Until 1995, when Israeli PM Rabin was assassinated by a right winger, they were moving towards a two state solution, to the point of the IDF forcibly removing their own Jewish settlements from the lands of the prospective Palestinian state.
After the assassination, Netanyahu became the next PM, and has served in the position for most of the time since, asides most of a decade in the 2000s where other Likud politicians held it. He reversed the policy of settler removal.
Try not to conflate the entire country with the crazy right winger leadership they have currently. The same leadership of strongmen that catastrophically failed to keep them safe back in October, which is the one single thing such a man says he is supposed to be good at.
All that said, I also support Palestinian entry as a UN member state, and am tired of the US unfairly favoring its treaty ally in this case.
To whatever extent Israeli civilians are more moderate, they’ve never truly been able to affect change. Israel’s history only started with a terrorist campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Rabin’s efforts are truly exceptional in Israel’s history, and he was murdered for it. The return to genocide is simply a return to the norm.
Even if Israeli moderates were to win political power, it would only be temporary. Israeli terrorists saw no problem ethnically cleansing the land to invent their own state with only people they approved of, and if popular sentiment turns away, they no doubt would do it again to remove the new “undesirables”.
There decades since Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination and Israel has lurched only further to the right. One of the greatest obstacles to peace has been Israel’s continual land grabs and illegal settlement building. That has pretty much been cemented as nationalist policy. Ben Gvir is a psychopath and his rise is telling of how far Israel has embraced religious fanaticism.
No one, however, offends liberal and centrist Israelis quite like Itamar Ben-Gvir. Ben-Gvir, who entered parliament in 2021, leads a far-right party called Otzma Yehudit, or Jewish Power. His role model and ideological wellspring has long been Meir Kahane, a Brooklyn rabbi who moved to Israel in 1971 and, during a single term in the Knesset, tested the moral limits of the country. Israeli politicians strive to reconcile Israel’s identities as a Jewish state and a democracy. Kahane argued that “the idea of a democratic Jewish state is nonsense.” In his view, demographic trends would inevitably turn Israel’s non-Jews into a majority, and so the ideal solution was “the immediate transfer of the Arabs.” To Kahane, Arabs were “dogs” who “must sit quietly or get the hell out.” His rhetoric was so virulent that lawmakers from both sides of the aisle used to walk out of the Knesset when he spoke. His party, Kach (Thus), was finally barred from parliament in 1988. Jewish Power is an ideological offshoot of Kach; Ben-Gvir served as a Kach youth leader and has called Kahane a “saint.”
Ben-Gvir, who is forty-six, has been convicted on at least eight charges, including supporting a terrorist organization and incitement to racism, compiling a criminal record so long that, when he appeared before a judge, “we had to change the ink on the printer,” Dvir Kariv, a former official in the Shin Bet intelligence agency, told me. As recently as last October, Netanyahu refused to share a stage with him, or even to be seen with him in photographs. But a series of disappointing elections persuaded Netanyahu to change his mind.
I would still blame the entire country as long as thing like “aliyah” exist. The fact that any jewish person or a convert can immigrate to a stolen land is crazy to me.
Never is a strong word.
Until 1995, when Israeli PM Rabin was assassinated by a right winger, they were moving towards a two state solution, to the point of the IDF forcibly removing their own Jewish settlements from the lands of the prospective Palestinian state.
After the assassination, Netanyahu became the next PM, and has served in the position for most of the time since, asides most of a decade in the 2000s where other Likud politicians held it. He reversed the policy of settler removal.
Try not to conflate the entire country with the crazy right winger leadership they have currently. The same leadership of strongmen that catastrophically failed to keep them safe back in October, which is the one single thing such a man says he is supposed to be good at.
All that said, I also support Palestinian entry as a UN member state, and am tired of the US unfairly favoring its treaty ally in this case.
To whatever extent Israeli civilians are more moderate, they’ve never truly been able to affect change. Israel’s history only started with a terrorist campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Rabin’s efforts are truly exceptional in Israel’s history, and he was murdered for it. The return to genocide is simply a return to the norm.
Even if Israeli moderates were to win political power, it would only be temporary. Israeli terrorists saw no problem ethnically cleansing the land to invent their own state with only people they approved of, and if popular sentiment turns away, they no doubt would do it again to remove the new “undesirables”.
Thank you for reminding about the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.
Not enough people realize the extent and level of religious fanaticism that exists in Israel.
There decades since Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination and Israel has lurched only further to the right. One of the greatest obstacles to peace has been Israel’s continual land grabs and illegal settlement building. That has pretty much been cemented as nationalist policy. Ben Gvir is a psychopath and his rise is telling of how far Israel has embraced religious fanaticism.
No one, however, offends liberal and centrist Israelis quite like Itamar Ben-Gvir. Ben-Gvir, who entered parliament in 2021, leads a far-right party called Otzma Yehudit, or Jewish Power. His role model and ideological wellspring has long been Meir Kahane, a Brooklyn rabbi who moved to Israel in 1971 and, during a single term in the Knesset, tested the moral limits of the country. Israeli politicians strive to reconcile Israel’s identities as a Jewish state and a democracy. Kahane argued that “the idea of a democratic Jewish state is nonsense.” In his view, demographic trends would inevitably turn Israel’s non-Jews into a majority, and so the ideal solution was “the immediate transfer of the Arabs.” To Kahane, Arabs were “dogs” who “must sit quietly or get the hell out.” His rhetoric was so virulent that lawmakers from both sides of the aisle used to walk out of the Knesset when he spoke. His party, Kach (Thus), was finally barred from parliament in 1988. Jewish Power is an ideological offshoot of Kach; Ben-Gvir served as a Kach youth leader and has called Kahane a “saint.”
Ben-Gvir, who is forty-six, has been convicted on at least eight charges, including supporting a terrorist organization and incitement to racism, compiling a criminal record so long that, when he appeared before a judge, “we had to change the ink on the printer,” Dvir Kariv, a former official in the Shin Bet intelligence agency, told me. As recently as last October, Netanyahu refused to share a stage with him, or even to be seen with him in photographs. But a series of disappointing elections persuaded Netanyahu to change his mind.
I would still blame the entire country as long as thing like “aliyah” exist. The fact that any jewish person or a convert can immigrate to a stolen land is crazy to me.