Isreal Election: Extreme right in Netanyahu’s Government won’t dent Western Support
“The most disturbing outcome of Israel’s general election this week was not the fact that an openly fascist party won the third-biggest tally of seats, or that it is about to become the lynchpin of the next government. It is how little will change, in Israel or abroad, as a result.
Having Religious Zionism at the heart of government will alter the tone in which Israeli politics is conducted, making it even coarser, more thuggish and uncompromising. But it will make no difference to the ethnic supremacism that has driven Israeli policy for decades.
Israel is not suddenly a more racist state. It is simply growing more confident about admitting its racism to the world. And the world – or at least the bit of it that arrogantly describes itself as the international community – is about to confirm that such confidence is well-founded…..”
“….None of this is to play down the significance of the results. Meretz, the only Jewish party that professes to favour peace over the rights of Israeli settlers, appears to have failed to make it over the electoral threshold. Israel’s tiny peace camp looks dead and buried.
The secular far-right, the settler far-right and the fundamentalist religious right have secured 70 of the parliament’s 120 seats, even if internecine feuds mean not all of them are prepared to sit together. Enough will, however, to ensure that disgraced former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu returns to power for a record sixth time.
All but certain to be at the heart of the new government is Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose party represents the brutish, nakedly supremacist legacy of the notorious Rabbi Meir Kahane, who wished to expel Palestinians from their homeland. Netanyahu knows he owes his comeback to the astonishing rise of Ben-Gvir and the Kahanists – and he will need to suitably reward them…..”
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