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ISRAEL TODAY: AFTER OCTOBER 7, JUST HOW FAR RIGHT WILL ISRAEL GO?  
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Dahlia Scheindlin
October 8, 2024
Haaretz
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_ October 7 should have handed Israel's wild-eyed right the perfect
storm for success: wartime rallying and vengeful fury. So why don't
the polls over the past year back that up? _

TURNING TO THE RIGHT: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
addressing a joint session of Congress in July., Credit: Justin
Sullivan//Agence France-Presse (AFP) // Haaretz

 

On October 7, 2024, Or Gabbay felt miserable thinking of "the
catastrophe." The soft-spoken 30-year-old waiting for a train in the
central Israeli city of Lod has a shy smile and a chubby baby named
Yaeli, just under a year old, with tiny studs in her pierced ears.

Gabbay says he has lost all trust in the state, along with any sense
of security. He thinks the Gaza war hasn't gone far enough.

"There's no other choice," he says, ominously. "My views are sort of
harsh. I won't say to kill them, but in the U.S., if someone did that,
they can take away their citizenship. I think that's completely fine,
anyone should agree to that."

It hardly matters that Palestinians under Israeli occupation
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not citizens – he was talking generally. Gabbay, a law student,
laments that Israel has no strong leader like Russian
President Vladimir Putin
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When pressed if there is any Israeli leader who represents his views,
he answers awkwardly: "If I were to say [National Security
Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir
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they still wouldn't give him the means to do it."

 
An Israeli man walking past an electoral billboard bearing portraits
of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, flanked by Itamar Ben-Gvir,
Bezalel Smotrich and Michael Ben Ari, with a caption in Hebrew reading
Kahana Lives. (Credit: Thomas Coex/Agence France-Presse (AFP)  //
 Haaretz)
Every long-term poll trend from my 25 years of survey research,
political analysis and cyclical wars indicated that October 7
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cause Israelis – at least Jews – to flood further to the right.

A WHOLE NEW RIGHT

One year after the Hamas attack, Israel's government seemed to prove
the point – careening to the far right. The parties and people
currently in power seem to have completed a decades-long
transformation into something unrecognizable to earlier generations of
the Israeli right.

The old, classic right in Israel fused a commitment to the "rational
state" – poli-sci talk for a state based on civic institutions with
the citizen at the center – and hawkish national security positions,
alongside free market economics, says Yossi Shain in an interview.

Shain is professor emeritus of political science at Georgetown
University and Tel Aviv University, and served briefly as a lawmaker
for Yisrael Beiteinu
[[link removed]],
the party of Avigdor Lieberman
[[link removed]].
As for religion, he refers to Ze'ev Jabotinsky's argument that in a
future state, Jewish religion mattered only for collective identity;
state institutions must be secular, and halakha (Jewish law)
represented something like a "mummified corpse" – Jabotinsky's
words.

Likud
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long since jettisoned the last generations of the classic Israeli
right. No young guard of liberal-oriented politicians is joining Likud
today. And even many religious Jews in Israel recall the earlier
generations of the National Religious Party with some nostalgia,
viewing them as more moderate than the current brand of
fundamentalist, messianic populists in its latter-day successors,
Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit.

 
The conference calling for resettlement of the Gaza Strip, in
Jerusalem in January. Attendees are holding a banner saying: " Only
transfer [of Palestinians] will bring peace."  (Credit: Olivier
Fitoussi / Haaretz)
The meaning of the "right-wing" ideological label has also shifted to
a new set of policies. For a long time, beginning roughly in the early
1990s, the difference between right and left in Israel referred mostly
to attitudes toward land concessions for peace, a two-state solution,
settlements, West Bank annexation.

But since October 7, right-wing conversations focus on using more
force in Gaza; the conquest and resettlement of Gaza; major strikes on
Hezbollah or Iran; and, of course, levels of support for the leaders
who advocate these things.

Finally, over the past 12 months, the current government translated
these ideologies into reality. Seizing on October 7 to rail against
the Oslo Accords
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the 2005 dismantling of Gaza settlements
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the government burned rubber to undo both.

By blocking West Bank workers from coming to Israel, and withholding
taxes Israel collects for the Palestinian Authority, Finance
Minister Bezalel Smotrich
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it to the brink of budgetary and institutional collapse. The Israeli
army launched a major operation in the heart of Palestinian cities and
refugee camps in Area A. Each such move is one step closer toward the
government's original, stated aim: full West Bank annexation.

Governing coalition figures began to advocate rebuilding Gaza
settlements almost immediately after October 7. Lawmakers and
ministers from the coalition participated in an ecstatic conference
in January calling to resettle Gaza
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transfer the Palestinians. A second conference in August by a Gush
Katif
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group was suffused with missionary fervor and well attended by public
officials.

 
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir attending the conference
calling for the resettlement of Gaza, in January.  (Credit: Olivier
Fitoussi / Haaretz)
Likud
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the party that has been the standard-bearer of the Israeli right since
its founding, has become ideologically indistinguishable from what
Israelis call the hard right for one reason: Benjamin Netanyahu
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Too often, observers excuse his policies by insisting that he's not
ideologically far right but trapped by his fundamentalist allies,
since his corruption trials make him _haram/mukseh_ for others.

He can't accept a hostage deal and a cease-fire, in this view, because
these coalition partners have threatened to collapse the government.
But this logic is dubious.

Smotrich and Ben-Gvir's polls aren't good enough to secure their
political future if they topple the government. Netanyahu could have
called their bluff; Smotrich already changed his mind to support the
first (and only) hostage deal in November
[[link removed]].

Netanyahu has happily followed their lead on other issues. In January,
Smotrich began insisting that the Israel Defense Forces take over
distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza
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which he saw as the springboard to a military government (de facto,
direct military rule). Recently, Netanyahu has openly embraced the
idea – and plans are moving ahead
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On Iran, when Netanyahu stood before the U.S. Congress in 1996, 2011,
2015 and 2024 to excoriate Iran as the greatest threat to the world,
he wasn't "just clinging to power." Or perhaps he was – since he has
long believed that a shadowy left-wing, deep-state elite seeks to
bring him down, and anything goes to save his political position –
which means saving the state from existential destruction. Ideology
and politics have become inseparable.

Netanyahu swore that there would never be a Palestinian state on his
watch in 2015 – a year before his corruption investigations began
– and made this policy a reality. He appointed Ayelet Shaked as
justice minister that year, when her anti-Supreme Court positions were
well-known. His own Likud cosponsored illiberal legislation and
attempts to constrain the court even in his comeback term (2009-2013).
As Israelis say these days, "You're the leader, you're responsible."

 
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotich talking at a Gush Katif conference
in August.  (Credit: Yossi Zeliger  /  Haaretz)
A Likud MK he backed over the years, Yuli Edelstein, spoke at the Gush
Katif conference in August; a Likud minister, Shlomo Karhi, attended
the one in January. If it sounds insane to imagine Israel conquering
southern Lebanon and building settlements there, that's how these
things start – with the fringe right
[[link removed]] becoming
ever-more mainstream.

AND YET…

October 7 should have handed this unbound, wild-eyed right wing the
perfect storm for success: wartime rallying and vengeful fury. But
something in the picture is off; the public isn't entirely there.

The parties of the original coalition collapsed in the polls for the
first six months of the war. They crept up for the next six months,
but haven't been able to get to a majority of Knesset seats since
January 2023.

Around the November 2022 elections, polls from the Israel Democracy
Institute showed that about 60 percent of Jews self-identified as
right wing. Interestingly, that portion had declined steadily in the
institute's polls during the democracy protests of 2023, down to 50
percent in September. October 7 and the war prompted a rise again, to
64 percent within a few months. But "right wing" drifted back down to
56-57 percent in recent months.

The portion of Jews who self-defined as left eroded at first, but
stabilized at 12 percent – close to the levels before the 2022
elections (during 2023, that number rose). Israel's massive escalation
against Hezbollah pushed the right slightly above 60 percent in the
institute's September poll, but these trends are clearly not quite
fixed.

 
Credit: Dahlia Scheindlin / Haaretz
Behind the numbers, the city of Lod offers what some have called a
microcosm of Israel's pressure cooker. It is home to former Soviet
immigrants, Mizrahi Jews
[[link removed]],
Ethiopian Israelis – many of them religious – Palestinian citizens
and Garin Torani
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a religious-Zionist movement that sets up communities in
underdeveloped areas. In May 2021, Arab and Jewish citizens clashed
violently there, in the shadow of a 10-day Gaza flare-up
[[link removed]].

In 2022, 28.53 percent of Lod's voters chose Likud
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for the combined slate of the far-right Religious Zionism (Smotrich)
and Otzma Yehudit (Ben-Gvir) – in total, 10 points higher than the
national average for those two parties.

Orit Ofer, 46, directs the culture department at the Lod municipality.
She grew up in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, in a religious
family with eight siblings, and has four of her own children. She's
lived in Lod for 16 years. Before that, she was an activist opposing
the 2005 evacuation of Gaza settlements and served as secretary of the
West Bank outpost of Amona, evacuated in early 2006. She was a
parliamentary assistant for a Likud lawmaker, and says she's still a
proud member of Likud because she believes in the need for a big
right-wing party.

But in an interview at her office in the Lod municipality, she offers
veiled frustration with Netanyahu, indicating that Likud clings to its
leaders for too long. She herself is no longer religious and has
become disenchanted by the inner workings of politics, including
within Likud.

 
The minaret of the Al-Omari mosque and St. George Greek Orthodox
church are reflected in the broken windshield of a vehicle outside a
synagogue in Lod, after the May 2021 riots in the mixed city.
 (Credit: David Goldman/AP  //  Haaretz)
Given that her daily job involves very close ongoing relationships
with the local Arab community, not least after the urban
intercommunal violence of 2021
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did the latest war cause a new wave of fear or tension? "The
opposite."

She explains that the municipality was unprepared for the 2021 riots
and worked hard to build coping skills for the future. When this war
broke out, the staff quickly set up "situation rooms," including in
the Arab community, and she believes this helped maintain calm. They
mourned and even cried together.

How has the state performed during the war? "I'd rather not say. We're
lucky that we have local government."

Her views toward Palestinians are hard-line, but distinct: "They have
to decide if they want to be part of the state and accept our
sovereignty. If they do – they should have equal rights. Including
the right to vote. If they want to fight – we'll have to fight."

Ofer says she could never support Ben-Gvir or Smotrich or their
parties, which she sees as driven by narrow sectarian interests: "They
want to control things always at the expense of others." The war
didn't really change her overall views, she says, just made them
stronger.

Gabbay, the young father in the Lod train station with his
self-defined "harsh" views, also says October 7 didn't truly change
his worldview regarding the conflict. "What happened was my
nightmare." He could well be among the stable base of support Ben-Gvir
retains in surveys.

Two Ethiopian-Israeli women on a bench chatting in Amharic chuckle
sadly when asked how they felt on October 7, 2024. They had just been
having that same conversation among themselves, they say. All they
could relate was how hard this day was, how sad they are – and "how,
how could this have happened to us?"

 
Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman attending a press
conference in July. Israelis are "looking for a leader who is strong,
secular, not clerical, liberal, but very tough on security," says
Shain.  (Credit: Olivier Fitoussi / Haaretz)
Someone will have to answer for it. Those no longer supporting the
government – or the centrist Yair Lapid
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are favoring the hawkish secular right, including Lieberman, Benny
Gantz
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Bennett
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Trying to explain Lieberman's rise, Shain says: "They are looking for
a leader who is strong, secular, not clerical, liberal … but very
tough on security."

Israel is headed nowhere good. But secular right-wing hawks driven by
a modern, pragmatic view of the state might lead the country in the
future. If they are truly pragmatic, they'll start thinking now about
how to undo everything Netanyahu and the fanatical right wing have
done.

_[DR. DAHLIA SCHEINDLIN is a leading international public opinion
analyst and strategic consultant specializing in progressive causes,
political and social campaigns. She is the author of The Crooked
Timber of Democracy in Israel: Promise Unfulfilled.]_

* Israel
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* Israeli politics
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* Benjamin Netanyahu
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* Israeli right-wing
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* Likud
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* Oct. 7
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* Itamar Ben-Gvir
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* Bezalel Smotrich
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* Israeli religious right
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* Israel-Gaza War
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* Gaza
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* Palestine
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* Occupied Territories
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* zionism
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* Hostages
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* Hamas
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* Hezbollah
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* Israeli fundamentalism
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* Jewish fundamentalism
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