Israel’s Racist Election - The main debate is ‘Who Has Killed the Most Palestinians?’

As the Zionist ‘Left’ Disappear will the Generals’ Blue & White Party Replace Netanyahu?

In most Western countries, parties compete over issues such as taxation, nationalisation/privatisation, poverty, Brexit, refugees, global warming in general elections. Political parties in most European countries, with the exception of avowedly racist parties of the far-Right, are inclusive of ethnic minorities and supporters of different religions and faiths. It is unknown in Europe, with the exception of fascist parties, for parties to frame their arguments in terms of maintaining a demographic majority of a certain section of the population.

In Israel, the self-styled ‘only democracy in the Middle East’, politics are entirely different. You have Jewish parties and Arab parties. Only the Communist Party, Hadash, and to a less extent the left-Zionist party Meretz, has a mixed membership.

Leaders of the Blue & White 'General's Party (l to r)
Moshe Yalon, Benny Gantz, Yair Lapid, Gabi Ashmenazi

The other feature of Israeli politics is its political instability.  Parties come and go virtually every election. So Tzipi Livni’s Hatnuah, which was the offshoot of Kadimah and in 2009 the largest party in the Knesset, latterly in alliance with the Israeli Labour Party, will disappear.

There have been a plethora of 'centrist' parties in Israel, from the old General Zionists, to Shinui to Yesh Atid, each more right-wing than its predecessor.

Springing up out of nowhere is the Blue and White Party an alliance of the right-centrist (though in the Israeli context labels like left, right and centre are largely meaningless) Yesh Atid and Resilience, a new party formed by former Chief of Staff Benny Gantz together with two other former Chiefs of Staff Moshe Yalon and Gabi Ashkenzi. Not for nothing is it known as the General’s Party.

As Elizabeth Tsurkov of the liberal Zionist Forward observed ‘Campaign ads seem to be competing over which candidate has killed the most Palestinians.’ This is what British politicians such as Emily Thornberry and Barry Gardiner call a ‘beacon of democracy’. Presumably Jews getting to have a vote on which party can kill most Arabs is an example of democracy at its best!

Likud’s Avi Dichter, a former Director of Shin Bet, Israel’s equivalent of MI5, put out a video which ends with “A thousand mothers of terrorists will cry and my mother won’t.” In the minds of most Israelis every Palestinian is a terrorist. Gantz put out an ad boasting of how many Palestinian militants had been killed in Gaza in 2014. Tsurkov wrote that these campaign ads ‘demonize, ridicule and belittle Palestinians, who are presented as a people without history, pathological liars and terrorists.’ This is Israel today.

A primaries campaign video put out by Likud’s Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotoveli shows her speaking in the Knesset where she presented a book filled with empty pages. According to Hotovely, that book represents the history of the Palestinian people. She proclaimed that: “You have no Kings, no heritage sites” in Israel. An ad produced by Culture Minister Miri Regev, a self-proclaimed fascist, refers to Palestinian citizens of Israel as a “trojan horse,” and the Joint List uniting several Arab parties as a “fifth column.” Those with a sense of history will remember that accusations of being a fifth column were a favourite in the days of McCarthyism. It is a rerun of the Nazi theme of the 'stab in the back'.

Gantz boasted of sending Gaza back into ‘the stone age’ during Operation Protective Edge in 2014.  A boast not without foundation.  Netanyahu who is playing the Arab card for all its worth accused Gantz and his party of being ‘leftists’ which in Israel today is an insult.

Yair Lapid has led Yesh Atid since 2012.  In 2013 it obtained the second largest number of seats, 19, and entered into coalition with Netanyahu. In the 2015 election it fell back to 11 seats. It had been engaged in protracted negotiations with Benny Gantz regarding an electoral coalition until Netanyahu made what could be a fatal mistake in pressurising the far-Right Jewish Home party into allying with the neo-Nazi Otzma Yehudit. This resulted in the formation of the Blue and White Party. See Ultra-nationalists join forces ahead of Israeli elections as liberal and Palestinian blocs splinter

Last week Jewish Home’s Central Committee agreed to an electoral pact with Otzma Yehudit which will receive the 5^th and 8^th seats on the list making it all but certain that one of their members will be elected.

Even the worm, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, turns

Otzma Yehudit is led by an open supporter of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, former MK Michael ben Ari. The actions of Netanyahu in seeking to unify the ultra-Right with Otzma Yehudit has led to an unprecedented backlash amongst diaspora Zionist organisations.  Even the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has condemned this alliance as has the American Jewish Committee though this hasn't stopped AIPAC from inviting Netanyahu to its conference in March. Netanyahu’s opportunism however may backfire on him judging by the reaction amongst even loyal Zionists abroad. As Phillip Weiss and Yossi Gurvitz note

‘The outrage at Netanyahu over the move has been unprecedented, for rehabilitating the “David Dukes” of the Israeli political scene, heirs to Meir Kahane who advocate for transfer of Palestinians to other countries.’

Israel Hayom, an Israeli free-sheet which is owned by Sheldon Adelson, one of the largest donors to Trump’s election campaign, had a screaming headline calling AIPAC ‘irresponsible’ for getting involved in domestic politics.

Netanyahu’s rationale was that Otzma Yehudit might, as in the 2013 and 2015 elections ‘waste’ votes by standing and thus imperil the election of a Likud government. His solution was for Jewish Home to form an electoral pact with Otzma Yehudit because a party now needs 3.25% to enter the Knesset.

The Jewish Home Party is already in an electoral alliance with Bezalel Smotrich MK’s Tkuma party. Smotrich describes himself as a ‘proud homophobe’ and openly supports the segregation of Israel’s Arab citizens. He has defended the practice of Israeli hospitals which separate Jewish and Arab women in maternity wards.

Israel’s General Election is impossible to call at the moment because there are a number of variables, not least the impact if Netanyahu is indicted for corruption. In most countries this would be a death sentence for a candidate but Israel is not most countries.

According to polling from Israel’s Channel 12 in Israel (tweeted by Lahav Harkov) the following is how the parties fare:

Blue and White 36
Likud 30
Labor 8
UTJ (religious party) 7
New Right 6 (Shaked/Bennett)
Ta’al Hadash (Tibi/Odeh) 6
Joint List 6
Shas (religious Mizrahi party) 5
Yisrael Beytenu 4
Bayit Yehudi (including Jewish Power) 4
Meretz 4
Kulanu 4

It is clear that the Israeli Labour Party is heading for disaster.  The ILP formed every single government from 1948 to 1977 as well as the 1992 and 1999 governments. It was last in a coalition government in 2011. Since then Netanyahu has formed every government. In 2015 under Isaac Herzog the ILP ran on a joint electoral list with Tzipi Livni’s Hatnuah and gained 24 seats. 

In 2017 the ILP elected a new leader, Avi Gabbay, a former Minister in Netanyahu’s government, who immediately decided to move the ILP several degrees further to the Right.  Among his policy innovations were to support Netanyahu’s attempt to deport Israel’s 40,000 Black African refugees on the grounds that they were neither White nor Jewish. He also supported the retention of the settlements. Gabbay, who was Chief Executive of Israel’s largest company, Bezeq International, a telecommunications giant, from 2007-2014 echoed Netanyahu when he declared that:

"In 1997, Bibi [Benjamin Netanyahu] said that 'the left has forgotten what it means to be Jewish.' Do you know what the left did in response? Forgot [how] to be Jews,"

This is the pathetic level of the ideology of the Israeli Labour Party. It is a sign of desperation of a party which has no purpose and it would seem no social base in Israel.

Gabbay at the beginning of the election campaign, in front of the TV cameras, publicly humiliated Tzipi Livni by announcing that their electoral pact was over. Livni, although a horrendous racist and a war criminal in her own right, is nonetheless seen as on the left in Israel, which is an indication of just how far right-wing Israeli politics are today. But if Gabbay thought that he would receive an electoral boost from this he was soon to be disappointed. The ILP ‘strategy’ of moving further and further to the Right simply alienates those Israelis still on the Left without appeasing those on the Right. Gabbay is yet to learn that however fast and far he moves to the Right Netanyahu can move even faster, even to the extent of taking genuine neo-Nazis on board.

At the moment although Blue and White is estimated to gain 36 seats to the Likud’s 30, Netanyahu still has the greatest chance of forming a government coalition. Gantz’s B&W, even if it receives the support of Meretz, the ILP and Kulanu will still only have 52 seats. Given their refusal to contemplate a coalition with Arabs, Netanyahu is likely to be able to form a coalition with the religious parties (12) and the far-Right parties (15) making a total of 57.

If current projections are correct then the Jewish Orthodox parties will go down from 13 to 12 seats, Kulanu - a Likud offshoot - will decline from 10 to four - and the far-Right will increase from 11 to 14.

Netanyahu and Mendelbit in happier times

However this is to miss out one factor. The Police long ago recommended that Netanyahu should be indicted for corruption and it is likely that before the election campaign finishes Attorney General Avichai Mendelbit will charge Netanyahu.  In most states purporting to be democratic and a few which are not, that would spell the death knell of a candidate.  However in Israel nothing is guaranteed.  There has been a systematic campaign of intimidation against Mendelbit including the desecration of his father’s grave.  Such is the nature of Israeli politics.

Meretz, which originates in Ratz, the Civil Rights Party and Mapam, the United Workers Party, had 12 seats in 1992.  Today they have five seats and are hovering on the brink of extinction with a predicted 4 seats. If Meretz do fail to get candidates elected to the Knesset it will be the end of a long tradition of left-Zionism, the most hypocritical face of Zionism. They talked socialism but practised segregation. Mapam talked about co-existence but their Kibbutzim were not only Jewish only but were established on the ruins of destroyed Arab villages.

In March 2018 Tamar Zandberg replaced Zehava Gal On as leader of Meretz. Tamar Zandberg was elected after having hired a right-wing election fixer Moshe Klughaft as an adviser to her campaign. Klughaft was previously a strategist for Jewish Home and had targeted left-wing activists and NGO’s.  

Under Zandberg Meretz has focussed mainly on peripheral topics such as the environment, cannabis legalisation, civil and gay marriage to the exclusion of the major issue in Israel which is the Occupation of the Territories and the racism and discrimination against Israel’s Palestinian citizens.

Avi  Gabbay (Israeli Labor Party) and Tamar Zandberg (Meretz)

Zandberg is on record as stating that she would join a government coalition with Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beteinu. Lieberman is an open advocate of the transfer of Israel’s Arab population out of Israel and the imposition of a loyalty oath on Israel’s non-Jewish population. Galon called this ‘flushing ideology down the toilet” though to be fair Meretz has long ago dispensed with anything in the way of ideology.

Zandberg also called on the Israeli Labour Party to form a joint party or electoral pact, which would save Meretz from extinction but Gabbay rejected this out of hand.

The other major development is the splitting of the Joint Arab-Jewish List into two. Previously the Arab parties have run separately but in 2014, on the proposal of Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s fascist Defence Minister, the threshold for election to the Knesset was raised from 2% to 3.25%. The purpose was to eliminate the Arab parties from the Knesset but what happened was that they unified in one Joint List.  Ironically Lieberman’s Yisrael Beteinu nearly didn’t qualify!

Ahmad Tibi (Ta'al) and Aymen Odeh (Haddash)

However this time around the Joint list has split into two separate electoral alliances. Ahmad Tibi’s Ta'al has combined with Haddash (Communist) and Balad (National Democratic Union) has united with the United Arab List (Ra’am). Tibi, a veteran member of the Knesset, believed that his group, was underrepresented in the Knesset.

According to the Channel 12 poll above both alliances are scheduled to get 6 seats each though according to Channel 13’s poll, as reported in The Times of Israel, the Hadash-Ta'al group will get 10 seats and Balad and Ra’am will get 4 seats, which if true would be an improvement of one over the present situation.

I hesitate from this distance to make any predictions about Israel’s General Election.  My hunch is that Likud will be rocked by Netanyahu’s indictment and that this may propel the General’s party into power. What isn’t in much doubt is that the Zionist ‘left’, if it can be called that, is going to be heavily defeated. It is quite possible that Meretz, whose raison d’être has long since vanished will disappear and the Israeli Labour Party will pay a heavy price for trying to imitated Likud.

On the Israeli Palestinian front it is regrettable that the Joint Arab List split. It is entirely possible that Balad and Ra’am will also fail to make the minimum of 4 seats and thus be eliminated from the Knesset. It is a great pity that firstly Ahmad Tibi put the interests of his own party above Arab unity and secondly that Hadash and the more nationalist parties were unable to unite.

Hadash has always had a Jewish member of the Knesset even though it receives very few Jewish votes. The days have long since gone when Israel’s Jewish voters would elect communists to the Knesset.  However the replacement for Dov Kheinin, Dr Ofer Cassif, a lecturer at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University is a far more dynamic character. He has had no hesitation in describing Israel today as politically similar to Nazi Germany in the 1930’s.

In a lecture to his students, which was secretly recorded he stated that

‘"those who refuse to see the similarities between what is happening in Israel, specifically in the past two years, and Germany in the 1930s, has a problem and will be responsible for the potential situation of the state."

Dr Ofer Casif, Hadash's Jewish candidate and lecturer at Hebrew University

Cassif also called Ayelet Shaked, Israel’s ‘Justice Minister’ and a member of Jewish Home (now the United Right) Party a ‘filthy neo-Nazi’ Which is about right. Shaked has previously declared that Israel should abandon universal values of human rights in favour of ‘Jewish values’ and that the Torah and halachah should form part of the jurisprudence of the Israeli legal system. Shaked also called for the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza in a (now deleted) Facebook post where she wrote, quoting Uri Elitzur, a settler leader, speechwriter and close advisor to Netanyahu, who had died a few months previously that:

‘What’s so horrifying about understanding that the entire Palestinian people is the enemy? Every war is between two peoples, and in every war the people who started the war, that whole people, is the enemy....

They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there....

There is nothing more just, and probably nothing more efficient. Every suicide attacker should know that he takes with him also his parents and his house and some of the neighbors. Every brave Um-Jihad who sends her son to hell should know she’s going with him, along with the house and everything inside it.”

No doubt if Dr Casif was a member of the Labour Party he would have been suspended for ‘anti-Semitism’ for having dared to compare Israel to Nazi Germany!

Tony Greenstein

Israel is jettisoning even the trappings of democracy

Apologists for the Israeli state always refer to the fact that Arabs have the vote in Israel, as if  putting your cross on the ballot paper once every 4 years rectifies all the racist injustices of the previous years.  In fact nearly 50% of Israeli Palestinians don’t even vote because it is considered a waste of time.  But those who do vote overwhelmingly for Arab parties (& the Communist Hadash) not under one electoral roof – the Joint List.

The reason the Arab parties and Hadash joined together for the first time ever was because the electoral threshhold was raised from 2% to 3 .25% in order to exclude Arab parties from the Knesset altogether.  That was the brainwave of the fascist former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.  That forced all the non-Zionist parties to come together.

Now the Knesset has decided to support a Bill that will allow the Jewish majority to expel or suspend Arab MKs.  In an ethnocracy, where different communities vote for either Jewish or Arab parties, then this means quite simply that the Jewish parties are deciding which Arab representatives will be allowed.

Democratic?  In Israeli terms yes, by most peoples’ standards no.

Excluding Arabs from Israel’s ‘democracy’

An article by Marzouq El-Halabi in +972 follows the one from Times of Israel

MKs Basel Ghattas, Haneen Zoabi and Jamal Zakalka, from the Joint Arab List’s Balad faction, visited the families of Palestinians killed while trying to stab Israeli soldiers. The MKs were trying to negotiate the returns of their corpses to the families. For this the Knesset ethics committee decided they should be suspended. Photo by Noam Moskowitz.

Controversial MK suspension bill passes first Knesset reading

Proposal would allow lawmakers to ban colleagues for inciting racism, supporting terror; critics say move limits democracy

By Raoul Wootliff, Times of Israel

March 28, 2016

The Knesset voted on Monday night [March 28] to advance a controversial law enabling MKs to suspend their colleagues, approving the first reading of the bill by 59 to 52 votes.

The proposal would allow 90 MKs to vote to suspend lawmakers if they “negate the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state,” incite racism, or express support for a terror group or state in its war against Israel.

The coalition managed to secure the win despite two Likud members refusing to support the measure, after the opposition Yisrael Beitenu party abstained from the vote.

The measure must still pass two more Knesset readings.

The vote was preceded by a flurry of speeches by MKs calling to support or oppose the measure, as well as discussions by some MKs about a soldier charged with murder over the shooting death of a wounded Palestinian assailant in Hebron last week.

Speaking before the vote, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the bill would help in Israel’s fight against terror.

“I expect all those who say they are in favour of the bill to vote in support and to not give an advantage or profit to those who support terror,” he told the weekly Likud meeting, anticipating rebellion by a number of coalition MKs.

Likud MKs David Amsalem and Avraham Neguise followed through on threats not to vote with the government until it renews the immigration of remaining Falashmura Jews from Ethiopia.

Earlier on Monday, Avigdor Liberman, head of hawkish Yisrael Beytenu, said he would not support the measure unless he gets tit-for-tat backing from the coalition for a bill to block the Supreme Court from involvement in activities of the Central Elections Committee.

Backed by Netanyahu, the bill was proposed after three Arab MKs made a condolence visit to the families of Palestinians killed while attacking Israelis, and the three observed a moment of silence, which some said was tantamount to showing support for terror.

In a legal opinion published hours before a Monday night vote on the bill, Eyal Yinon, the chief legal adviser for Israel’s parliament, said that while he does not deem it necessary, it is “preferable” the proposal receive a majority and could face legal challenges if it doesn’t.

"If MKs suspected of committing crimes, they should go to the Attorney General, not misuse parliament." President Rivlin

The controversial measure has been vociferously opposed by some, including President Reuven Rivlin, who warned that the power to punish lawmakers should not be in the hands of fellow Knesset members.

Earlier this month Rivlin said the bill reflected “a problematic understanding of parliamentary democracy,” and that the correct address for MKs who had committed or were suspected of committing crimes was the attorney general, not fellow lawmakers.

Writing on Twitter during the vote, opposition leader Isaac Herzog railed against the proposal, saying it would do nothing to prevent terror attacks.

“I call on the prime minister and his coalition: Stop!” he wrote. “This is an unnecessary and twisted law that is not needed in order to fight terror.”

In February, a stormy meeting of the Knesset’s Constitution Law and Justice Committee voted to send the MK suspension bill for a first reading in the Knesset — prompting the head of the Joint (Arab) List MK Ayman Odeh to announce that he and members of his party were considering resigning from the Knesset if the three lawmakers who made the condolence visit were expelled.

The three lawmakers were suspended on February 8 by the Knesset Ethics Committee — Hanin Zoabi and Basel Ghattas for four months, and Jamal Zahalka for two.

Odeh also said a bill such as the one under discussion could strengthen a nascent debate in Arab Israeli intellectual circles about creating a separate Arab parliament in Israel, which would act as a counterweight to a Knesset that only represented the country’s Jews.

Ahead of the vote, former Shin Bet head and current Likud MK Avi Dichter said Odeh would be called to account for his support of Palestinian terrorists assassinated by Israeli forces.

Odeh later took the podium and accused Dichter of “cheap and lowly incitement” to get headlines.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.

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On our way out of the apartheid closet

By advancing legislation to exclude the Arab minority from the Knesset, Israel is showing the world that its political system is really only intended for one group.

By Marzouq El-Halabi, +972
April 08, 2016

The so-called “suspension bill,” which passed its first reading in the Knesset several weeks ago, constitutes another step by the Israeli Right to exclude Arab representatives from Israeli politics. The bill, which gives the Knesset the authority to temporarily or permanently suspend elected members, stems not from a worry over the fate of Israel’s democracy, but is part of the Right’s slow effort to maliciously and intentionally harm it. The ultimate goal of the bill goes unspoken, although it is clear to all: to remove the Arab electorate from the political game in order to ensure the Right’s reign in the near future.

That strategy began even before the right-wing parties marked Arabs in Israel as the targets of a well-orchestrated delegitimization campaign. There is not a single leader on the Right who has not tried his hand, whether through incitement, anti-democratic bills — some of which passed — or targeting specific Arab MKs in the Knesset. A racist public discourse that besmirches the Arab minority as a “suspicious group” that is always “at fault.” My presumption is that this incitement is organized, even if it comes from different political parties.

From cooperation to exclusion

After the Right failed, at least temporarily, to exclude the Arabs by raising the election threshold, it attempted to put pressure on the Arab minority and its representatives. Unfortunately, many media outlets cooperated with the Right’s mission, even so far as strengthening the attacks against the Arab minority and its representatives. When the atmosphere grew tense due to violent attacks by individual Palestinians, the Right struck again, this time by outlawing the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement. The Islamic Movement may have been the target, but the goal was to create an atmosphere in which the entire Arab public is removed from the political sphere. Now it seems that the Right has marked the representatives of the nationalist Balad party, and any other Arab representative that does not dance to the tune of Bennett or Netanyahu.

A Palestinian citizen of Israel votes in the 2015 elections, March 17, 2015 Ramle, Israel. Photo by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org

The process is clear. The point is to drive a wedge between the Arab minority as a significant electorate power and the opposing right-wing camp. Let us remember that it was the Arab members of Knesset who provided a political safety net for Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the 90s. This kind of scenario could repeat itself, which is exactly what the Right is trying to prevent by removing the Arab minority from the political game.

The establishment’s attitude since the founding of the state has been to include the Arab minority in the political game, and to encourage Arab citizens to participate in elections. Those who held this view believed that the participation of the Palestinians who remained in their homeland would give the nascent state a seal of approval, and would only strengthen its legitimacy in the eyes of the world. The legal attitude was much the same: aside from the “Al-Ard ruling” in the 1960s, Israel’s Supreme Court has tended to allow Arab parties who had been disqualified by the Central Elections Committee from participating in elections. The Right, which has failed at disqualifying Arab parties and leaders, is attempting to pass legislation that would allow it to do so.

And if they succeed? What then?

This move is not surprising since those behind it are right-wing ideologues who prefer the nation and religion over the state. What is surprising is the political camp that positions itself as an alternative to right-wing rule, the one which praises itself for protecting democracy. Instead of fighting for democracy and proper representative for Arabs, this camp turns a cold shoulder to them. This camp seems to enjoy taking part in the delegitimization of the Arab minority in Israel (see MK Avi Dichter’s speech targeting Joint List Chairman Ayman Odeh*). This kind of discourse leaves little room for doubt that even the “enlightened” camp, which “fights for democracy” does not intend to include Arabs in its democracy.

Let’s imagine that Arabs are finally excluded from the Knesset, and that the number of Arab citizens who vote starts to dwindle — whether due to more anti-democratic legislation or as a response to the Right’s policies. That is precisely when the world will start to suspect that the regime in Israel is an apartheid regime that has come out of the closet. If the political game between the river and the sea becomes designated for one nation alone, the result will be that the Right in Israel will have succeeded in turning Israel into an apartheid state. There is no other name for this kind of rule. The problem is that we are already at the peak of this process.

Marzouq El-Halabi is an attorney, journalist, and author. He writes a regular column in the London-based Al-Hayat daily newspaper.

* The link provided in the text  [here] was actually to the March 1st Haaretz report of an attack by Odeh on former Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter. A few weeks later ‘Former Shin Bet chief MK Avi Dichter (Likud) accused the Joint (Arab) List leader MK Ayman Odeh on Monday of doing nothing to stop terror against Israelis.’ Times of Israel, March 29, 2016

The ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ Suspends 3 Palestinian members of the Knesset and takes steps to expel them

Israel is, as every Zionist propagandist tells you, a democracy.  Of course they define a democracy quite narrowly.  Basically the chance to vote every few years for a new parliament (Knesset) counts as democracy.

The systematic discrimination, the denial of land rights to Israeli Palestinians, the denial of any civil or political rights to the 4.5 million Palestinians under occupation, the demolition of ‘unrecognised’ Arab villages (Jewish villages/towns are always recognised), the overt discrimination in terms of jobs, welfare benefits, education etc. is of course ignored. 

Uri Avneri attends a Hadash (Communist Party) demonstration

In a society based on a situation where one ethnic group (Israeli Jews) dominates another ethnic group (Arabs/Palestinians) then what exists is not so much democracy as the dictatorship of the majority.  A similar situation could have been said to exist in Nazi Germany. 

Balad MKs

Now however even the right to vote is being taken away, or rather the democratically elected representatives of Israeli Palestinians are being taken away.  The 3 members of Balad, an Arab nationalist party, have been suspended for between 2 and 4 months.  Their crime?  They visited the relatives of dead Palestinians to offer their condolences and to give their support to their demand for the return of the bodies of the children.

Haneen Zoabi - MK for Balad has been demonised by Israeli Right (& Israel's left-Zionist Meretz and Israeli Labour Party/Zionist Union after going on Marvi Marmara

Only a State which specialises in cruelty and barbarities would even think of kidnapping dead bodies and refusing the right of the parents to bury their children as they see fit.  Children who, out of desperation at their plight,  took a knife or scissors and attempted to kill and Israeli soldier or settler or just an Israeli who they hold responsible for their plight.  If there was no racism and discrimination in Israel, if there wasn’t a Prime Minister who complained about ‘hordes’ of Arabs going to the polls, or a Deputy Defence Minister, Eli Dahan, who speaks of Palestinians as not being humans, ‘beasts’ or a ‘Justice’ Minister Ayelet Shaked who has called for the murder of Palestinian mothers to stop them breeding ‘little Palestinian snakes’ then there would be no stabbings.

Zoabi is physically removed from the Knesset again

Not only has the Knesset voted to suspend the 3 Balad MKs, having previously tried to ban the Balad party outright, but there is now a bill going through the Knesset which will allow the majority of the Knesset, i.e. its Jewish members, to vote by a 75% majority to expel the elected members of the Arab minority altogether.  A situation where a majority of members of a parliament can expel a minority is not democracy but dictatorship.  It says to the Arab minority in Israel that you can only vote for parties that we approve of.  This is Israeli democracy.

The article below by Uri Avnery, a veteran peacenik and someone who is on the outer fringes of Zionism, explains the background to what is happening and in particular the witch-hunt of Haneen Zoabi, a secular Arab woman who most Israelis hate.

It is also of note that the ‘left-wing’ Meretz party, the old Civil Rights Party and Mapam, also voted for the suspension of Balad MKs and also supports the new law.  Once a Zionist always a Zionist.  I doubt though that the late leader of Meretz, Shulamit Aloni, who had effectively become a non-Zionist, would have approved though.

Tony Greenstein

Uri  Avnery on Knesset Attempts to Expel an Arab Faction

A Lady With A Smile

February 13, 2015

by Uri Avnery

IT IS not easy to be an Arab in Israel.

It is not easy to be a woman in Arab society.

It is not easy to be an Arab in Israeli politics.

And even less easy to be an Arab woman in the Knesset.

Israeli Right hate demonstration against Haneen Zoabi

Haneen Zuabi is all these together. Perhaps because of this she wears a perpetual smile – the smile of somebody who has won, after all.

It can be very annoying, this smile. Annoying and provocative.

These days, Zuabi has achieved something no Arab woman in Israel ever dreamed of: the whole country is talking about her. Not for an hour, nor for a day, but for weeks on end.

The vast majority of Jewish Israelis hate her guts. Zuabi's smile is triumphant.

Haneen Zoabi speaking in the Knesset

HANEEN BELONGS to a large Hamula (extended family) that dominates several villages near Nazareth. Two Zuabis were members of the Knesset in its early days – one was a vassal of the (then) ruling Zionist Labor Party, the other a member of the left-wing Zionist Mapam party. It was he who coined the memorable phrase: "My country is at war with my people!"  

Haneen Zuabi is a member of the Balad ("homeland") party, an Arab nationalist party founded by Azmi Bishara, an Israeli-Palestinian intellectual. Bishara was an admirer of Gamal Abd-al-Nasser and his pan-Arab vision. When the Shin-Bet was about to arrest him on some pretext or other, he fled the country, asserting that because of a severe kidney disease, prison would endanger his life.

He left behind a three-man Knesset faction, one of three Arab factions of similar size. All of them were a constant irritation to their Jewish colleagues, so they invented a remedy. A new law was enacted denying Knesset membership to any party that did not gain enough votes for a four-member faction. (A larger minimum could have endangered the Orthodox Jewish party.)

Haneen Zoabi after having been attacked at election debate

The logic was simple: the three small Arab factions hated each other's guts. One was Communist (with one Jewish member), one Islamist and one nationalist (Balad).

But lo and behold, under threat of annihilation even Arabs can unite. They formed a "Joint List" ("Joint", not "United") and together gained 13 seats – three more than before. They are now the third largest faction in the Knesset, right after Likud and Labor, an eyesore to many of their colleagues.

THIS IS the background of the latest outrage.

For months now, Israel has been in the throes of a mini-intifada. In the two  former intifadas, "terrorists" acted in groups under the orders of organizations, which were easily infiltrated. This time, individuals act alone, or together with cousins who could be trusted, without any prior signs. The Israeli forces (army, police, Shin Bet) have no information whatsoever and are therefore unable to prevent these acts.

Moreover, many of today's "terrorists" are children – boys and girls who just pick up a knife in their mother's kitchen and, on the spur of the moment, run out and attack the nearest Israeli. Some of them are 13, 14 years old. Some of the girls wield scissors. All of them know that in all probability they will be shot dead on the spot by soldiers or passing armed civilians.

The preferred victims are soldiers or settlers. Lacking these, they attack any Israeli, man or woman, in sight.

The mighty Israeli security forces are admittedly helpless against this kind of "infantifada" (as my friend Reuven Wimmer calls it). In their distress, the security forces do what they always do in such situations: use methods that have already failed many times.

Apart from summary executions on the spot (justified or unjustified, these methods include the demolition of the family's home, to deter others, as well as the arrest of parents and other family members.

Frankly, I detest these measures. They remind me of a Nazi term I remember from my youth: "Sippenhaft" ("kin liability”. It is barbaric. It is also highly ineffective. A boy who has decided to sacrifice his life for his people is not deterred by such things. Not a single piece of contrary evidence has ever been produced.  On the contrary, it stands to reason that such barbaric acts increase hatred and provide motivation for more attacks.

BUT THE most atrocious and stupid measure is the withholding of dead bodies. I am almost too ashamed to bring this up.

After almost any "terrorist" act, the body of the perpetrator – adult or child – is picked up by the security forces. Under Muslim law and usage, dead bodies must be buried the same day or the next one. Withholding them is a supreme act of cruelty. Our security services believe that this contributes to prevention. For Muslims, this is a supreme act of sacrilege.   

This is the background of the latest scandal. The three Balad members of the Arab faction visited the families of the perpetrators of a "terrorist outrage", whose bodies had been withheld. Their version is that they came to discuss how to retrieve the bodies. The security forces insist that they also expressed their condolences and even stood in silence for a minute.

The Knesset, "from wall to wall", was outraged. How dare they? Extolling murderers? Showing sympathy for their families?

The Balad members of the Joint Faction are, apart from Zuabi and her smile, Bassal Gatas, and Jamal Zahalka. I have never met Gatas personally. He is 60 years old, a Christian Arab, a doctor of engineering and a businessman. He was for a long time a member of the Communist Party but was thrown out when he insisted on his right to criticize the Soviet Union. Azmi Bishara is his cousin. On TV, he makes a very sensible impression.

I consider Gamal Zahalka a personal friend. Once we both attended a conference in Italy and undertook some hikes together with our wives. I like him very much.   

The three Balad members were banned from the Knesset for several months, except for the right to participate in Knesset votes (a right that cannot be denied). Now a new bill proposes that the Knesset can, by a majority of three fourths, expel members from the Knesset altogether.

This means that – unless the Supreme Court declares this bill unconstitutional - the Knesset will soon be Araber-rein, free from Arabs. A purely Jewish Knesset for a purely Jewish state.

THIS WOULD be a disaster for Israel.

Every fifth Israeli is an Arab. The Arab minority in Israel is one of the largest national minorities, per capita, in the world. Pushing such a minority out of the political process will weaken the very structure of the state.

When the state came into being, we believed that after a generation or two the gulf between the two communities would close, or nearly so. The opposite has happened.

In the early years, political cooperation between Jews and Arabs in a joint peace-camp was strong and getting stronger. These days are long past. The gulf has widened.

There was – and is – an opposite trend, too. Many Arabs are integrated in important professions, such as medicine. The last time I was hospitalized, I could not guess if the chief doctor of my department was Jewish or Arab. I had to ask my (Arab) male nurse, who confirmed that the very gentle doctor was Arab. I have found that Arab medical personnel are generally gentler than Jewish ones.  

In several professions, Arabs are more or less integrated. But the general trend is the opposite. Where once there were cordial relations between neighborhoods, or between political organizations, contacts have loosened or disappeared altogether.

There were times when my friends and I visited Arab towns and villages almost every week. Not anymore.

This is not altogether an one-sided process. Insulted and rejected for so long, Arab citizens have lost the appetite for cooperation. Some of them have become more Islamist. The happenings in the Occupied Territories affect them deeply. A third and fourth generation of Israeli Arab citizens  is becoming more proud and self-reliant. They are very disappointed by the failures of the Jewish peace movements.

To throw the Arab members out of the Knesset is, as a French politician once famously said, "This is worse than a crime – it is a mistake!"

It would cut the ties between the Israeli state and more than 20% of its citizens. Some Israelis may dream of evicting the Arabs altogether from the historical country – all six million of them in Israel proper, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip -  but that is a pipedream. The world in which this was once possible does not exist any more.

What is possible, and indeed already exists, is a creeping apartheid. It is already the reality in the West bank and East Jerusalem, and – as this episode shows – it is becoming the reality in Israel proper, too.

The hysteria that has engulfed the country after the "visit to the 'terrorists' families" has touched the Labor party, and even Meretz, too.

I am putting "terrorists" in quotation marks because they are terrorists only to the Jews. For Arabs they are heroes, shaheeds, Muslims who sacrifice their lives to "testify" to the greatness of Allah.

The question is, of course, what is the job of an Arab MK? To upset the Jews? Or to narrow the gap and convince Israelis that Israeli-Palestinian peace is both possible and worthwhile.

I am afraid that Zuabi's smile does not help with the second aim.

IF ANYTHING, this affair has reinforced the arguments for the Two State.  Let each of the two states have a parliament of its own, where they can commit all the stupidities they want, and a serious joint Coordination Council, where serious decisions can be taken.