Israel’s Election

Those with an agenda, particularly the foreign press, have been reporting Israel’s 2009 election as a tie. This is categorically not the case. In the best of democratic traditions the election has clearly communicated the will of the people, and the people’s will is predominantly to the right.

This election took place because in 2008 Livni was unable to form a majority coalition. Back then the Knesset was weighted predominantly to the left and significantly Kadima enjoyed more representation. Now the tables have turned and the people of Israel have elected 64 rightwing Knesset members and just 56 leftwingers. It would now be impossible for Livni to form a leftwing coalition and so her only hope is to talk of a national unity government. But if she couldn’t form a national unity government then what hope does she have of doing it now? That’s not to say it would be impossible for her to do it, but were she to form a unity government the country would only be the worse for it. Such a government would be paralysed to appease it’s staunchly opposed interest groups and would live under the constant threat of disintegrating, sending the Israeli public back to the polls yet again in perhaps less than a years time.

With this in mind it’s essential that Netanyahu form the next government and crucially a nationalist one at that. If Shimon Peres has any concern for the democratic right of the Israeli public it’s essential that he does this. No one who voted for Yisrael Beteinu, Shas, the National Union or Jewish home seriously believed that the leaders of any of these parties would be the next Prime Minister, they did so with the intention that these parties would sit in Netanyahu’s coalition. But more than this it’s crucial that a right wing government be formed so that their can be some real unity. As mentioned national unity governments have been disastrous at getting anything done and right now Israel can afford an ineffective government no more than at any other time in its history. A rightwing government would have a shared vision and would be able to enact a coherent policy.

The other reason that it’s essential a nationalist government be formed is that Israel is entering a period of its history when it is going to need a leader with a stronger resolve to stand for Israel’s best interests than it has ever done before. With growing anti-Israeli feeling across Europe and an administration in Washington that has showed signs of having misunderstood the geo-political reality Israel needs a government that will be able to determine it’s own course of action if need be. No matter how much condemnation it receives in the U.N and European Union and no matter how much pressure it comes under from the U.S government Israel has to focus on counteracting Iran and defeating Hamas before it’s too late.

Livini is attempting to claim some fanciful unanimous mandate from the Israeli people, when in reality she may have just one more seat than Likud and well under a quarter of the vote. In most countries it would be unprecedented for a politician to become the national leader with less than half of the vote. And where as Kadima has seen its Knesset representation reduced Likud’s has jumped dramatically from 12 to 27/28. In reality Livni has far less entitlement to the position of Prime Minister than Netenyahu and in the up coming coalition formation it’s essential both for democracy and Israel’s well being that this be recognised.

Genocide in Gaza?

I had to go to London’s Israeli embassy to collect my visa just as Israel’s war in Gaza was reaching its climax. Anyone in the city at this time couldn’t miss the large protests and nightly vigils taking place outside the Israeli embassy as British Muslims and a handful of Islamist apologists repeatedly attempted to storm the building and attacked the British policemen put there to stop them. Many of those there were holding placards demanding that the ‘holocaust in Gaza’ be stopped.

No one could ignore the fact that the insinuation that the Jewish state, formed as a sanctuary for holocaust survivors, is now committing its own holocaust is a controversial hard hitting claim. And you’d be hard pushed to deny that such claims aren’t both extremely insensitive and highly offensive, not to mention wildly inaccurate, but for most people, Jews included, that’s where it stops. For most this is just mindless unpleasant anti-Semitism. Exactly the same is assumed about all of the many comparisons that Israel’s opponents draw between it and the Nazi’s. But if you think that then you’ve missed the point entirely. Because really offending Jews, in the way European neo-fascist groups might, is utterly irrelevant to these people’s agenda. Claiming that Israel is the modern day Nazi Germany and that the Palestinian’s are its Jews has little to do with being offensive, it’s really about a well thought out strategy for delegitimiseing Israel’s right to exist.

In the minds of Israel’s opponents Israel exists because of international guilt, the Holocaust meant the world felt it owed the Jews a state. However they also believe that if they can demonstrate that Israel has committed its own Holocaust then the world ceases to owe it its existence. It’s a simple equation: some non-Jews commit genocide against the Jews and so they’re owed a state, now the Jews have committed genocide against some non-Jews, so the score is equalled and the Jewish people forfeit their right to their country. Laughable as this may sound don’t assume people aren’t finding it convincing. During this year’s international Holocaust Memorial Day a city in Sweden cancelled it’s commemoration service in ‘protest’ at what had happened in Gaza a few weeks previously. As though to say that because a government in 2009 had accidentally killed some civilians in a military operation to defend itself, it stops being a tragedy that 6 million men, women and children of the same ethnicity as the government in question were murdered as part of one of the worst and most systematic genocides in history.

Claim’s that the Palestinians have been victims of genocide are really farcical when it’s considered just how rapidly their population has expanded since the creation of the state of Israel. Perhaps what claiming that the Israeli’s are Nazis really comes down to is an intense jealousy on the part of the Arab world. Not only do Palestinians desire Israeli land but also the very same unique victim status that Jews have held in the West ever since the atrocities of the Second World War came to light. Nevertheless moderates around the world are still commonly heard to claim that in light of the Jewish holocaust experience Israel should know better, as if to imply that the holocaust was little more than a course in moral behaviour. But it really does seem that the rest of the world expects an unprecedentedly high level of moral behaviour from the Jewish state, indeed one far higher than what is expected of other countries. The negation of Israel’s right to defend its civilians in the face of attack seems to essentially be the demand that Israel turn the other cheek in a way that no Christian country ever would.

There is however one further irony to the claim that a Holocaust has taken place in Gaza. The Holocaust was an attempt to totally rid an area of territory of all of its Jewish inhabitants. That is exactly what happened in 2005 when under international pressure the Israeli government expelled every Jewish man, woman and child from Gaza with the promise that never again would Gaza be a source of terrorism and international condemnation.