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.