ISRAELI citizens mobilising against Benjamin Netanyahu’s assault on judicial independence say democracy is at stake.
For many Palestinians and their supporters internationally, the notion of Israeli democracy is already a joke, given its brutal occupation of their land and increasingly codified oppression of its Arab citizens.
Nor has the protest movement earned unconditional sympathy. In the name of preventing alienation of anti-Netanyahu elements of the Israeli establishment including former police and army officials, demo organisers have banned Palestinian flags from stages and sought to avoid the issue of the occupation entirely: a classic case of using “inclusivity” to silence rather than empower.
Nonetheless, the struggle against Netanyahu’s power grab deserves support — and it is of international significance.
Israeli political shifts have a direct impact on another people — the Palestinians. They are also part of a wider resurgence of authoritarian nationalist politics across the globe.
Victims of a brutal occupation, ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem and other areas and an inhuman siege in Gaza which are maintained by successive Israeli administrations, Palestinians have no reason to see the anti-Netanyahu movement as allies.
But Israel’s domestic and external policies — if the latter term can be applied to its rule over a land it is rapidly colonising — are intertwined.
Illegal settlement expansion has been accompanied by crackdowns on NGOs and the peace movement inside Israel, and by formalisation of the second-class status of Arab citizens with measures like 2018’s Nation-State Law.
Palestinians do not expect or receive justice from Israel’s courts — but plans to allow the Knesset to overturn Supreme Court rulings by simple majority vote will certainly make things worse, allowing an increasingly far-right-dominated parliament to sweep aside legal considerations at a whim. This is likely to further accelerate the settlement and ethnic cleansing projects.
Objective assessment of Israel’s shifting political realities is difficult in Britain. Near-uncritical support for Israel is now seen as a badge of right-wing reliability in both Labour and Tory circles.
A side effect of the propaganda war against Jeremy Corbyn has been a drive to ban the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and an insistence that criticism of Israel be kept within certain narrow limits.
Hence the uproar when Labour’s Kim Johnson referred to the Netanyahu government as fascist, a comment for which she was quickly forced to apologise.
“Fascist” is a term thrown around too loosely on the left. And the history of 20th century fascism and its extermination of millions of Jews should prompt caution over applying it to a Jewish state.
But it should also be noted that Israeli groups including its Communist Party have used the term of Netanyahu’s latest coalition, and indeed of the Nation-State Law.
Israeli politician Benny Gantz, a former defence minister who is no friend to the Palestinians, has warned that current National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir would seek to treat West Bank settlers as a “private army,” while co-ordination between armed settler and Israeli Defence Force attacks on Palestinian civilians in the occupied territories is reportedly increasing. Human rights lawyer Quamar Mishirqi-Assad believes “the army now perceives the settlers as an auxiliary fighting force.”
The use of organised violence to terrorise particular ethnic groups and political opponents is a traditional feature of fascist movements, from Mussolini’s Blackshirts to the Hindutva RSS in today’s India.
None of this makes Israel a fascist state — if it was, the protests against Netanyahu would themselves be suppressed.
But its development in that direction should not be ignored, not least because it is far from alone. Attacks on judicial independence and protest rights are familiar from the hard-right government in Poland — and for that matter the hard-right government in Downing Street.
Calling it out is part of the democratic struggle we must step up in our own country, as well as an act of international solidarity.
