[ Israeli analysts say the Biden administration thinks Netanyahu
"has lost his mind," there is a growing likelihood of Jewish
inter-communal violence, and the country is losing its ability to
fight the apartheid label.]
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BIDEN’S DISINVITATION TO NETANYAHU FOLLOWED PM’S ACCUSATION U.S.
IS FUNDING DEMONSTRATIONS TO ‘TOPPLE’ HIM  
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Philip Weiss
April 4, 2023
Mondoweiss
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_ Israeli analysts say the Biden administration thinks Netanyahu "has
lost his mind," there is a growing likelihood of Jewish inter-communal
violence, and the country is losing its ability to fight the apartheid
label. _

A campaign poster in Tel Aviv shows, from left, Itamar Ben-Gvir,
Benjamin Netanyahu and Bezalel Smotrich., Photo: Jamal Awad/Flash90 //
Mondoweiss

 

Joe Biden took the “unbelievable” step of telling Benjamin
Netanyahu he’s not welcome in Washington last week because Netanyahu
had accused Biden of paying for the demonstrations that have rocked
Israel, according to two Israeli analysts, in comments to pro-Israel
organizations.

“[The Americans] are thinking somebody has lost his mind out
there,” one said.

Briefings by pro-Israel groups in the last tumultuous week provided
other insights from Israeli Jews: Israel is out of control to a degree
that befits Hassan Nasrallah’s prediction that Israel will fall
apart like a spider’s web; there is a growing likelihood of
Jew-on-Jew violence; the massive demonstrations in Israel are
indifferent to discrimination against Palestinians; but the country is
losing its ability to fight the apartheid label because of the powers
that Netanyahu has given to Jewish extremists in the West Bank.

Here are some of those comments.

BIDEN ACTED BECAUSE NETANYAHU ACCUSED HIM OF FUNDING THE
DEMONSTRATIONS

Yossi Alpher at Americans for Peace Now
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The administration was also reportedly furious after Netanyahu’s
extreme-right son Yair tweeted that the US State Department was
conspiring to topple his father’s government through CIA financing
of mass anti-Netanyahu demonstrations–a libel reportedly endorsed by
the prime minister in a briefing to Israeli journalists. 

Tal Schneider of the _Times of Israel_ expanded on the sequence
in a Democratic Majority for Israel
[[link removed]] webinar. She
said Biden’s statement that Netanyahu is not welcome in Washington
as “unbelievable” and said that Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed the
libel during two briefings to Israeli reporters in Rome and London
after which they quoted “the most senior official you can think of,
no one is higher” — an obvious reference to Netanyahu.

In those two briefings he said the U.S. administration– the current
administration is out to topple me. They are financing the
demonstrations, they are sending money. Stuff like that– conspiracy
theories that some of them are portrayed out in the open by his son
[Yair]. But I never expected the prime minister to say it in a
briefing. It blew my mind off, really to hear that.

I don’t know what were the specifics that brought Biden to say he is
disinvited, but I would not be surprised if those two briefings were a
big part of it. Because you cannot go around in Israel and say things
like that to an American president, that’s unheard of… Some of the
things that he did and said in the last couple of weeks seemed to us
Israelis, as if he is detached from reality. I mean, firing your
defense minister in a text message to reporters without giving any
explanation to the reasons you are doing so?…

When you look at the American administration… they are thinking
somebody has lost his mind out there.

ISRAEL IS IMPLODING, JUST AS NASRALLAH SAID

Yoni Shimshoni, an Israeli army reservist general, told the Israel
Policy Forum [[link removed]] that the
country is out of control, and Israel’s neighbors see it.

What they’re seeing is an inability to control the country….
There’s a regime there that can’t control what’s going on… The
army’s coming apart, the society’s coming apart. [Hassan]
Nasrallah has said, What I said several years ago in the famous cobweb
speech– it’s working out, this country is imploding.

The Hezbollah leader, Nasrallah, said in 2000 that he was confident of
victory because “Israel is weaker than a spider’s web.”

Tal Schneider said that she believes that both Netanyahu’s wife,
Sara, and son Yair, who lives at home, are making important decisions
and are engaged in political negotiations.

“The man who was supposed to be the protector of Israeli security–
he is today the greatest threat to Israeli security,” author Yossi
Klein Halevi said of Netanyahu on that Democratic Majority for Israel
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Halevi said he does not think the negotiations between Netanyahu and
the opposition have any chance of success. The government’s “red
line” is that it can control the appointments of Supreme Court
justices, and the opposition has a redline of judicial independence.
He said, “We will be back on the streets as soon as the negotiations
fail.”

MORE VIOLENCE IS LIKELY– AGAINST PALESTINIANS AND BY JEWS AGAINST
OTHER JEWS

Halevi described “runaway settler violence,” and admits that he
ignored it “for years.”

I simply turned a blind eye for years to settler violence and
attributed it to an irrelevant fringe. Well that irrelevant fringe is
now controlling the Israeli police, the Finance Ministry, has a deep
foothold in the Defense Ministry. The pogromists who burned dozens of
Palestinians’ homes
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have backing within the government. We’ve never experienced anything
like this before. We are angry, we are galvanized, but most of all we
are terrified. Every day we wake up to an impossible
development…There is growing violence on the streets. If you heard
Netanyahu’s supposed reconciliation speech where he called for an
end to violence…[it was directed at] the opposition– which has not
behaved violently. It is his own hardcore followers that have produced
the violence.

Alpher on civil strife:

[C]ivil strife is likely to continue and even escalate. That means
growing involvement by the security community–police, striking
reservists, a defense minister warning of major conflict, conceivably
a vigilante ‘national guard’.

Lior Amihai, executive director of the Israeli organization Peace Now,
describes “very violent” pro-Netanyahu demonstrators in a
briefing with Americans for Peace Now:
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Those who demonstrated were two groups. One group was what we call the
La Familia group. It’s like a violent group, a very small group, I
must say in figures, but violent citizens who are supporters of
Netanyahu, who are on the fringe and the margins of society that had
been neglected by Israeli society, been dismissed by Israeli society.
They’ve become very violent, and they don’t see themselves as part
of society. And this is one this is a very small minority within the
demonstrators and the right wing demonstrations. And 95% of the right
wing demonstrations are settlers…. My take on yesterday’s
demonstration– it was a majority of settlers from the settlements
who came on buses financed and organized very well to demonstrate. And
my prediction is, if we’ll start seeing right wing demonstrations,
it will actually be settler demonstrations, because they’re very
organized.

THE DANGER TO THE RELATIONSHIP WITH AMERICAN JEWS:

Shimshoni says that Netanyahu is oblivious to Israel’s most
important international alliance with the “global Jewish
community.”

From a political science point of view, What’s your most important
global alliance? That’s our most important alliance. we see that we
are straining that particular relationship around shared values if we
pull off in this direction.

Alpher said Netanyahu has lost his touch with Americans:

Something very fundamental is amiss in Israel’s understanding of
America…. Some Israelis, of the sort who tend to be outspoken and
not nuanced, apparently don’t know how to read between the lines.
Netanyahu and his emissary to America Ron Dermer, who purport to know
the United States like the back of their hand, have been living in a
bubble.

Halevi, a longtime apologist for Israel (and Netanyahu voter in
earlier years), said that it is time for American Jews to be
“grownups” and give Israelis advice about “democratic ethos.”

This moment is an opportunity for a much needed reset in
Israel-diaspora relations, time for us to start relating to each other
as grownups, who trust one another… I understand Israelis who have
reservations about diaspora criticism of Israeli security policy,
especially in times of war. Though in principle I believe that
Diaspora Jews are shareholders in the Jewish state and have the right
and responsibility to express their opinions even during war, even
though that’s personally painful to me– in this case, there is no
minority anywhere in the world that is as sophisticated on the
democratic ethos as American Jewry. We need your input especially on
this issue… I not only tolerate diaspora criticism, I invite it and
welcome it…. We need you as partners in helping shape the nature of
Israeli society, the nature of the state.

ZIONIST IDENTITY BATTLE BETWEEN THE RELIGIOUS AND THE “LIBERALS”

Halevi called himself a “militant centrist” and said the Israeli
center is now galvanized against the religious right — “the state
within a state that we have allowed the ultraorthodox to create” —
over questions of Zionist identity:

What do we mean by a Jewish state, and a democratic state? Two camps
have emerged. The liberal definition of a democratic state… protects
the rights of a minority. The main debate we have with the
ultranationalist right, is, the liberal Zionist idea of a Jewish state
is a state of the Jewish people, whoever we are. This [Netanyahu]
coalition– their idea of a Jewish state is the state of Judaism, the
state of orthodox Judaism, a much more narrow and exclusivist
understanding the mission of a Jewish state. These are the two issues
that Israel is divided on, and liberal Israel is galvanized.

THAT RELIGIOUS STATE IS BRINGING “TOTAL CHAOS” TO THE WEST BANK

Shimshoni said there are now conflicting Israeli authorities in the
occupation because Netanyahu has given portfolios to fascistic
partners Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, and Itamar Ben-Gvir,
the police minister, who was promised his own militia:

What’s been created now is total chaos. If I’m a commander now in
the West Bank I don’t know who I’m supposed to listen to, to
Smotrich, to the [army] chief of staff, to Ben-Gvir, I dont know who
I’m supposed to listen to. This idea of a dedicated force, a militia
[for Ben-Gvir], a personal army– if it happens he will probably
recruit… the more violent young settlers, the hilltop youth, and
we’ll end up with a private army like some mafia chief. And then
there will be security events and the IDF will show up and this
private army will show up…. Is this a setup for him having a force
in what he hopes will be total Armageddon?

THE GOVERNMENT HAS HUGELY ADVANCED THE APARTHEID DISCOURSE.

Lior Amihai
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Americans for Peace Now that
[[link removed]] awarding
civilian authority to Smotrich in the West Bank has further undermined
Israel’s claim that it does not practice apartheid.

The fact that Smotrich has now authority over this is like really an
annexation move an unparallel annexation decision that the government
made which went really almost under the radar, and it’s unheard
of…. They took parts from the military regime, and then made it
civilian… It’s hard to argue in any legal terms that there
aren’t two different legal regimes, you know, could have argued this
before, but now it’s also legally speaking.

Hadar Susskind of Americans for Peace Now said the arrangement
“unequivocally fits” the apartheid definition:

Just to be clear, when you have you know, two different legal regimes
under the same power under international law that has a name, it is
called apartheid. So whether we any of us choose to use that word or
not, or whatever people may think about that, that unequivocally fits
the the international legal definition. ..

Amihai says the right wants apartheid.

It’s a territory with two different legal systems and the purpose of
maintaining it this way to get one group, ours, over the other to
discriminate in a systematic way. This is what they want.

Shimshoni told the Israeli Policy Forum that Israeli soldiers and
reservists might no longer be able to travel abroad because they could
be charged with war crimes at the International Criminal Court.
“Because our status in the West Bank becomes de facto annexation
instead of a temporary, security-driven occupation which is military
in nature.”

ANTI-PALESTINIAN DISCRIMINATION AT “LIBERAL” DEMONSTRATIONS

The massive Israeli demonstrations are indifferent to the occupation,
and the demonstrators are for systemic discrimination against
Palestinians, Amihai said.

You also have to be frank that the liberal camp in Israel is failing
in addressing Palestinian issues… They are preventing in many
degrees Palestinians to participate in speakers demonstrations, and to
state their authentic agenda. So you don’t hear issues about the
occupation. You don’t hear issues about discrimination, the Nation
State law, for example [an apartheid law from 2018
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accepted by the majority of demonstrators. The liberal camp in Israel
is still very, very blind to the discrimination against Palestinians
in Israel. And even when you see the the political parties, they’re
not including the Palestinian Arab parties, in their discussions
they’re not taking them seriously. They’re thinking of them as a
political actor that could help them or could not in toppling down
Netanyahu but it’s not a sincere equal sort of participants in the
political game…

Palestinian flags are all but excluded from the demonstrations.

If you go to the demonstrations, which are really hopeful and
optimistic, and so many levels and you still don’t see the
Palestinian factor, and if you will see a Palestinian flag that will
mostly be either where we demonstrated– the pro-peace,
anti-occupation groups– or it would cause frustration for the
majority of others.

Palestinians don’t feel that the Supreme Court is anything to fight
for, Amihai said:

You have to be frank and [while] the Supreme Court… helped
Palestinians citizens of Israel in many, many issues, in many issues
it didn’t, and discrimination against Palestinians citizens in
Israel exists today, despite Israeli democracy… In so many different
ways, there’s so much discrimination inside Israel, that they just
don’t feel that Supreme Court is theirs.

American author Peter Beinart reported similar tensions from a
solidarity rally for the Israeli demonstrators that he attended in
Washington Square Park
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in New York, when he got booed off the stage for talking about
fighting apartheid:

[T]he point that I made was that if this is gonna be a real movement
for democracy, it can’t be a movement that champions liberal
democracy for Jews but accepts apartheid for Palestinians. And that it
can’t be a movement to return to a status quo of the kind that Benny
Gantz and Yair Lapid oversaw when they criminalized Palestinian human
rights organizations and oversaw the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh…

[P]art of the reason that the Israeli right has been so successful,
has been hegemonic in Israel for decades, is because you can’t have
a successful movement for democracy that’s just a Jewish movement.
That no great movement for equality can simply be the province of one
ethnic or religious group. That all great movements of the left, great
movements for equality, have to broaden and include all the people, be
movements for democracy for all, that include people across ethnic and
religious and racial divisions. And that if you wanted to move this
protest movement—as impressive as it has been—from hundreds of
thousands to millions of people, your best allies, the people who most
thirst for freedom, the people who would be most important and
valuable in a freedom movement, are the people who are most denied
freedom today: Palestinians under Israeli control…

But there were some people who were pretty upset, and they were upset
enough to basically pretty much shout me down. I mean, I just
couldn’t keep speaking because people were booing and yelling so
much that they wanted me to stop.

Fears of economic collapse

Last month I reported the fears expressed by Israelis
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the Israel lobby that the Israeli economy will fall apart and
Israelis’ high standard of living collapse. In a more recent
webinar, Shira Efron of the Israel Policy Forum fretted that “one
thing after another is almost unraveling” in Israel, and she fears
for the “prowess” of the Israeli economy, which has given Israelis
a GDP per capita of $53,000– higher than the European Union.

Shimshoni echoed that Israel is now “staring at the cliff.” The
social fabric is “precarious.” The orthodox are growing
demographically but not doing their part in the economy.

* Israel
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* Benjamin Netanyahu
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* Bezalel Smotrich
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* Biden Administration
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* Israel Lobby
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* liberal zionism
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* Tal Schneider
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* Yossi Klein Halevi
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* Israeli politics
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* Israel protests
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* Israeli reservists
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