Even before the new Israeli government was officially sworn in on December 29, angry reactions began to emerge, not only among Palestinians and other governments in the Middle East, but also among Israel’s historical allies in the West.
As early as Nov. 2, senior U. S. officials told Axios that “Joe Biden’s management is unlikely to have any interaction with Jewish supremacist politician Itamar Ben-Gvir. “
Indeed, the EE. UU. se government’s apprehensions have gripped Ben-Gvir, who was convicted by Israel’s own court in 2007 of supporting a terrorist organization and inciting racism.
The U. S. Secretary of State has reportedly been the Secretary of State for the Announcement. U. S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan “hinted” that the U. S. is not yet in the U. S. The U. S. government would also boycott “other right-wing extremists” at Netanyahu’s Array.
However, those strong considerations seemed absent from the congratulations of the U. S. ambassador. U. S. Department of State Tom Nides in Israel the next day. Nides said he “congratulated (Netanyahu) on his victory and told him he looked forward to running together to maintain the unbreakable bond” between the United States. two countries.
In words, this “unbreakable bond” is more potent than any American public fear about terrorism, extremism, fascism, and criminal activity.
Ben-Gvir is not the only convicted thief in Netanyahu’s government. Aryeh Deri, the leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, convicted of tax evasion in early 2022, and in 2000 served a thief’s sentence for accepting bribes while serving as interior minister. .
Bezalel Smotrich is a debatable figure, whose anti-Palestinian racism ruled his political figure for many years.
While Ben-Gvir granted the post of Minister of National Security, Deri gave the Ministry of the Interior and Smotrich the Ministry of Finance.
Palestinians and Arab countries are right because they perceive that the new government threatens to sow more violence and chaos.
With many of Israel’s sinister politicians in one place, Arabs know that Israel’s illegal annexation of parts of the occupied Palestinian territories is back on the agenda; and that incitement to Palestinian opposition in occupied East Jerusalem, along with raids on Al-Aqsa Mosque, will increase exponentially in the coming weeks and months. until.
These are not unfounded fears. In addition to the highly racist and violent statements and movements of Netanyahu and his allies in recent years, the new government has already declared that other Jews have “exclusive and inalienable rights over all parts of the Land of Israel,” promising to expand settlements, while distancing itself from any commitment to a Palestinian state. or even through participation in any “peace process”.
But while the Palestinians and their Arab allies have been largely consistent in detecting extremism in the various Israeli governments, what excuse do the United States and the West have for not detecting that the new Netanyahu-led government is the ultimate rational outcome of blind aid?for Israel the process? The years?
In March 2019, Politico called Netanyahu the author of the “most right-wing government in Israel’s history,” a sentiment that has been repeated countless times in other Western media.
This ideological shift was declared through Israel’s own media years earlier. In May 2016, the popular Israeli newspaper Maariv described the Israeli government at the time as “the greatest right-wing and extremist” in the country’s history. This was partly due to the fact that far-right politician Avigdor Lieberman had been assigned the post of defense minister.
The West also expressed concern, warning that it opposes the demise of Israel’s so-called liberal democracy and demanded that Israel remain committed to the peace procedure and the two-state solution. None of this has been achieved. Instead, the frightening figures in this government were rebranded as conservative, centrist, or even liberal in the following years.
It is very likely that the same thing will happen now. Indeed, the symptoms of America’s willingness to adapt to any extremist policies produced through Israel are already visible. In his Dec. 30 welcome to the new Israeli administration, Biden said nothing about the risk of Tel Aviv’s far-right policies to the Middle East region, but rather about the “challenges and risks” the region poses to Israel. In other words, Ben-Gvir or not Ben-Gvir, unconditional aid to Israel through the United States. The states will remain intact.
If history is any lesson, the long-term violence and incitement in Palestine will also be blamed primarily, if not directly, on the Palestinians. This instinctive pro-Israel attitude has explained Israel’s relations with the United States, whether Israeli governments are run by extremists. or the so-called liberals. However, Israel has maintained its false prestige as “the only democracy in the Middle East. “
But if we are convinced that Israel’s exclusive racial “democracy” is a democracy, then we also have reason to believe that Israel’s new government is neither less nor more democratic than previous governments.
However, Western officials, commentators, and even pro-Israel Jewish leaders and organizations in the United States are now warning of the supposed danger to Israel’s liberal democracy in the run-up to the formation of Netanyahu’s new government.
This is an indirect, if not intelligent, form of cover-up, because those perspectives conform to the fact that what Israel has practiced since its founding in 1948, until today, was a form of true democracy; and that Israel remained a democracy even after the passage of the questionable geographical region law, which defines Israel as a Jewish state, in all the rights of the country’s non-Jewish citizens.
It is only a matter of time before Israel’s new extremist government is also whitewashed as further evidence that Israel can strike a balance between being Jewish and democratic at the same time.
The same story repeated itself in 2016, when warnings about the rise of far-right extremism in Israel — in the wake of the Netanyahu-Lieberman pact — temporarily disappeared and disappeared. Instead of boycotting the new unity government, the U. S. government is boycotting the new unity government. The U. S. finalized its largest $38 billion army aid package to Israel in September 2016.
In truth, Israel has not replaced the Palestinians much, either in its own definition or in its remedy. Failure to understand this is tantamount to tacitly approving Israel’s racist, violent and colonial policies in Palestine occupied for 75 years.