A Coalition Whose Only Common Factor is Opposition to Netanyahu - Meet Israel's New Prime Minister

The Zionist 'Left' Joins Hands with the pro-Transfer Far-Right in Israel's New Government

The following article first appeared in Weekly Worker 10 June 2021 as House Built on Sand

On Sunday, assuming the coalition of eight parties holds together and there are no defections, the hardline, former settler leader, Naftali Bennett, will be sworn in as the new Prime Minister of Israel. However if anyone believes that this coalition will put an end to the run of four General Elections in two years, then they are likely to be disappointed. It would be a brave person who gave this government even a year before it breaks up.

Netanyahu doing his best to play the Arab card with the inclusion of the conservative Ra'am Party in the new coalition

Netanyahu, the original Donald Trump, whose incitement is widely believed to have led to the assassination of Israeli Labor Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, is not going quietly. With his imminent departure from office, Netanyahu can hear the sound of prison doors clanging behind him. Currently he is facing 3 charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

On June 3 Netanyahu tweeted that ‘Bennett sold the Negev to RAAM! All right-wing Knesset members must oppose this dangerous left-wing government.’ RAAM is a reference to the one Arab party in the coalition, the United Arab List, a conservative Islamist party headed by Mansour Abbas, which broke away from the left wing and nationalist Joint List dominated by Hadash, the Israeli Communist Party.

Speaking to the right-wing Channel 20 Netanyahu called Bennett “a habitual liar” and that the emergent government was “more dangerous than the [2005 Gaza] Disengagement and Oslo [Accords].” For Netanyahu to call anyone ‘a liar’ is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Mansour Abbas and Netanyahu with whom he had previously been negotiating

Netanyahu accused Bennett of engaging in a “liquidation sale” of the country and claimed the incoming government was in league with the so-called “deep state.” All the paranoid racism and conspiracy theories of Trump rolled into one by the master thief himself.

When his back is against the wall then Netanyahu has no hesitation in playing the ‘Arab card’ as he did six years ago when on his Facebook page he warned, in a video that

“The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are heading to the polling stations in droves. Left-wing NGOs are bringing them in buses.”

None of it was true and in fact the turnout by Jews was higher than that by Arabs but it did the trick. Right-wing voters did come out in droves and they voted for Likud.

Bennett has responded by asserting that the government he hopes to lead “is 10 degrees to the right of the current one” whilst appealing to Netanyahu to “let go” that “People are allowed to vote for a government even if you do not lead it.” Netanyahu, is Israel’s longest serving Prime Minister at more than 15 years.

Israel is a Jewish Supremacist state and it is natural for political leaders to argue as to who is the most anti-Arab. In is this is what right-wing means. All parties, including the Israeli Labour Party do it.  Isaac Herzog, the new President of Israel, when leader of the ILP was a past master at dog whistling. He told Labour MKs that

“A false impression exists that we take the needs of Palestinians into account before the needs of the State of Israel,”

He also told Labor activists that

“his faction’s MKs needed to correct an impression that they are always “Arab lovers…. God forbid, and without giving the impression – from what I have heard after meeting with the Israel public – that we always like Arabs.”

Of course this was true. The Israeli Labour Party was the original party of anti-Arab incitement and the Nakba, the expulsion of ¾ million Palestinians in 1947/8. The ILP was the party that instituted military rule over Israeli Palestinians until 1966.

But what is the truth? Is Bennett about to lead the Tel Aviv Soviet? Is he preparing to storm Israel’s equivalent of the Winter Palace?

The new Israeli government, if it comes to power, is no less right-wing than Netanyahu’s putative coalition government with the exception of the neo-Nazi Jewish Power led by Itamar ben Gvir, a disciple of Rabbi Meir Kahane, who believed in the expulsion of all Palestinians from Israel and the Occupied Territories.

What has infuriated Netanyahu and the Israeli Right is that, for the first time in its history, an Arab party is a formal part of a government coalition, albeit that it won’t be taking ministerial posts. The irony is that Netanyahu also held talks with Mansour Abbas, in order to persuade him to support his coalition whilst remaining outside the government. This however was vetoed by Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionism bloc which includes Jewish Power. They refused to have ‘terrorists’ (for which read Arabs) associated with the government.

Bezalel Smotrich - leader of Jewish Zionism

Netanyahu and Likud have therefore focussed on ‘persuading’ individual MKs from Yamina, the party that Bennett heads, to refuse to support the new government. For Netanyahu, ‘persuasion’ should be interpreted in the same sense as the mafia would use the term when convincing their clients to had over ‘protection money’.

Bennett has already been depicted in a kaffiyeh and with a swastika and his picture has been burned. Social media is full of death threats against him and his family. He is being called a traitor and a court Jew. At least 4 members of Yamina have been provided with extra security by Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service.

Protests outside Yamina MK Orbach

Idit Silman MK can’t even send her son to school because of the threats. Six leading religious-Zionist rabbis, led by Chaim Druckman issued a letter on Saturday calling on the public to do everything in their power to prevent the new government taking power as the religious right and the Ultra-Orthodox parties – Shas and United Torah Judaism - try to come to terms with the fact that they will not be in government for the first time in a generation.

Yitzhak Rabin is widely believed to have been assassinated as a result of his decision to rely on the support of an Arab Party

‘Everything in their power’ should be interpreted as meaning just that. There is no doubt that Yigal Amir, Rabin’s assassin had received authorisation from unnamed rabbis, as well as the declaration that he was a din rodef, a traitor.

Silman complained that a car with a loudspeaker on the roof followed her vehicle around town. The Army Radio reported that her children had been “banned” from attending their youth movements. In Zionism attacking children is seen as a legitimate way of getting at their parents. Not for nothing is Israel known as ‘the only democracy in the Middle East.’

Silman and Orbach MKs Yamina

Those who think I am exaggerating should recall Richard Goldstone, the South Africa Jewish Judge who chaired the UN Inquiry which issued a Report accusing Israel of war crimes in Operation Cast Lead in 2008/9 was banned from attending his grandson’s bar mitveh. It was only after an outcry that South Africa’s Zionists backed off and Goldstone was allowed to attend. But one result of the attacks was that Goldstone attempted to have the Report withdrawn although the other two members of the Inquiry refused to support him.

The head of Shin Bet, Nadav Argaman, issued a rare warning this week that Netanyahu’s campaign of incitement could lead to political violence.

“This discourse may be interpreted among certain groups or individuals as one that allows violent and illegal activity and could even lead to harm to individuals,”

It is a measure of how far to the racist right the Israeli state has gone that what is in effect a choice between two far-right coalitions is subject to such tactics. The proposed coalition government consists of

right wing settlers in Jeruslem

Yamina, a religious settler party which has 6 seats, one MK Amichai Chikli having already defected. Bennett was former head of the Yesha Settlers’ Council. When it comes to anti-Arab comments Bennett can outdo anything that Netanyahu has to offer.

In 2013 he said that Palestinian “terrorists should be killed, not released”, and in 2018 – the same year Israeli snipers were murdering unarmed Palestinian demonstrators at the Gaza fence – Bennett said Israeli troops should have a “shoot to kill” policy, including for minors. Asked about the army targeting children, he replied: “They are not children. They are terrorists. We are fooling ourselves.”

Bennett is also famous for saying ‘I’ve Killed Lots Of Arabs In My Life And There’s No Problem With That”

Gideon Saar’s New Hope, a breakaway from Likud has 6 seats and is to the right of Netanyahu.

Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beteinu has 7 seats. A secular party of the far-Right, it depends mainly on Russian voters. Lieberman can only be described as a fascist who is on record as saying that Israeli Palestinians who don’t take a loyalty oath should be either expelled or beheaded. He has also said that it would be better to drown thousands of Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea if possible, ‘since that’s the lowest point in the world.’

Yesh Atid with 17 votes is headed by Yair Lapid. In Israeli terms it is described as a ‘centrist’ party but in Britain it would be on the Tory Right.  Lapid is, in the unlikely event that the coalition lasts, scheduled to take over as Prime Minister in two years time. However that is highly unlikely.

Benny Gantz, leader of what is left of Blue and White with 8 seats, entered the last government as Defence Minister with Netanyahu. He was supposed to become Prime Minister by rotation but Netanyahu outwitted him. He is supporting the new government and will retain his position as Defence Minister.

The Zionist Left, or what’s left of it, has had no compunction in entering the coalition with the sole purpose of removing Netanyahu. The Israeli Labor Party, led by Merav Michaeli, the grand daughter of the famous Zionist collaborator with the Nazis in Hungary, Rudolf Kasztner, has 7 seats.

Meretz, led by Nitzan Horowitz, which in Zionist terms is seen as far-left but in Britain would be seen as right-wing Labour, at best, has 6 seats. It too has agreed to go into coalition even though gay rights are supposed to be its hot issue and the coalition includes anti-gay parties.

It says everything about the Zionist ‘left’ that it is prepared to enter a coalition of the far-Right under a hard right former settler leader who has no intention of agreeing to any peace deal with the Palestinians and who is on record as favouring the annexation of the West Bank.

Mansour Abbas, who just scraped into the Knesset with 4 seats, has signed the coalition agreement but he is effectively supporting the government from the outside. It is after all too much to expect an Israeli Arab party to actually hold ministerial posts.  Abbas will instead accept the Chairmanship of two Knesset Committees.

What Abbas hopes to gain is extra funding for Israel’s Palestinian communities, the recognition of three ‘unrecognised’ Bedouin villages in the Negev, which means they will then receive basic facilities such as electricity, schools and running water, and a repeal of a law which heavily penalises illegal construction in Arab towns. Since land is so scarce in Palestinian Israeli towns, and since building permits are hard to come by, people build homes regardless and the authorities regularly demolish them. Whether or not he manages to secure these concessions remains to be seen.

I have little doubt that if Bennett manages to survive to the weekend and no further Yamina MKs are peeled off that the government is not likely to last. The pressure from those even further to the right will be immense. Abbas too is likely to come under massive pressure from Israeli Palestinians, especially if there are further attacks on the Al Aqsa mosque and worshippers.

Already Netanyahu has supported a new March of the Flags by thousands of settler youth through Arab East Jerusalem. The march has been rerouted away from  the Arab quarter for the time being but there will be pressure for the right to demonstrate that they have every right to hold a pogrom in Arab Jerusalem.

Also the question of the evictions at Sheikh Jarrar is looming. Already Attorney General Mendelbit has announced that the government will not be opposing the evictions as the racist laws which allow the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem are quite clear. Which is true. Jews can reclaim houses they once owned in East Jerusalem before Jerusalem was partitioned between East and West in 1948. However Palestinians are not able to reclaim homes they abandoned in West Jerusalem.

The justice of evicting Arabs for the crime of not being Jewish poses no problem to Israel’s Supreme Court. Whether the new governing coalition will step in seems doubtful but if Jerusalem explodes as a result, then Abbas may yet be forced to pull his support for the coalition.

Tony Greenstein

Video Emerges of Netanyahu Praising Israeli Fascist Group Im Tirtzu

In this article from Electronic Intifada we learn of death threats to the Swedish Foreign Minister from Zvi Zameret, a former official of Israel’s education ministry.  In his article Zameret recounts the fate of Count Folke Bernadotte, a Swedish diplomat who was murdered by the Stern Gang/Lehi in Jerusalem in September 1948.  Bernadotte had been mediating on behalf of the United Nations over the question of the position of Jerusalem in a settlement.

Previous Im Tirtzu poster denouncing Naomi Hazan of the NIF, a Zionist group, for funding Israeli human rights groups

Margot Walstrom - Swedish Foreign Minister - Subject to Netanyahu's vitriolic outbursts and threats of death

Zameret in his article links what happened to Bernadotte to what might happen to Margot Walstrom, the Swedish Foreign Minister.  Walstrom had previously condemned Israel’s use of extra-judicial execution of Palestinians only to be denounced by Netanyahu. See In 2016 one doesn’thave to be Adolf Eichmann to be executed in Israel – it’s enough to be a teenage Palestinian girl with scissors  She was met by the normal hysterical denunciation by Netanyahu.  She was ‘stupid and outrageous’ for condemning Israel’s death squads even though it is advocated by Israeli government ministers that someone possessing a knife or even a pair of scissors, regardless of whether they pose a threat or not, should be killed.

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Walstrom

Contrast this with a certain Yishai Schlissel, a religious madmen who had already served 10 years for stabbing people at the 2005 Jerusalem Gay Pride march.  Ten years later, having only just been released 3 weeks before, he was allowed to wander into the Gay Pride march by the Police unhindered.  Given he was dressed as an ultra-orthodox Haredi Jew, who are uniformly hostile to gay rights, this was in itself a strange decision.  When he started going on a rampage with a knife Israeli police chased after him and wrestled him to the ground.  They did not shoot him in the back because he wasn’t a Palestinian.  The result was that several people were stabbed and one, Shira Banki was murdered.

Palestinian school girl with back pack executed by Israeli army

It is also interesting that a video has emerged of Benjamin Netanyahu approving of and urging support for a fascist organisation Im Tirzu.  In 2013 Im Tirzu brought a legal action against a group that called them fascist.  The Jerusalem District Court, which heard the petition, rejected the action because ‘‘certain lines of resemblance’ to fascism inthe ideology or activities of the right-wing movement can be seen as‘truthful.’ 

Im Tirtzu's McCarthyist Campaign Poster Against Israel's Cultural Figures 

Although the Supreme Court reversed this decision, on nakedly political grounds viz. sympathy for its politics, Im Tirtzu has just this past week been accused of being a fascist organisation.  This time even right-wing politicians denounced it.  Im Tirtzu decided to launch a campaign against ‘moles in culture’ demonising even left-Zionist poets, actresses and novellists like Amos Oz and David Grossman.  They were undermining the nationalist fabric by daring to criticise the Israeli Defence Forces.  There is a long and good pedigree for this.  The Nazis denounced 'degenerate art' and when they were in power they burned books and art they considered undermined the nationalist and Volkish spirit.

Even Benny Begin, a former Likud MK and son of the Likud Prime Minister Menachem Begin ‘accused Im Tirtzu of fascism and called the new campaign “a new level of ugly.”

Even the far-right racist, Education Minister Naftali Bennett denounced Im Tirtzu’s campaign as “embarrassing and unnecessary.”  Right-wing MKs flog ‘fascist’ group for ‘outing’ lefty artists 

None of this has stopped Netanyahu from praising the group.

Tony Greenstein

Sweden investigating Israeli death threats against its foreign minister

Ali Abunimah 29 January 2016

Palestinian children executed by Israeli military death squads

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström. Ryan Brown UN Women

Swedish security officials are investigating Israeli death threats directed at their foreign minister Margot Wallström.

Last week, Zvi Zameret, a former official of Israel’s education ministry, published an article in Hebrew implying that Wallström deserved the same fate as Count Folke Bernadotte, a Swedish UN diplomat murdered by a Zionist militia in 1948.

“There are security people looking at this issue and we have no more comment than that,” Wallström’s spokesperson Kristian Brangenfeldt told the Swedish publication Etc.

“But I know which article you mean,” Brangenfeldt added in reference to Zameret’s op-ed, “and it felt very strange.”

The Swedish foreign ministry did not respond to a request for additional comment from The Electronic Intifada.

Persona non grata

Wallström has raised the ire of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for suggesting that there should be an investigation into Israel’s frequent killings of Palestinian youths that human rights groups term extrajudicial executions.

The Israeli leader recently denounced Wallström’s comments as “outrageous and stupid.”

Wallström also angered the Israelis by connecting the kind of radicalization behind the November attacks in Paris that killed 130 people to the situation in the Middle East, “where not least, the Palestinians see that there is not a future.”

Sweden was already in Israel’s bad books for announcing in 2014 that it would recognize the “State of Palestine” (I strongly criticized this action, but for other reasons).

Earlier this month, Wallström cancelled a visit to Israel after officials said they would refuse to meet her.

“Inspiration”

The article by Zvi Zameret, headlined “Margot Wallström’s source of inspiration,” was published in Makor Rishon, a paper owned by US billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a major financier of the Republican Party and anti-Palestinian organizations.

Folke Bernadotte was a Swedish aristocrat and diplomat who helped rescue thousands of Jews and others from Nazi death camps during the Second World War.

Later, he became the UN mediator for Palestine. He was assassinated in Jerusalem on 17 September 1948 by the Stern Gang, the Zionist armed group among whose leaders was Yitzhak Shamir, a future prime minister of Israel.

In the article, translated for Mondoweiss by Jonathan Ofir, Zameret lists Bernadotte’s supposed transgressions in the eyes of the Zionist movement and then turns his fire on Wallström: “The Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström, with her characteristic covert anti-Semitism, with her arrogance, ignorance, and her interest-bound speculation regarding her future Muslim voters – she too seeks to fight the foundations of the State of Israel. I am convinced and certain that her intentions will smoulder, just as all of the undignified count’s [Bernadotte] intentions did.”

Zameret has denied that his article was an implicit endorsement of violence against Wallström, but Swedish officials will be concerned because of high profile assassinations of the country’s political leaders in recent decades.

In 2003, Wallström’s predecessor Anna Lindh was murdered while out shopping in Stockholm. Her killer, Swedish citizen Mijailo Mijailović, is serving a life sentence.

In February 1986, the country’s Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot dead while walking home with his wife from a cinema in the Swedish capital.

His murder has never been solved, but among the many theories pursued by investigators over the years is that it was linked to South Africa’s apartheid regime, of which Palme was an outspoken international critic at the time.

Incitement

Zameret’s article came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had turned his anger on Wallström.

It also comes amid an atmosphere of incitement against domestic and international critics of Israel’s violent repression against Palestinians.

Last month, the Israeli right-wing group Im Tirzu released a report calling on the Israeli government to shut down human rights organizations that receive foreign funding and criticize Israeli policies.

Im Tirzu also released a video that labels the heads of four major Israeli human rights groups as traitors who aid terrorists at the behest of their foreign bankrollers.

It should be recalled that rising incitement preceded the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by the Jewish militant Yigal Amir. This included Rabin frequently being called a traitor for signing the 1993 Oslo accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Many in Israel still feel Netanyahu himself played a direct role in this incitement.

Now, a 2012 video has come to light titled “PM Netanyahu’s message to ‘Im Tirtzu’ supporters.” It features the Israeli prime minister praising the group and urging donations to support it.

Chemi Shalev, the US editor of the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz, tweeted the video on Friday with this comment: “Making the rounds (and turning stomachs) 2012 Netanyahu appeal in English to support proto-fascist Im Tirzu.”

It is one more indicator that incitement and extremism in Israel are not marginal phenomena but are nurtured at the very top.