#israeli politics

[unsolicited-opinions]

weve been moots for a while and its interesting, i feel like you have gotten a little more "radicalized" ans turned slightly more rightwing than when you first started posting abt i/p

I wouldn't say more right wing. On domestic policy, I still align pretty well with the Bernie Sanders end of the liberal spectrum.

Here's a ranty infodump:

I still think that Trump is the most dangerous President in US history. I think he's our Hitler/Mussolini/Franco. I think his support of Israel and his supposed opposition to antisemtism are products of political convenience, not principle/values/solidarity. I think he'll turn on both when the political winds change. I think his party's base includes a massive number of white supremacists, Christian Nationalists, and antisemites to whom he and his allies dogwhistle often.

I still think the GOP is completing its transition to fascism.

I continue to despise Netanyahu. I still loathe Otzma Yehudit. I still think that Israel was wrong to continue to invest in West Bank settlements for decades. I still think that the situation in the West Bank is unsustainable.

- I still think there hasn't been an honest partner working towards peace in leadership on either side for decades.

Some views have definitely changed, though, as I've read more broadly on the latest war which Israel did not want and did not choose...but must fight and win anyway.

- I am no longer able extend the benefit of the doubt to antisemites on the right or on the left, domestically or internationally, because I've come to see them as either nakedly hateful or wilfully ignorant. There aren't any other plausible explanations for their words and deeds.

- I no longer believe there's any principled, informed antizionism which isn't antisemitic.

- I'm out of sympathy for people who are brainwashed by the far right or the far left because they find it easier than thinking for themselves.

- I continue to find the suffering of the non-combatants of Gaza appalling, but I think the responsibility for that suffering rests mostly with Hamas and a popular sentiment among Palestinians which prioritizes Israel's destruction over building a Palestinian state.

- I think that real, awful suffering has been exaggerated by Hamas' propoganda war (which I think Hamas is winning, with Qatar's help).

- I think that while no war has ever been free of war crimes and it would not surprise me if members of the IDF have commited war crimes, I don't believe that Israel has conducted this war in an immoral manner. I think that if a Labor Prime Minister had been in power on 10/7/23, the war would not have gone much differently.

- I no longer believe that there's ever been any significant movement for Palestinian statehood. I believe now that the goal has always been Israel's destruction, and never the "liberation" of the Arabs of the Levant. If a state had ever been the goal, there would be a Palestinian state.

- I no longer believe that institutions like the UN, Amnesty International, or the BBC can be assumed to be acting in good faith and merely incompetent. The lies are too frequent, too blatant, and too obvious to have benign explanations.

- I still think that many US Jews are so freaked out by leftist antisemitism that they're failing to understand the very real danger of the Christian Nationalist, White Supremacist, xenophobic, misogynistic administration which weilds levels of power unparalleled in US history. I think that US Jews who ally with Trump or his movement will eventually regret it.

- I have come to believe that no lasting peace is possible until Hamas is destroyed and the people who elected them are deradicalized. For Israel to walk away from this conflict without destroying Hamas is just an invitation to continue this war in a handful of years in what appears to be a never-ending cycle.

Another round of this cycle benefits nobody.

- I understand better now what happened to the Labor party, why and how the second intifada changed Israel's electorate.

- I have become angry that my 14yo feels safe as an LGBTQ person in Jewish spaces, but not at all safe as a Jew in LGBTQ spaces.

- I have become angry at the way the far left (and much of what I once thought was the center-left) has revealed itself to be just as intellectually lazy and as morally bankrupt as the far right.

- I've come to reject the cultural relativism which says the lack of rights for women, LGBTQ people, and ethnic/religious minorities in all of Israel's neighbors is anything but appalling.

- While I continue to criticize the many profound failings of the Western world, I would not under any circumstances trade the Western world and its deeply flawed nature for the world promoted by its enemies. Classical liberalism is the force behind not just the liberation and enfranchisement of Jews in the West, but most of the forward progress the world has made lifting humanity out of sickness and poverty at record rates in recent decades.

- I have come to see the hypocrisy of Israel's detractors as historically unique, despite my affection for learning new and exciting ways to criticize Israel...by reading Israelis.

- There's no longer any political leader or pundit with whom I consistently agree.

At best, there are a handful who I think are genuinely knowledgeable and intellectually honest (like Haviv Rettig Gur or maybe Ezra Klein) and I cringe inwardly when people like Douglas Murray, Ben Shapiro, or Dennis Prager present a rational, fair, honest, historically accurate defense of Israel...because I find a number of their positions on other matters repulsive.

- While I think it's wrong that many DEI programs have not recognized Jews as a persecuted minority, I just haven't been able to buy the argument that DEI programs are innately antisemitic. I think they need reform, not destruction.

So yes, my views have changed. I aim to be open about that because they'll change again as I continue to read and learn.

More conservative, though? I don't think so.

I think we need more and better models for understanding political alignment now than this single unidimensional spectrum from Left to Right.

[anartificialsatellite]

Like yes sorry I am actually fucking furious that there are people in Israel who have been fighting for peace and equality for Israelis and Palestinians for years and years without acknowledgement or support from the broader international left, and since you weren't spoonfed this information by the Tumblr School of International Relations you wanna just act like it's never existed.

Fuck you.

[ertik-einstein]

please stop justifying this bitch. I'm Israeli. I love Israel. I hate bibi. I know he bombed on purpose the second phase of the deal. netanyho isn't for Israel, he's for himself.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

A Brazilian journalist claims that, albeit they don't officially state it, the country's Foreign Affairs Ministry (aka Itamaraty) has the impression that Israel is stopping Brazilians from leaving Gaza as retaliation for the Brazilian government asking for a ceasefire and calling out the current ethnic cleansing campaign.

[amaditalks]

We should know better than to ever mistake the bluster of leadership to be the unified voice of a nation. This is an excerpt from the Hanukkah message from R'Gilad Kariv, a HaDemokratim member of the Knesset. The idea that all of Israel, or even all of the political leaders of Israel are aligned behind Netanyahu's horrifying, self-serving violence and the dehumanizing rhetoric used to try to justify it is entirely false.

[jewish-vents]

Responding to the anon talking about how people are saying the hostage deal is cause Hamas was big and scary

I’ve been living in Israel for the year and in our orientation security talks back in September they told us they weren’t really worried about Hamas anymore because they had already killed so much of their military and destroyed so much of their weaponry. The rockets since then have all been hezbollah and houthis.

They also had someone come in to talk to us about it and he predicted there might be a hostage deal for political reasons of some of the left wing parties said they wouldn’t vote to make bibi leave office early if his coalition started breaking apart after he made a hostage deal and also there has been Public Pressure with a capital P in Israel for a hostage deal

His coalition has been very anti hostage deal recently because they think it would be more worth it to just decimate Gaza

Hamas military had so little to do with this

Perhaps if more people globally joined forces with the Israeli organizations to put pressure on Bibi for a hostage deal it would’ve happened sooner but nooooo

Noooo they had to go support Hamas and say they were opposed to everyone advocating for return of hostages instead of recognizing they were on the same side against bibi this entire fucking time

.

[xclowniex]

Most Palestinians have always declared over the decades that they're being treated worse than second class citizens by Israel but I guess if you, a Jew from New Zealand, says its not true then I will take your word over theirs 👍🏼

Straight from the Merriam Webster dictionary.

Factually speaking, arabs have the same rights as jews. Like I said in my original post, I am not denying that arabs face racism in Israel. I literally said that it is something which needs improvement as it is bad that it happens. I also mentioned that there are some political parties in Israel who want to take away some rights from arabs and that is also bad.

Also a little correction there, it's arab jew from NZ bud.

But, if you want to get into second class citizens shit, how about you look up dhimmi laws.

There is also much more that you should read about jewish treatment, so the source for that which has a lot more is below

[elder-millennial-of-zion]

Heya! Just wanted to mention the American/global definition of "left" might be kind of shit vis a vis Jews and Zionism (fucking apparently), but leftism in Israel very much means "we deserve to live here and so do Palestinians let's be responsible adults and fix this please". The party I vote for, Meretz (who have a charter PDF in English if anybody's interested) represents this interest very well in my opinion. In general, a lot of the Israeli anti-government protests, which started far before the war and were decried by the government as The Extreme Left, expressed this opinion - being a functioning country with actual morals means both not having a corrupt government, AND not maintaining the ridiculous, dangerous and demeaning status quo with Palestinian territories, and that this is what actual Israeli patriotism and Zionism looks like. I hope this might help with your definition, because the "right" definitely does not have our best interests at heart :D

Thank you for pointing that out! I’m definitely aware of this, but I obviously haven’t communicated it clearly enough. When I complain about “the left” I’m referring to the American/global/basically-anywhere-outside-of-Israel left.

The Israeli left is the faction I admire most, especially right now. You have worked longer and harder for Palestinian liberation, in more concrete ways, at much greater cost, than anyone in the world besides actual Palestinians. And you’re still doing it even in the wake of 10/7.

It makes me so angry that non-Israeli “leftists” for whom this cause is just the latest trend, totally ignore the work of the actual Israeli left in favor of labeling you all “settlers.” It makes me so angry that many of the victims of 10/7 were those leftist Israeli activists, because those people who were making a real difference are gone, and because their memories are being desecrated as “colonizers who aren’t really innocent.” The non-Israeli, non-Jewish left could learn a lot from the Israeli left’s conviction and courage and integrity. It’s too bad they probably won’t.

This got a bit long winded but all this to say: thank you for being on the front lines and doing the actual work.

[belleandre-belle]

Israeli police in West Jerusalem manhandle and arrest members of Neturei Karta Orthodox Jewish group during their attempt to show support for Palestinian people amid Israel’s war on besieged Gaza.

Neturei Karta rejects Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israhell

[unsolicited-opinions]

This is an excellent insight into how Netanyahu's far-right coalition of the corrupt, the racist, and the theocratic have screwed *everyone*

Also an excellent example of criticism of Israel which never comes anywhere near antisemitism.

[anartificialsatellite]

Hello friends, I am a westerner with radical politics that I've never really examined and I'm looking for position through which to launder my bloodlust while keeping my cred relatively intact, do you have anything like that in stock?

[ertik-einstein]

my disappoint is imeserable and my day is ruined

[ translation: 1. smutrich resigned from the government 2.smutrich resigned from the government and will be re sworn next week]

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Israel incensed after Brazil's Lula likens Gaza war to Holocaust

Israel accused Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of trivialising the Holocaust and causing offence to the Jewish people on Sunday after he likened the Israeli war against Hamas militants in Gaza to the Nazi genocide during World War Two.

"What is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people has no parallel in other historical moments. In fact, it did exist when Hitler decided to kill the Jews," Lula told reporters during the 37th African Union Summit in Addis Ababa.

The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem said it would summon the Brazilian ambassador for a reprimand over the remarks, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as "disgraceful and grave".

"This is a trivialisation of the Holocaust and an attempt to attack the Jewish people and the right of Israel to self-defence. Drawing comparisons between Israel and the Nazis and Hitler is to cross a red line," Netanyahu said in a statement.

Continue reading.

[spot-the-antisemitism]

what do you think, is ben-gvir throwing a tantrum a real threath to the ceasefire/hostages deal? from all ive read it seems unlikely, but i want to know your opinion. also did he really claim he and his party actively prevented previous attempts on purpose? not that i am surprised by far right being ridiculous, but like. why would he admit that, if he did

Dear Zina

I'm not an Israeli politics expert but last time that Ben-Gvir pulled "choose between the ceasefire deal or me", the others told him "then resign" and he's more likely to resign than to sabotage a deal

that said this deal is likely to get nixxed last minute but not by Ben-Gvir

Cecil

followers?

[xclowniex]

How do you feel about people trying to characterize the Israeli government as if unfair to Arabs and Muslims or that they hate Arabs and Muslims

Sorry if this has already been asked before

It depends on how they do it.

Being absolutely 100% real, whilst arabs and Muslims have the same rights as jews, there is a threat to those rights from sole political parties and racism still exists.

I do think it's fine if someone talks about it as long as they recognize that they do have equal rights. Not that it makes the situation any better, it is just to stop the spread of misinformation and disinformation which happens. And whilst I would like to participate in those conversations, I simply do not know enough about the Israeli political parties and laws to contribute anything meaningful to the discussion.

I do think that the whole "the Israeli government treats Muslims and arabs as second class citizens" a load of bs and problematic. Also, not recognizing the equal rights doesn't allow for you to really hone onto what actual issues there are for them to be fixed.

[lemedstudent2021]

me when israel:

walked into the living room aljazeera is on and live streaming some knesset meeting or whatever and everyone is interrupting and yelling at bitch baby bibi and he looks pissed lmao. i love it when u can see israel collapsing on itself in real time