RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.timesofisrael.com/arab-israeli-raam-party-makes-history-by-joining-be

Ringed by flashing cameras in a luxury hotel in Ramat Gan, conservative Islamist Ra’am chief Mansour Abbas made history on Wednesday night as the first Arab Israeli party leader in half a century to sign a deal to sit in a coalition government.

“This is the first time that an Arab party is part of the process of forming a government. We of course hope that it works and that a government will rise after four rounds of elections,” Abbas said.

Even before Ra’am announced it was signing on, the nascent coalition was widely regarded as the widest in the country’s history, uniting parties from the left to the pro-settlement right aimed at deposing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud faction.

To make it happen, Yamina chief Naftali Bennett and centrist Yesh Atid leader Yair Atid agreed to a rotation scheme, with Bennett becoming Prime Minister for the first two years.

Despite the wide spectrum of views in the so-called “change government,” Abbas said that he had agreed on numerous plans and budgets in Arab Israeli society with his counterparts in the constellation of parties seeking to topple Netanyahu.

“We have reached a critical mass of agreements in various fields that serves the interest of Arab society and that provide solutions for the burning issues in Arab society — planning, the housing crisis, and of course, fighting violence and organized crime,” Abbas said.

Abbas promised that many of the benefits would flow to the Negev region in southern Israel. Ra’am’s base is among the traditional Bedouin communities in the Negev desert.

Ra’am said that the so-called change bloc agreed to over NIS 53 billion ($16.3 billion) in budgets and government development plans for Arab society.

https://www.jns.org/analysis-what-does-a-bennett-lapid-government-mean/

“This looks to me like a car with four different wheels, and every wheel is going in a different direction,” said Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Mordechai Kedar. “The only thing they agree upon is the need to get rid of [Benjamin] Netanyahu. This objective will be achieved in the first minute of this government.”

(June 2, 2021 / JNS) Yesh Atid Party head Yair Lapid and Yamina Party head Naftali Bennett announced on Wednesday that they have secured an agreement to form Israel’s next government, thereby likely ending the 12-year consecutive term of Benjamin Netanyahu as the country’s prime minister.

The new government will be unprecedented in its composition, consisting of seven parties spanning the entire Israeli political spectrum, plus the backing of an Arab party for the first time. As such, questions remain over the ability to successfully govern such a disparate group of parties at a time when the country faces serious security threats stemming from Iran and its terror proxies, as well as internal social discord between Jews and Arabs.

Nevertheless, most analysts JNS spoke with were hopeful, especially when it comes to improving U.S.-Israel ties.

“It could certainly help the mood, initially,” Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, told JNS, saying that the United States will be pleased with a government that includes left-wing members. Though he cautions, “I could well see the Biden administration disappointed if the right-wing parties—which are, in fact, more right than Netanyahu—have their way.”

Pipes expects the right-wing coalition partners to dominate, noting that in the negotiations on forming the coalition, the three right-wing parties—Yamina, New Hope and Yisrael Beiteinu—“have been in the driver’s seat,” and Yamina, with only seven seats, has been given the premiership.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/a-message-for-president-elect-isaac-herzog-opinion-670080

Upon the election of Jewish Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog as Israel’s 11th president on Wednesday, letters of congratulations began to pour in from the leaders of organizations whose paths have frequently crossed with him in his current position, which he’s held for the past three years.

The heads of the American Jewish Committee, World Jewish Congress, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, American Jewish Congress and the Israeli-American Council all welcomed the news on the grounds that Herzog is just the right man for the job of unifying Israelis and strengthening bonds between the Jewish state and Jewish communities around the world.
Incumbent President Reuven Rivlin, too, extended felicitations. “I send you my warmest greetings, Mr. President,” Rivlin said in a phone call to his successor. “I can tell you that the responsibility of the role that you are about to assume is unlike anything you have done until now. The Jewish and democratic system we established here, in the land of our ancestors, has a body and soul. If the Knesset is a place of argument, as we have certainly seen recently, Beit Hanassi [the office and official residence of the president] is a place of discourse, partnership and statehood.”

Rivlin went on, “Beit HaNasi is the ‘neshama yetera,’ the additional soul of democracy. It is the home of the people, all the people of Israel. Its door is open and its ear is bent to all partners in building our home, their pains and their troubles, as well as to the fundamental issues of concern to Israeli society as a whole. The title of ‘first citizen’ and the task of guarding the character of the State of Israel, particularly at this point in time, are heavy responsibilities. I have no doubt that you will bear them superbly. I am proud to pass the baton on to you in a month’s time.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/refuting-disproportionality-libel-against-israel-richard-l-cravatts/

Seeming to give credence to Orwell’s observation that “Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence,” the world’s attention has turned once again to the clash between Hamas and Israel, as the Jewish state launched its defensive air offensive into Gaza to suppress a deadly barrage of 4360 rockets that killed 10 civilians in Israel and injured 330 others. And, predictably, as the body count rose on the Palestinian side, the moral arbiters of acceptable political behavior began condemning the Jewish state for its perceived abuses in executing its national self-defense.

Forgetting that Israel’s current campaign was necessitated by ceaseless rocket and mortar assaults on its southern towns from Hamas-controlled Gaza, international leaders and diplomats initiated their moral hectoring of Israel as it attempted to shield its citizens from harm.  Five so-called experts from The UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), led by Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk, released a statement which suggested that “This most recent violence has a depressingly familiar pattern to it.” And what was the familiar tragedy? Not that Hamas had tried to murder Israeli civilians with no justification, but that “Israel and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza exchange missiles and rockets following dispossession and the denial of rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, with Israel’s far greater firepower inflicting far higher death tolls and injuries and a much larger scale of property destruction.” [Emphasis added.]

In addressing a special session of the 47-member UN Human Rights Council, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet was similarly condemnatory of Israel’s military behavior. While begrudgingly admitting that Hamas’s “indiscriminate” firing of thousands of rockets constitutes “a clear violation of international humanitarian law,” Israel’s response was equally questionable, especially the targeted strikes on buildings that were said to house terrorists and armaments. “Despite Israel’s claims that many of these buildings were hosting armed groups or being used for military purposes,” Bachelet noted, “we have not seen evidence in this regard.” And then, in creating a moral equivalence that is unsurprising when Israel is involved, she solemnly announced that Israel, too, may be condemned for its military misbehavior, that “If found to be indiscriminate and disproportionate,” Israel’s defensive “attacks might constitute war crimes.”  [Emphasis added.]

The words “indiscriminate” and “disproportionate” are the most insidious refrains, uttered only when Israel’s enemies are killed (certainly not when Jews are murdered), and suggesting that Israel’s military response is too aggressive, that the force and effect of the sorties into Gaza are beyond what is permitted under human rights law and the rules of war.

https://danielgordis.substack.com/p/is-bibi-out-its-far-from-clear?token=

Yesterday, Israel got a new President (Isaac Herzog — more on whom in a later posting), and, more significantly, may have taken a step towards getting a new Prime Minister. We shall see. While Yair Lapid (on the right, above), who leads the centrist Yesh Atid [“There is a Future”] Party, has informed the (current) President that he can form a coalition, the actual vote on this coalition will probably not take place for twelve days. Bibi will use this time to do everything he can to undermine the fragile agreement. Netanyahu contends that as long as he is Prime Minister, he cannot be convicted in his corruption trial and sent to jail; if he’s out of office, he has no such protection. We should thus expect to see some very scorched earth as he desperately (and perhaps successfully) tries to cling to power.

While the question of who will be Israel’s “next” Prime Minister remains unresolved, what is clear is that some international coverage of what is unfolding here is so myopic as to be essentially wrong. According to the “all the news that’s fit to print” world (see screen shot below), Israel is lurching to the right under the leadership of a new “ultranationalist” leader. The real story is precisely the opposite.

So with a few quick bullet points, a brief illustration of how much more complex — and hopeful — the story really is.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/israels-lost-cause-joseph-puder/

Anti-Semitism, the undying virus that still infects millions in the Muslim world and beyond, found a pretext to once again show its poisonous venom. The anti-Semitic protests, in many European cities as well as Latin and North American communities, used the 11-day war between Israel and Hamas, (the Islamist terrorist group controlling Gaza), to malign the Jewish state with ugly obscenities such as an “apartheid state,” and characterizing Zionism (the Jewish national liberation movement) as Nazi-like. The slogans voiced in these protests didn’t match the facts that led to the conflict. Israel was seeking a long-term peace accommodation with Hamas, and instead got a barrage of rockets from Gaza aiming to kill Israeli civilians in its capital – Jerusalem, central Israel, including Tel Aviv, and particularly, in the communities surrounding the Gaza Strip. Israel, charged with the sacred duty to protect its civilian population, retaliated by destroying the sources of the rockets, cannons, and mortar fire. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) avoided many terrorist targets when innocent civilian bystanders were in the vicinity. Moreover, the IDF warned Gazan civilians to evacuate prior to bombing a Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) specific target. Hamas did the exact opposite, seeking to maximize Israeli civilian casualties. Yet, in world capitals, be it in Europe, America, or the Middle East, the truth and the facts are irrelevant. Anti-Semitism is irrational, as are these ugly protests.

Jews, having served as scapegoats in Christian Europe for almost 2,000 years, and a somewhat shorter period in the Muslim Middle East, became a convenient target for regimes to let their majority population vent their political, economic or social frustrations on the minority of Jews in their communities. Today however, the Jewish state – the collective Jewish body, has become a more convenient target, not that individual Jews in Europe or the Americas are immune as we have clearly seen in recent years. Some of the European governments, in seeking to appease their violent Muslim immigrants (Germany alone invited more than a million Muslim migrants into their country, who were brainwashed with pathological hatred for Jews and Israel) often criticize Israel, creating fertile ground of increased anti-Semitism. In the US, the Biden administration is being pressured by an anti-Semitic group of radical Democratic Party members in the US Congress, to disassociate the US from Israel. What we see in large portions of the West is moral equivalency, where actual right and wrong has become irrelevant. 

Demographics alone point to an unfair fight between Israel and the Palestinians. 1.6 billion Muslims, most of whom automatically support their fellow Muslim Palestinians, are arrayed against less than 16 million Jews worldwide, with a sizeable percentage being anti-Zionist. It means that Muslim voices on behalf of Palestinians will always be louder than Jewish voices, as well as violent and intimidating, whether it takes place in Berlin, London, Paris, Buenos Aires, Montreal, or Santiago de Chile. This is true for the social media as well.

Demographic disadvantage notwithstanding, Israel it seems rarely mounts on effective worldwide informational (hasbara in Hebrew) campaign to go along simultaneously with its far more effective military campaign. This anomaly is unfortunate since Israel has justice on its side. Hamas clearly and deliberately initiated this war, and its declared agenda is to destroy the Jewish state. One often hears those voices in the West who bemoan the fact that Gaza Palestinians have far more casualties than Israel does.  Consider therefore these simple facts. While Israel built shelters to shield its people from bombs, Hamas built attack tunnels to penetrate into Israel in order to murder and kidnap civilians in particular. They do not, though, build shelters for their people. Moreover, Israel cares enough for the Palestinian civilians to warn them of an impending attack, and canceling certain operations that might hurt innocent bystanders. Of course, there will always be unintended consequences, and civilians will get hurt. This however, has to do with the simple fact that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, and places their firepower in residential areas such as schools, hospitals, and apartment buildings. Hamas then uses children who died because of its own negligence, for its propaganda, to generate international sympathy.

https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-never-netanyahu-coalition/

Whenever I get asked about Israeli politics on the radio, the first thing I do is point out that Israeli politics isn’t America, it’s European.

Israel was controlled by the British. More of its founders were European than American. That means the same messy coalition parliamentary politics without even the benefit of regional representation and direct elections.

It’s a terrible system that serves all the wrong people.

The last few years have been a grinding disaster of repeat elections because first, a huge chunk of Israel’s political spectrum wants to oust Netanyahu. Those on the left, including pseudo-centrists like Yesh Atid Party leader Yair Lapid, are motivated by ideology. Others, on the right, are scrambling for power.

Second, no leader within Netanyahu’s Likud or outside has emerged as a viable alternative to him. Non-Likud parties have little credibility. Especially those on the left. The fake centrist parties that act as leftist stalking horses have even less credibility.

What finally happened is that one of the alternative right-wing parties got together with the left and Israel’s worst enemies to form a coalition. And the media is celebrating Netanyahu’s downfall while preparing to spin this as proof that Israel is terrible.

I’m not in the business of making political predictions, but I am skeptical that a coalition so ridiculously unwieldy can hold up. And Netanyahu is far from done. There are plenty of reasons for Israelis to be disappointed by Netanyahu, but this alternative coalition is the equivalent of Never Trumpers campaigning for Hillary. Except it’s even worse, by a factor of a few thousand.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/twilight-of-the-netanyahu-era-11622495465?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Western democracies produce all manner of governments: Left- or right-wing, centrist, populist. But the new government taking shape in Israel defies categorization. If negotiations go through as planned, Israel could soon be led by a religious-nationalist Prime Minister backed by a centrist dealmaker, with the support of Arab and leftist parties.

American liberals will surely celebrate the departure of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has come to symbolize the Democratic Party’s rift with Israel over the last decade. But it would be a mistake to interpret it as a rejection of Israel’s rightward political and security direction, which the new government is likely to maintain.

***

The unusual coalition is coming together after Israelis went to the polls four times since 2019, most recently this March. Though his security policies had wide support, Mr. Netanyahu—who has been Prime Minister since 2009—was unable to form a majority coalition from among Israel’s 13 fractious parties.

The conventional wisdom this month said Hamas had given Mr. Netanyahu a new political lease on life by launching its rocket assault on Israel, elevating the security issue that built Mr. Netanyahu’s career. Yet a week after the fighting stopped, Naftali Bennett of the conservative Yamina party announced that he would accept an offer from the centrist Yair Lapid to form a government without Mr. Netanyahu. Under the agreement, Mr. Bennett will be Prime Minister immediately, with Mr. Lapid taking over in 2023, if the government lasts that long.