#Yisrael Beiteinu

[huskerthefriendlyghost]

As much as Benjamin Netanyahu’s past actions make me hesitate to support him, perhaps it would be a positive step forward for a unity government to form. I am still reluctant to support Netanyahu in a position of power any longer, but it appears that is not an option as he continues to fight for a hold on Israel’s government. I believe Benny Gantz would be able to balance out the Prime Minister, to create a government with wider values and more diverse interests for the future of Israel. Then again, it is possible the government they create would not be able to reach any agreements, let alone accomplish any task together with such conflicting goals. The most pressing obstacle right now is who would serve as Prime Minister, which could at least be solved with a premiership rotation, but I fear this supposed solution would be a hindrance to productivity for the fledgling government. 

[cazort]

Proponents of the US supporting Israel through massive military aid packages often tout the fact that Israel is a democracy. They never delve much into Israeli politics, however. I would love for supporters of Israel to study more about Israeli politics because I arrived at my views critical of Israel largely by looking at their political system, particularly researching the Knesset and which parties hold the power and looking at how they function.

Most Westerners think "democracy" and picture countries like the US and Western European countries like the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, or Italy. Israel has a parliamentary system more like most European countries and less like the US.

But unlike any of the Western democracies countries I listed above as examples, Israel's government has been dominated by right-wing politics over almost their entire existence. Netanyahu has been described to me as a Trump-like figure, combining xenophobic and racist tendencies, consolidation of power in the executive portion of the government, with vaguely right-leaning domestic policies. He was first elected prime minister in 1996 and has held the office for a total of 16 years, and when not in that position, he has been in the government in other key roles. Even before Netanyahu, the right, embracing hardline views on things like settlements, land grabs, treatment of Palestinians, and censorship of the Nakba, has dominated Israeli politics.

The left has little power in Israeli politics. Israel's largest center-left party, Yesh Atid, currently only holds 24/120 seats in the Knesset. This party corresponds roughly to the mainstream policies of the Democratic party in the US. It is not particularly progressive, just left-leaning and often described as centrist. It still tolerates a lot of the atrocities committed by Israel. It is the largest part of the opposition to the current government, but this opposition includes a loose alliance with other, mostly less-progressive factions. The next-largest alliance in the opposition is National Unity (8 seats) which consists largely of centrist-to-independent military (IDF) interests, and the third-largest is Yisrael Beiteinu (6), a conservative party that historically represented mostly Russian-speaking secular Jews, the United Arab List (5) which is a conservative Islamist party, and New Hope, which is another right-wing party. The only progressive parties in the opposition are the Hadash–Ta'al joint list, and labor, and between all these parties the progressives control only 9/120 seats, which exactly 7.5% of the seats.

So left-leaning parties in Israel have only 33/120, or 27.5% of the seats. And only 7.5% of them are progressive. Only the progressives and the conservative Islamist party are critical of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

Imagine what the US would be like if someone like Trump had been president for 16 years, and for another 12 years had been in the Senate. And if the Democrats controlled only 27.5% of the seats in congress, and much of the opposition to Trump were just from anti-Trump conservatives.

That's what Israel is like now.

Yeah, it's a Democracy. It's a Democracy where an overwhelming majority of the citizens keep voting for a genocidal, power-hungry government and have been doing so for decades. It's a Democracy where the left is left with scraps, where even centrists or moderates are marginalized and the only power is held by the far-right.

It's not free the way countires in Western Europe or even the US are. We take for granted the type of freedom of protest. In Israel, Hasidim get beaten by police when the protest the government. Jewish Israeli Journalists get doxxed and their families threatened, when they publish material deemed too critical of the government. Members of the legislature get shut down when they speak out too strongly about what is going on. Right-wingers and hardliners are able to openly voice calls to violence and other extremist stances, but people on the left get suspended when they draw analogies between what Israel is doing and what Nazis did during the holocaust, like how Ofer Cassif was suspended for 45 days:

Please be mindful of this when you defend Israel as a "democracy", or see others doing so. Yes, it is a democracy. But what does this mean? A democracy allows people to vote to take away people's rights. A democracy allows people to vote to tolerate or condone genocide.

And remember, it is only a democracy for citizens; people who had lived on the land for generations and were forced out by violence, and who either refuse to follow the processes of the state that forced them out in order to become citizens, or cannot follow those processes, are not given the right to vote. This is why people say it is an apartheid state. Israeli citizens can vote; Palestinians cannot.

[stupidjewishwhiteboy]

I've noticed a thing where American left-wing critics of Israel of approximately my age group (so millenials and Gen-Xers) whose main experience of right-wing politics growing up was Bush-era evangelical Christian neo-cons, will use the same vocabulary to describe right-wing Israelis (and sometimes to describe all Israelis, or all Zionists)-"religious fundamentalists", "zealots", that sort of thing. The thing is, Israel isn't the US, and Judaism isn't Christianity, so while one could describe both Religious Zionists/Ben Gvir and Smotrich types and Haredim as "zealots" or "fundamentalists" the way those terms describe them is very different from how they would be used to describe Mike Pence or George W Bush or John Hagee or Pat Robertson or whoever, to say nothing of Likudniks or the various offshoots of Likud or Yisrael Beiteinu, to say nothing of the various parties not of the Israeli Right.

[sethshead]

There are two other possibilities, not mutually exclusive, not mentioned here:

Some Likud backbenchers, desiring competence or seeing their fortunes slip in association with a discredited party, defect to National Unity or Yisrael Beiteinu and join a vote of confidence to unseat Netanyahu.

A Haredi party defects from Netanyahu's coalition. Haredim are distinct from religious settlers. Most are ambivalent at best to Zionism. They just want to maintain their benefits and fiefdoms. This is of course highly frustrating, to have to grant so much patronage to special-interest parties as a bribe for them to join you. But if it undoes Netanyahu, it might be worth the temporary sacrifice of civil marriage or mandatory conscription of yeshiva bahurim.

[plitnick]

More Israeli Elections: What Happens Now? Former Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has succeeded in bringing down Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government before it formed.

[dykesbites]

Image description: Three screenshots from a wikipedia page. They read:

Israel does not officially recognize the Armenian genocide. Recognition of the genocide became a subject of debate in Israel in the years following Armenia's 1991 independence from the Soviet Union. Turkey has warned that labeling the events as genocide by Israel or the United States would harm its relations with Israel.

In 2001, when he was Israli Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres called the Armenian genocide "meaningless". In response, Israel Charny, executive director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem, wrote: "It seems that because of your wishes to advance very important relations with Turkey, you have been prepared to circumvent the subject of the Armenian genocide in 1915-1920... it may be that in your broad perspective of the needs of the state of Israel, it is your obligation to circumvent and desist from bringing up the subject with Turkey, but, as a Jew and an Israeli, I am ashamed of the extent to which you have now entered into the range of actual denial of the Armenian genocide, comparable to denials of the Holocaust".

In 2008, Yosef Shagal, an Azerbaijani-born former Israeli parliamentarian from Yisrael Beiteinu said in an interview with an Azerbaijani news outlet: "I find it is deeply offensive, and even blasphemous to compare the Holocaust of European Jewry during the Second World War with the mass extermination of the Armenian people during the First World War. Jews were killed because they were Jews... [With Armenians] the picture is principally different - seeking to establish the state and national independence, Turkish Armenians sided with the Russian Empire, which was at war with Turkey".

End image description.

when you are most definitely not evil

[newsfind]

Israel faces new elections after parliament dissolves Source link

[progressivejudaism]

[mariacallous]

Israel election update:

well the rounds of musical chairs are finally over the dead line for final party lists has past with the dramatic literal 11th hour split of the Arab Joint List, the party making a deal, breaking up, coming together and finally breaking up all in the HOURS before the midnight deadline to submit a party list, I believe the two sides literally filed their list of candidate names after 11PM

That leaves Likud, Yesh Atid, National Unity, Religious Zionists-Otzma Yehudit, Shas, United Torah Judaism, Yisrael Beiteinu, Labor, Meretz, Hadash–Ta'al, and Ra'am as the parties polling over the threshold, the Likud right-Religious bloc has been polling at 60 seats while the Coalition has been polling at 56 with Hadash-Ta'al polling at 4 seats. The break up of the Joint List was in part about Balad wanting the party to pledge itself to not recommend anyone to form a government. So if Hadash recommends Lapid it'd be a 60-60 tie

It's never a dull moment in Israeli politics.

Among my many concerns with a Likud-led government with Netanyahu in charge again is that they're less likely to face the same kind of splits and tensions that the Coalition has due to being more ideologically in sync with each other, which means more likely to get their legislation passed and their goals accomplished, which is not good news on a number of fronts.

[ruminativerabbi]

Bibi Out, Naftul In

I had an important decision to make last Sunday morning: what music to listen to as I drove around in far-eastern Connecticut looking for the last-minute things we needed to buy for Emil’s wedding that afternoon. Lots of things suggested themselves, but I finally settled on “Brightly Dawns our Wedding Day,” a quartet from The Mikado and one of Arthur Sullivan’s most lovely choral pieces. The music—a BBC recording that Spotify recommended—was gorgeous. But, as I drove around looking for open stores, I realized that I was listening not only to an appropriate piece of wedding-day music, but also to a (choral, but trenchant) comment on the topic I knew even then I wanted to write about this week: the new government in Israel and the promise it holds for the future.

The plot line of The Mikado is a bit complicated, but the basic idea is that the singers are rejoicing over a happy marriage about to take place and noting, in four-part harmony, that one must always rejoice over happy events even without knowing what the future will bring. (Within the storyline of the operetta, the union being celebrated is unlikely to endure for more than a single month because the groom’s execution has already been scheduled for thirty days in the future. Emil and Adam’s union, on the other hand, I fully expect to be permanent and enduring. But the deeper point is that love should always be celebrated for its own sake and not merely because of where it might conceivably lead or tragically not lead, which idea I certainly can endorse wholeheartedly.) In the end, no one knows the future. But when two hearts are joined as one and from two separate individuals emerges a couple wholly devoted to each other’s welfare—that is a moment to rejoice, not to suffer over your inability to forecast every twist and turn on the road ahead.

And that is something like the set of thoughts I bring to the remarkable and—at least by myself—unexpected departure of Benjamin Netanyahu for greener pastures (or jail) and the no less unexpected ascension of Naftali Bennett to the office of Prime Minister.

Bennett heads a coalition of, to say the very least, strange bedfellows. In fact, it would not be entirely wrong to say that the parties to the new coalition, co-led by Bennet and his unlikely partner Yair Lapid, are united by more or less nothing at all other than their wish to send Bibi packing, which goal they have actually managed to accomplish. So the question isn’t whether the parties to the new government are each other’s natural allies (which they certainly aren’t) or whether they will attempt to exploit each other’s wish for the government not to collapse to accomplish their own goals (which they certainly will), but whether they will be able effectively and successfully to govern a nation known for its political fractiousness and, at least recently, political instability. That, more than anything else, is the question.

They are a very diverse lot, the partners to this new coalition.

Most unexpected of all, I suppose, would have to be Mansour Abbas, head of the Islamic Raam party. At first blush, there shouldn’t be anything too surprising here—Arabs make up about 20% of the Israeli population and there have been many Arab MKs in the past. But this is the first time an Arab party has been invited into the corridors of power as a member of the governing coalition. Is this a sign of desperation, welcoming into the government people whose allegiance to the Jewish nature of Israel is beyond tenuous? Or is it a sign of health, and of great health at that, this notion of a democracy specifically not excluding citizens from positions of power because of their ethnicity or their faith? I think I think the latter: part of the democratic process has to be a willingness to allow all citizens to be represented by the leaders they themselves choose. And that right cannot be abrogated by their unwillingness to toe this or that party line. It’s a daring move, bringing Raam in. It could obviously backfire. But it could also herald a new period in Israeli politics, one in which the citizenry is represented in the government in an unprecedented, but ultimately reasonable and fair way. We’ll see.

Bennett himself is the leader of the Yamina party, a tiny right-wing group that has exactly six seats in the 120-seat Knesset. That’s both good and bad: good, because Bennett’s retention of power will obviously have to depend on his ability to compromise with people who are in many ways totally dissimilar from himself or the other MKs of his own party, but bad because it means the PM has no natural power base on which to rely and will almost definitely be at odds with the vast majority of his fellow Knesset members. Yair Lapid, who heads the centrist and very hopefully-named Yesh Atid (“There Is A Future”) party, will take over as Prime Minister in two years. (In the meantime, he will serve as Foreign Minister.) Yesh Atid did better than Yamina, but they still only have seventeen seats in the Knesset. That means that together Bennett and Lapid only control twenty-three out of 120 seats. Will there be enough common ground for the members of the government to govern? Or will the coalition collapse almost immediately now that the only glue holding them all together—their common loathing of Netanyahu—has vanished with the object of their loathing himself. I suppose we’ll see about that too.

The other parties in the coalition are all far more likely to be uncomfortable in each other’s presence than comfortable. The left-wing Labor and Meretz parties have almost no important positions in common with the right-wing New Hope and Yisrael Beiteinu parties. Nor does it bode particularly well that the sole centrist party in the government now is Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party. (Gantz will remain in place as Minister of Defense.)

It’s also important to notice who isn’t in the new government. For the first time in a long time, there are no Haredi parties represented. Whether that will signal a sea-change in Israeli policy towards drafting ultra-Orthodox young men remains to be seen, as also remains to be seen whether the new coalition will have the strength finally to break the Orthodox stranglehold on matters of personal status (like marriage and divorce) and to offer a fair deal to non-Orthodox Jews in Israel whose tax shekels pay the salaries of the nation’s Orthodox rabbis but who must also pay dues to their own synagogues to support their own clergy. It’s unlikely that the coalition will want to step too heavily on the toes of the nation’s ultra-Orthodox population. On the other hand, the possibility of change with respect to the imperious, self-righteous way the chief rabbinate has been permitted to impose its will on the entire nation is something we can only hope to see realized.

So the chances of long-term success are not great. The coalition holds a razor-thin majority of exactly two seats in the Knesset. (This basically means that for anything at all to be accomplished, more or less every single member but one of the coalition has to be on board.) There are eight parties that belong to the governing coalition, a number only exceeded one single time in the past history of Israel. Whether that turns out to be the kiss of death or a sign of vibrant democracy at its most pliable and effective remains too to be seen. On the other hand, the new government includes nine female cabinet ministers, the most ever. But on the other other hand, none of the governing parties is led by a Jew of Middle Eastern or Sephardic origins—not a good sign for a nation in which non-Ashkenazic Jews have often felt looked over or disregarded.

So, to sum up, there are a thousand good reasons to expect the Bennett government to collapse momentarily. The man himself is a bit of an anomaly too—he will be Israel’s first religiously-observant Prime Minister who appears in public wearing a kippah, yet he leads a nation overwhelming secular in its orientation. (Whether his ascension will eventually be seen as emblematic of the nation’s move from the secular Zionism of the state’s founders to the kind of religious Zionism that has religion itself at the core of its self-conception—that too will be revealed only in the future.) He is Israel’s first Prime Minister born to American parents too, a natural, fluent English-speaker (like Netanyahu) who will do well on American television—which is key for Israeli politicians who want to win the hearts of the American public. But, of course, Bennett is also a natural Hebrew speaker—which is important since he now leads a nation of native-born Israelis to whom the ability to speak English well is unimportant and who will be far more closely tuned into the nuances of his Hebrew-language speeches and rhetoric.

The Israel of today is not the Israel of 1948. But neither is it the Israel of 1967 or even of the early 2000s. The nation today, particularly in the wake of the success of the Abraham Accords, is facing a set of potential foreign policy break-throughs, including with the Palestinians, that are unprecedented. So maybe the notion of a coalition that includes left-wing, right-wing, and centrist parties, plus an Arab party, will turn out to be the perfect government to move Israel successfully into the next decade, one—and the first—that can truly claim to represent the widest possible spectrum of opinions and positions. Things could go south at any moment, obviously. But for the moment I’m hoping for the best and wishing PM Bennett success in leading his nation forward successfully for these next two years.

[freinhardt56]

We will have regime change in Israel soon (no way Bibi wins again after his failures), but I worry that it will be another brand of apartheid state nutjobs like Yisrael Beiteinu or something 😞.

On the topic of American Colonialism, it's hilarious that people are like "Jews aren't indigenous to Israel, they should go back to America" 😑.

You're right that fear is what spurs atrocities. That fear of loss and pain drives reprisal and atrocity. I won't mourn Hamas militants, but I'm not naive enough to think most of them would still be terrorists were it not for 16 years of bombardment and blockade in Gaza. And I'm sure Israel would never have kept Likud in power for ~15 years without intifadas and rocket attacks.

You... Are a very good person. Good luck with your strike. I don't know if there ever will be peace in the Levant, but there has to be. We must make it happen.

Regarding charities, my hot take is that Jewish charities have enough money, the most important thing you can do is keep sticking up for us. If you still want to, JNF, ADL + Jstreet are good.

Love going into the Palestine tag and seeing people beg everyone not to say "Hitler did nothing wrong" and jackasses questioning the identity of Black Jews, etc. Attacking Jewish people isn't going to help jack shit. People are getting killed over in Palestine and you somehow think hating an entire ethnic group helps? Hating entire ethnic groups is how we got here in the first place!

Also, antisemitism is a major drive for Jewish people to flee to Israel. I hear many stories about people who fled because their storefront was destroyed and swastikas spraypainted, that kind of thing. So protecting Jews and not giving them a reason to move over there actually HELPS Palestine and spreading antisemitism that degrades their safety does nothing but make the situation WORSE for everyone involved. Knock it off.

Seriously, people are dying. Quit fooling around.

[grootpoepjeplasjehoofd]

sorry if this comes off as rude but why do you want Yisrael Beiteinu in government? i thought they’re also fairly conservative

I don’t, I just love the concept of the Joint List, the leftist led Palestinian bloc, in coalition with Yisrael Beitanu, led by a man who wants Arabs to give loyalty pledges to Israel while he’s not trying to find a way to give the Triangle to the Palestinian government in the event of a two state solution.

[theindianewstoday-blog]

Benjamin Netanyahu claims victory in Israel vote

https://theindianewstoday.com/benjamin-netanyahu-claims-victory-in-israel-vote/ Benjamin Netanyahu claims victory in Israel vote

[anthonyt525]

Unofficial results in Israel's second election in five months suggest it is too close to call, Israeli media say. Incumbent PM Benjamin Netanyahu's party and that of his main challenger, Benny Gantz, are neck and neck with 32 seats each, the Kan public broadcaster says. A prime minister needs to command a 61-seat majority in parliament. The smaller Yisrael Beiteinu party appears to hold the balance of power. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving prime minister, has been in office for 10 years and is vying to win a record fifth term in office.

The 69-year-old, who leads the right-wing Likud party, has pledged to annex Jewish settlements and a swathe of another territory in the occupied West Bank if he is returned to power.

[plitnick]

How racism is fueling Israel’s political paralysis

“Hating Arabs Isn’t revenge–it’s values.” Hashtag reads Israel Demands Revenge!”

For a moment, it seemed there was a light at the end of Israel’s political tunnel. Although Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party won fewer Knesset seats in the March 3 election than Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, sheer hatred of Netanyahu drove his former ally, the right-wing Avigdor Liberman, toward Gantz’s camp…

[telavivisaidhi-blog]

With our class peace simulation quickly approaching, it seems this article does a good job to express the hard-right viewpoints of my assigned political party, Yisrael Beiteinu.

This bill, proposed by Netanyahu’s political coalition, aims to exempt ultra-Orthodox Jews from being drafted into the military. However, members of Yisrael Beiteinu, such as Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, are completely against the bill and are against “compromising Israel’s security” in any way.

The Yisrael Beiteinu is so concerned with security, and so infuriated by the current bill, that they are (once again) threatening to leave the coalition. Netanyahu essentially called their bluff and stated the coalition can’t maintain 61 members anyway.

It seems there is a consensus between Likud and the other parties on this particular bill, and the only thing holding it up are the threats being made by Yisrael Beiteinu.

This article really shows how conservative the Yisrael Beiteinu party is compared to others in Israel, as well as the challenges Israel faces internally which are separate from any they face externally with Palestine or Iran.