The hysteria over the Israeli government is far worse than anything the government is remotely likely to do

From Time, in a two page print story:

Israel is no longer a liberal democracy. As Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government took office on 29 December, its illiberalism was evident. No longer a matter for debate or polite embarrassment, the contempt for liberal ideas brings all the disparate factions together: against the media and intellectuals and increasingly against the old Western-inspired Israeli political system and the existing Israeli constitution, including its Basic Laws.

This is really getting crazy. 

Nothing has happened.

The government is not going to reduce the rights of gay people. It is not going to impose a theocracy on Israel. It is not becoming a dictatorship. 

Wikipedia defines a liberal democracy as:

Liberal democracy is the combination of a liberal political ideology that operates under a representative democratic form of government. It is characterized by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into different branches of government, the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society, a market economy with private property, and the equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedoms for all people. To define the system in practice, liberal democracies often draw upon a constitution, either codified (such as in the United States) or uncodified (such as in the United Kingdom), to delineate the powers of government and enshrine the social contract. 

Nothing is happening to remotely change Israel's status to anything other than a liberal democracy. 

The only argument that critics can make is that the proposed judicial reforms give too much power to the legislative branch, but now most people recognize that the judicial branch - which can dismiss government officials for literally no reason except what it considers  "reasonable" -  has far too much power as an unelected branch of government. Perhaps the proposed reforms go too far in some specific ways, but the general idea of reforms is quite reasonable and hardly the earth shattering change that they are being portrayed as. 

Everyone agrees there should be a balance of power. The only disagreement is where to draw the line. It is an important debate, but it is hardly a real crisis that threatens Israel's democratic character. 

(In fact, one can argue that Israel is more of a liberal democracy than either the US or UK. Universal suffrage for citizens is a key component of any liberal democracy, but unlike Israel, the US and UK do not allow many or most citizens who are prisoners to vote. Is that a crisis? Where are the front page articles about this?)

It seems to me that the over the top reaction to the Israeli elections are more dangerous than anything the government itself is likely to do. Over the weekend, we saw direct, public incitement to violence from Israeli liberals.

Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai spoke at a demonstration against the government and said: "This is the opportunity to reach broad agreements, and if the words end, the actions will begin. We will not stop at protests, we will not be indifferent, we will not react with resignation."

And:

David Hodek, a commercial lawyer who won a Medal of Courage, one of the Israeli military’s highest awards, for his conduct as a tank officer in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, told the Israel Bar Association’s annual conference in Eilat that “if someone forces me to live in a dictatorship and I have no choice, I won’t hesitate to use live fire.”

Hodek, who was speaking on a panel, appeared to make clear he was not talking metaphorically, saying: “People are willing to fight with weapons. Everyone is aghast [at such statements]. They say ‘How can you say such a thing?’ I’m saying it. If I’m forced to go there and they drag me there, that’s what I’ll do.”

And:

Ze'ev Raz, one of the leaders of the Balfour protest and a former fighter pilot, backtracked on what appeared to be a call to assassinate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday. Raz was a pilot who participated in a reactor bombing operation in Iraq in 1981, which is known as Operation Opera.

"If a sitting prime minister assumes dictatorial powers, this prime minister is bound to die, simply like that, along with his ministers and his followers.

He continued by arguing that Israel should integrate 'din rodef' (a concept in Jewish law that allows for the killing of an individual who intends to kill or harm others).

"My din rodef rules that if my country is taken over by a person, foreigner or Israeli, who leads it in an undemocratic manner, it is obligatory to kill him...it is better to kill the criminals first."

These threats and incitement are a far bigger danger to Israel's democracy than the most extreme things the government is proposing. They are normalizing violence as a means to change government policy. That is the definition of terrorism.

And they come from the constant incitement in world media. 

Losers of elections should spend their time convincing voters to support them next time, not threatening to assassinate the elected leaders. 

I have plenty of problems with Netanyahu, and some of the optics of judicial reform are less than ideal, but he is not a dictator. He is not a racist. He has (with next to no publicity) done more for Arabs in Israel than any previous prime minister, bar none. 

Step back. Take a a breath. And if you care about Israel's future, fight for it using all legal means. Debate it using facts, not hyperbole. 

When people demonize political opponents, to the point that prominent people literally threaten violence to get their way, everyone loses. 

(h/t Yoel)

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Is the bogus FBI Akleh investigation meant to insult Israel's right-wing government?

Times of Israel reports:

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation is launching an investigation into the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, apparently by an Israeli soldier, officials said Monday, with Israel immediately rejecting cooperation with the probe.

US officials updated their Israeli counterparts earlier this month about the decision, an official familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel on Monday, confirming a Channel 14 news report.

There is a lot that doesn't make sense about this.

First of all, the US has insisted for months that they will accept the results of Israel's internal investigation. This a very strange about-face, with no obvious reason.

Secondly, the FBI has - as far as I know - never done an independent investigation of an ally without their cooperation. Normally they will work together with, often upon request from, allies to add investigative expertise that other countries cannot do. To publicly disrespect an ally like this is extraordinary.

Thirdly, this is even extraordinary according to official FBI policy described in this document:

The FBI becomes involved in investigating crimes against U.S. citizens under the following two circumstances:

When the FBI has authority under the U.S. criminal code to investigate certain crimes such as terrorism, the homicide or kidnapping of U.S. citizens, or international family abduction.

When a foreign government requests FBI assistance with an investigation.

This only makes sense if you consider Abu Aklehs' death a homicide, which is again an amazing assumption.

Combine this with the huge number of civilians that have been killed by the US Army in various circumstances - the US armed forces certainly know the difficulties of avoiding unfortunate deaths - and there is only one way to look at this investigation. 

It is a gross, deliberate insult to Israel. 

So why is the US knowingly insulting its ally? And why now?

The TOI article says that "US officials updated their Israeli counterparts earlier this month about the decision." That's about the time of the results of Israel's elections.

Abu Akleh's death and investigation were not under a right wing government, and the US respected Israel's decisions at the time. 

The Biden administration and traditionally friendly Democratic members of Congress have been increasingly willing to criticize and show displeasure at Israel's upcoming government. It seems more than coincidental that this insult, which could have happened at any time over the past six months, is timed right after the Israeli elections. 

The Biden administration is sending a profoundly passive-aggressive message that it will treat Israeli governments it does not approve of with little respect, and only lip service towards being an ally.

If I am correct, expect things to get much uglier in coming months, at the UN and maybe even an unofficial move of diplomatic resources from Jerusalem back to Tel Aviv.

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11/06 Links: Melanie Phillips: How Jew-hatred has to fit the narrative; ADL creates 'more antisemitism,' divides Jews, black people -Candace Owens

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: How Jew-hatred has to fit the narrative

Last week, a Palestinian Arab terrorist murdered 50-year-old Israeli Ronen Hananya and injured 5 others. But Hananya was murdered in Kiryat Arba in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria, and so was considered a “settler”. Since such Israelis are thus blamed for their own murder, Hananya’s killing went unreported by western media.

It was part of an escalating campaign of Palestinian Arab terror attacks in which 27 Israelis and others have been killed so far this year. Who can be surprised? For Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, has been calling on social media for “an escalation against the… settler herds”. That is, Israeli Jews.

Nazi-style antisemitic tropes demonising Jews constantly pour out of the PA. None of this is reported by the western media, which instead turns the Palestinian Arabs into martyred victims and the Israelis into their oppressors.

The watchdog Honest Reporting has revealed that a letter published last month on the Jew-baiting website Mondoweiss, signed by more than 300 Palestinian and Arab reporters, supported several journalists who had posted pro-Hitler messages on social media.

One signatory herself compared the Israel Defence Forces to Nazis. Another likened Jews to “dirt and rats” and, in response to a tweet about the death of a young Palestinian, replied: “Do you still ask why Hitler killed the Jews?”

Read anything about that in the mainstream media? Of course not. It doesn’t fit the narrative.

West’s views about Jews haven’t appeared in a vacuum. He’s channelling Jewish conspiracy theories and links between the Jews and Satan pushed by Nation of Islam’s leader Louis Farrakhan, as well as claims by the Black Hebrew Israelite group that black people are the real Jews and that “so-called” Jews have stolen their identity and birthright.

These views are commonplace in America’s black community. Yet Farrakhan is still indulged by the Democrats, and you won’t hear a peep about black antisemitism from the mainstream media.

Instead, everyone is “shocked” by a rapper’s Jew-hatred, while a murderous attack by an antisemite on a public figure is turned into a political football.

As if antisemitism weren’t bad enough, this makes it truly heartbreaking.

ADL creates 'more antisemitism,' divides Jews, black people -Candace Owens

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) creates more antisemitism, political commentator Candace Owens said on Saturday night in the wake of the Kanye West and Kyrie Irving antisemitism scandals, sharing a tweet by an anti-Israel activist claiming that the NGO created Jewish insecurity to justify Zionism.

"I think the ADL is like BLM [Black Lives Matter] and the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]. They create more antisemitism just like BLM created more racism." wrote Owens, explaining why she shared The Grayzone News editor Max Blumenthal's tweet. "They work only to further divide groups—in this circumstance, black and Jewish people."

In the tweet shared by Owens, Blumenthal had written that "White American Jews are living through a golden age of power, affluence and safety," and that "Acceptance of this welcome reality threatens the entire Zionist enterprise, from lobby fronts like the ADL to the State of Israel, because Zionism relies on Jewish insecurity to justify itself."

He added that Irving and West did not threaten American Jews in any concrete way, and the result of the ADL's attempt to justify its existence was "Jewish paranoia and Black humiliation is the result."

You are about to get into a lot of trouble for stating this.
Reminds me of when I said something similar about the NAACP and BLM way back when.
When you disrupt the trauma economy and call out the not-for-profits that benefit from it, you become their next target. https://t.co/gNbl9YsoZZ

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) November 5, 2022

Owens warned Blumenthal that he could "get into a lot of trouble" for his statements, and that she had experienced backlash over similar statements about BLM.

"When you disrupt the trauma economy and call out the not-for-profits that benefit from it, you become their next target," she said.

The US political commentator further called upon Americans to "fix fractured relations between Jewish and black Americans." She decried the cancel culture response to Irving and West.

I think the ADL is a partisan hack organization, too. But RTing Max Blumenthal, who spends his life covering for Jew-haters and stumping for Israel's destruction, makes the conversation significantly worse. It's garbage. pic.twitter.com/Y5hr6RwfjJ

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) November 6, 2022

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11/05 Links: Dore Gold: UN takes its war on Israel to next level; Doublespeak at Its Worst; ‘Millions’ of Jewish American Dollars Paid to Raise Percent of Arab Vote

From Ian:

Dore Gold: Diplomatic invective: UN takes its war on Israel to next level

One of its commissioners, an Australian named Chris Sidoti, was explicit on this issue. He allowed the UN to quote him, suggesting that states must move from the report that the COI issued to an actual referral to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague. In short, he called for legal proceedings against Israel.

An initial report by the COI made the charge that Israel was “largely to blame for the continuation” of its conflict with the Palestinians. It was no wonder that State Department spokesperson Ned Price concluded that the COI was “unfairly singling out Israel.”

One of the arguments the COI report makes is that the Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria “is now unlawful under international law due to its permanence.” In other words, the report is saying that since 1967 the UN could not use that language, but now it feels at liberty to make that legal argument. What exactly changed?

It has already been noted that while the issue of the COI came up, so did the international response to the annexation of four regions in Ukraine by Russia this past October. However, there is no basis for comparing the two territorial disputes. It must always be recalled that Israel moved into Judea and Samaria in a war of self-defense back in June 1967.

Israel’s neighbors, including Jordan, had massed their armies along its borders during the month of May. True, Jordan had annexed Judea and Samaria back in 1950, but no one recognized that action at the time with the exception of Britain and Pakistan. Russia’s current operations in Ukraine were not in self-defense but rather looked like a war of aggression.

Indeed, the great British authority on international law, Elihu Lauterpacht, has drawn the distinction between unlawful territorial change by an aggressor, and lawful territorial change in response to an aggressor. In short, comparisons between Israel back then and Russia today are simply baseless.

The only explanation for what the UN is doing with the COI is the singling out of Israel. It is a kind of diplomatic invective. It is a nasty misuse of international law and practice by taking its struggle with the Jewish state to a new level.

What can Israel do, given the predicament at the UN? There is no question that the singling out of Israel yet again at the UN requires a response.

Doublespeak at Its Worst

And yet, despite the truth of these facts, the narrative one reads and hears in the mainstream media and from pro-Palestinian propagandists never reveals these critical details. The delegitimization of Israel relies on the spurious mantra that Israel was never legitimate, and that the Jewish nation has no valid claim to a country in the land that was previously “Palestine.”

And, as if this is not enough, the anti-Israel narrative maintains that the Arabs of Palestine were illegally dispossessed and that they remain dispossessed — all of them victims of a colonial enterprise executed by non-indigenous outsiders who stole the land from the Arabs.

But nothing could be further from the truth. While it is true that Arabs settled and dominated Palestine — which in the modern period was an ill-defined province of the Ottoman Empire — it was the Jews who were dispossessed, some 2,000 years ago.

And it was the Jews who were a perpetually persecuted minority in the territory which was theirs for more than 14 centuries, beginning with the conquest of Joshua, and ending with the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 C.E., followed by the rout of Bar Kokhba and his rebels in 135 C.E.

And it was the Jews who were associated, throughout the period of their dispossession, with the province known as Palestine — even by Muslim scholars of the Koran, as pointed out by, among others, the widely respected British imam, Sheikh Dr. Muhammad Al-Husseini.

How is it possible that the truly dispossessed can be accused of dispossessing others when they reclaim territory that is rightfully theirs?

What this means is that anyone who proposes Israel’s illegitimacy is simply guilty of Orwellian doublethink — at its worst. As Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell’s masterpiece “1984” puts it: doublethink is “to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies.”

The truth of the Land of Israel’s association with the Jewish nation cannot possibly be disputed — it is a fact no less true than that the sky is above, and that water is wet.

With far right ascendant in Israel, Blinken tells Abbas US committed to 2 states

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas spoke with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken Friday, demanding the Biden administration “compel” Israel to stop various attacks against Palestinians.

According to State Department spokesman Ned Price, Blinken and Abbas discussed “joint efforts to improve the quality of life for the Palestinian people and enhance their security and freedom.”

Price said Blinken “further reaffirmed our commitment to a two-state solution,” a noteworthy statement as Israel, following this past week’s election, looks set to usher in its most right-wing government ever, including far-right elements.

Blinken “underscored his deep concern over the situation in the West Bank, including heightened tensions, violence, and loss of both Palestinian and Israeli lives, and emphasized the need for all parties to de-escalate the situation urgently,” Price added.

According to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, Abbas briefed Blinken on “Israeli attacks against the Palestinian people… including the blockades, extrajudicial killings, home demolitions and settlement construction, in addition to settlers’ violence and violations carried out against the ‘occupied’ city of Jerusalem and its Muslim and Christian holy sites.”

The report said Abbas “reiterated his demand for the US administration to compel the Israeli occupation authorities to stop these crimes committed against the Palestinian people, land and holy sites.”

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11/04 Links Pt1: Ruthie Blum: Israel’s right to sideline the Left; No Call to Bibi: Biden Has Yet to Congratulate Newly Elected Israeli Leader; Teenage Israeli girl shot in the head in Kiryat Arba

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: Israel’s right to sideline the Left

The emerging landslide victory for the camp headed by Israeli opposition leader Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu is causing more than the average stir. Though there’s nothing unusual about a losing side feeling disappointed by an unwanted result at the ballot box, the outcome of Tuesday’s Knesset elections – the fifth round in three-and-a-half years – is generating a level of disgruntlement not seen in the country since 1977.

That was the year when Menachem Begin, founder of the Likud Party now chaired by Netanyahu, became premier. The upheaval ended three decades of Labor Party dominance.

Panic on the Left was palpable and shrill, with detractors calling him a terrorist, likening him to Mussolini and bemoaning Israel’s inevitable downfall at his hands. Not only was the frenzy unwarranted but in retrospect, it was laughable.

Today’s equally undue apoplexy surrounds two phenomena: Netanyahu’s smashing comeback, which his foes had been doing everything to quash, and the meteoric rise to mega-popularity of Otzma Yehudit MK Itamar Ben-Gvir.

At Netanyahu’s behest prior to the election, Ben-Gvir and Religious Zionist MK Bezalel Smotrich merged their factions so as to prevent the possibility of split and wasted ballots. The move turned out to be a brilliant one, as together they garnered a large number of seats.

The haredi parties Shas and United Torah Judaism also increased their mandates. The upshot is a strong majority for the Right with Netanyahu at the helm. In other words, for the first time in its history, Israel will have an exclusively nationalist and religious governing coalition.

Jonathan Tobin: The panic in the US surrounding Israel’s next government is about politics, not values

As far as many American Jews are concerned, this time the Israelis have gone too far. After more than four decades of tolerating, with decreasing patience and growing disdain, Israeli governments that were led by the Likud Party, the results of this week’s Knesset election go beyond the pale for a lot of liberals.

Their angst is not so much focused on the return to power of Benjamin Netanyahu for his third stint as the Jewish state’s prime minister, even though he is widely viewed by many Jewish Democrats as the moral equivalent of a red-state Republican. The panic about the election results is caused by the fact that the Religious Zionist Party and its leaders, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, will play a leading role in the next governing coalition. The party won 14 seats, making it the third largest in the Knesset and an indispensable part of the majority that Netanyahu is about to assemble.

The prospect of Smotrich, and especially Ben-Gvir, sitting in Netanyahu’s Cabinet has not just set off a bout of pearl-clutching on the part of liberal Jewish groups. It’s also led to the sort of ominous rhetoric describing a crack-up of the relationship between American and Israeli Jews that goes beyond the usual rumblings about the growing distance between the two communities.

There are legitimate questions to be posed about Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. Time will tell whether they are up to the challenge of their new responsibilities and act in a manner that helps, rather than hurts, Netanyahu’s efforts to consolidate support for his government at home and abroad. But what no one seems to be considering is whether the rush to judgment about them says more about Diaspora Jewry’s obsessions than it does about the embrace of nationalist and religious parties by Israel’s voters.

The pair are the embodiment of everything that most American Jews don’t like about the Jewish state. Their unapologetic nationalism and perceived hostility to Arabs, gays and non-Orthodox Judaism are anathema to liberal Americans.

But the interesting thing about the statements coming out of groups like the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and more unabashedly leftist organizations is the way they highlight their worries about the new Israeli government by pointing to the supposed threat that the Religious Zionist Party poses to Israeli democracy.

The Return of Bibi Netanyahu

In Israel, just as in the U.S., the Right typically tends to perform better when the public votes on issues pertaining to the economy and, above everything else, crime, public safety, and national security. Israel has generally been in a shakier place, from a public safety perspective, ever since the Jewish state's last full-scale war with Gaza-based Hamas in May 2021. There have been a number of terrorist attacks and shootings, not merely in Judea and Samaria but even in the liberal/secular heart of Israel, Tel Aviv, that have shocked the national conscience. Israeli-Arab violence, and even the occasional vandalism of synagogues, has at times escalated in mixed Jewish/Arab cities. The Israel Defense Forces has also been forced to step up its counterterrorism operations to thwart the now-ascendant jihad waged by the "Lions' Den" militant group, which is based in Nablus.

At the same time, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is still dealing with the domestic fallout of its state-sponsored murder of protester Mahsa Amini, inches ever closer to the bomb. Iran poses a significant threat to the West and to the U.S., but it poses an existential threat to Israel. In fact, it is, at this time, Israel's only true existential threat. And there is no one Israelis trust more to handle the Iran portfolio than Netanyahu, who gave a tremendous speech to the U.S. Congress in March 2015 excoriating the then-ongoing Iran nuclear deal negotiations, oversaw the daredevil Mossad operation to expose and airlift out Iran's nuclear secrets a few years later, and who helped achieve the 2020 Abraham Accords peace with the U.A.E., Bahrain, and Morocco, which is best understood as an anti-Iran regional containment coalition.

Put simply, Israelis finally sobered up and (correctly) realized that Netanyahu is the best person to steward the Jewish state on issues pertaining to law and order, public safety, national security, and even Israel's international diplomacy. Israelis should be applauded for this decision. The so-called international community will undoubtedly blanch at the inclusion of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir in Netanyahu's governing coalition, but, frankly: Who the hell cares? The Israeli people, and only the Israeli people, can deem what is best for them and their country. The Biden administration, and other Western actors, should respect their judgment.

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The sky isn't falling, there is no plague of locusts, and Israel isn't becoming a fascist theocracy

The headlines in Haaretz alone makes one wonder when they will be predicting a plague of locusts in the wake of the Likud bloc victory.

All of these are from today.

Yes, Bibi has destroyed Judaism!

The thing is, we've seen this before. We saw similar warnings from the media, pundits, "experts" and American Jewish leaders every single time a right wing government won an election in Israel. 

Yet is was the Israeli Right that made peace with Egypt, the helped drive the Abraham Accords, that has given record amounts of monetary support for Arab Israelis.

I cannot predict what this government will do. However, the fears are quite clearly overblown, and too many people are buying into the insane and inane predictions.

Here's what I do know:

* Israel is a strong democracy with checks and balances in its government. It cannot turn fascist because of a minister or two.

* Netanyahu is a brilliant politician and the leader of the largest elected party. He will make deals to keep his larger agenda moving, but if there is something he opposes, it will not happen.

* Netanyahu already has a long record of leadership. We know his opinions and positions. The concern that he will suddenly change his political opinions - which have been quite moderate, despite the media coverage - is ridiculous.

* Newspapers and pundits gain readers by making up predictions that are extreme, and they rarely get punished for being wrong - so there is little incentive for sober analysis in the the more prominent outlets.

My opinion of Netanyahu has gone down since the previous election, but he has made his positions and vision clear. He is not going to be manipulated by any other MK or minister - he's the one who manipulates them. Things will largely be the way they were during his previous terms, which were largely pragmatic.

The sky isn't falling, and those making the overblown predictions are as unreliable as the ones that predicted Begin and Sharon were going to start wars. 

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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11/03 Links Pt1: Israelis Want Leaders Who Have a Vision for a Jewish and Zionist State; Melanie Phillips: Israel joins the West’s culture wars

From Ian:

With overwhelming victory, Netanyahu set to form strong, stable, legitimate, right-wing gov’t

Apparently in Israel, the fifth time is the charm. After repeated attempts by the opposition, by defectors from his own right-wing bloc, by the prosecution and the Supreme Court to prevent embattled former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from ruling, the electorate finally ended Israel’s protracted political deadlock by voting overwhelmingly in favor of Netanyahu and his natural—and loyal—right-wing allies.

With 87.6 percent of the paper ballots counted, Netanyahu’s bloc is likely to surge to as many as 65 seats in the 120-member Knesset. The number represents a stable parliamentary majority. By contrast, Israel’s left-wing collapsed to barely 45 seats—a massive 20-seat gap between the right-wing and left-wing blocs. Parties comprising the outgoing coalition secured only 50 Knesset mandates this time around, including an Arab party affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Even if the distribution of mandates shifts slightly as the final votes are counted, the results are clear: Netanyahu is returning to power for a third stretch as head of government, after a year in the opposition.

The vote was a national referendum on the fitness of Netanyahu—Israel’s longest-serving prime minister—as the man best suited for the top job. It was also a referendum on the tremendous damage caused cycle after election cycle by opposing parliamentarians who conspired to block the people’s choice from serving as prime minister.

In a major surprise, turnout was the highest in years. Many had said that Israelis were growing tired of going to the polls each year and might boycott the voting booths. On the contrary, Israelis embraced their hyper-democracy and voted overwhelmingly to return stability to the electoral system. And the voters proved once again that Israel is a traditional, center-right country.

Despite all the efforts to oust him, it is now clear that Netanyahu has not lost any support across five consecutive elections. And now, the right-wing government he is poised to assemble represents the most stable alignment he has ever secured. There is virtually zero chance that Netanyahu will attempt to move towards a so-called unity alignment with parties that have tried to prevent him from serving as premier. Doing so would bring a Trojan horse and the opposition directly into his cabinet. Stability depends on forming an alliance with parties that actually support Netanyahu’s candidacy.

Continuity expected on Bennett-Lapid policies on Lebanon, Turkey - analysis

The next government is likely to continue some of its predecessors’ key regional policies if Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu forms a coalition, as expected.

Netanyahu expressed sharp opposition to the Lebanon maritime demarcation agreement shortly before it was set to be signed, calling it “terms of surrender.”

However, when the deal was finalized last week, Netanyahu said he would “behave as [he] did with the Oslo Accords.” When Netanyahu became prime minister in 1996, he fulfilled the previous government’s commitment that Israel would mostly withdraw from Hebron, following negotiations in which he demanded the Palestinians pledge to stop terrorism.

Netanyahu’s attitude towards the Oslo Accords as prime minister can be summed up in a statement he made at the time: “If they give, they will get; if they don’t give, they will not get.” Netanyahu repeated this call for reciprocity several times in his autobiography published last month, and as such, is likely to be his approach to the Lebanon agreement, as well.

US President Joe Biden provided Prime Minister Yair Lapid with a letter of guarantees over the weekend that would likely limit Netanyahu’s ability to change the deal. The letter backs up the Lebanon agreement and states that the US is committed to supporting the IDF and strengthening its ability to defend Israel, including against threats to its ships and energy assets.

Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati told Reuters on Wednesday that the US guarantees protect the maritime boundary deal.

Melanie Phillips: Israel joins the West’s culture wars

With the result of its election this week, Israel has joined other Western countries in a notable current trend: A revolt by the public against the political establishment.

The Religious Zionist Party has now become the third-largest party in the Knesset. This is likely to mean cabinet posts for the rabble-rouser Itamar Ben-Gvir and the ultra-conservative Bezalel Smotrich in a new government led by the Likud Party’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

While their likely inclusion is due to Israel’s baroque political structure—some 90% of voters didn’t vote for them—the increase in support they received is significant.

Just as happened in Hungary, Italy, the U.S. and Sweden, the once-fringe Religious Zionist Party has come to power because a significant proportion of the public has become profoundly disillusioned with a political establishment that it felt was ignoring and betraying its interests and values.

Before the election, a number of mainstream conservative-minded Israeli voters said they would be voting for Ben-Gvir. So too did a surprising number of the secular young in Tel Aviv. For the latter, Ben-Gvir’s authenticity and directness made him an unlikely political rock star. In addition, among some conservatives, there was a weariness with Netanyahu.

Others who had previously voted for the Yamina Party’s Naftali Bennett felt a deep sense of betrayal when he tore up his previous promises and principles and formed a governing coalition with the left-of-center Yair Lapid that depended upon the Islamist Ra’am Party.

As this coalition staggered along, there was further disillusionment. Bennett and Lapid seemed to be groveling to the Biden administration, only for Israel to get kicked in the teeth in response.

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