Israel’s General Election – The Death of the Zionist Left

The Israeli Labour Party Slumps to a Record Low and the Arabs Save Meretz from Oblivion!

Cast your mind back, if you can, to 1949, when the State of Israel held its first elections. A mere year after the Nakba, when ¾ million Palestinians had been expelled thus allowing Israel the ability to call itself both democratic and Jewish.

How a Labour Kibbutz shifted its votes since the 2015 general election

In that election Mapai, the Israeli Labour Party, gained 46 out of 120 seats in the Knesset. In second place was Mapam, the United Workers Party, then in an alliance with Ahdut Ha’avodah, a militaristic left-Zionist party with 19 seats giving the parties of Labour Zionism an absolute majority.  20 years later the leadership of Ahdut, Israel Galili, Yitzhak Tabenkin and Yigal Allon, would form the basis of the Greater Israel movement Gush Emunim and abandon Labour Zionism for messianic colonisalism.

However the leader of Mapai, David Ben Gurion preferred to form a coalition with the religious parties since the definition of Jewish could not be a secular one and had to be in the hands of the Orthodox.

Avi Gabbay of Israel's Labor Party and Yair Lapid of the 'centrist' Yesh Atid

In the 1951 elections Mapai and Mapam lost 5 seats but they still had exactly half the seats in the Knesset and in practice, with client Arab parties, an overall majority. In 1955, after Ahdut had split with Mapam, the parties of Labour Zionism had lost a further seat. In 1959 the Labour Zionist parties gained 63 seats giving them an overall majority again.  In 1961 the Labour Zionist parties achieved 59 seats and in 1965 the three Labour Zionist parties, which now included Rafi, Ben Gurion’s right-wing breakaway from Mapai, totalled 63 seats. In 1969 the Israeli Labour Alignment, a merger of all the Labour Zionist parties gained 56 seats, the highest number any party has ever achieved in an Israeli election.

In 1973 the Labour Alignment gained 51 seats to Likud’s 39 seats but in 1977, in the wake of the Yom Kippur war, when Israel was taken by surprise by the joint attack of Egypt and Syria, Likud gained 43 seats to Labour’s 32 and Menachem Begin formed the first Likud government. Since then the Israeli Labour Party has only twice formed a government on its own.

The first such time was in 1992 when Yitzhak Rabin became Prime Minister. The Israeli Labour Party gained 44 seats and Meretz (which included Mapam and other parties) gained 12 seats. The government rested on the tacit backing of the Arab parties.

Contrast this with the recent election. The Israeli Labour Party gained just 6 seats in the recent elections in comparison to the 24 seats it held as the Zionist Union (with Tzipi Livini’s Hatnuah) in the 2015 Knesset. Meretz declined from 5 to four seats. 

The morning after - shell shocked Israeli Labor Party leaders gather

So from a high point of 65 seats in 1949, the parties of Labour Zionism have now slumped to just 10 seats between them. What makes this even worse is that although Meretz is a Zionist party, it relied heavily on Arab votes, about a quarter of its total, in order to retain any seats in the Knesset. Meretz lost significant support to Benjamin Gantz’s Kahol Lavan (Blue and White) Party. A Zionist party that relies on Arab votes does not have a healthy or promising future

If it had not been for a very significant increase in votes from Israel’s Druze population in particular, which previously voted for Likud and parties of the Zionist Right, Meretz would not have gained any seats. This switch to Meretz was a consequence of Netanyahu’s decision to introduce the Jewish Nation State Law last summer. In Kafr Qasem, the site of a famous massacre in 1956, Meretz gained 39% of the vote.

It wasn't  Herut/Likud militias who perpetrated this massacre but those of the Labour Zionist militias

Even members of the Kibbutzim, the last reservoir of support for Labour Zionism in Israel voted predominantly for Kahol Lavan on the basis of wanting to see Netanyahu removed. Ideologically there is little or nothing now to distinguish Labour Zionism from its centrist rivals.

What is the explanation for this collapse in support for Labour Zionist parties? I suggest it is a culmination of a series of factors. The Labour Zionist parties were never socialist or even left-wing in the sense that is understood in the West.  Meretz is, at best, a party of civil liberties but it doesn’t challenge the Zionist basis of the Israeli state. It doesn’t like its more overt racist character but it signs up to Israel as a Jewish state.

The Israeli Labour Party today has no social base. Where once the major organisation of Labour Zionism, Histadrut, a trade union which was also Israel’s second largest employer, provided a comprehensive series of services such as a national health service, today it is merely a conglomeration of individual unions.  It’s industry has long been privatised.

The lack of any socialist or left-wing ideology and any economic or social base has left it rudderless, without a purpose. The ILP is not seen to stand for anything.  This was one reason that in 2017 it elected as its new leader, Avi Gabbay, the ex-CEO of Bezeq, Israel’s largest telecommunications firm and a former Minister in Netanyahu’s government! Gabbay had only joined the ILP three months before.

Gabbay’s strategy was simple.  To move the ILP further to the right in order to compete with Likud.  He even took advice on this from Tony Blair! Gabbay announced that he was opposed to dismantling any settlements in the Occupied Territories and he supported Netanyahu’s attempts to deport Israel’s 40,000 Black African refugees because they constituted a ‘threat’ to Israel’s national identity, not being Jewish.

This strategy has failed dismally. Netanyahu has demonstrated that when it comes to staking out a position on the Right no one can beat him.  Netanyahu was even responsible for the election merger of Jewish Home and Otzma Yehudit, an openly racist party of the late Meir Kahane, into the United Right party. This gave secular Israelis even less reason to vote for the ILP, especially since Gabbay had told his own party that the Left had forgotten what it is to be Jewish!

Gantz’s Blue and White Party, led by former generals and Yair Lapid, leader of the ‘centrist’ Yesh Atid (in practice firmly on the right), was held together by only one thing – opposition to Netanyahu.  I predict that it will not be long before this wholly artificial and unprincipled alliance will haemorrhage members.

Avi Gabbay will no doubt be despatched back to Bezeq but for the Israeli Labour Party the problem still remain. What exactly does the Israeli Labour Party stand for? As Israel moves further to the nationalist Right with a plurality of Israeli Jews wanting to see Israel’s Arab citizens expelled, a sentiment shared by Likud’s partners, Yisrael Beteinu and the United Right Party of Bezalel Smotrich and Rafi Peretz, the old Labour Zionist ideals, which represented collective colonialism, are now only of interest to historians.

Meretz also faces a dilemma.  A Zionist party relying on the support of Israel’s Palestinians is a living contradiction!  Meretz has never been a party of left activism and it has never, for example supported Israel’s teenage refuseniks who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories. Merertz should consider the votes it received in this election as being on loan only.

What Meretz, which is committed to a two state solution will not face up to is that Israel is now one state, from the Jordan to the sea. With nearly 5 million Palestinians living under occupation it is an apartheid state. In these elections we had the obscenity of 400 settlers in Hebron having the right to vote whilst the 200,000 Palestinians in Hebron had no vote.  Meretz has no answer to this or the fact that two legal systems operate in the same area of land.

Meretz’s problem stems from its desire to see a non-racist Zionism. A democratic Jewish state.  These are impossible contradictions.

As Israel races to the nationalist right its defenders in the West, from Donald Trump in the United States to Theresa May and Tom Watson in Britain’s Labour Party have only one answer – to accuse Israel’s critics of ‘anti-Semitism’.

Tony Greenstein

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

Netanyahu Invites the neo-Nazi Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) to help him form a new Coalition government

As Labour MPs indulge in attacks on fake ‘anti-Semitism’ Israel moves to the ultra-Right

In 1984 Rabbi Meir Kahane of Kach (Thus) entered the Knesset with over 25,000 votes.  Kach stood on a programme which, as The Times of Israel’s Michael Aarenau noted even members of Likud likened to the Nazis’ 1935 Nuremberg Race Laws.

Smotrich, Netanyahu and Itamar Gvir - the difference between them is one of semantics

In 1988, when polls suggested that Kach could get between 4 and 12 seats, Kahane was banned from standing by the Supreme Court. The reason that Kach was banned had nothing to do with opposition to racism but a fear that the image of Israel would be damaged. In the four years that Kahane was a Knesset member, when he spoke all the other 119 members would walk out.

But yesterday what was trefa (unclean) has now become kosher. What used to be Zionism’s forbidden fruits have now become its delicacies. But even in 1984, what Kahane said openly the other Zionist parties muttered behind closed doors.

Fearing defeat by the Centrist Right bloc of Benny Gantz’s Resilience and Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid parties Netanyahu openly pressurized the far-Right Jewish Home-National Union religious settlers’ parties to unite with Otzma Yehudit, the direct descendants of Kahane’s Kach.

One can get an idea of Otzma Yehudit’s politics from its leader Michael Ben Ari, who was a member of the 18^th Knesset for the National Union between 2009 and 2013. Apart from instigating a pogrom against Black African refugees in South Tel Aviv Ari is famous for tearing up a copy of the New Testament that a missionary sent him and putting it in a trash bin.

In September 2010 in response to being told that for every Israeli killed, six Palestinians had died, he remarked that "For every one dead on our side, we need to kill 500 and not six." This was five times the number of hostages that the Nazis murdered in Yugoslavia for every German soldier killed. Ben-Ari holds left-wing Jews and human rights organisations in particular contempt, referring to them as “germs” that need to be eradicated. During the 2012 Operation Pillar of Defence he stated that “there are no innocents in Gaza…mow them down! Kill the Gazans without thought or mercy!” This is who Netanyahu has gone out of his way to ensure will be a member of the next Knesset.

Netanyahu - it would seem there is no one on the Right with whom he won't get into bed with

It would be wrong however to simply concentrate on Otzma Yehudit. Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home), which had 6 members, including the Education and Justice Ministers in the last government, is no slouch when it comes to racism and bigotry.  Bezalel Smotrich, who described himself as a ‘proud homophobe’ distinguished himself by advocating separate maternity wards for Jewish and Arab women on the grounds that his wife didn’t want to give birth next to a woman whose child might become a ‘terrorist’. However, despite the outrage these comments provoked, it is a fact that 5 of Israel’s 7 major hospitals allow Jewish women to give birth in Arab free wards.

Habayit Hayehudi members vote to unite with Otzma Yehudit

In 2013, the Deputy Defence Minister Rabbi Eli Dahan openly stated of Palestinians that ‘To me, they are like animals, they aren’t human.’ Despite considering gays an abomination he held that “A Jew always has a much higher soul than a gentile, even if he is a homosexual.”

Whereas Menachem Begin, the first Likud Prime Minister would have nothing to do with Kahane and his brand of Jewish messianic fascism, there are no waters too polluted for Netanyahu to fish in.

The reasons for Netanyahu’s decision to invited Otzma Yehudit into the Knesset and the governing coalition were that the far-Right in Israel today commands at least 250,000 votes. The problem is that they are split between at least 4 parties meaning that these votes could be wasted. When Kahane was elected in 1984 Israel’s proportional representation system meant a party which gained 25,000 votes (1%) was guaranteed a seat but in the 2013 Knesset the threshold was increased from 2% to 3.25%.  The idea behind this was to exclude the Arab parties but instead the Arabs parties united to form the Joint List, becoming the third largest party in the Knesset with 13 seats.

In the words of YNet ‘A dynasty of racism and provocation is on its way to the Israeli parliament’. Yet Israel’s Arab population will ask what is new? Whether it was Labour or Likud governments they suffered ongoing violence and institutional discrimination. What we are seeing today is Zionist ideology and practice catching up with each other.  Whereas Israeli Labour governments spoke the language of collectivism and social democracy, they practised ethnic cleansing and exclusion. The new, openly fascist Right has taken the hypocrisy out of Zionism and in the process left Labour Zionism high and dry.

When Meir Kahane preached that Israel could be a Jewish state or a Democratic state he was stating a truth that generations of ‘left’ Zionists preferred to ignore. Labour Zionism spoke of a Jewish democratic state which was always an oxymoron. What happens if the Arabs’ higher birth-rate meant they become the majority?  Would the Zionist parties acquiesce in a non-Jewish state or would there be a new round of ethnic cleansing like in 1948?

In other words which is more important, a democratic or a Jewish state? For Zionism a Jewish state was always the most important goal. which was why a majority was gerrymandered by the new Israeli state in 1948 through the expulsion of 90% of the Arabs. In the words of one of the key organisations of Israeli Apartheid, the Jewish National Fund, ‘over 70% of the Jewish population in Israel opposes allocating KKL-JNF land to non-Jews, while over 80% prefer the definition of Israel as a Jewish state, rather than as the state of all its citizens.’

Members of Otzma Yehudit Baruch Marzel and Michael Ben Ari in a protest in Jerusalem, July 22, 20018. טס שפלן / ג'יני

Successive Zionist governments, beginning with the Israeli Labour governments of 1949-1977 were opposed to mixed marriages and sexual/ personal relationships between Jews and Arabs. That was why marriage between a Jew and a non-Jew was made impossible. As Hannah Arendt noted at the time of the Eichmann trial in 1961:

‘‘Israeli citizens, religious and non-religious seem agreed upon the desirability of having a law which prohibits intermarriage… there certainly was something breathtaking in the naiveté with which the prosecution denounced the infamous Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which had prohibited intermarriage and sexual intercourse between Jews and Germans.

Hannah

But what Labour and Likud whispered under their breath Kahane and the thugs of Lehava openly practiced. During his four year stint in the Knesset Kahane proposed a series of laws which outlined what a Jewish theocratic state would look like: As Bradley Burston noted in Ha'aretz this included:

- Revocation of non-Jewish citizenship.

- Expulsion of non-Jews from Jerusalem and eventually Israel.

- The eventual imposition of slavery on Arabs and other non-Jews.

- Prohibition of contact between Jews and Arabs, including sexual relations.

- Segregated beaches.

- Prohibition of non-Jews living in Jewish neighborhoods.

- Forced dissolution of all intermarriages.

Not only did much of this come straight from the 1935 Nazi Nuremburg Law but much of it merely codified existing practice.

For example the prohibition of non-Jews living in Jewish neighbourhoods is already existing practice.  Hundreds of Jewish communities in Israel are Jewish only. That was the purpose of the 2011 Admissions Committees Law, to keep out Arabs (and also Black and Sephardi Jews). This was reinforced by the Jewish Nation State Law 2018 which advocated Jewish Settlement as a ‘national value’. The JNF has been practicing Jewish only settlement since the early 20^th century but Israel’s far-Right wishes to make explicit that which was always implicit. What was previously normal but not written down in law is now becoming codified and rigid.

If the idea of Arabs as slaves seems far-fetched we should remember that the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Ovadia Yosef ruled that non-Jews would be expelled from Israel apart from a few who ‘will be allowed to remain in the land and fulfil roles reserved for gentiles in the service of Jews.’ That role was made clear in a sermon in 2010.  “Goyim (non-Jews) were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel,”

What Kahane represented was the face that Zionism itself could not bear to see.  However even though Kahane died at the hands of an assassin in 1990 his ideas have lived on. The present Israeli elections are likely to see the demise of Labour Zionism.  Meretz, which as the ‘Marxist’ Zionist Mapam was the second largest party in the 1949 Knesset, may be wiped out entirely. The Israeli Labour Party which until 1977 formed every single government is presently forecast to gain less than 10 seats (down from 24 in the present Knesset).

Otzma Yehudit Marzel and Michael ben Ari

Naturally this is causing apoplexy among Zionism’s liberal supporters. Batya Ungar-Sargon, Opinion Editor of The Forward wrote that Netanyahu Just Invited Israel’s Equivalent Of The KKK To Join The Government. Ungar-Sargon, who has just finished targeting Congresswoman Ilhan Omar for tweeting that AIPAC is in the business of buying political support for Israel wrote that:

‘These are the David Dukes and the Richard Spencers of the Jewish State, people who believe that Jewish sovereignty depends on the oppression, ethnic cleansing and even murder of Israel’s Arab population.’

To listen to Ungar-Sargon you would imagine that ethnic cleansing, murder and oppression are novelties for the Palestinians.

American Jews, who have been shaken by the recent murder of 11 of their compatriots at Pittsburgh, are the most liberal part of America’s white population. They are especially sensitive since the Trump Administration combines white supremacy, demonisation of refugees and a not-too-hidden anti-Semitism with ardent support for Israel and Zionism. They are looking aghast as Israel moves off the political radar.

The American Jewish establishment is also shaken, not by the open association of with fascists and racists but by Netanyahu’s brazenness. For decades these leaders have turned a blind eye to all sorts of racist atrocities and provided cover for Israel’s repeated massacres. But what they cannot stand is that Israel no longer seems to care what others think of it. They know Trump will support them regardless. As Susie Gelman, a major Zionist philanthropist asks ‘Is there any line of decency and morality that he (Netanyahu) will not cross?” complaining that “Netanyahu’s actions are feeding the estrangement of young American Jews from Israel’ which is her real concern before assuring her interlocutors that ‘I still feel committed to the Israeli people’ making a fatuous distinction ‘between the Israeli government and the people of Israel.” Perhaps it has not occurred to Ms Gelman that the reason why Netanyahu can get away with what he does is that the Israeli people support and vote for him?

As Ha'aretz notes the main concern of America’s Jewish Establishment is not the fact of Israeli racism and ethnic cleansing but that ‘Netanyahu's move will hurt Israel's image and create rift with Jewish Americans.’

It is hard to stifle a smile when the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League Jonathan Greenblatt whines that "There should be no room for racism & no accommodation for intolerance in Israel or any democracy," Where, one wonders, was Jonathan when the Chief Rabbi of Safed Shmuel Elihayu issued an edict in 2011 that Jews were forbidden to rent rooms and apartments to Arabs? When criticized Eliyahu was backed by hundreds of Israeli rabbis. To this day Eliyahu is a paid Israeli state official.

Zionism is coming full circle. The old hypocrisies have become redundant. Ideology and practice are coming into line. The logic of a Jewish state, like all ethno-nationalist states is that non-Jews do not belong. Just as Jews were not welcome in similar states in the Europe of the 1930’s.

Today there are large elements in Israel, in particular amongst the religious Zionists for whom the Palestinians represent the ancient foe of the Hebrews, the Amalekites. In Exodus 17:14, God told Moses that ‘I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.’ Yeah every man, woman, child and infant was to die. For those who are aware of the biblical story of Esther, Netanyahu is indeed the Jewish Haman.

Tony Greenstein  

Meir Kahane addresses a gathering at the Silver Springs Jewish Center in Maryland, October 27, 1988. (AP Photo/Doug Mills)

"Without unity the left will win." Page 4 and 5 of Israel Haiom newspaper, on Tuesday 19, 019.Israel Haiom screengrab

Meir Kahane in 1984Daniel Rosenblum

See below for articles about Netanyahu’s invitation to Kahane’s students:

Netanyahu Just Invited Israel’s Equivalent Of The KKK To Join The Government.

Banned in 1988, assassinated in 1990, mainstreamed in 2019: Kahane lives

U.S. Jewish Leaders Slam Netanyahu for Promoting Kahanists

Netanyahu Orchestrates Merger To Bring Extremists Into Knesset

I Thought Bibi Was Amoral. He's Not. He's Evil. Thanks to Him, Kahane Lives

Kahane Returns to the Knesset

Otzma Yehudit's history of racism and provocation