JVL Introduction

The Israeli election results have still to be finalised but the return of Netanyahu to power, propped up by neo-fascists Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, is inevitable. Here are a handful of Jewish reactions.

For some, especially liberal Zionists in the diaspora, this election represents a watershed. Jewish News in Britain has spoken up for that current, appalled by the development, as evident in the JN editorial line: Never in Israel’s history has hatred wielded such power. It calls on “our community’s leaders” in Britain to denounce it.

Does this herald a split in Jewish communal institutions in Britain?

Not if the Jewish Chronicle can help it… It treads a careful line so as not to offend its furthest right suppoerters, basically saying that while Smotrich and Ben Gvir’s “extreme views rightly repel even the most ardent supporters of Israel” , basically it is none of our business: “We are there for Israel, as Israel is there for us.” In other words, shut up.

For Gideon Levy, fiery commentator for Haaretz, the outcome was no surprise: Israel has been set on this trajectory for decades. Had Balad and Meretz reached the 3.5% threshold, it may have been delayed but it was inevitable. Opposition to Netanyahu was never a programme on which the left could rebuild itself.

Veteran campaigner for peace, Gershon Baskin is clear that a government filled with extremists cannot provide the security that the people of the region crave. It is the occupation that provokes the violence and nothing will be resolved until the occupation ends: “The stronger the force against a people fighting for freedom, the stronger the desire for liberation will grow in their hearts and minds and will more than likely be expressed by violence against those who are oppressing them.”

Jewish News: front page two weeks before the elections

Never in Israel’s history has hatred wielded such power

This week’s editorial reflects on the result of the Israeli election and its repercussions for the Jewish state and its relationship with the diaspora.

Voice of the Jewish News, 2nd November 2022,

Benjamin Netanyahu’s triumph was really a victory for his allies.

For the sixth time, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister has led his party to the top of the polls and appears set to return to the job.

But Likud barely increased its vote share in this election. The true winner was the far-right and its leaders, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Across Israel, nearly half-a-million people voted for the Religious Zionist bloc and sent over a dozen of its members into the Knesset.

Never in the Jewish state’s history has hatred wielded such power.

To be clear: this newspaper’s concern is not that Netanyahu himself is on the cusp of a dramatic return. Yes, many British Jews oppose him – for his West Bank annexation plan, say, or the fraud and corruption allegations he faces – but many others support him in this country as a strong, conservative voice.

Few members of our community agree with Ben-Gvir or Smotrich – and the fact is the political marriage between these two men was concocted by Netanyahu.

He did it to maximise his electoral chances but he may have unleashed a beast he cannot control. Religious Zionism has attracted a diverse voter base: it includes young Charedim who have had enough of their rabbis instructing them on who to vote for and West Bank settlers driven to despair over the security situation. It also includes extremists who have shown they are quite prepared to take the law into their own hands.

Over the coming months we will likely see Israel do things that, if it were any other country, we would condemn without hesitation.

Religious Zionism wants a law that gives Netanyahu a Get Out of Jail Free card. They would annul those charges of fraud and breach of trust by ending his trial.

If Minister Ben-Gvir were to visit this country, anyone who agrees to meet him runs the risk of legitimising hatred. What will the Board of Deputies do, or the Jewish Leadership Council?

Ben-Gvir could soon be Public Security Minister. He would make soldiers and police officers immune from prosecution and allow them to use more live fire in confrontations with Palestinians and Arab Israelis.

There are now difficult questions for us in Britain to answer. If Minister Ben-Gvir were to visit this country, anyone who agrees to meet him runs the risk of legitimising hatred. What will the Board of Deputies do, or the Jewish Leadership Council? What about Ben-Gvir’s hypothetical ministerial counterpart – the Home Secretary, perhaps?

As the election results rolled in, the bodies that represent UK Jewry kept an uneasy silence. Perhaps they were hoping the few remaining votes to be counted will swing the result away from the Netanyahu camp and towards another political stalemate.

That is a futile dream. Hatred is already in the Knesset and may well prop up the next Israeli government. It is not befitting this country that many of us love and many of us pray for.

The time has come for us to consider our own response to the tragic conflict of loyalties with which we have all been wrestling for perhaps too long.

That is why this newspaper loudly denounced the far-right’s surge a fortnight ago. That is why we now call on our community’s leaders to show similar resolve.

If that must mean a fundamental change to our relationship with Israel’s government, so be it.

Britain’s bond with Israel will outlast the far-right

The JC Leader,  3 November 2022

The relationship between Britain and Israel has never been stronger. Our trade is worth £5 billion a year and supports 6,600 UK businesses. A new trade deal is being negotiated. We see eye-to-eye on key foreign policy issues and our extensive military cooperation is of immense benefit to both countries.

It is through that prism of a deep and lasting bond between our two nations that the likely ascent to power after this week’s election results of Itamar ben-Givir and Belazel Smotrich should be viewed.

Their extreme views rightly repel even the most ardent supporters of Israel. But is is good, and important, that both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer have emphasised that their inclusion in the next Israeli government will not alter our bilateral relationship.

There has certainly been widespread unease throughout the diaspora at the rise of Ben-Givir and Smotrich. To many, they stand for a version of Israel that we do recognise and do not want to see.

But it is important to remember that we are not Israeli. Israel is the eternal Jewish homeland and diaspora Jews have a uniquely close bond with Israel. But it is not for us to demand how Israelis vote or to make pre-conditions on our support for Israel.

We are there for Israel, as Israel is there for us.

After More Than 50 Years of Supporting Israel’s Occupation, What Exactly Did the Israeli Left Think Would Happen?

The aftermath of the elections have shown that Israeli society has become partly religious and largely racist, with hatred of Arabs being its main fuel, with no one to stand against it

Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 3rd November 2022

What did you think would happen? What was the Zionist left, which sank into a coma after the Oslo Accords, thinking? That it was possible to return to power out of a coma? Empty-handed? Without an alternative and without leadership? Solely on the basis of hatred for Netanyahu? Aside from that, it had nothing to offer.

No one should be surprised by what happened. It could not have been otherwise. It began with the occupation – pardon the annoying and clichéd mention of that – but that is where it really began, and it had to culminate in a government of racism and transfer. Fifty years of incitement against the Palestinians and scare tactics about them cannot culminate in a government of peace. Fifty years of almost wall-to-wall Israeli support, from the Zionist left and right, for the occupation, could not end any other way than with Ben-Gvir as the popular hero. A never-ending occupation could only lead to the Benjamin Netanyahu-Itamar Ben-Gvir government. For if you’re going to have an occupation, then you need to embrace its genuine version, the one that is not the least bit abashed about it – the Ben-Gvir version.

It was simply impossible to continue with the illusions – Jewish and democratic, an enlightened occupation, a temporary occupation – and that whole tired repertoire of phrases. The time for truth had arrived, and that is what Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir are going to tell us.

Yesterday, Israel awoke to the dawn of a new day, in which all the stammering and euphemisms have become a thing of the past. From now on, the occupation is just that, and the same goes for Jewish supremacy in Israel. From now on, Zionism will be promoted to the level of overt racism. Yesterday, the death of the Green Line was also officially declared: The occupation is here, everywhere. Anyone who thought that what happens in Yitzhar stays in Yitzhar was only fooling themselves. Anyone who thought that Yesha is there and not here was mistaken. For a long time now, Yesha has been taking great strides closer to Israel, with its ingrained nationalism and fundamentalism, and in all these years, no one arose to stop it. Now it is too late. Two days ago, the move was completed.

There is no point in pursuing a blame campaign now – Yair Lapid siphoned off Labor votes, Labor didn’t merge with Meretz, Balad didn’t go with the Joint List. These things would have amounted to temporary pain relievers for a terminal illness. Even if all that would not have happened, nothing about the overall picture would have been different: The society that has arisen here is partly religious and largely racist, with hatred of Arabs being its main fuel, and there was no one to stand against that.

What happened two days ago did not begin two days ago. Maybe Golda Meir started it, maybe Shimon Peres, but in any event, none of their successors tried to go another way to stem the tide. Did you really think that Yair Lapid, a moderate and hollow rightist, filled with good intentions, was capable of offering an alternative to Ben-Gvir? What alternative? To kill gently? To embrace Emmanuel Macron? Now Israel has decided it prefers not to be gentle when it comes to killing. The next government will at least avoid the self-preening.

For years, a rudderless left and center that lacks leadership and lacks courage has desperately attempted to grovel to and look like the right. It just had to end with Ben-Gvir and with the nationalist Shas. There was no other possible outcome.

For years, Israelis have been about the Chosen People, about the Holocaust after which anything is permitted, about the Arabs who want to throw us into the sea, about our right to the land because of the biblical stories, about the IDF as the world’s most moral army, about David versus Goliath, about Israeli Arabs as a fifth column, about the whole world being against us and that anyone who criticizes us is an antisemite. What did we think would arise out of all that? Ben-Gvir actually took his time. He could well have made his big splash a long time ago. That’s what happens when you have a Bolsonaro and no Lula facing him. That’s what happens when cries of “Death to the Arabs,” which will now be drilled at morning assembly in schools, were not met with a single cry of “Freedom for the Arabs.” That is where it began, this is where it ends.

An Israeli Netanyahu-Ben-Gvir gov’t will fan fumes of hatred – opinion

A new right-wing government filled with extremists will not make Israel stronger and will certainly not provide any of us with more security.

Gershon Baskin, Jerusalme Post, 3td November 2022

I condemn violence, especially political violence. Violence begets violence. We have seen more than 100 years of violence between the two people claiming land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Israelis and Palestinians have proven their willingness to fight, die and kill over the territory each claim as their own. They both claim they have given their identity to this land and have taken their identity from it. Both sides claim, at least to themselves, that they want to live in peace but they claim the other side does not want to live in peace.

Both peoples are here on this land and have no intention of going anywhere. For Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, Gaza and abroad, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Israeli control over Gaza is terrorism. For Israelis, any Palestinian attempt to resist Israeli control is terrorism.

In one of Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent election interviews on Israel Channel 14, he said, “The fact that terrorism has risen in a meteoric tragic way, as we saw today, terror attack followed by terror attack, as we saw in Hebron and near Jericho happens because the government is weak. The government is a left-wing government that we must send away” (October 30, 2022).

No Netanyahu, no!

First of all, when Palestinian resisters or combatants attack Israeli soldiers or armed settlers, they are not terrorists. That is not the definition of terrorism. They are combatants, guerrillas or resisters and I will never support killing anyone. When Palestinian combatants attack Israeli civilians with weapons, such as guns, knives, hammers and axes – then they can be called terrorists.

Second, a weak government as Netanyahu called it or a so-called left-wing government is no different in its ability to prevent young Palestinians from fighting against the injustice of the 55-year-old occupation than a right-wing Israeli government. The outgoing Lapid-Bennett government killed more Palestinian combatants than previous Netanyahu governments.

When Netanyahu was prime minister, the “knife intifada” took place between September 2015 and October 2016, 47 Israelis were killed on his watch. The bloodiest violence of the second intifada took place on the watch of Ariel Sharon and he cannot be labeled as weak or left-wing.

If Netanyahu was prime minister now and Itamar Ben Gvir was minister of the police, there would be continued attacks against Israeli soldiers and armed settlers. In fact, I believe very strongly, when (God forbid) Minister of Police Ben Gvir lets loose his unrestrained policies of hatred against Arabs, we will witness not only the acts of individual Palestinian combatants or small groups of armed resisters, we will witness attacks against Israel on a scale that will remind us of the second intifada.

NETANYAHU NOR Ben Gvir has the ability to create so-called deterrence against a people fighting for liberation who have long lost hope of any political horizon. Netanyahu killed the Oslo peace process by design. He knew then, as he should know now, that the use of force, violence, against an occupied people will ultimately result in more violence. It may be possible to crush and kill some individuals, and perhaps some organized cells but it is not possible to crush the will of an occupied people to be free.

Every Jew should know that very well from their own history. The burning desire to be free and to have independence is something that cannot be crushed from the force of those who seek to deny it. The stronger the force against a people fighting for freedom, the stronger the desire for liberation will grow in their hearts and minds and will more than likely be expressed by violence against those who are oppressing them.

There comes a point when so-called deterrence, the overuse and abuse of power and force, becomes the spark that explodes the powder keg, and the fumes of anger and hatred consume even those who were in general moderates the day before. You can demolish their homes but their homeless children will return one day with guns and bombs. We can arrest them and we do, thousands of them every year, but that will only increase the desire of many of them to abduct soldiers or civilians because they see no other way to release their loved ones from the occupier’s prisons. We can surround them with checkpoints, armed soldiers and settlements with armed militia but they will not lay down their arms or raise white flags of surrender.

Israel has a massive amount of military power at its disposal. Israel can defeat any standing army of any of the countries that threaten it. That military might cannot defeat the Palestinian people. The increase in support for renewing an armed struggle against Israel, particularly among young Palestinians, should be a clear enough indication that the use of force by Israel has not succeeded.

Israel has no long-term strategy for dealing with the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people have no leadership that presents a clear vision or strategy for their own future. Both sides are in survival mode, totally lacking the courage to face reality head-on with the understanding that we must return to the table to try to figure out how we are going to live together on this land and to stop thinking about how we are going to kill each other.

A new right-wing government filled with extremists will not make Israel stronger and will certainly not provide any of us with more security.

The writer is a political and social entrepreneur who has dedicated his life to Israel and to peace between Israel and her neighbors. He is now directing The Holy Land Bond.