The post-election debate in Israel has heated up over the weekend.
When the exit polls last week suggested a win for current Prime Minister Netanyahu and his coalition of extreme right-wing political parties, the man was claiming a decisive victory and welcoming the opportunity to pass legislation to stall the bribery and corruption charges he faces.
He was also planning the immediate, illegal, annexation of vast swathes of Palestinian land.
Later in the week the final counting of votes saw him falling three seats short of a majority – his right-wing block has 58 seats in the 120 seat Knesset. The misnamed “centre-left” block – led by Benny Gantz – has 55 seats and Avigdor Lieberman’s party (sometimes the “kingmaker”) has 7 seats. Traditionally Lieberman has supported Netanyahu but this soured and Lieberman resigned as Defence Minister in 2018 over a government decision to support a ceasefire in Gaza which Lieberman characterised as “surrendering to terror”.
Facing losing his job as Prime Minister and being forced to answer bribery and corruption charges due in court on 17 March, Netanyahu is lashing out in all directions, with racism towards Palestinians as his go-to argument.
The 55 seats of the so-called “centre-left” includes 15 seats won by the Arab list parties. These are seats held by Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship (about 20% of the Israeli population)
Netanyahu has previously attacked any proposal to include the Arab-List parties in a coalition government as “an existential threat to Israel” but on the weekend he went a step further saying that the Arab-list seats should not be included in the left block total of seats. According to Netanyahu the only seats that count are those held by Jewish-led parties.
He says the opposition are “stealing the election” and stealing votes. He is inciting the population to reject any government which does not include him as Prime Minister.
All this vile, filthy racism from Netanyahu is predictable and unsurprising. He has built his political career on creating fear and loathing of Palestinians in the Israeli electorate.
But if Netanyahu is finally removed from the political stage in the coming weeks this should not be seen as a sign of any major change in Israeli attitudes towards Palestinians.
Gantz, who could become Prime Minister if he can form a government, has already declared support for annexation of Palestinian land and Lieberman has long supported the excising of a block of Palestinians towns from the state of Israel to make the country more purely Jewish.
Whatever the immediate outcome, the only constant in Israeli political leadership is racism towards Palestinians and the only way forward for the solidarity movement is BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) against Israel till it abides by international law and United Nations resolutions.
If everything was fine for the Palestinians and there were human rights violations etc in New Zealand do you honestly think that the Palestinians or anyone in the Arab world would care in the slightest let alone champion these issues such as John here is doing?
I strongly feel that they wouldn’t give a rats arse and especially after how the Arab world has shown their absolute lack of any empathy for others when all Syrian refugees are heading (or trying to) the west.
How many Palestinians have you ever met ?
Immediately after the earthquake here in Christchurch , we received concerned messages from a Palestinian friend in the Galilee area. He was worried about us. We were worried, and still are, about him.
Spent about 4 days hiking with 4 Israeli Palestinians once in northern Thailand – they seemed nice enough but again less than convinced they would give two shits about the plight of the Uighur’s or the Tibetans (or the John Minto’s of the world if anything ever happened to them).
@James Brown. There are no realities in your speculative announcement. Perhaps you might be helped by reading the below:
‘A young fellow tied to a tree and set on fire. A woman and an old man shot in back. Girls lined up against a wall and shot with a submachine gun. The testimonies collected by filmmaker Neta Shoshani about the massacre in Deir Yassin are difficult to process even 70 years after the fact.’
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/MAGAZINE-testimonies-from-the-censored-massacre-at-deir-yassin-1.5494094
I have to comment that really anyone without a very solid understanding of middle eastern relations and experience of living in isreal and understanding both Hebrew and Arabic really shouldn’t critic isreali politics or make translations of comments of politicians I have been living in isreal since 2003 and the issues people like to pretend to understand and start throwing around words like racism and apartheid are not really the issues the issues are economic and there is a war in isreal between peoples but they also co exist it’s a lot more complicated than you have described here and the translation of the situation you give here is entirely removed from any context is just a slanted perspective just focusing on one issue which is by far not the biggest problem in the region
Do they use punctuation in Israel? Asking for a friend.
You know Hannah we didn’t need to go to South Africa to know that apartheid existed and the 25 m black people were ruled by the 5 million whites. And many of us demonstrated and wrote letters and did things to ensure that change came and those black people got the right to vote.
Now I don’t have to come to Israel to see for myself, there is reputable newspapers all around the world and great websites.
And Hannah we have speakers here several times a year, speakers who live and work in Gaza. We also have Palestinians living in Aotearoa. You should read a few things, get yourself educated about the country you live in, start with The General’s son by Miko Peled – the general was an Israeli general.
Let me know when you have done this and I will give you some other great reads. Alas if you don’t you will continue living in your little bubble ignorant of the terrible injustices being carried out on Palestinians.
By the way Hannah where did you live before, are you just another person invading the Palestinian’s country.
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