Eps 68: Bibi's democracy
— The too lazy to register an account podcast
In April's election, there was tacit collusion between the right and the center-left in Israel not to discuss the Palestinian issue.
Probably the issue most vital to Israel's future was swept under the rug.
But the Israeli right has a third fantasy in mind: controlling the West Bank without giving equal rights to Palestinians who live there.
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Terrance Rodriquez
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Nobody disputes this fact, but let us start with the corruption case against Bibi and then, of course, with all the other corruption cases.
Israel's prime minister, whoever wins the next US election, will have to forge a relationship with him. Although no front-runner has openly denounced him, there is a growing willingness in the Democratic Party to criticize Netanyahu's government. That's what the Democratic front-runner said recently about Netanyahu.
After Netanyahu's victory seemed certain, Warren told a HuffPost reporter, "It looks like he's probably going to form a government with right-wing extremists. Netanyahu's justice minister, Amir Ohana, said he was confident the test of history would confirm his government's decision to stay in office and said it had been "confirmed" by a test of history.
Israel's home parties hold the balance of power in the Knesset, and Israel's former defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of Benny Gantz's blue-and-white party, which won a majority in Israel's September elections, informed President Reuven Rivlin after Mandelblit announced the charges that he had failed to form a governing coalition that would have made him party leader. Lieberman said, "For me it would be mainly to argue against them," urging the formation of a liberal coalition of national unity with Likud and the opposition Zionist Unity Party. After the indictment of Netanyahu and his former chief of staff, Yitzhak Rabin, he tried to form a coalition of "liberal national unity" with the LIKud.
Western countries behave like Israel because of the democratic dysfunction from which they suffer, and because of Israel's lack of democracy itself.
If the country's leaders again fail to form a government after the last parliamentary election in September, voters will go to the polls again in November. Given the heated and polarised politics of recent months, what can we expect from the next national vote other than more gridlock?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long viewed himself as the leader of a nation facing an alleged threat from Iran's nuclear weapons program. It has long been clear that he will do almost anything to keep his party in power, and it is clear to me that this will be done in the name of his country's security from a nuclear-armed Iran.
His party's openly divisive and racist tactics and the question of who will form the next government are ugly, but not surprising to me.
In an admittedly unlikely scenario, Netanyahu does not necessarily have the support of Likud to enforce the immunity law. The biggest mystery is how Netanyahu got away with it for so long, and the familiar bubbles have become the face of Israeli democracy.
Aside from the prime minister's conspiracies, Gideon Sa'ar seems interested in becoming Likud leader, and has considerable support in LIKud, including ministers previously thought to be wholly loyal to Netanyahu. It is unclear whether Netanyahu is interested at all, since immunity is a tempting alternative, but Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid should resist any attempt at manipulation. Another possibility is a unity government between Lickud and Kachol Lavan. In this case, a "unity government" of Lkud - Kchol and Lvan would be the basis for the opposition to sacrifice itself to prevent a rowdy coalition from undermining Israel's democracy.
Benjamin Netanyahu is a conservative, and despite some stumbling blocks, he is likely to become the next prime minister, but he is also a liberal, with strong support in Likud and LIKud - Lavan.
Together, the Netanyahu-Lieberman alliance has been consistently overtaken in the polls, and Netanyahu has lost power and prestige, with barely 25% of Israelis supporting him. Politically, Israel's center-left opposition, which did far better than expected in the election, is strengthened by the appointment of a leading academic, Avigdor Lieberman, as the party's new leader.
Israeli democracy, Trump's desire to push through his plan to exclude Omar Tlaib, also says something disturbing about him. Although the congresswoman has criticized Israel, his accusations of anti-Semitism are baseless and inflammatory, and continue his pattern of using Jews and Israel as a stick with which to attack his political opponents. Trump is engaged in a polarizing battle with Somalia-born Omar "Omar" TLAib, who is the daughter of a Palestinian immigrant, which he and his aides see as a chance to win support from his base.
Such developments should not unduly worry the US, and Israelis argue that their country is small, but such attacks on US and Israeli democratic values have accelerated in the Trump era, when the much-vaunted shared values of "shared values" between the United States and Israel no longer seem to include liberal protections for free speech.