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June 3rd, 2021 
Awake Goy The news is that Israeli centrist lawmaker Yair Lapid, head of the Yesh Atid party (“There is a Future”), declared to the President Reuven Rivlin, that he had managed to put together a majority supported coalition to govern the country. He managed to proclaim this just before his mandate to form the coalition ran out, Wednesday night.
This would supposedly be a “Change government”, as it is widely being called in Israel.
But is it, really?
Under the agreements reached, Naftali Bennett, of the religious-Zionist settler party Yamina (“Rightwards”), would be Prime Minister first, in a rotation agreement with Lapid. Bennett, who is to the right of Netanyahu, who has boasted of killing “many Arabs” and said “there is no problem with that”, will now be heading the big liberal change coalition. Halleluja.
Second to Bennett on the Yamina party list is lawmaker Ayelet Shaked – who endorsed a call for genocide of “little snakes” – Palestinian children in Gaza in 2014. Shaked has openly and ideologically opposed equal rights in Israel.
While Bennett’s partner, Yair Lapid, has himself stated his “principle” as “maximum Jews on maximum land with maximum security and with minimum Palestinians”. Praise be.
The whole coalition is right-center by three-fourths:
Yamina (7 seats)
Yesh Atid (17 seats)
New Hope (6 seats), led by former Likudnik Gideon Sa’ar, is also to the right of Netanyahu. It is the embodiment of the racist Nation State law, with a platform seeking “realization of the natural and historic rights of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel” (the whole of historical Palestine), upholding Israel’s “values as the national state of the Jewish people” and all the rest of it. What glory.
Blue-White (8 seats), headed by the former army chief of staff Benny Gantz – the man who boasted of having returned Gaza to the “stone age” when he entered politics 2.5 years ago in an appeal to voters. And under the deal, Gantz is supposed to be the Defense Minister again, by the way. Yay!
Yisrael Beitenu (“Israel is Our Home”, with 7 seats), led by Avigdor Lieberman: the war-monger who suggested that disloyal Palestinian citizens be decapitated with an axe, and that Palestinian prisoners be drowned by the thousands in the Dead Sea. Hurrah for liberalism!
I’ve just counted 45 seats – almost three-quarters of that “Change bloc”.
As for its supposedly left satellites, this bloc has Labor (7 seats), which is considered left in Israeli politics, but is no such thing, since it is an arch-Zionist party, historically and ideologically. Labor is centrally responsible for the mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the 1948 Nakba and beyond. And Meretz (6 seats) is leftist in the Zionist spectrum, but typically conflicted as such.
Finally there’s Ra’am, the United Arab List (4 seats), the conservative Islamist party. Ra’am split off from the other three parties of the Joint List (which have 6 seats), which represents most Palestinian citizens in Israel, in quest of political pragmatism inside the Zionist paradigm of the Jewish State – rather than challenging Zionism more ideologically as the Joint List tends to. Ra’am is not a left party, and it ideologically opposes LGBT rights – which is why it considered going with Netanyahu at a point.
So really, there’s hardly a hint of actual left in this. The “Change bloc” is not ideologically very different to a Likud bloc. Alright, it might not have the extreme right Kahanist faction of Jewish Power in it, as the right bloc did, but the Change bloc really is about Jewish power anyway: the Zionist dominance of Jewish power. It cannot even feign to be leftist. It is centrist at best, and centrally nationalistic in its Zionism.
Netanyahu
And this begs a reflection concerning Netanyahu. The main motivation of those opposing Netanyahu’s continued rule over the last 12 years (a combined 15 counting the 1996-99 term), was “Just not Netanyahu.” Many of these people appeared ridiculously ‘liberal’ when pitting themselves against Netanyahu’s alleged corruptions, and his populist, autocratic vein. But who are these people? When it comes to their attitudes towards Palestinians, when it comes to their adherence to Jewish supremacy and Zionist Apartheid, these people are not necessarily any better than Netanyahu – and some are arguably worse.
So Bennett will smile widely, and be all upbeat as is his custom, while “many Arabs” will be killed and he will have “no problem with that”. Lapid will show all his grace and probably hug Biden soon, while he continues to work for maximum territory and minimum Palestinians. And Gantz may continue bombing Gaza to the stone age, but politely so.
The ‘liberals’ need Netanyahu as a means of reflecting against, to make themselves believe that they indeed are liberals, and that they have something to fight for, or rather against – just as Netanyahu’s adherents need him as a strong leader that can divide the opposition, because he’s a master at that.
Israelis needed Netanyahu, for all kinds of reasons, and those opposing him would not care to admit it as much as those on the right. Sure, there will be a time after Netanyahu, and maybe it’s closer than we think. But it’s a long way to Palestinian freedom. And that’s all that really matters, because if you have an Apartheid state, everything that maintains the status quo is a problem. Everything that doesn’t challenge it is petty.
So where are the Palestinian voices in mainstream media?
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