Larry Derfner : Neo-fascists Threaten the West. In Israel They've Already Arrived
Neo-fascists threaten the West. In Israel they've already arrived
From
America to Austria, belligerent, xenophobic ultra-nationalism is
rising. But its hold on power in Israel is far more secure — and
uncontested.
haaretz.com
I hear a lot of Israeli liberals saying that yes, things are bad here, but they’re bad everywhere. On the one hand, Avigdor Lieberman is running the army, a majority of Israelis
believe the soldier who executed a prone Palestinian in Hebron behaved
“responsibly,” and it’s gotten so that even Roni Daniel, Channel 2 news’
superhawk, is wondering whether his children should leave the country.
But on the other hand, they point out, America has Donald Trump.
In Austria, the party of Jorg Haider just came within an inch of taking
over. In France, Marine Le Pen is the rising power. All over Western
Europe, even in Scandinavia, the neo-fascists are gaining strength.
So
Israel isn’t alone in its slide into the swamp of belligerent,
xenophobic ultra-nationalism — it’s happening in the most “enlightened”
countries of the West. We’re in no worse a political predicament than
they’re in, according to this view.
But
this view is mistaken; our political predicament is worse. In the 21st
century, the forces of belligerent, xenophobic ultra-nationalism have a
much stronger, more secure hold on power in Israel than they do in any
Western country (not counting Eastern Europe).
Netanyahu
has been elected prime minister four times, and each of his governments
is more right-wing than the last. Meanwhile, the so-called center and
center-left parties grow increasingly antagonistic toward the
Palestinians and the Israeli Arab parties, until it’s become a bad joke
to refer to them (except Meretz, the lone party of the Zionist left) as a
liberal opposition. And now their leader, Isaac Herzog, has left them
more divided and weaker than ever.
In
Israel today, the right-wing powers-that-be are only getting more
right-wing and more powerful; except for the Supreme Court (to a limited
degree), there’s nothing and nobody to hold them back.
In
America today, the situation is quite different. The president, now in
his eighth and last year, is Barack Obama, the sort of liberal
politician who has become extinct in 21st-century Israel. And even if
the grotesque Donald Trump does win the November election, the
Democrats, with their larger share of the electorate, will have a good
chance of beating him the next time. The Republicans have no hope of
ruling American politics without challenge for nearly a generation like
the Likud and its allies have done here. Over there it’s the Democrats, davka, who have such a hope.
In
Austria, the Freedom Party, running on the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant
platform common to all European far-right parties, came within 0.7% of
the vote to winning the presidency. But not only did it lose, the winner
was a member of the liberal Green Party. And even if that result gets
turned around in the coming years, the liberals will almost certainly
remain contenders for power in Austria, unlike what’s happened in
contemporary Israel.
In
other Western European countries, even France with its National Front,
the demagogic, nativist parties and movements are growing — but they are
all still at a far remove from having national power such as that
enjoyed here by Yisrael Beiteinu, Habayit Hayehudi and current-day
Likud.
Since
World War II, Western Europe has developed a strong liberal, tolerant
consensus; this is fraying due to the large influx of Muslim immigrants
and refugees and the influence of radical Islam in their ranks, but it
remains the norm. By contrast, liberalism and tolerance for Arabs, while
always a stream in Israeli politics, only came to the fore during the
Oslo years — and even they were interrupted by Netanyahu’s first term.
Since Oslo imploded in 2000, this stream has been steadily drying up —
except during the anomaly of Sharon’s disengagement from Gaza – while
the racism and militarism of the right keeps running stronger.
Western
Europeans have problems with immigration, refugees and jihadism, and
often with economics; these problems may grow to the point where they
derange the public and the neo-fascists start taking power. But this
hasn’t happened yet, and there’s a very good chance it won’t.
Israel,
on the other hand, is a tiny ethnic-religious minority in a hostile
region on a permanent war footing with its neighbors. Israel believes
(wrongly) that it has done everything it can to make peace and been
turned down, and so it trusts its security to the subjugation of the
Palestinians and the periodic bombing of Syria and Hezbollah, with no
expectation or even reasonable hope that things will change.
This
is a much more deeply entrenched and volatile problem than the Western
Europeans, or, certainly, the Americans have been dealing with. What
ails Israel is the sort of condition that’s just made for a long-term
takeover by belligerent, xenophobic ultranationalists, which is what’s
happened here and hasn’t happened there. No, unfortunately, this is not a
Western country we’re living in.
Larry Derfner is a copy editor at Haaretz and blogs at www.larryderfner.com. Follow him on Twitter: @DerfnerLarry
Haaretz Contribut
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