– by Yahav Zohar – 13/11/2022

Last Tuesday Israelis went to the polls for the fifth time in three and a half years, finally yielding what may be a stable government coalition. It is no surprise that this government will again be headed by Netanyahu, but what has been a surprise to many is the rise of the extreme right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Strength) party, and its expected inclusion in the government. The head of this party, Itamar Ben Gvir, has for decades been an outspoken supporter of the Rabbi Meir Kahana, whose party was barred from running in the Israeli elections for its outright support of Jewish supremacy and its call to deny non-Jews any civil rights and to institute a system of religious Jewish law. Later, following the 1994 Ibrahimi Mosque massacre in Hebron, that movement was declared a terrorist organization. Ben Gvir himself has been arrested and charged dozens of times, and convicted on at least eight occasions, for membership in a terrorist organization, hate speech, interfering with the work of the police and more. One of his demands for joining the next government will be his own  appointment as minister of public security and head of police.

This turn of events has been a shock to many more liberal Israelis, who view the projected government coalition of Netanyahu’s center-right Likud with the ultra-orthodox and the extreme right as a threat to Israeli democracy. Others suggest that Israel has never been a true democracy and that the rise of the extreme right is the natural result of Israel’s long standing oppression of Palestinians.

Since its inception Israel has maintained two parallel legal systems, electoral multi-party democracy for some, mostly Jews, and military government for others, exclusively Palestinian. For decades, official Israel has been trying to put a nice face on this ugly truth, making out that the occupation and military government are a matter of security, unfortunate, undesirable and in some sense temporary. But as settlements grew and the system of oppression became more entrenched, this prospect receded and the parties calling themselves left-wing lost public support and shrank almost to the point of disappearance. Though the winning side of these elections is clearly the right, the parties on the losing side are not left-wing but a collection of centrists and secular right wingers.  The parties that still identify as left comprise less than 10 percent of the parliament. 

The change of government is not expected to change the policy of holding Palestinians under military government in the West Bank and under siege in the Gaza strip.  What is changing is the official rationale for doing so. While the outgoing government explained the occupation as an unfortunate necessity, a matter of security, the incoming government, and particularly the far-right segment of it, combine religion and nationalism in an ideology of Jewish supremacy. In their view Jews are intrinsically superior and the land belongs exclusively to them by right of divine promise, Palestinians remaining without political rights being therefore permanent and desirable.

Israelis, and especially younger Israelis who have grown up in this reality, no longer buy the centrists’ platitudes. For many of them, Ben-Gvir is a hero for speaking the truth that others are trying to hide, that Jewish supremacy is the underlying logic of the entire Israeli state, this never changes, whether Palestinians rebel or acquiesce, and the reason for it must be that Jews are intrinsically superior, God chosen.

Reading carefully through Israeli media and social media, it becomes clear that most  opponents of the extreme right are not worried about what this new government will mean for Palestinians, but about what it will mean for the maintenance of the liberal Israeli bubble in Tel Aviv, for businesses staying open on the sabbath, for women’s rights and for LGBTQ people’s rights. They fear that some of the oppression and denial of freedoms that Israel has been imposing on Palestinians for decades will seep in to affect them, the privileged.

Those of us advocating for universal civil rights in Israel/Palestine, do not take any joy in the rise of the extreme religious right. It is undeniably noxious and dangerous. However, we can hope that it will cause more centrist, secular Israelis (and perhaps some of Israel’s supporters around the world) to sit up and take notice of the dangers of maintaining the siege of Gaza, military government in the West Bank, and the general oppression of Palestinians. We can hope that more Israelis realize that we cannot maintain liberal democracy for some alongside military government for others, and that ultimately, none of us are free until all of us are.