel.
Basically you’re an American citizen. Why should what Israel does really matter more to you than say Mexico does to a Mexican-American who was born in the US?
Now of course I have only known two Jews in my life, so obviously you have more insight than me here.
I guess I missed the part where Mexico was founded by Spaniards fleeing the Holocaust.
Is Israel a grown up normal country or isnt it?
Look, MNPundit, as you know, my wife is from Minnesota, a nice Jewish girl, so although you’ve never met her, you and I are practically relatives, despite some differences in our backgrounds.
That being said, the first thing you need to know is, not to confuse the major loudmouthed Jewish organizations like AIPAC, ZOA, etc., with the majority of American Jews. But if you like, pay more attention to Jewish organizations like JStreet and Jewish Voice for Peace, which are getting more and more influence, especially JStreet.
And those of you out there who like to tell me that JStreet has no influence and doesn’t do anything, you’re full of shit. They are having a lot of influence and it continues to grow.
The second thing you need to know is that Netanyahu has ALWAYS been disliked by most American Jews, and that dislike has been increasing over the past years. And I don’t think his latest shenanigans have done anything to counter that trend.
But what are we supposed to do? when practically half the voters couldn’t get rid of him? Well, I’ll tell you one thing we did, we voted for Obama, most of us.
If you want to complain about somebody, why not look at the multitude of apple-pie American Christian Zionists, because that is the BIG voting block kissing Bibi’s butt and supporting the Republican party.
I would also remind you that one of the first congressmen, if not the first, to protest Netanyahu’s plan to speak to Congress, was John Yarmuth, a Jewish Democrat from Kentucky; while the first senator to do so was Bernie Sanders, Jewish independent from Vermont.
This should not surprise anyone. The reason most American Jews are leery of the direction Israel is taking, is because we have always been a minority in America, and precisely because we are Americans AND Jews we deeply appreciate democracy and remain well aware of the horrors of racism.
That’s what I have trouble understanding.
What, being a minority?
No, I’m Latino. I know how it can be. Though its often a different type of bigotry than most anti Jewish stuff.
What I have difficulty understandung is why the concern for Israel if you’re in America and have always lived in America. Why isn’t it just another foreign country?
Is Ireland “just another foreign country” for Irish Americans? Is Cuba “just another foreign country for Cuban Americans?
And yet it is different, but not in a simple way. Because for the great majority of American Jews, the “old country” is not Israel, it’s central and eastern Europe. The family language was Yiddish or some European language, not Modern Hebrew. But those home communities no longer exist. We all know why, but Zionism didn’t want them to exist either.
On the other hand, for a lot of American Jews, Israel IS indeed “a foreign country”, because it is a constructed identity that only Israelis can identify with. But tremendous effort is still put in by the Hasbara etc. in continuing this image-tuning with Jewish youth outside of Israel, and it has some success with idealistic youth. Jewish education for a long time has been absolutely dominated by Israel in terms of funding and curriculum. But it also has a lot of failure because, well, in my opinion, because it is artificial and somehow young people sense that the picture is not as rosy as painted.
But look, you grow up in Oshkosh, you want to be Jewish, and that’s what’s presented to you.
The strong identification with Israel among Jews (not just American Jews) comes from the fact that Zionism evolved not only as a political program (which the masses didn’t really understand very well), but also a hope, a dream, fashioned out of cultural and religious motifs with powerful emotional appeal. Except for the relatively small number who were actively anti-Zionist, most had an ill-defined collection of these emotional images in their mind, many of them contradictory. In the old days what is now known as Likud was called Zionist Revisionism, and it was just one flavor of Zionism and understood to be fascist by many other Zionists (it was infact strongly influenced by Mussolinian fascism). Now it runs the show.
In becoming a reality, Zionism changed, but it still retains that dream-like appeal to non-Israelis, no matter what the reality.
In other words, official Zionism, strongly aided by assimilation and cultural forgetting, in part natural and in part promoted by Zionism itself, has consciously fashioned itself into the one size fits all Jewish identity of today. Of course there are many alternatives, but you asked a very broad question, and I’m trying to give some kind of answer. The real answer requires at least one book because it’s very complex.
But with all that, most American Jews are profoundly uncomfortable with the direction Israel is taking. Until very recently, there has been no alternative political voice to AIPAC and the like for American Jews Now there is.
Well 1 thanks for explaining it makes it more clear, and 2 I am pretty sure Ireland is basically a foreign country to the majority of Americans of Irish descent. Cuba gets a pass because its so close to America.
It wasn’t very long ago that the IRA was being supported mainly by Irish-American money.
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cxsvp/how_prevalent_was_american_funding_of_the_iris
h/
The fact that, 20 or 30 years later all this seems quaint, may show only that the Likud cause is starting to go downhill the same way …
Another example is the massive fundraising, lobbying, propaganda, etc. the Chinese Nationalist Kuomintang did in the United States between the 1940s and the 1980s at least.
But there are plenty of other examples. For general background, you might want to read this:
http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/O-W/Special-Interest-Lobbies-Ethnic-lobbies.html
Marc Stier was looking forward to seeing Netanyahu go down, and I am sure he is seething today.
I agree with everything you just wrote. I wasn’t sure if, in your article, you were conflating Israel’s aggressive posturing with its Sephardic population. It sounds like you’re not. You’re just saying Israel is moving away from Europe.
I wouldn’t think it fair to impugn the Sephardim when there is a long history of simmering racism among the Ashkenazim. Like I said, there are all kinds of people on all sides.
Things are so stuck now and it’s sad. It’s hard to imagine the Israel of the past turning into an apartheid Israel but it seems to be happening right under our noses.
The question raised is extremely complicated. Whether it makes sense to you or not, the Sephardim tend to vote for Likud and other right-wing parties in a much greater proportion than Ashkenazim. One of the main reasons for this is that, at a time when Labor was the establishment, they were the ones who were treating the Sephardim like second-class citizens. Likud courted their vote, and the rest is history. Also the Sephardim have their own far-right ultra-orthodox party, Shas, which often plays a pivotal role in Israeli politics.
This article on the ethnicity factor in yesterday’s election is right on the subject:
http://www.i24news.tv/en/opinion/61294-150216-the-x-factor-of-the-2015-israeli-election-ethnicity
I’m actually not as angry and depressed as most of y’all. There are a lot of downsides to this election for Bibi, ans that will become clear as things play themselves out. This was truly a Pyrrhic victory.
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/netanyahus-pyrrhic-victory-a-unified-stable-and-self-defined-oppositi
on-needs-to-evolve/
For a start, Israel has not suddenly acquired a “new nature”. Israel isn’t any different today than it was yesterday. Bibi was forced by circumstance to doff a few of his masks, that’s all. What he’s showing is not new. What’s new is that he’s showing it.
One or two of his henchmen were even saying that now he’s won reelection, he may become more favorable to Palestinian statehood again. Yes, I can definitely see him doing that. He was lying before, and if he does come back to “supporting” Palestinian statehood, anybody who doesn’t realize he’s bullshitting is an idiot. Of course, there are people that want the bullshit, because it offers them a convenient place to hide. But from now on, we can be sure they are bullshitting too.
Looks like Obama’s got other plans.
Pshaw and Phooey.
Netanyahu has already backed off his Palestinian position blaming the switch on “threats” from Obama.
proving once and for all that he is a Republican
○ Clinton weighs loyalty to Obama with distinctions on Israel issues | Jewish Ledger |
○ Hillary Clinton’s Visit to Egypt, Highest Ranking U.S. Official to Meet Muslim Brotherhood’s Morsi (2013)
○ Samantha Power Won’t Promise To Back Israel at United Nations | The Forward |