The first measures of Benjamin Netanyahu’s new ultra-Zionist, racist and theocratic government are generating growing political and social tension in Israel and throughout the region. Here is a first analysis:
By Pablo Vasco
Last November 1st, in the State of Israel, the right-wing and anti-Palestinian Likud party won the legislative elections, which made a parliamentary alliance with five ultra-right and ultra-religious partners: Shas (Sephardic), United Torah Judaism (Ashkenazi), Religious Zionism and Jewish Power (openly racist and anti-Muslim) and Alegria (anti-LGBT). With 64 deputies out of a total of 120, this alliance obtained a majority to form a government and appointed Netanyahu as Prime Minister, who holds that position for the third time.
In this election (the fifth in three years due to the high economic and political instability of the country) there was a right-wing punishment vote for the previous government of Yair Lapid, which implemented austerity measures. His secular center-right There is a Future party now holds 24 of the 56 opposition seats. Two other similar forces, National Unity and Israel is Our House, have 18 seats. The entire Zionist “center-left” dropped: Labor went from 7 deputies to 4, the two Arab lists went from 12 to 10 and the social democrats and Islamists were left out as they did not exceed the 3.25% threshold.
The ultra-right in the government
The current government headed by Netanyahu is the most fascist in history since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. Let us take a look at some of its reactionary measures and projects:
- Implementing a reform to subject the Supreme Court and the entire judicial system to political power: the parliament, by a simple majority, could overturn rulings of the supreme court or enact laws that it deems unconstitutional.
- Therefore, the government would have the power to appoint judges, and the position of attorney general would be eliminated.
- Netanyahu would then be able to appoint his own state prosecutor, seeking to evade prosecution for corruption. And the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank would be reactivated, aimed at its annexation.
- Subordinate the police to the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, disciple of the racist Rabbi Meir Kahane, who has eight convictions for inciting racism and anti-Palestinian terrorism. Ben-Gvir proposes to “moderate” open-fire regulations to facilitate trigger-happy behavior and also controls the national guard, an anti-Palestinian civilian reserve militia.
- Ban the display of Palestinian flags in institutions funded or subsidized by the Israeli state, such as universities. Although not yet banned, nowadays the police remove all Palestinian flags from public spaces.
- Prepare a political reform to ban any list or candidacy “that denies the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state or supports terrorism”. At the same time, repeal the ban on lists and candidates that postulate Jewish supremacy.
- Impose the death penalty on Palestinian “terrorists,” a definition that includes as a terrorist anyone who throws stones at armed Israeli soldiers.
- Revoke Israeli citizenship or residency for anyone who receives subsidies from the Palestinian Authority.
- Legalize the current de facto ban on Palestinian citizens residing in exclusively Jewish cities or neighborhoods. Deny household permits to Palestinians and Syrians in Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Naqab and the Golan Heights.
- Taxing donations from foreign NGOs to civilian entities of peaceful solidarity with Palestine, which would affect liberal Zionist or anti-occupation groups (Peace Now, New Israel Fund, Breaking the Silence).
By the pact with the ultra-religious parties, the alliance pledges to increase state subsidies to Jewish schools, allow subsidies to sex-segregated events, and refuse to allow Israel to sign the international Istanbul Convention against gender-based violence.
Such a platform encourages the most violent Zionist bigotry. In a parliamentary debate, MP Har-Melech (Jewish Power) proposed the death penalty for an Arab who kills a Jew, but life imprisonment for a Jew who kills an Arab. MP Pindrus (United Judaism) declared, “My dream would be to blow up the Supreme Court.” Two Religious Zionism MPs propose legalizing the refusal to provide health care and other services to LGBT people. Religious Zionism’s leading anti-LGBT MP Smotrich proposes separating Jewish and Arab babies in maternity wards. Zionist councilman Yonatan Yossef walked through an Arab neighborhood in Jerusalem shouting “we want a new Nakba”, or a new Palestinian genocide…
The people’s reaction
Last Saturday, despite the rain, in Tel Aviv’s Habima Square, for the third time in a row, more than 110,000 people – in a city of less than half a million – took part in a rally in repudiation of the new government and its “coup attack against democracy”. There were also protests in Jerusalem, Haifa, Beersheba and several other cities in the country.
At the rally, Palestinian and Palestinian-Israeli pacifist flags, LGBT banners and banners comparing Justice Minister Levin to the Nazis or expressing “Free Palestine from Zionist colonial rule” and other slogans critical of the Netanyahu government showed up. Tension tends to grow.
The Zionist offensive is not only against Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular, but also against religious or secular Jews who question Zionism. This is the case of the orthodox religious branch Neturei Karta, which opposes the State of Israel and defends Palestinian autonomy. A few days ago, some of its rabbis gathered in solidarity with Palestinian leaders in the Jenin refugee camp, and were later arrested by the Israeli police.
No peace is possible with Israel
Israel was born from blood and fire, expelling native Palestinians, stealing their land and committing a genocide that continues to this day. Since then it has usurped more and more territory from them, confining them to Gaza and the West Bank, areas of high poverty whose borders, roads, water, electricity, supplies and airspace are under Israeli military control. Israel has breached the Oslo Accords and 30 UN resolutions, whose Human Rights Commission recognizes that it commits apartheid, i.e. discrimination and racism. It is the only state in the world where torture is legal, under the euphemism of “moderate physical pressure”.
Since 2016, the Zionist International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) has been pushing globally a definition of anti-Semitism that equates it with anti-Zionism. In this way, it seeks to silence any criticism of the genocidal State of Israel, as evidenced by the DAIA’s lawsuit against our comrade Alejandro Bodart for his critical tweets when months ago the Israeli police murdered the Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in cold blood.
In 2018, Israel tightened one of its so-called basic laws of constitutional rank to define itself as the national state of the Jewish people, impose Hebrew as the only official language -no longer Arabic-, recognize the right to self-determination only to Jews, value as national interest and push forward illegal Zionist settlements in Palestinian areas, and designate all of Jerusalem as its capital, violating the UN criterion of sharing it with Palestine. The current measures of the ultra-right are the logical continuation of that advance. That is why the option of two states, one Israeli and the other Palestinian, is absolutely false: the oppressor will never live in truce with the oppressed.
The only way out to achieve genuine peace in the whole region is to dissolve the State of Israel and establish a secular and democratic Palestine in all the historical territory, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and with its capital in Jerusalem, as part of a federation of socialist republics of the Middle East. The road to achieve this is the joint struggle of the heroic Palestinian resistance and the Arab peoples of the region, plus the support of the democratic anti-Zionist Jews who are part of those who movilize in Israel against the Netanyahu government and the ultra-right.