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How could it happen? Why did Israeli voters
return Benjamin Netanyahu to power?
Glad it was spring break when the news came down, otherwise my campus would
have erupted in protests. For obscure reasons–though I
suspect backdoor Anti-Semitism–quite a few people out my way demonize Israel
and equate Palestinians with a seven-year-old being pummeled by a band of sixth
grade bullies.
I'm no fan of Benjamin Netanyahu. I think
his recent speaking stunt before the U.S. Congress was reprehensible, that he
is an anachronism, and that his utterances are more provocative than effective.
But if I were an Israeli, I probably would have voted for him. That's because,
for all his faults, Netanyahu is right to oppose the creation of independent
Palestinian state as long as Hamas pulls the power strings. The nature of Hamas
is among the many things Americans don't get about the conflict. Here are a few
more:
1.
The Palestinian/Israeli conflict cannot be explained via Israeli bullying.
Let's dispense with the nonsense that the
Palestinians are innocent victims in this conflict. Hamas is a terrorist
organization that calls for Israel's annihilation. In 2014, Hamas and its
affiliates launched 4,005 missiles into Israel. It was also responsible for 15
terrorist attacks inside Israel and the loss of 47 lives.
The anti-Israel crowd likes to dismiss
these terrorist acts by pointing out that far more Palestinians have died than
Israelis. That doesn't make the Palestinians innocents–just militarily
ineffective. (Israel's Iron Dome defense system is reasonably good at shooting
down rockets.) It was the Palestinians who launched a new intifada against
Israel in 2014, not vice versa–just as they launched the first one (1987-93)
and the second (2000-05). Funny thing about that–when you attack someone, they
tend to fight back rather vigorously.
Those who argue that disproportionate power
justifies the use of terror lack moral authority. It is a classic
means-justify-the-ends argument that ignores famed examples of using moral
force to subdue superior firepower: the Gandhi movement in India, the U.S.
civil rights movement, "people's power" in the Philippines,
Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution, Serbia's Optor protests against Slobodan
Milosevic, Ukraine's Orange Revolution….
One could make the case that Hamas are, at best, fools to think attacks
on Israel do anything other than ensure Likud's success.
2.
Hamas is a terrorist organization.
A better approach would be to look at what
Hamas stands for and what it does and conclude the obvious: Hamas is a
terrorist organization that, given the chance, would behave with all the
brutality of ISIS or Boko Haram. It tries to hide its desire to destroy Israel
by claiming that it is only trying to "liberate [its] homeland." But most
of that "homeland" just happens to be land marked "Israel"
on a map near you–and I'm not talking about West Bank settlements. Despite its
in-principle acceptance of a two-state solution, it also calls for Jerusalem as
the capital of Palestine and Gaza. Only a naïf thinks that's acceptable.
Want to see Hamas's real stripes? Check out
Hamas leader Khaled Marshaal's recent plea for Iran to "liberate"
Palestine by attacking Israel. I wonder how the US would react if a Mexican
leader based in Tijuana traveled to Moscow and asked Vladimir Putin to help liberate
California. I wonder how we'd react to missiles flying across our borders. Need
I remind how the entire country went into lockdown after 9/11, or that the
Gallup Poll revealed that 88% of Americans supported the decision to wage war
against the Taliban?
3.
Israelis reelected Netanyahu because peace isn't immanent.
Why not reelect a security-first candidate at
a time in which peace is unlikely? That's what Americans did in 2004 when wars
raged in Afghanistan and Iraq–wars I hasten to add were not related to the very
survival of the United States. Is
anyone out there seeing "moderates" with whom Israel can reasonably
negotiate? Don't tell me it's Mahmous Abbas or the Fatah Party; Israel
correctly sees Abbas as a powerless straw man who can't sneeze unless Hamas loosens
his noose.
Likud supporters also lack moral force, but
they're not crazy when they see a return to 1967 borders as dangerous. West Bank
settlements are based upon a buffer-zone notion of border security. Without
them Israel is just ten miles wide at its narrowest point, which would open the
possibility of daily showers of Hamas rockets upon Tel Aviv that even the Iron
Dome couldn't counter. As uncomfortable as it sounds, until peace actually
breaks out, those settlements might be the best hedge against another
full-scale war. Likud says it deals from strength rather than weakness.
Israelis apparently agree.
4.
Israel is a democracy.
How did Netanyahu win? He won because
Israel–unlike any other nation in the
region–is a democracy. Democracies some times return messy results, or do smug
Americans believe that George W. Bush was the best candidate we could have elected?
Democracy is particularly thorny in Israel because it also has a broader
electorate than others in the region and because it's a parliamentary democracy. Arabs and Palestinians make up about 21%
of Israel's population and can vote. They are disproportionately represented in
parliament, but they can/do vote for president.
The Knesset's (Parliament) 120 seats are
proportionately distributed. Likud won just 30 of them–six more than Isaac Herzog's
runner-up Zionist Union Party–and is still 31 seats shy of a majority. Herzog
has rejected a call to support Likud, which means Netanyahu must cobble a
coalition from among the eight other parties that won seats in the Knesset.
If you really hate Netanyahu, you might not
have him around for long. In parliamentary democracies, when the government loses
its majority, new elections must be held.
It's going to take at least four parties to obtain a 61-seat majority
and thus far only the Jewish Home Party (8 seats) and the centrist Kulanu Party
(10) are on board. Netanyahu simply won't have the power to put his incendiary
rhetoric into action. What could change that is if the West does something
stupid such as launching a boycott against Israel, or if the United States rescinds
its veto of Palestinian statehood. Such actions would probably hand Likud an
outright majority in new elections.
5.
People who live in glass houses…
After the stolen election of 2000 and the
money-driven U.S. elections since Citizens'
United it boggles the mind that the United States would tell other
democracies how to conduct their affairs. And doesn't a majority of the current
Congress favor mass deportation of illegal immigrants and immigration
restriction? Hmmm…. The GOP or Likud? Can I get back to you?
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