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Israel: When the Drums of War Have Reached a Fever Pitch


IFR

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This is a perfect example of media bias toward Israel: https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2021/05/21/amanour-ceasefire-israel-hamas-mariam-barghouti.cnn 

I love how the news anchor responds with complete silence (or ignores) every time the interviewee brings up actual facts like the suffering Palestinians are going through. Almost seems like CNN isn't allowed to acknowledge the basic humanity of Palestinians. Good on Mariam for pressing on with her points though. It seems that the efforts of ordinary people on the ground in terms of sharing information, images and more on social media have had a far more powerful impact than official 'reporting' by media. 

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Okay, just coming back from the first lesson on this conflict I did with that class I mentioned. Last week we prepared by analyzing a fictional conflict, today we used my text and the tasks to get an overview.

It was... actually pretty much as I expected. When we brainstormed what we knew of the conflict I found that the students didn't know anything whatsoever, they didn't even know that there was fighting with rockets and airstrikes, just that "something" was happening there, "possibly an invasion or something?". I should note that the class is entirely made up of students with migration background, but like I said, I judged them too apathetic to have a strong opinion. Though one girl rather impressively noted her impression that Turkish media says Israel is the attacker while German media says Palestinians are the attacker. One Arab boy who was connected through video conference was also slightly having his temper flare up when I mentioned the Hamas rocket strikes, upset at the notion that they fired first, at least until I reiterated the events in eastern Jerusalem that were used as a justification that we previously figured out from the scraps they picked up from the news.. He then remained silent and only joined, quite productively, towards the end when we were trying to figure out how the Fatah and Hamas see each other.

The actual question-solving with the help of my text was then as much of a slog as figured it would be. I do think quite a few pieces stuck with them, but I still needed to push most of them towards the answers (and we were starting with rather basic questions like "What is Zionism?", "What are the aims of Fatah, what are the aims of the Hamas?", "Who controls the West Bank?" etc.. I suppose my text was still too dense and too complicated...

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Supposedly Yair Lapid has managed to get everyone needed on board for a "change government" that will see Naftali Bennett become the new Prime Minister in rotation with Lapid. Lots of reporting that Bennett will formally announce he's on board with the deal tomorrow.

One the one hand, it's amazing and great that Netanyahu might finally be removed from power (though he's got at least a couple days, and maybe up to a week, before the new government is sworn in; plenty of time to try to muck things up). On the other hand, I can't see how this government lasts for more than a couple months; On some issues Bennett might arguably be further to the right than Netanyahu (just more respecting of democratic norms); and he's going to lead a government that includes the entire center-left, left, and even one of the Arab Israeli parties. And with a margin so small that every party involved will have a veto over doing anything. 

So there's a ton of roadblocks to getting much done, and I won't even truly believe this is happening until I see Bennett sworn in as PM. But this is the first time in a long time that I'm feeling anything remotely positive about Israeli politics.

Not that I think this government could advance anywhere in the peace process, there's way too many disagreements about that. But it does seem like everyone, including the secular right-wing parties joining, are in agreement on a handful of other issues, like reducing the power of the religious right-wing. And if they actually succeed there, that might have some long-term benefits for peace.

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So definitely looks like this is happening after Bennett's announcement.  Pretty sweet deal for him - getting to go first and (as far as I can tell) evenly splitting the prime minister tenure with Lapid even though Yesh Atid got more than twice as many votes as Yamina.  We'll see how long it lasts, but ousting Bibi is worth it.

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I have to assume that everyone in this alliance knows that it won't last and it is just to get rid of Netanyahu.  Which is fine by me, a new election in a few months without Netanyahu has a real possibility of forming a functional govt afterwards.  No guarantee of course, but it's possible.

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12 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I have to assume that everyone in this alliance knows that it won't last and it is just to get rid of Netanyahu.  Which is fine by me, a new election in a few months without Netanyahu has a real possibility of forming a functional govt afterwards.  No guarantee of course, but it's possible.

Removing Netanyahu is a principle necessity. I'm not sure what to make of the recent news, but there is no real path to peace with him at the helm of the Israeli side and I hope he gets ousted for now and forever.

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48 minutes ago, DMC said:

So definitely looks like this is happening after Bennett's announcement.  Pretty sweet deal for him - getting to go first and (as far as I can tell) evenly splitting the prime minister tenure with Lapid even though Yesh Atid got more than twice as many votes as Yamina.  We'll see how long it lasts, but ousting Bibi is worth it.

Agreed. Although it makes sense that he'd get the biggest prize for joining since he's making the biggest leap in joining this government. The other two right-wing parties joining have long-standing grievances with Bibi, but Bennett would've happily joined a Likud government if there was a majority for it. 

7 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I have to assume that everyone in this alliance knows that it won't last and it is just to get rid of Netanyahu.  Which is fine by me, a new election in a few months without Netanyahu has a real possibility of forming a functional govt afterwards.  No guarantee of course, but it's possible.

Yeah, if all this government accomplishes is finally passing a law that anyone under indictment for corruption can't be Prime Minister (thereby barring Bib), that'd be enough of a victory.

 

Also, someone working for Bennett is quite a good speech writer. I don't know the precise phrase he said (and other than rote memorization of some prayers I don't know Hebrew anyway), but the English translation of one his key lines is roughly

Quote

Netanyahu is trying to take the entire state of Israel to his personal Masada

That's a hell of a line, and seems like a permanent bridge-burning.

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51 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I'm not sure what to make of the recent news, but there is no real path to peace with him at the helm of the Israeli side and I hope he gets ousted for now and forever.

I'm pretty dubious that there's a path to peace with Bennett in a position of power either.

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15 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

I'm pretty dubious that there's a path to peace with Bennett in a position of power either.

I wouldn't hold my breath either, but still, he has to go and it cannot happen soon enough.

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17 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

I'm pretty dubious that there's a path to peace with Bennett in a position of power either.

"A path to peace" is still very hard to envision.  Doesn't mean getting rid of Bibi is still a plus.

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Yeah from everything I understand, if Bennett had any chance of doing anything this would be awful but in practice this is a coalition designed purely to pass that corruption law and for the reasons Fez mentioned no one expects or really intends for it to do anything else, right?

 

Of course once that power vaccum opens up who knows who'll gain - certainly seems plausible that Bennett would hoover a lot of Netenyahu's support if his supporters aren't personally bitter about a 'betrayal' and just want a right-wing leader, no? 

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Bennett won't bring peace and wouldn't agree to a reasonable deal, but even then he might be able to push the political circus in the right direction and he might take steps that will help bring peace years in the future. Getting rid of Bibi is absolutely mandatory. Making some chances to curb the ultra-Orthodox nuisance would help a lot. Making some changes to reduce the power of the settlers and limit settlements would help a lot as well. Bennett guarantees the first and might make some moves towards the 2nd, if only because of people like Lieberman pushing hard. I don't expect any move on the 3rd one, despite Arab and anti-settlers politicians backing the coalition. Would still be an improvement over the last 10 years.

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8 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

Yeah from everything I understand, if Bennett had any chance of doing anything this would be awful but in practice this is a coalition designed purely to pass that corruption law and for the reasons Fez mentioned no one expects or really intends for it to do anything else, right?

 

Of course once that power vaccum opens up who knows who'll gain - certainly seems plausible that Bennett would hoover a lot of Netenyahu's support if his supporters aren't personally bitter about a 'betrayal' and just want a right-wing leader, no? 

Bennett might benefit. On the other hand, Gideon Sa'ar, who leads one of the other two right-wing parties joining the coalition and was a member of Likud until this most recent election might be the one to benefit the most. Or someone still in Likud could take the reins.

It's also possible that Yair Lapid has so boosted his reputation the past month that next election he could cobble together a coalition that only extends as far as the center-right and doesn't need to have any true right-wing parties in it. Though I think that only happens if this coalition lasts quite a bit longer than people expect.

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17 hours ago, ljkeane said:

I'm pretty dubious that there's a path to peace with Bennett in a position of power either.

It's irrelevant at this point, because until there is unity on the Palestinian side and everyone from Hamas to Fatah is ready to negotiate a final status peace agreement with Israel, nobody from left to right in Israel is going to consider withdrawing from any part of the West Bank. The left is in no more of a rush than the right to see the West Bank turned into another Hamas dictatorship, especially a dictatorship that can hit Tel Aviv and Jerusalem from higher ground less than 15 miles away.

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Well I just lost respect for President Grant. 
 

Nothing to do with Israel, but something to do with Jews in the U.S. 

While watching old episodes of Jeopardy, I learned he wanted to expel Jews from the territory under his command :stillsick:  Apparently President Lincoln had to override him.

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And the necessary deals have apparently been struck...

Now they need to hold everyone together for the week or so until the confidence vote, and then actually run the country. Neither of which is any small task; nothing is done yet. Meanwhile, the Israeli right-wing is losing its mind, US-style:

Quote

 

Right-wing activist calls to burn home of Yamina lawmaker if he agrees to coalition

Following the news of the impending conclusion of the formation of the Bennett-Lapid government, one of the protestors against its formation addressed the other protestors and said that if Yamina lawmaker Nir Orbach agrees to the agreement "we will go home to his house. We will burn Petah Tikva.

 

 

From what I've seen this is absolutely going to be a right-wing government that's made concessions to the left, rather than the inverse of that. But that was always going to be the best the left could hope for under current circumstances. So long as Netanyahu is abandoned and democratic principles are re-enshrined, that'll be a win.

The biggest longterm winner in all this may be Abbas, head of the Arab Israeli party joining the coalition. It sounds like he got some important concessions (nothing peace process-related though, more things like additional economic development aid for Arab Israeli communities) and of course he'll have the ability to bring down the government just like every other party joining because of how narrow the margin is. More importantly, this is the first time in Israel's history that an Arab Israeli party is joining the government. If it works out this time, he could have significant leverage in trying to join future governments as well, and being able to act as the Jewish Israeli parties have been able to since the beginning. He might also end up taking a lot of support away from the other 3 Arab Israeli parties in future elections, if he's able to deliver on campaign promises thanks to all this.

Of course, it's not all sunshine and roses. Apparently one of the other concessions Abbas got was the removal of "strengthening protections for the LGBT community" from a list of principles for the new government. The Arab Israeli parties have ended up a mishmash of all sorts of beliefs because, for very obvious reasons, their voters never comfortable supporting any of the Jewish Israeli parties that more clearly delineated where they were on the left-right spectrum.

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I think the most positive aspect of this (other than perhaps an Arab party joining the government) is the fact that Hamas' attacks finally didn't work.  It's well established that attacks on Israel increase right before elections precisely because Hamas et al. prefer Israel to have the most right-wing, confrontational government in power as possible.  While this time it wasn't before an election - and of course Bennett is comfortably rightwing as well - the widespread expectation was the conflict would help Bibi, who is a much better bogeyman for Hamas.  That instead it led to his ouster is a significant shift.

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4 hours ago, Fez said:

From what I've seen this is absolutely going to be a right-wing government that's made concessions to the left, rather than the inverse of that. But that was always going to be the best the left could hope for under current circumstances. So long as Netanyahu is abandoned and democratic principles are re-enshrined, that'll be a win.

How so? It is essentially a center-left majority that needed the support of three right or right-leaning Jewish parties and one right Arab party.

Yesh Atid (17 seats), Blue and White (8 seats), Labor (7 seats), and Meretz (6 seats) are all comfortably center-left or left. That is 61% of the coalition.

Yamina (7), Yisrael Beiteinu (7), and New Hope (6) are all right or center-right Jewish parties (about 32% of the coalition).

Ra'am (4) is a straight up right wing Islamist party.

Regardless of how long this coalition will last, considering any one of them can blow the coalition up at any time over some bullshit or another, the fact that secular leftist Yair Lapid was able to get religious nationalist Jewish, religious nationalist Muslim Arab, leftist social democratic parties, and secular right-wing parties to sign onto a coalition together that will first be led by a kippa-wearing former settler leader and then be led by a borderline anti-religious Lapid (well, it probably won't last that long, but Lapid is playing the long game) is amazing. Just getting them all to sign the same document is an unbelievable picture.

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