T. Belman. When Caroline wrote her book recommending sovereignty over all of J & S and a path to citizenship for all Arabs, she wasn’t troubled by the Arabs being 35% of the total population.
The current government has adopted a post-Zionist ethos and governing agenda. We must reinstate the Jewish consensus around Zionism in our schools, media, and politics.
By Caroline B. Glick, ISRAEL HAYOM Jan 14/22
Young Israelis wrapped in the national flag watch the Independence Day flyover in Sacher Park in Jerusalem on April 15, 2021 | File photo: Oren Ben Hakoon
After their claim to be the peace camp exploded into a million pieces in a hundred suicide bombings, Israel’s Left reinvented itself as the Zionist camp. Their plan of quitting Judea and Samaria and partitioning Jerusalem remained unchanged. But it was rebranded not as a plan for peace, but as a means to protect Israel’s Jewish identity in the face of the mortal threat of the Palestinian womb.
Within a year or two or a decade or two, the Left warned, if Israel maintained its control over its strategic depth, unified capital and historic heartland, the Jews would lose their numeric majority over the Arabs. And at that point, Israel would be faced with the choice of becoming a non-Jewish state or a non-democratic one. By this reasoning, anyone who calls to apply Israeli law over all or parts of Judea and Samaria, and maintain Jerusalem as an undivided city is an anti-Zionist, a fascist, or both.
Luckily, the demographic time bomb worked out to be as much of a dud as the peace process was a bomb. As the population data published at the end of 2021 by the Central Bureau of Statistics demonstrate, Israel’s Jewish majority is massive and growing.
There are 6.98 million Jews living in Israel. They comprise 73.9% of Israel’s citizens. With non-Jews who are sociologically aligned with the Jewish majority (Russian immigrants who are not Jews under Jewish law and other minority groups), 80% of Israel’s citizens are Jews.
Jewish Israeli women have more children on average than Muslim Israeli women and Muslim Palestinian women in Judea and Samaria. Aliyah rates to Israel remain high and far outstrip emigration rates. These data indicate that not only is Israel’s Jewish majority stable, it is growing. As demographer and former ambassador Yoram Ettinger has proven through repeated analyses of Palestinian birth, death and emigration data over the past decade, if Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria were incorporated into Israel’s population count, the Jewish majority would be reduced, to be sure, but it would not be endangered. Under that scenario, Jews would comprise 63% of Israel’s citizenry. So far from being a threat to Israel’s Jewish identity, demography is a safeguard of Israel’s Jewish character.
Unfortunately, demography isn’t the only variable determining whether Israel will or will not remain the Jewish state. It turns out that Arabs don’t need to outnumber the Jews to destroy the Zionist dream. All they need is find a minority of Israeli Jews to partner with them. Equipped with a sufficient number of Jews on their side, Israel’s Arab minority, which comprises just 20% of the population, can effectively end the existence of the Jewish people’s nation state.
And this brings us to the Left’s latest shift. The failure of Oslo, and the failure of the withdrawal from Gaza, which was justified with demographic demagoguery, left Israel’s Left on life support. In 2014, only 12% of Israelis identified themselves as leftists. By 2018, only 8% of Israelis did.
Despairing of ever winning an electoral majority, beginning in the early 2000s, Israel’s ideological leftists began abandoning Zionism and joining the Israeli Arabs, the international Left and the EU as central players in their political war against Israel and its right to exist. Leftist professors joined the campaigns to boycott their universities. Leftist lawyers led lawfare and propaganda wars funded by European governments and anti-Israel foundations in America. Working hand in glove with post-Zionist Supreme Court justices and government lawyers, these lawfare activists constrained Israel’s ability to enforce its laws among Arab citizens and to wage successful counterterror campaigns against the Hamas terror regime in Gaza.
Israeli leftists led foreign-funded fights to block Israel from enforcing its immigration laws against illegal aliens from Africa.
They waged legal and political fights against Jewish public observance. Their fight against the ban on the sale of hametz [leavened foodstuffs] during Passover; for non-Orthodox prayer at the Western Wall; and their campaigns to prohibit separate public events for men and women in religious communities are just a few examples of the post-Zionist Left’s across-the-board war against the Jewish character of the State of Israel.
The Left’s political parties, seemingly doomed to the back benches of the Opposition, also adjusted to the new realities by abandoning Zionism. The far-left Meretz party’s leaders realized that their Jewish voter rolls were unlikely to expand and if they wished to remain in the Knesset, they had to direct their voter recruitment drives toward Arab Israelis. In fits and bounds, the Labor Party followed suit.
To be sure, the leftist parties weren’t the only Jewish parties courting the Arab vote. Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu and Shas leader Arye Deri also had long been assiduous in their outreach to Arab Israelis. But there was a distinct difference between Likud and Shas Arab outreach campaigns, and Labor and Meretz’s efforts. Likud and Shas have sought to bring Arabs into the Jewish polity by advocating on behalf of their economic and municipal interests. In so doing, Likud and Shas sought the support of Arabs who seek to integrate into the Jewish Israeli mainstream.
In contrast, Meretz and Labor courted Arab voters by adopting the anti-Zionist positions advocated by the anti-Zionist Arab parties. So it came to pass that Meretz erased Zionism from its party platform. It adopted the slogan, “To be proud in our land.” The slogan, taken from Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah,” includes an obvious omission. The line in “Hatikvah” is “to be a proud nation in our land.”
As for Labor, the Zionist banner of David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin was replaced with the banner of radical feminism. Labor head Meirav Michaeli’s platform doesn’t erase Zionism. It simply defines Zionism as withdrawing from Judea and Samaria and partitioning Jerusalem (to maintain the Jewish majority, of course). But Michaeli’s real emphasis has been radical feminism. Michaeli’s decision to bring Arab nationalist Ibtisam Mara’ana onto her Knesset slate was a staple of her new Labor party. Mara’ana has a long record of comparing Israel’s establishment (the “Nakba”) with the Holocaust. But on the other hand, she has embraced Michaeli’s annoying efforts to feminize the Hebrew language by using feminine forms of nouns and verbs rather than masculine ones, defying the basic rules of grammar in the service of some illiterate feminist agenda.
This brings us to the more moderate Left. Its shift to post-Zionism has been more gradual and far less publicized. In 2011, the moderate Left was still very committed to Zionism. That year, in response to the radicalization of the far Left, including the legal fraternity, Kadima lawmaker MK Avi Dichter presented a bill for Basic Law – Israel: The Nation State of the Jewish People. At the time, Dichter’s boss, Kadima leader Tzipi Livni supported Dichter’s efforts to use primary legislation to safeguard Israel’s Jewish character.
Dichter submitted the bill again as a Likud MK in 2017. By that time, as co-head of the Labor party, Livni was one of the bill’s most ardent opponents.
The erosion of the moderate Left’s Zionist commitment kicked into high gear during the 2019-2021 election vortex, where Israel held four inconclusive elections in rapid succession. At the outset of the process, the new center-left party Blue and White, led by three former IDF chiefs of General Staff – Benny Gantz, Gaby Ashkenazi, and Moshe Ya’alon – and Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, was firmly in the Zionist camp. The four leaders all opposed forming a government that relied on the support of the virulently anti-Zionist and largely pro-terror Joint Arab List. That consensus view began to crumble after the second election. Lapid and his Yesh Atid party were the first to support forming a government with Arab lawmakers who seek Israel’s dissolution as a Jewish state. After the third election, Gantz, Ya’alon and Ashkenazi agreed. But the Left alone was not large enough to form a 61-seat majority, even with the Arabs.
The prospect of a minority Arab faction gaining control over the Knesset and government became a salient possibility after the fourth election last March. It was then that the careerist, anti-Netanyahu right-wing parties – Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope and Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked’s Yamina – decided that in exchange for senior positions, they would form a coalition government dependent on Ra’am, which hails from the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Islamic Movement.
Initially it wasn’t clear who was swallowing whom. Ra’am chairman Mansour Abbas has become an expert making empty pronouncements (his latest involved stating the undisputed fact that “Israel is a Jewish state”), that are music to Israelis’ ears while advancing his Islamist, decidedly anti-Jewish agenda. There was hope early on that Abbas’s willingness to join a governing coalition stemmed from an abandonment of anti-Zionism in favor of an integrationist impulse. Perhaps that would have been the case if he had joined a Netanyahu-led all right-wing coalition. But in the event, from the early days of the current, opportunist right-wing-led, leftist-dominated government it became apparent that it was Abbas that had swallowed the leftist and opportunistic right-wing parties. They aligned toward him, not the other way around.
The government’s failure to pass the amended citizenship law that blocks mass Arab immigration; its passage of the so-called “Electricity Law,” which effectively legalized thousands of illegal Bedouin houses and towns built on stolen state lands in the Negev; the government’s cancellation Wednesday of tree planting in the Negev in the face of Ra’am-supported Arab nationalist riots; the government’s repeated rejection of bills requiring the provision of electricity to new Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria – these are just some of the governmental actions that attest to the current government has abandoned Zionism as its governing rationale and replaced it with a post-Zionist ethos and governing agenda.
The lesson from all of this is obvious. Having a Jewish majority is not a guarantee that Israel will remain a Jewish state. We must reinstate the Jewish consensus around Zionism in our schools, media, and politics. Post-Zionist politicians must be exposed. And opportunists who prioritize their ambitions over securing the Jewish state must be ousted and replaced with men and women who are dedicated to the Zionist vision of the Jewish people from time immemorial.
@ BEAR-
I don’t thing the ,P.M. “swore by him”. Possibly at the beginning, as he had to have supported him. But not that long after it became obvious that Mandelblit was interfering with the political process of government decisions which, without being consulted, he constantly said were illegal. There is no way that Netanyahu by this time was his supporter.
Yet, and always very strange to me. he would oppose any attempts to reprimand or replace him, Even supported the High Court and rarely criticised that clique which had plenty to be critical of.
I had always thought that no one could be as bad as Mazuz , Mandelblit’s predecessor, but I was woefully wrong. Mazuz for his disservices to Israel became a high Court judge and was always critical of Netanyahu. He behaved, in fact, very like Mandelblit, shooting down a multitude of Government decisions, which were no business of his.
The Attorney General Bibi appointed and swore by is who has had him charged and is now working a plea deal. Some people can get a grip on the reality that Bibi has done so ethically wrong things while trying to keep up with the Billionaires he hangs around with. Some of these are also legal transgressions. The last witness blew his defense out of the water and if he is smart he will take a plea bargain that keeps him out of jail. I actual like the man and think overall he has done some very good things for Israel. He will not be Prime Minister again so reality says he has more to gain than lose by taking a plea bargain.
It is not the political opponents such as in the US where the Dems get trying to throw out on things that would not fly.
It is not like when the GOP tried to get Bill Clinton thrown for lying about having oral sex with Monica Lewinsky and lying about it.
That actually is pretty Jungle type behavior oh the moralist judges here called itBanana Republic Stuff.
@Sebastien
Very well described
@Sebastian Zorn
A question mark is really appropriate here.
Check his actual record – he is a two-state enabler and a demagogue with a magical baritone.
He started dealing with the PLO a couple of weeks after his father died.
@Reader If you’ve been following the case, at all, you would know that the things Netanyahu has been accused of aren’t even crimes. His only crime is being in the opposition. Only banana republics behave this way. If he is convicted and imprisoned, he will be a political prisoner and I hope there will be international protests and petitions to free him. He is being railroaded. They free terrorists but imprison Israel’s greatest prime minister after Ben Gurion?
@Edgar G.
What an awful thing to say, Edgar!
Besides, to the best of my knowledge Netanyahu doesn’t have a daughter.
@Sebastien Zorn
If the leader of the opposition is a criminal, he should be imprisoned or otherwise appropriately punished; if not – then not.
It looks to me like Bibi is getting preferential treatment (the justice system is helping him to get off scot-free or nearly so) because of WHO HE IS.
It doesn’t make sense to say that there is a horrible conspiracy to paint Netanyahu as a criminal when the behavior of the top of Israel’s judiciary shows that, on the contrary, they are trying to do everything to save him from punishment, including taking into account the opinion of his family(!).
@Sebastien
Very good point.
or Biden’s America.
How would it look if the Israeli government puts the leader of the opposition in prison? Not like a democracy, that’s for sure. More like Putin’s Russia.
(@ PELONI-
READER goes quite off the rails when thinking of Netnayahu.(and he’s getting worse) I heard a report (very unreliable_ the the PM did a “Clinton” on his daughter when she worked (also unreliable) in the PMs office.
The ONLY reason they are pushing so hard for “Moral Turpitude” is because they have little or nothing else to go on, in this faked up once only (?) litany of specious charges.
No point in arguing with Reader about it. He loves argument for it’s own sake, thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes, and if he notices a comma out of place is prepared to dispute this through 20 to and fro posts.
A pity, because he often finds reports that none of us has ever seen therefore, very interesting to us.
@Reader
It would be something so silly that only a fool would act with such a lack of reason. Regardless of your obsessive hatred of the man, Bibi is no fool and what you suggest would be a foolish move on every plane of consideration.
There was no reason the original or replacement bill should not have been passed, and no reason either should not have been passed by a Right wing govt, which was chosen by the public to guide the country in the era in which the US was to be led by a group of Radicals quite intent on the return of the TSS and the rise of a nuclear Iran. There was no reason except the very reason that brought all of this into reality. And that is quite regrettable, as Abbas stands as master of the Arab street, emboldened with position, empowered with state funds and celebrating newly won Arab lands in the Negev.
Celebrate what you see as a victory as you like, but none of this should bring anything but concern and dread to mind for any of us.
@Reader
What twaddle. Was the special treatment in the form of the investigation into his ice cream bills, or his staffing? Perhaps the special treatment was in the form of him supposedly taking a bribe from a news organization which gave him no benefit while a similar situation came to benefit Lapid and others who were not being persecuted under the same manufactured law?
The special benefit that was show to Bibi was the use of Lawfare to undermine his premiership and cripple the state while attempting to prohibit the public from choosing him as a candidate for Knessett, even as he gained one quarter of all mandates. He may stay or he may go, but there was no benefit shown to Bibi in any of this, even if they simply acknowledge the fraud that was created for their own ends. Manufactured laws, coerced witnesses, innumerable inventive investigations into family and associates, and you say he gained a special treatment…I find some thing you share to be quite interesting, and then you make such silly statements as this.
The use of a perversion of the law will be used again to manipulate the PM and should Bibi be swept from the stage using such fictitious legal shenanigans, any future PM will bow to the will of these unelected villains as they will have no choice, regardless of their guilt or innocence or the existence of a crime or lack thereof. This is a very dangerous precedent that you and others will celebrate, but it places the PM in the hands of the unelected appointees. Whoever stands as PM will be a victim of these unelected villains such as Mandelblit or a tool to be used by them to whatever ends they may desire. Do you have no recollection of Sharon?
@peloni
Wouldn’t it be something if the opposition refuses to vote for it just to spite the coalition?
After all, Bibi is still their boss.
@peloni
There was no need whatsoever for any alternative bill.
Likud extended the old bill several times, this is a routine security issue and it had to be passed ASAP as a matter of routine before it expired.
Likud sacrificed the security of the country to please Bibi, and did a trick to let the bill lapse and to make the coalition look bad.
The alternative bill could not have been passed without a discussion which would take a long time, and a demand to pass it without looking amounted to blackmail.
Netanyahu is extremely powerful, I think everyone is simply afraid of him
Mandelblit is now allegedly ready to remove the “non-negotiable” moral turpitude term from the plea, and leave it to the judges to decide.
Barak himself (a Supreme Court justice) interceded for him after numerous pleas from Netanyahu to do so.
He is getting special treatment which is bordering on illegal.
He still may end up with a light slap on the wrist and a full return to politics.
@Bear
This is very good news.
Two things are likely now that a budget has passed will lead this government to eventually to fall apart.
One either from the Meretz / Raam side or from the right-wing part of the Coalition (Yamina, Saar) it will no longer be sustainable to keep making gut wrenching compromises with the opposite side of the coalition.
Two , If Bibi leaves the Likud leadership it will easier for the right and center to join together under someone like Barkat. So right-wing partners who agree on most things of importance will be able to join forces.
Hopefully this will happen before Lapid becomes Prime Minister and stops the continued danger of Gantz as Prime Minister.
@ Peloni, Shaked, Bennett, Saar are now going to vote for the Citizenship bill being brought forth by the opposition for the good of the country because Meretz is refusing to back the government bill. So we and all those who love Israel and want to protect from terrorists trying to infiltrate via marriage should be pleased.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/320570 (full article)
@Peloni you are correct I do defend Bennett but when I believe he is correct and doing something realistic and for the benefit of the country in the whole. I understand Israel and the Israeli system and politics. There are usually not perfect outcomes or perfect choices.
Bennett has done what he believes is best for the country. I think 100% the Likud was being purely partisan in not voting for the renewal of the Citizenship Law. You are just trying to being a good debater in defending in your golden calf in saying there was a realistic choice for Bennett and not saying the Likud was cynical.
@Adam actually I totally disagree with you, the Israeli Supreme would likely jump for joy at plea deal for Bibi. The plea deals in the past have been up held with other politicians.
@Bear. I don’t think that a plea deal for Bibi is a realist possibility, even if he thinks it is. The Supreme Court would almost certainly throw it out after receiving a petition asking them to do so from Bibi’s enemies. The Supreme Court and numerous other highly placed enemies of Bibi wanted blood. They have always wanted blood, and that’s why he was prosecuted in the first place. I hope he is not enough of a sucker to buy a deal that will inevitably be broken.
Bibi should try to find a country that is willing to let him go into exile there. Of course, there are probably few such countries. Perhaps Panama, Belize or one of the independent Caribbean Islands. The Bahamas? Hungary? Serbia?I don’t think the u.S. will grant him asylum, although it certainly should. Ditto Britain.
No country regarded as a democracy is so hard on its politicians. A former president had to suffer a long jail term on trumped up charges. A former prime minister had to serve time. Many other politicians have been subjected to lengthy investigations and indictments.
Successful businessmen are also frequently prosecuted on dubious charges.
Sensible Israelis should emigrate to countries where government lawyers and judges less intent on prosecuting successful and prominent people, and where you have more civil rights and legal protections if you are arrested. Of course many Israelis have done this already.
@Bear
Only Likud was cynical as Bennett resisted negotiating when he knew the interest of the country was at stake? Your selective use of the word cynical only towards Bennett’s opposition is curiously telling. Such partisan views are what brought this fundamentally significant bill to become the subject of a contest of wills within the Right against itself and in which either side could and should have acted out of a love of country to do what is right as well as what is Right. Neither did, not the opposition and not Bennett, who as PM had the greater responsibility in not settling this mess. If negotiating a settlement of the controversy would have acted as too great a burden for Bennett’s govt, that too should be telling of what a love of country might dictate.
So, yes, we do not agree. You are very defensive of Bennett it seems in every scenario regardless of the context. It is not my intent to be unpleasant, but I think this is a fair statement.
I am cheering for Bibi to make a plea deal. It would be the best for all.
He will do community service (and not jail time hopefully). Just this saga ending and Likud freed from him would be a community service. I wonder what form of community service would be imposed on him?
Naturally not all will be happy. Some will want him in jail for his crimes and some will believe he was framed and has just been screwed.
The view is the last witness testimony hurt him badly and the next witnesses would make his defense even weaker. This is why it is likely that a plea deal which was open to him is occurring now. Plus a new attorney general (coming very soon) may not agree to a plea deal and want jail time and a conviction.
@peloni the Likud was being cyncial because the bill they proposed who have split the coalition and they knew it. They could have protected the country by passing the old bill which they had done previously. They actual are now considering passing the old bill as Bibi is starting to have less influence
You can keep arguing the point as long as you want we will not agree.
Shaked as Interior Minister has been using her power to prevent unification’s from occurring. However, a new bill is needed as the court may over rule her tactics.
@Reader
The claim you made at the time was that the bill could not have been passed in time to prevent the lapse in the law. You concluded it was a false attempt by Likud to fake their willingness to see the bill passed, only to pacify their base. There was no reason for the govt not to have pursued this offer by Likud, especially after the law lapsed. If Bennett had done so and Likud acted in poor faith and withdraw their support during such negotiations, we would clearly have heard about it. It has been many months now and as the priorities of the Arab donatives have now been settled, for the moment at least, perhaps the interests of the state could be prioritized and this new bill might be revisited. I would, however, not put any stock in such a reasonable move.
@Peloni, okay we will not agree on this subject, no surprise.
I like you also want a right wing government witout RAAM and Meretz (also would not be sad if Labor were not in it).
Information leaking out is indicating that it is possible that Bibi will sign a plea deal that will keep him out of politics for perhaps 7 years (by law). This will allow the Likud to appoint the Likud to appoint a new chairman and the right wing to join together again to form a new government with all the right wing or center elements in it possibly.
@Bear
Actually the issue was the fact that the old bill allowed the Interior Minister the ability to influence the number entering the state and this had been an issue in the past. The new bill removed the input of the Interior Minister. The Right did not trust the influence that Abbas had over the govt and this was and is the issue, and as we have seen the influence of Abbas over the govt has been quite significant. The changes in the law could not be argued to be an issue if it was not a point of pride by Bennett unless it was intended by Bennett or Abbas to use this feature to satisfy the Brotherhood – or so it could be argued. The changes would not have been a bad thing in any case. Perhaps it was politically based, they are all polititicians, and Bennett seems as attuned to making false statements as the others when it suits him.
What I said in my previous comment is not changed by any of these details. The Right could have passed the old bill and Bennett could have passed the new bill. It is a failure of governance with which the public placed their trust in the Right to first form a Right wing govt and then see to the needs of the state which would include passing the Citizenship bill. It was a failure of the Right and Bennett, as PM, in particular not to have done so.
@Peloni, the bill the Likud voted against was the same bill they had voted for previously. The alternative bill was presented to just guard against criticism such as I am making and they knew it would not pass with the coalition. A very cynical ploy.
@peloni
As far as I remember the alternative bill had something really wrong with it – it was designed to be a provocation, to sabotage the same citizenship law that Likud had no problem extending when it was in power.
@Bear
This is not a fair description of the full story. Likud put forward an alternate bill which Bennet could have passed out of love of country. The simple reality is that there is blame enough to go around. Furthermore, Bennett is PM and as such, it was incumbent upon him to see this matter settled with the passage of the old bill or a new bill, no matter the cost of pride or convenience, and he could have done so, but chose otherwise, likely to keep his chubby dentist in line and his govt above water. Regardless, this was a failure of the Right, and of Bennett in particular as he was PM and the Right did signal that they would work with him to see a new bill passed. This failure of the Right to work together is a continuance of the failure of the Right to form a govt. Partisans will look to seek support for one side or the other, but the reality is that both the failure of the Right to secure both the passage of the Citizenship bill and the forming of a Right govt was a betrayal of the public’s trust.
Aside from the Citizenship bill, the exorbitant payments made to Abbas in position, power, cash and land, however, were all a failure of Bennett and Saar, alone. And, presumably, these additional betrayals were hopefully not done out of a love of country.
Lower than under the Mandate.
NOTHING has changed since then, BTW, except for the size of the population and the names of the politicians.
I hope the government changes also but she is just piling on. Citizenship law could have been passed if the Likud voted for it but did not out of partisan politics and not love of country.