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Right Wing Nation - A View from Jerusalem; Israelis Must Seize the Chance to Recover Quickly

Israel is not a liberal democracy that supports the flourishing of its citizenry. Democracy requires consent of the governed, and Israel controls, directly and indirectly, millions of Palestinians without their consent. There is a progressive, liberal, civil rights movement in Israel - the third largest list in the Knesset. The awful crisis of the right's victory is an unprecedented opportunity for us to learn from our mistakes and create a new mass movement.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waves during his election rally in Tel Aviv, Israel, Sunday, March 15, 2015,Photo by AP // Haaretz

Right Wing Nation - Israel After the Elections - A View from Jerusalem

By Jeremiah (Jerry) Haber

March 19, 2015
Magnes Zionist

Jerusalem - Israel is a Right Wing Nation. What is "center" in Israel is right in the rest of the world. What is "right" is extreme right is, well, you fill in that one. Even had Herzog evened the score with Netanyahu he would not have been able to create an alternative government. That has been clear from the beginning.

There is a progressive, liberal, civil rights movement in Israel; indeed the third largest list in the Knesset will be what journalist Haim Baram calls the "consistent left".  Congratulations to the Joint List; mabruk; this is the list I voted for.  But because that left is predominantly Arab, it will never be invited by the Israeli Jewish parties to coalition negotiations. It appears that Meretz, the Jewish nationalist Left, will also be in the Knesset; good for them. But their numbers are small, and the soldiers' votes might actually kick them out. They are also now part of a permanent opposition.

Whether there is a narrow rightwing government, or a centrist-rightwing unity government (I prefer the former), liberal and progressive Jews and non-Jews will have to continue to question  their relationship to the State of Israel. This is not a state that is presided over by a unpopular tyrant. This is a state run by a very popular Jewish bigot, who gets elected by telling his supporters that there will be no Palestinian state, and that they must get out and vote in order to stop the Arab citizens of Israel "who are voting in droves."

"This is your god, O Israel" Aaron said to the Israelites, as they worshipped the golden calf of bigotry, deceit, and self-centeredness.

Today it will be it a little easier for liberals to distance themselves further from a country with which they cannot identify. Tonight, it will be a little easier for them to identify with the Palestinian Israelis, who are fighting for their civil rights just as the Jews fought such for such rights in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Today, the big winner of this election are the Palestinian people, who will press ahead for statehood, who have shown how, even after ethnic cleansing, they are a force to be reckoned with. The global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement will take off, and more progressives and centrists will support.

As for the Jews, how does the Hebrew song go? We survived Pharoah; we will survive this as well.

Hope and Change - How Israel Maybe Took a Step Today Towards Being Democratic and Jewish

By Jeremiah (Jerry) Haber

March 17, 2015
Magnes Zionist

Israel is not a liberal democracy that supports the flourishing of its citizenry. In fact, it is not a democracy, since democracy requires consent of the governed, and Israel controls, directly and indirectly, millions of Palestinians  without their consent on the West Bank and Gaza. It is not a liberal democracy even in what Peter Beinart calls "Democratic Israel", because it excludes a large percentage of its citizenry, native Palestinians, from the nation that the state represents. And because any government that rests on the votes of those outside the nation is considered, by a  great number of Israelis, illegitimate.

I don't believe Israel is substantively a Jewish state either,at least not with respect to  these issues. That is not to say that there are not a great many Jews here; on the contrary, it is a state of the Jews, and there are Jewish institutions, and Jewish folks like other folks, some good, some bad. But it is not a Jewish state in the sense that its founding principles do not embody core Jewish principles, in my opinion. In its treatment of its minorities, its underprivileged groups, its foreigners, it does not reach the level of a decent society, much less a Torah society. The fact that there may be better or worse societies in the world  doesn't affect my view that this society is not, on these questions, a substantively Jewish society

Israel could become substantively democratic if it  grants real political power to native Palestinians by ending the occupation; creating the ability for native Palestinians who are not citizens to become citizens, including the Palestinian refugees who wish to return; recognizing Palestinian Israeli citizens as a homeland minority with national and cultural rights; and empowering Palestinian parties by giving them control over ministries and budgets.

This is, of course, a dream. But today we are moving closer to realizing the dream, with the election of a party to the Knesset that will fight for those goals, the Joint List.

There are still many hurdles to face. For years I have been saying pessimistically that even if there were 20 or 30 members of the Knesset that believed in the aforementioned goals, they would be in a permanent opposition, because Israel is considered to be a Jewish state. Even the Joint List has said repeatedly that for ideological reasons it cannot sit in a Zionist government that makes decisions affecting settlements, Palestinians, lands, etc. There is almost a coalition of interests to keep Palestinians out of the government.

And then I read the vision of Ayman Oudeh, the lawyer who heads the Joint List,  who says that in ten years there could be an Arab prime minister of Israel, and that empowering Palestinian Israelis will be good for all Israelis.

And I remember the example of the anti-Zionist ultra-orthodox parties, who found creative ways to take care of their underfunded sectors without being full fledged members of the government, until time did its own work, and they began to be members of the government.

How can Israel become substantively Jewish? By becoming a society that attempts to eliminate social injustice. By becoming a desegregated society. By saying to itself, "If we are commanded to love the stranger as ourselves, because we were strangers in the land of Egypt, how much more so are we to take care of  ourselves, our citizens, especially those who have suffered through the creation and maintenance of an ethnic exclusivist state!"

Such a state will have its flaws; no state is perfect. But such a state and only such a state will be worthy of the adjective "Jewish".

One small step was taken today for Israel to become substantively Jewish and democratic - and, also, Palestinian.

[Jeremiah (Jerry) Haber is the nom de plume of Charles H. Manekin, an orthodox Jewish studies and philosophy professor, who divides his time between Israel and the US.
Why do I write under a nom de plume? Not because I am afraid of being hounded, like Norman Finkelstein -- thank God, I have tenure. But because I want to keep my academic persona and my polemical persona distinct. Writing under a nom de plume allows me to be more "unbuttoned." Maybe that's a copout; maybe not.
]

Disaster 2015: Israelis Must Seize the Chance to Recover Quickly

The awful crisis of the right's victory is an unprecedented opportunity for us to learn from our mistakes and create a new mass movement.

By Ari Shavit

March 19, 2015
Haaretz (Israel)

An Israeli protester waves a national flag during a rally demanding political change, Rabin Square, Tel Aviv March 7, 2015.
Photo by AFP // Haaretz

First of all, we must bow our heads. The people had their say. The election was free and fair. If the media skewed the game, they skewed it against the right. And in a decision against the current, the majority ruled that Benjamin Netanyahu would be prime minister, that Likud would be the ruling party, and that ultra-Orthodox and nationalist parties would be an integral part of the government.

Anyone who expected a rerun of 1999 when Labor's Ehud Barak became prime minister got an intense version of 1996 when Netanyahu became prime minister - a quiet rebellion and a night of surprise, with Netanyahu crowned emperor. A person committed to democracy cannot but accept these results because that's what the majority decided, and the majority is sovereign. In a legitimate process, Israel once again defined itself as Netanyahu's Israel.

And yet what happened was a disaster. Israel had a last-minute chance to swerve before crashing into the glacier of delegitimization, but it chose to collide with it. It had a last-minute chance to avoid a confrontation with the Palestinians, but it chose confrontation. With eyes wide open, Israelis once again chose blindness. Of sound mind they chose inebriation.

When blood is shed it will happen because the old-new majority chose not to see the Palestinians, the settlements or the occupation. When sanctions strike, it will happen because the old-new majority turned its back to the winds of time. A shabby, turbid election campaign ended with a clear decision that buried the chance of sobriety before the head-on collision with reality.

Even better put, what happened here was an earthquake. The intensity of the 2015 convulsion was no less than the tremor of 1977 when Likud came to power and of 1981 when it won an upset victory.

It's no accident that about a third of Israelis are steeped in depression today. It's enough to glance at the roster of the new Knesset - only about a quarter of the MKs are from parties fully committed to democracy. It's enough to glance at the makeup of the expected government - the ultra-Orthodox, settlers, nationalists and populists.

This country has several tribes, and the violent dynamics among them cause the earth to open up again and again and swallow up hope. Instead of forging a sane, enlightened center that will lead the various tribes, we've launched an ongoing tribal war that causes us to make irrational and irresponsible decisions.

Yair Garbuz sowed hatred and Netanyahu reaped the whirlwind. The media tried to force its opinion on the masses and the masses rebelled. The vicious circle of the elites' war against the people and vice versa let the magician turn the beloved country into scorched earth.

The temptation to plunge into despair is huge. After the shock it's easy to embrace the belief that Israelis are religious-Zionist, half-racist and incorrigible. After we awoke into a dark night's dawn, it's easy to plunge into helpless despondency.

But despair isn't an option. This awful crisis is an unprecedented opportunity. The impending disaster is a command for action. We must learn our lessons, and quickly. We must learn from our mistakes. We must reinvent the wheel and create a new mass movement that will do vital ideological and political work.

Netanyahu's victory is not a sin but a punishment - a punishment because we were complacent and arrogant. It's a punishment because we were superficial and light-headed. If enlightened Israelis come to their senses following the crushing blow, there will be hope. There will be an alternative. There will be another chance.

After we failed so disgracefully in the 2015 election, we must start the new campaign at once. We don't have a year to wait. We don't have a month to wait. This week. Today. Now.

[Ari Shavit is a senior correspondent at Haaretz Newspaper and a member of its editorial board.]

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