Political protests in Israel, rightwing political extremism still strong

Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak in mid-August made a rhetorical appeal for a political general strike in Israel. It seems to have been a rhetorical flourish rather than any real political effort to organizing such a move.

Under cover of the war, a governmental and constitutional putsch is now taking place in Israel without a shot being fired. If this putsch isn't stopped, it will turn Israel into a de facto dictatorship within weeks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government are assassinating democracy. ...

The only way to prevent a dictatorship at such a late stage is by shutting down the country through large-scale, nonviolent civil disobedience, 24/7, until this government falls. But ordinary people aren't democracy's first line of defense. That would be the leaders, gatekeepers and elected officials. [my emphasis] (1)

Of course, a former Prime Minister warning about the impending imposition of a dictatorship is quite a dramatic rhetorical flourish.

There actually a general strike going on today in Israel. But it’s not a Wobblies-style attempt to overturn the government and establish a One Big Union. “Israel's largest trade union, the Histadrut, also pressured the government by calling a general strike for Monday. The strike aims to shut down or disrupt major sectors of the economy, including banking, health care and the country's main airport.” (2)

And on Sunday, there were big protests over the death of six hostages: (3)

But a one-day combination of strike actions and demonstrations focused on the death of hostages is not the same as an uprising against Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

Opposition leader Benny Gantz has regained the lead over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in recent opinion polls as the preferred candidate for prime minister.

According to a Friday report by the daily Maariv, 40% of Israelis prefer Gantz for the position, while 39% favor Netanyahu.

The same poll shows that if elections were held today, both Gantz’s National Unity party and Netanyahu’s Likud party would have an equal number of seats in the Knesset, each securing 21 out of 120 seats. (4)

There is no large electoral bloc of parties explicitly opposing the war or condemning the widespread criminal violence, though there certainly are Israelis criticizing them. Between media control and nationalist ideology, there is just no large political movement trying to block Netanyahu’s very reckless war policies. And even less so for a two-state solution (which is completely unrealistic though it’s still an official US talking point) and none at all for a secular, democratic nation including Gaza and the West Bank.

Dahlia Scheindlin, author of The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel: Promise Unfulfilled (2023) in a recent interview described the state of Israeli public opinion this way:

What we would expect to see in wartime is the “rally around the flag” effect, and among Israeli Jews we did see just that: very high and sweeping support for the war. Palestinian citizens of Israel, it should be noted, have consistently displayed much lower levels of support for the army’s offensive.

We’ve also seen the popularization among Israeli Jews of some very extreme positions regarding the war, including opposing humanitarian aid and complete justification of almost all military actions. Commonly held opinions also include the argument that Israel should strike Hezbollah and Lebanon hard, and that Israel should occupy Gaza and rebuild Jewish settlements there. (5)

She notes that while Netanyahu’s support dropped in the early part of the war – going against the usual circle-the-wagons impulse – that didn’t carry over into criticism of the war itself to the same degree.

Whereas in other countries with a “rally around the flag” effect you tend to see strong support for the leadership, in Israel we saw the opposite. Support for the leadership among Israeli Jews plunged to its lowest levels ever, which is very unusual in the first months during wartime. This trend has been very consistent.

Netanyahu and his Likud party had terrible ratings, losing about 50 percent of their support. The government [as a whole] lost a third of its support, and generic questions about public trust in government fell below 20 percent, in juxtaposition to faith in the strength of Israeli society itself.

But now Netanyahu’s support is starting to bounce back, right?

Yes, we’re seeing trust in the government recover pretty consistently across all surveys — starting in April [when Israel assassinated an Iranian Quds Force commander in Damascus, and Iran responded with a missile attack]. A series of polls in recent weeks have shown that Likud would win the most votes if elections were held today, and Netanyahu himself is once again coming out on top in head-to-head surveys against opposition leader Benny Gantz. He’s not in a stellar position, but he is more or less where he was before the war. [my emphasis]

In an earlier column, Scheindlin observed that the conflict with Iran in particular seemed to boost Netanyahu’s own ratings. Which will presumably encourage him in the belief that as long as a serious war is going on, he won’t have to give up being Prime Minister and therefore will be able to indefinitely postpone his trial on corruption charges:

But what today's numbers show is that Netanyahu is winning back some of his old, remarkably enduring support. What could have happened both in early April and in early August to generate watershed progress in his post-war poll recovery? All evidence points to Iran.

On April 2, Israel assassinated Mohammad Zahedi, the Iranian Quds Force commander, in Damascus. When I analyzed the very early polling improvements on April 9, Israelis didn't yet know that Iran was going to respond by attacking Israel directly only days later. When Iran was poised to respond, Israel rallied an international coalition of Western and Arab allies that would have been unthinkable barely a decade earlier, and together they repelled Iran's attack in an impressive military and diplomatic feat. Netanyahu almost made it look easy.

When it was over, by late April, Netanyahu saw his best polls since the start of the war to date. A plurality of Israelis of all political camps in an Israel Democracy Institute survey thought Israel had the strategic upper hand over Iran. In Lazar's weekly polls for Maariv, Likud rose two seats after the Iran strike on Israel, and stayed up, while the coalition parties' total number (without Gantz's National Unity) rose five seats and stayed put. [my emphasis] (6)

What are Israeli fantasists to the right of Netanyahu promoting?

Frances Coppola is a finance specialist and is mainly know for her insightful economic journalism. But she obviously also follows the situation in Israel very closely. And in a recent post, she paints a grim picture of Israel’s territorial intentions and some very hair-raising maximalist goals by the most extreme Zionist ideologues there. Prior to last October, I would have thought some of the ones she described were nothing more than crank extremist fantasies. And they are that. But we can all see know just how much sway the ugliest extremism has right now in Israeli politics.

Ethnic cleansing of the West Bank is now in progress.

They have repeatedly threatened to do to Lebanon what they have done to Gaza. And now, they are menacing other countries in the region.

They have gone mad. The world must act to stop them. Before it is too late. (7)

But at the moment, the “world” acting to stop them comes down to the Biden Administration cutting off military aid to Israel’s current rogue government. I try to avoid fatalism about Middle East messes. But the practical chances of that happening as long as Joe Biden remains President look very close to zero.

We’ve seen Israel doing things since November that have stunned even their jaded critics. And the fanatical religious right in Israel does have a lot of clout. And so does the Christian Zionist radical Protestant fundamentalist political faction in the US. So, as crazy as their wild territorial fantasies may be, crazy has a lot of clout on Israeli politics right now, just as it does in the US Republican Party. Coppola:

I do not think we should ignore the territorial ambitions of the Israeli religious right. They are in power, and they have big plans. Eliminating the State of Palestine, and annexing Lebanon and Jordan, will not satisfy them.

This map has been doing the rounds:

In this version of the map from Wikimedia Commons, the west and east boundaries run, respectively, along the river Nile and the river Euphrates - hence the wiggly lines.


When the religious far right talks about the Promised Land extending “from the Nile to the Euphrates”, it’s this area they mean. As the maps show, it encompasses not only Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, but all of Jordan, all of Lebanon, most of Syria, half of Iraq, part of Kuwait, a third of Saudi Arabia, all of Egypt east of the Nile (including the vital Suez Canal), and a small part of Turkey. It’s not hard to imagine the effect that turning all of this into a Jewish ethnostate would have on the Middle East, and indeed on the world.

The official program of Netanyahu’s government calls for what appears to be control by Israel “from the river to the sea”, then “from the Nile to the Euphrates” is many times worse. The official program calls for the following (from 2023):

Further clues to how Netanyahu and his partners will govern are apparent in the coalition agreement that sets out the new government’s guidelines. Though it is not legally binding, it states plainly its ideology: “The Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right over all areas of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop the settlement of all parts of the Land of Israel — in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan and Judea and Samaria,” the latter referring to the occupied West Bank. (8)

Certainly many Israelis and supporters of Netanyahu’s Likud Party will understand “all areas of the Land of Israel” to include Gaza. Likud has certainly traditionally used it that way. Judea and Samaria are the names of the administrative districts Israel uses in its longtime, illegal occupation of the West Bank.

Turning government over to the fantasies of whack jobs is never a good idea. Not in Israel, not in America.

Notes:

(1) Barak, Ehud (2024): Shut Down the Country: How Israelis and Their Leaders Can Avert Netanyahu's Dictatorship. Haaretz 08/14/2024. <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-08-14/ty-article-opinion/.premium/shut-down-the-country-how-israelis-and-their-leaders-can-avert-netanyahus-dictatorship/00000191-4d56-d94f-adf1-dd7e64d10000> (Accessed: 2024-14-08).

(2) Tens of thousands of Israelis protest for cease-fire deal in response to 6 dead hostages. Ynet News 09/01/2024. <https://www.ynetnews.com/article/ryapf7f20> (Accessed: 2024-02-09).

(3) Ibid.

(4) Arnaout, Abdelraouf (2024): Opposition leader Gantz leads Netanyahu in race for Israeli premiership in latest opinion poll. Anadolu Agency 08/30/2024. <https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/opposition-leader-gantz-leads-netanyahu-in-race-for-israeli-premiership-in-latest-opinion-poll/3316915#> (Accessed: 2024-02-09).

(5) Scheindlin, Dahlia (2024): ‘Israelis are frustrated, but do they want to stop the war? Not exactly’. +972 Magazine 08/30/2024. <https://www.972mag.com/israeli-public-opinion-war-gaza/> (Accessed: 2024-02-09).

(6) Scheindlin, Dahlia (2024): Despite Gaza, Netanyahu Is Topping the Polls in Israel Again. He Should Thank Iran. Haaretz 08/19/2024. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-08-19/ty-article/.premium/despite-gaza-netanyahu-is-topping-the-polls-in-israel-again-he-should-thank-iran/00000191-6b46-d87e-a9b3-6f7f795d0000> (Accessed: 2024-02-09).

(7) Coppola, Frances (2024): Believe what Israel says - and stop it. Coppola Comment 09/01/2024. <https://coppolacomment.substack.com/p/believe-what-israel-says-and-stop> (Accessed: 2024-02-09).

(8) Guyer, Jonathan (2023): Israel’s new right-wing government is even more extreme than protests would have you think. Vox 01/20/2023. <https://www.vox.com/world/2023/1/20/23561464/israel-new-right-wing-government-extreme-protests-netanyahu-biden-ben-gvir> (Accessed: 2024-02-09).