In Wag the Dog Move, Indicted Israeli PM Netanyahu Moves to Annex 25% of Palestinian West Bank

Netanyahu is brazenly planning to steal a quarter of all the land in the Palestinian West Bank, forever ending any chance of a Palestinian state.

by

Juan Cole

This second case really is about destroying freedom of the press and entirely undermining what little is left of Israeli democracy. (Photo: Ben Amos Gershom/Prime Minister of Israel)

Interim Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu committed again on Sunday that his government will steal the entire Jordan Valley from the Palestinians. He had floated this plan two months ago but now seems to be determined to move ahead. It makes up 25% of the Palestinian West Bank. Israel is forbidden to annex militarily occupied territory by the 1949 Geneva Convention and by the charter of the United Nations, which were enacted to forestall a repeat of Nazi atrocities. Netanyahu would also annex the 5% of Palestinian territory on which Israeli squatter settlements have been built on land stolen from its Palestinian owners.

Netanyahu is in a world of trouble. He has been indicted on criminal offenses. The only thing that might keep him out of jail is to stay in office and tinker with the law for his own benefit. But he can’t remain prime minister because he lost the last election and hasn’t been able to form a government.

You don’t need to be a really suspicion person to see this announcement as a form of wagging the dog by Netanyahu in hopes of making himself so popular in Israel that he can manage to find a way to fix the system and stay out of jail. Of course, he has made this pledge before, and he nevertheless couldn’t win the election and form a government.

The US Congress, which tacitly supports Israeli colonization efforts, has clung to a fig leaf of an imaginary peace process and a two-state solution for decades during which far right wing Israeli governments have energetically worked to forestall any such thing.

It is rumored that Trump will announce his support for Netanyahu’s massive piece of grand larceny. Trump made waves of his own Sunday, addressing a Jewish audience and telling them that they are “not nice people” but that they will vote for him because they care about money above all else and will reject Elizabeth Warren’s plan to raise taxes. He also insisted that Jewish Americans must give Israel their blind support. He managed to hit all the highlights of anti-Semitism, from caricatures of Jews as money-grubbers with no thought for the public weal to inaccurate charges of dual loyalty.

Israel may well go to the polls again for a third time in a year this spring. The electorate is divided between the far-far-right Likud Party of Netanyahu and the center-right Blue and White coalition of Benny Gantz. So it keeps returning a hung parliament. Gantz refuses to form a government of national unity with Netanyahu. Actually, either of the two blocs could form a government if they allied with the largely Palestinian-Israeli Joint List, but the racist rules of Israeli politics do not permit allowing persons of Palestinian heritage into the cabinet.

If Netanyahu loses again, it is possible that his party will dump him or that his enemies will form a government without him, leaving him in the dragnet of the police.

I explained earlier two of the cases against him:

In one case, Netanyahu allegedly accepted a couple hundred thousand dollars in bribes from an Australian businessmen in return for favorable treatment of his business and attempting to get him a US visa.

In the other case, Netanyahu is alleged to have offered a deal to Arnon Mozes, the publisher of Israel’s biggest-circulation newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth. Netanyahu supporter and shady casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson had begun a free pro-Netanyahu newspaper, Yisrael Ha-Yom, and it obviously was eating into the profits of the other newspapers in the country. (How this is not illegal as “dumping” baffles me.) Netanyahu allegedly told Mozes that he could persuade Adelson to reduce the publication run of Yisrael Ha-Yom, which would help his bottom line. In return, Mozes should report more favorably on Netanyahu.

This second case really is about destroying freedom of the press and entirely undermining what little is left of Israeli democracy.

Israel never had a claim on the Palestinian West Bank or the Gaza Strip. In 1967 Israel invaded these areas and occupied them even though the Palestinians took no role in the 1967 War. Nearly 3 million Palestinians now live in the West Bank under Israeli military control. Another 2 million live in the Gaza Strip, which is occupied via blockade. Violating international law, Israel long since annexed some of this Palestinian territory and added it to the Israeli district of Jerusalem, settling some 350,000 Israelis on this stolen Palestinian land. Israel has also sent 400,000 squatters to take property away from Palestinian families in what is left of the West Bank.

Now Netanyahu is brazenly planning to steal a quarter of all the land in the Palestinian West Bank, forever ending any chance of a Palestinian state.

The US Congress, which tacitly supports Israeli colonization efforts, has clung to a fig leaf of an imaginary peace process and a two-state solution for decades during which far right wing Israeli governments have energetically worked to forestall any such thing.

Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His new book, The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation Is Changing the Middle East (Simon and Schuster), will officially be published July 1st. He is also the author of Engaging the Muslim World and Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East (both Palgrave Macmillan). He has appeared widely on television, radio and on op-ed pages as a commentator on Middle East affairs, and has a regular column at Salon.com. He has written, edited, or translated 14 books and has authored 60 journal articles.

Fascists R Us: Trump and Pompeo’s Deny That Israeli Squatting on Palestinian Land Is Illegal

A combination of US Evangelical lawlessness and white supremacy with incessant lobbying by the Zionist far right has finally put the United States in the position of supporting the policies of the Axis in World War II.

by

Juan Cole

Pompeo has become Mussolini, in the same way that Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu long since had. (Photo: Guardian Screenshot) 

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Monday that the US no longer considers Israeli squatter settlements on Palestinian land to be illegal.

A combination of US Evangelical lawlessness and white supremacy with incessant lobbying by the Zionist far right has finally put the United States in the position of supporting the policies of the Axis in World War II.

That is the historical meaning of Pompeo’s position.

In 1940, Italy’s Mussolini (the idol of Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House chief strategist) grabbed Nice from France. Mussolini intended to permanently annex this territory, and had designs on the port city of Marseilles, as well.

Given that the whole creation of the international-law category of war crimes with the Geneva Conventions was in part intended to ensure that never again could the Jewish people be genocided, it is a supreme and ugly irony that no one has done more to undermine and destroy international law concerning occupied populations than the State of Israel.

Do you think that is right, that Mussolini could just march into France and gobble up part of it? What kind of world would it be if Mussolinis were constantly stealing other people’s territory?

When Mussolini was defeated (and shot to death by a leftist partisan in 1945), the non-Fascist countries created the United Nations and enacted the Geneva Conventions to try to stop Mussolini-like behavior in the future.

The United Nations Charter forbids any country to acquire the territory of others by military force. It is illegal for Italy to march into France and just take Nice for itself.

Mussolini’s imperialism did not stop at the shores of the Mediterranean. In 1911 Italy had launched a war of aggression on Libya and made it a colony. But it wasn’t enough to rule the lives of Libyans with a fascist iron fist and to steal their resources. Beginning in 1938 and continuing into WW II, Mussolini began sending Italians in to Occupied Libya.

Wikipedia notes,

"A project initiated by Libya’s governor, Italo Balbo, brought the first 20,000 settlers — the “Ventimila” – to Libya in a single convoy in October 1938. More settlers followed in 1939, and by 1940 there were approximately 110,000 Italians in Libya, constituting about 12 percent of the total population.[8]

Plans envisioned an Italian colony of 500,000 settlers by the 1960s: so, the Italians would be 2/3 of the population in coastal Libya by then. Libya’s best land was allocated to the settlers to be brought under productive cultivation, primarily in olive groves.”

After World War II, not only was aggressively annexing your neighbor’s land made illegal but so too was flooding your own population into an Occupied territory to deprive locals of the fruits of their own resources and grab them for the metropole.

The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 governs the treatment of populations in Occupied territories during wartime, and it forbids transplanting people from the Occupying Power’s population into the subjected region. Remember, the United Nations Charter envisages that at the cessation of hostilities, the Occupier would have to give back the territory. It cannot be annexed.

The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 on the treatment of populations in occupied territories contains these prohibitions:

Art. 31 Prohibition of coercion
Art. 32 Prohibition of corporal punishment, torture, etc.
Art. 33 Individual responsibility, collective penalties, pillage, reprisals
Art. 34 Hostages

Israel is in extensive violation of all of these provisions.

Article 49, Fourth Geneva Convention, says, “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population in the territory it occupies.”

So here’s the thing. There isn’t any difference in this regard between the Israeli government and Mussolini. Just as Mussolini invaded and annexed Nice and Corsica, the Israelis invaded Gaza and the West Bank in 1967, at a time when the civilian Palestinian population was not militarized and not directly involved in the Egyptian-Jordanian-Syrian war with Israel. Israel has annexed large tracts of the Palestinian West Bank.

And it has flooded some 600,000 squatters into Palestine (not to mention all the squatters around Jerusalem on annexed territory), just as Mussolini sent all those Italians into Libya. This is just naked aggression and colonialism.

Israelis like to take the 1947 UN General Assembly partition plan for British Mandate Palestine as their charter of legitimacy, even though the UNGA does not have any legal authority to decide such things. But even so, that plan did not award the West Bank and Gaza to Israel, and that denial was implicit in the 1949 Armistice among the belligerents.

Given that the whole creation of the international-law category of war crimes with the Geneva Conventions was in part intended to ensure that never again could the Jewish people be genocided, it is a supreme and ugly irony that no one has done more to undermine and destroy international law concerning occupied populations than the State of Israel.

So what Pompeo said is that the French who lost their lives fighting Mussolini’s invasion were on the wrong side of history, and that the United States now ex post facto regrets George W. Patton’s assault on Italy and US backing for Libyan independence.

The official policy of the United States is now that it is all right to annex neighbors’ land and to settle it with your own squatters.

Pompeo has become Mussolini, in the same way that Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu long since had.

Ezra Pound began his Pisan Canto LXXIV lamenting the death of “Ben” Mussolini, hung by his heels. The US military wanted to execute him for his active support of Italian Fascism. In turn, it was the aggressive militarism and severe human rights abuses of the fascist Italian state that provoked that animus.

I know what Gen. Patton and Gen. Omar Bradley and Gen. Ike Eisenhower thought of Mussolini. I know what they would think of Pompeo running up the white flag of surrender to Fascist policy.

We have met the Fascists and they are us.

Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His new book, The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation Is Changing the Middle East (Simon and Schuster), will officially be published July 1st. He is also the author of Engaging the Muslim World and Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East (both Palgrave Macmillan). He has appeared widely on television, radio and on op-ed pages as a commentator on Middle East affairs, and has a regular column at Salon.com. He has written, edited, or translated 14 books and has authored 60 journal articles.

What the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians is Abhorrent

- American Radio Star Kim Iversen 

The Ongoing Dread in Gaza: So Many Names, So Many Lives

"Free Gaza Chicago River Flotilla," three days of action calling for an end to Israeli attacks and blockades in Palestine

by

Kathy Kelly

Kayakers wore red T-shirts announcing the “Gaza Unlocked” campaign and managed to display flags, connected by string, spelling out "Free Gaza." (Photo: Twitter/@USBOATTOGAZA/AnnWright46)

Jehad Abusalim, a Palestinian now living in the United States, grew up Gaza. Last week, while addressing Chicago activists committed to ending Israeli attacks and blockades in the region, he held up a list of the names of 1,254 Palestinians living in Gaza killed in just one month of Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge” attacks five years ago.  

US Boat to Gaza is a coalition of organizations and grassroots campaigners seeking an end to Israel's naval blockade. (Photo: USBOATTOGAZA)

“I felt shaky and uneasy all day preparing for this talk,” he told the group. He described his dismay when, looking through the list of names, he recognized one of a young man from his small town.

“He was always friendly to me,” Abusalim said. “I remember how he would greet me on the way to the mosque. His family and friends loved him, respected him.”

Abusalim recalled the intensity of losing loved ones and homes; of seeing livelihoods and infrastructure destroyed by aerial attacks; of being unable to protect the most vulnerable. He said it often takes ten years or more before Palestinian families traumatized by Israeli attacks can begin talking about what happened. Noting Israel’s major aerial attacks in 2009, 2013, and 2014, along with more recent attacks killing participants in the “Great March of Return,” he spoke of ongoing dread about what might befall Gaza’s children the next time an attack happens.

US Boats to Gaza

The day before going on the river, members of the Freedom Flotilla for Gaza joined Voices For Creative Nonviolence in a protest outside of Boeing’s offices.

Eighty people gathered to hear Abusalim and Retired Colonel Ann Wright, of US Boat to Gaza, as they helped launch the “Free Gaza Chicago River Flotilla,” three days of action culminating on July 20 with a spirited demonstration by “kayactivists” and boaters, along with onshore protesters, calling for an end to the siege of Gaza. Wright resigned from her post as a U.S. diplomat when the United States launched the 2003 Shock and Awe bombing of Iraq. Having participated in four previous internationals flotillas aiming to defy Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza’s shoreline, Wright is devoting her energies preparing for a fifth in 2020.

The day before going on the river, members of the Freedom Flotilla for Gaza joined Voices For Creative Nonviolence in a protest outside of Boeing’s offices. (US Boats to Gaza)

Another organizer and member of US Boat to Gaza, Elizabeth Murray, who like Wright formerly worked for the U.S. government, recalled being in a seminar sponsored by a prestigious think tank in Washington, D.C., when a panel member compared Israeli attacks against Palestinians with routine efforts to “mow the lawn.” She recounted hearing a light tittering as the D.C. audience members expressed amusement. But, Murray said, “Not a single person objected to the panelist’s remark.” This was in 2010, following Israel’s 2009 Operation Cast Lead, which killed 1,383 Palestinians, 333 of whom were children.

Abusalim’s colleague at the American Friends Service Committee, Jennifer Bing, had cautioned Chicago flotilla planners to carefully consider the tone of their actions. A colorful and lively event during a busy weekend morning along Chicago’s popular riverfront could be exciting and, yes, fun.

But Palestinians in Gaza cope with constant tension, she noted. Denied freedom of movement, they live in the world’s largest open-air prison, under conditions the United Nations has predicted will render their land uninhabitable by 2020. Households get four to six hours of electricity per day. According to UNICEF, “sewage treatment plants can’t operate fully and the equivalent of forty-three Olympic-sized swimming pools of raw or partly treated sewage is pumped into the sea every day.”

Facing cruel human rights violations on a daily basis, the organizers urge solidarity in the form of boycotts, divestment, and sanctions. U.S. residents bear particular responsibility for Israel’s military attacks against civilians, they note, as the United States has supplied Israel with billions of dollars for military buildup.

U.S. companies profit hugely from selling weapons to Israel. For example, Boeing, with headquarters in Chicago, sells Israel Apache helicopters, Hellfire and Harpoon missiles, JDAM guiding systems and Small Diameter Bombs that deliver Dense Inert Metal Explosive munitions. All of these weapons have been used repeatedly in Israeli attacks on densely populated civilian areas.

During the 2009 Operation Cast Lead, I was in Rafah, Gaza, listening to children explaining the difference between explosions caused by F-16 fighter jets dropping 500-pound bombs and Apache helicopters firing Hellfire missiles.

Israel continues using those weapons, and Israeli purchases fatten Boeing’s financial portfolios.

On July 19, young Palestinians outside of the Israeli consulate read aloud the names of people who had, five years ago, been killed in Gaza. We listened solemnly and then proceeded to Boeing’s Chicago headquarters, again listening as youngsters read more names, punctuated by a solemn gong after each victim was remembered. Ultimately, 2,104 Palestinians, more than two-thirds of whom were civilians, including 495 children, were killed during the seven-week attack on the Gaza Strip in 2014.

During the Free Gaza Chicago River flotilla on July 20, Husam Marajda, from the Arab American Action Network, sat in a small boat next to his grandfather, who was visiting from Palestine. A chant, “From Palestine to Mexico, all the walls have got to go!” echoed from the water to the shore. Banners were dropped from bridges above, the largest reading, “Israel, Stop Killing Palestinians.”

Kayakers wore red T-shirts announcing the “Gaza Unlocked” campaign and managed to display flags, connected by string, spelling out “Free Gaza.” Passengers on other boats flashed encouraging peace signs and thumbs up signals. Those processing along the shore line, carrying banners and signs, walked the entirety of our planned route before a sergeant from the Chicago Police Department arrived to say we needed a permit.

We can’t permit ourselves to remain silent. Following the energetic flotilla activity, I sat with several friends in a quiet spot. “So many names,” said one friend, thinking of the list Abusalim had held up. “So many lives,” said another.

Kathy Kelly (kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence.

“Go forth and lie” Israel rolls out mandatory course for students travelling abroad

The illegal Zionist entity, as part of its extensive efforts to brainwash the new generation is instilling in them preposterous untruths in a bid to groom them for denying facts and realities of the injustices and oppressions that are rampant in Occupied Palestine and make up the regime’s devilish policies of racism, apartheid, torture, and the killing of children.

Now we have a report in this regard for MintPress, titled: “Go forth and lie” Israel rolls out mandatory course for students travelling abroad”.

The writer is author and human rights activist Miko Peled, a naturalized US Jewish citizen, born in Occupied Palestine and strongly opposed to the Zionist regime’s criminal policies, whose books include: “Injustice, the Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five.”

The so-called new course of Israel to prepare high school students traveling overseas to be supposedly good “ambassadors” includes training on how to combat truth such as claims of apartheid, genocide and BDS or the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement to end international support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians.

While Israel tries to portray a friendly face to the outside world, internally it is promoting racism and violence at levels that are more alarming than ever before. A course to prepare young high school students traveling overseas to be good “ambassadors” stands in contrast to racist policies and the advancement of a military that is encouraged to exercise unprecedented violence against civilians.

Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Occupied Palestine, recently demanded that the Israeli Education Ministry halt an online course that was designed to prepare young Israelis traveling abroad to be propagandists for the regime. The contents, particularly the absurd charge of anti-Semitism and BDS (the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement), is so offensive to Arabs and Muslims that a school in Nazareth canceled an exchange program for high school students from the city to go to Sweden, rather than having the students exposed to the content of the course.

To actually see the content of the course, one has to enroll, and so I did. The course has 12 chapters, starting with an introduction by former Minister of Education Naftali Bennett. Bennett begins by explaining “what is an ambassador,” and then gives examples of how to be a good one for Zionism.

Bennett’s introduction is full of praise for the Zionist regime. He provides students with tools with which they can “explain” Israel.

For example: If it wasn’t for Israel, you could never wake up in the morning, because the chip in your cell phone that works as an alarm is made in Israel. You couldn’t find your way to work because the application WAZE is an Israeli product, so you’d get lost. If you made it to work somehow you wouldn’t have a computer because Intel produces its parts in Israel, and then your account would be hacked because cyber security is made in Israel. On top of that, you would have no cucumbers to eat because Israel invented the irrigation systems that make it possible to grow cucumbers.”

Bennett also mentions that the students may encounter people saying such things about Israel like that it is an “apartheid regime,” and that Israeli soldiers are killing Palestinians, and that this is all nonsense. Israel, he says, as a photo of Palestinian Knesset member Ahmed Tibi is shown, is the only democracy where the minority Arab population has freedom and participates in a real democracy.

Other chapters include “Zionist Accomplishments,” “How to Combat Anti-Semitism,” and “BDS,” among others. It is stated by Gideon Bachar, a special ambassador for issues of Anti-Semitism that the Jews allegedly suffered from persecution in Europe and in the Arab world. It claims that today Anti-Semitism in Europe is fuelled by massive immigration from Muslim countries.

BDS, Talia Gorodes explains, is a coalition of “green and red.” According to Gorodes, Director of “Reut” Institute for Strategic Thinking, green represents Islamic ideology and red represents radical leftist groups. Together they create a powerful front to delegitimize Israel. However, not to worry, Israel has a plan and “you student ambassadors are part of the plan.” The students are told that the way they conduct themselves and listen and explain things will dramatically change the way the world perceives Israel and change it for the better.

Adalah’s letter stressed that the “Education Ministry’s propaganda exam focuses on core issues of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that are the subject of deep political controversy.” The course guides students — indeed they are required to choose specific positions. The course, Adalah points out — and, having taken it, I must agree — presents a racist ideological perspective that creates an equivalence between Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims and Anti-Semitism and violence.

This course is also required of Palestinian high school students in Israel and study in the Israeli school system. 

As the Ministry of Education is preparing students going overseas to show the supposedly kind and gentle face of Israel, Ha’aretz reports on the promotion of notoriously violent Israeli military officer Ofer Winter to the rank of major general. His new job is one of the most prestigious: commander of the 98th Division, also known as the Fire Formation, which includes the Paratroopers Brigade, the Commando Brigade, and two reservist brigades.

Winter’s promotion was delayed for several years by the previous Israeli Chief of Staff owing to his role in what is called Black Friday in Rafah.

“Black Friday” is the name given to a massive, irrational and vengeful attack on Rafah during the Israeli assault on Gaza in the summer of 2014. Winter, then a colonel and commander of the infamous “Givati” Brigade, came to public attention twice, once as the result of a letter he sent to the unit commanders, in which he wrote that they were fighting “a blasphemous enemy that defiles the God of Israel.” His use of religious terminology was cause for concern even in Israel but should come as no surprise.

Winter was educated in two radical, religious-Zionist educational institutions. The first is Yeshivat Or Zion, which is headed by Haim Drukman, one of the most notorious leaders of the “settlers movement.” The second is the military preparatory academy “Bnei David”, which has come under severe criticism for racist comments made by fanatic Zionist rabbis who teach there. They are known to follow an aggressively racist curriculum and have been quoted teaching that Arabs are slaves and Jews are masters and that Hitler was not wrong, he was just on the wrong side.

Winter also raised concerns when, under his command, the Givati brigade was criticized for its conduct during Black Friday. It was August 1, 2014 in Rafah and a ceasefire was in place when hundreds of innocent Palestinian people were massacred killed as a result of what is known as the “Hannibal Directive.”

Ha’aretz reported at the time that “this was the most aggressive action of its type ever carried out by the Israeli Army.” Codeword “Hannibal” is an Israeli military directive that is given when a soldier is taken prisoner. It allows for unrestrained use of firepower to stop the abduction, even at the price of the life of the soldier that was taken.

In this case, the directive was given after an Israeli officer was captured following a clash with Palestinian fighters in which an officer and a soldier were killed. It was during what was supposed to have been a ceasefire for humanitarian purposes.

According to a report by Amnesty International, when the Israeli attacks began: “The roads in eastern Rafah were full of disoriented civilians moving in all directions. Believing a ceasefire had begun, they had returned – or were returning – to their homes. Many decided to turn around, attempting to flee under a barrage of bombs and gunfire.”

According to testimony given by Palestinian witnesses, the attack included “jets, drones, helicopters and artillery.” The attack was described as “raining fire at pedestrians and vehicles at the intersections, indiscriminately hitting cars, ambulances, motorbikes and pedestrians.”

Ofer Winter was the brigade commander. Now he has been given what many consider to be the most prestigious commands, which will no doubt make him a strong candidate to be a future army chief of staff.

Following an election promise to act against the alleged “conquest” by Arab residents from surrounding communities of a city park, the municipality of the city of Afula issued an ordinance that says only city residents may enter the city park.

Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, reports from the northern city of Afula that when Attorney Nareman Shehadeh-Zoabi who lives in neighboring Nazareth brought her infant to the park, a security guard stopped them from entering because they are from Nazareth, which is a Palestinian Arab city.

This is not the first time that Afula is in the news owing to racist tendencies. In 2018, Jewish residents of Afula, along with the mayor, protested against the sale of a home to an Arab family. Afula is not alone. The establishment of admissions committees in kibbutzim, moshavim, and other communities were created to stop Palestinians from moving in.

It is no coincidence that the Zionist regime’s basic law includes a clause that authorizes “a community, including those belonging to one religion or nationality, to maintain separate community living.” This basic law affirms Israel’s policy of segregation and makes it constitutional and thus unchallengeable in court.

Israel is more overtly racist and violent than ever before, and yet it is preparing youth who travel overseas to paint it with bright, friendly colors. If ever there was a time when the call for boycott, divestment and sanctions — BDS — against Israel was not only justified but urgent, it is now.

War Versus Peace: Israel Has Decided and So Should We

By Ramzy Baroud

Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu

Israelis are divided on some issues, but resolutely unified around the continued subjugation of the Palestinian people.

So, what have we learned from the Israeli legislative elections on April 9?

A whole lot.

To start with, don’t let such references as the “tight race” between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and his main rival, Benny Gantz, fool you.

Yes, Israelis are divided on some issues that are particular to their social and economic makeup. But they are also resolutely unified around the issue that should concern us most: the continued subjugation of the Palestinian people.

Indeed, ‘tight race’, or not, Israel has voted to cement Apartheid, support the ongoing annexation of the Occupied West Bank, and carry on with the Gaza siege.

In the aftermath of the elections, Netanyahu emerged even more powerful; his Likud party has won the elections with 36 seats, followed by Gantz’s Kahol Lavan (Blue and White) with 35 seats.

Gantz, the rising star in Israeli politics was branded throughout the campaign as a centrist politician, a designation that tossed a lifeline to the vanquished Israeli ‘left’—of which not much is left anyway.

This branding helped sustain a short-lived illusion that there is an Israeli alternative to Netanyahu’s extremist right-wing camp.

But there was never any evidence to suggest that Gantz would have been any better as far as ending the Israeli occupation, dismantling the Apartheid regime and parting ways with the country’s predominantly racist discourse.

In fact, the opposite is true.

Gantz has repeatedly criticized Netanyahu for supposedly being too soft on Gaza, promising to rain yet more death and destruction on a region that, according to the United Nations, will be unlivable by 2020.

A series of videos, dubbed “Only the Strong Survives”, were issued by the Gantz campaign in the run up to the elections. In the footage, Gantz was portrayed as the national savior, who had killed many Palestinians while serving as the army’s chief of staff between 2011 and 2015.

Gantz is particularly proud of being partly responsible for bombing Gaza “back to the stone age.”

It apparently mattered little to Israeli centrists and the remnants of the left that in the 2014 Israeli war on Gaza, dubbed Operation “Protective Edge”, over 2,200 Palestinians were killed and over 11,000 were injured. In that most tragic war, over 500 Palestinian children were killed, and much of Gaza’s already ailing infrastructure was destroyed.

But then again, why vote for Gantz when Netanyahu and his right-wing extremist camp are getting the job done?

Sadly, Netanyahu’s future coalition is likely to be even more extreme than the previous one.

Moreover, thanks to new possible alliances, Netanyahu will most likely free himself of burdensome allies, the likes of former Israeli Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman.

One significant change in the likely makeup of the Israeli right is the absence of such domineering figures, who, aside from Lieberman also include former Education Minister, Naftali Bennett and former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked.

All the grandstanding from Bennett and Shaked, who had recently established a new party called “The New Right”, didn’t even garner them enough votes to reach the threshold required to win a single seat in the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset. They needed 3.25 percent of the vote, but only achieved 3.22 percent. They are both out.

The defeat of the infamous duo is quite revealing: the symbols of Israel’s extreme right no longer meet the expectations of Israel’s extremist constituencies.

Now the stage is wide open for the ultra-orthodox parties, Shas, which now has eight seats, and United Torah Judaism, with seven seats to help define the new normal in Israel.

The Israeli left—if it was ever deserving of the name—received a final blow; the once prominent Labor Party, won merely six seats.

On the other hand, Arab parties that ran in the 2015 elections under the united banner of the “Joint List”, fragmented once more, to collectively achieve only 10 seats.

Their loss of three seats, compared to the previous elections, can be partly blamed on factional and personal agendas. But, that is hardly enough to explain the massive drop in Arab voter participation in the elections: 48 percent compared to 68 percent in 2015.

This record low participation can only be explained through the racist ‘Nation State Law”, which was passed by the right wing-dominated Knesset on July 19, 2018. The new Basic Law, declaredIsrael as the “nation state of the Jewish people” everywhere, relegating the rights of the Palestinian people, their history, culture and language, while elevating everything Jewish, making self-determination in the state an exclusive right for Jews only.

Related article: The Jewish Nation State Law: If Israel Practiced Democracy, It’d Be Called Palestine

This trend is likely to continue, as Israel’s political institutions no longer offer even a symbolic margin for true democracy and fair representation.

But perhaps the most important lesson that we can learn in the aftermath of these elections is that in today’s Israel, military occupation and apartheid have been internalized and normalized as uncontested realities, unworthy of national debate. This in particular should summon our immediate attention.

During election campaigns, no major party spoke about peace, let alone provided a comprehensive vision for achieving it. No leading politician called for the dismantling of the illegal Jewish settlements that have been erected on Palestinian land in violation of international law.

More importantly and tellingly, no one spoke of a two-state solution.

As far as Israelis are concerned, the two-state solution is dead. While this is also true for many Palestinians, the Israeli alternative is hardly co-existence in one democratic secular state. The Israeli alternative is Apartheid.

Netanyahu and his future government coalition of like-minded extremists are now armed with an unmistakably popular mandate to fulfill all of their electoral promises, including the annexation of the West Bank.

Moreover, with an emboldened and empowered right-wing coalition, we are also likely to witness a major escalation in violence against Gaza this coming summer.

Considering all of this, we must understand that Israel’s illegal policies in Palestine cannot and will not be challenged from within Israeli society.

Challenging and ending the Israeli occupation and dismantling Apartheid can only happen through internal Palestinian resistance and external pressure that is centered around the strategy of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).

It is now incumbent on the international community to break this vicious Israeli cycle and support the Palestinian people in their ongoing struggle against Israeli occupation, racism and apartheid.

Ramzy Baroud

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, 2018). His latest book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, 2018). He earned a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter, and is a former Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, UCSB.