{"id":30485,"date":"2017-02-10T11:00:31","date_gmt":"2017-02-10T00:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=30485"},"modified":"2017-02-09T10:31:09","modified_gmt":"2017-02-08T23:31:09","slug":"illiberal-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/illiberal-israel\/","title":{"rendered":"Illiberal Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

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After a half-century of occupying Palestinian territory, Israel is succumbing to its deepest ethno-centrist impulses, and increasingly rejecting recognized boundaries. Israel is now on its way to join the growing club of illiberal democracies, and it has Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to thank.<\/p>\n

Over the course of 11 years as Israel\u2019s prime minister, Netanyahu has reshaped the country\u2019s collective psyche. He has elevated the isolated, traumatized \u2018Jew\u2019\u2014still at odds with the \u2018gentiles,\u2019 not to mention the \u2018Arabs\u2019\u2014above the secular, liberal, and globalized \u2018Israeli\u2019 envisioned by the country\u2019s founding fathers.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu himself is a secular, cynical hedonist who faces an ongoing investigation into his alleged acceptance of lavish illicit gifts from a Hollywood mogul. Yet he is adept at playing the \u2018Jewish card\u2019 to his own benefit. In 1996, his promise to be \u2018good for the Jews\u2019 won him power. In 2015, his warning that Jews must rush to vote for him, or have their fate decided by \u2018droves\u2019 of Arabs<\/a> supposedly headed to the polling stations, did the same.<\/p>\n

Just as appealing to people\u2019s Jewishness wins elections, it blocks negotiations on a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Netanyahu\u2019s insistence that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state in 2014 became the last nail in the coffin of an already dying peace process.<\/p>\n

In many ways, Netanyahu\u2019s political profile matches that of the most hardline Republicans. His wife once boasted<\/a> that, had he been born in the US, he could have been president. He probably would have preferred such a life, largely for the sheer power it would afford him. It also would have enabled him to avoid eight frustrating years at loggerheads with President Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

Now, however, Netanyahu is relieved to have in the White House Donald Trump, a like-minded Republican who is, in practically every way, the polar opposite of Obama. The last US president showed empathy for minorities and immigrants; defended human and civil rights; achieved a diplomatic breakthrough with Iran; sought peace in Palestine; and, most problematic, attempted to hold the Israeli leader to account. One of Obama\u2019s last acts as president was to have the US abstain from voting on a United Nations Security Council resolution against Israeli settlement-building in the occupied territories, rather than vetoing it.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu far prefers Trump\u2019s crude charlatanism to Obama\u2019s professorial liberalism. In fact, Trump and Netanyahu share much in common with each other\u2014and with other illiberal leaders, such as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan. All three view open hostility toward the mainstream media as a means of securing and consolidating power.<\/p>\n

Trump has launched, in so many words, a \u2018war on the media.\u2019 Erdo\u011fan, for his part, has cracked down on press freedom, arresting journalists on accusations of involvement in last July\u2019s failed military coup. Netanyahu has been Israel\u2019s acting communications minister since late 2014.<\/p>\n

The logic is not difficult to discern. News media are supposed to hold those in power accountable. So those in power try to muffle the news media. One way to do that is to amplify the voices of more agreeable alternatives, such as Israel Hayom<\/em>\u2014a Hebrew-language free daily newspaper dedicated to singing Netanyahu\u2019s praises.<\/p>\n

The goal of this North Korea-style pamphlet is not to turn a profit. In 2014, Sheldon Adelson, an American casino mogul who has long supported Netanyahu and also helped to finance Trump\u2019s campaign, invested an estimated $50 million in Israel Hayom<\/em>, which has lost more than $250 million since its launch in 2007. Netanyahu held an early election in 2014, in order to protect his mouthpiece\u2014which now has the largest circulation of any Israeli newspaper\u2014from parliamentary bills threatening to hobble it.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu has always denied that he had anything to do with Israel Hayom, <\/em>though the truth is that he is practically its editor-in-chief. In what other capacity could he have discussed with the owner of its main competitor, Yedioth Ahronot<\/em>, the possibility of curtailing the distribution of Israel Hayom<\/em>, in exchange for more favorable coverage?<\/p>\n

Of course, Netanyahu is not doing all of the heavy lifting in pushing Israel toward illiberalism, and censorship and harassment are not reserved exclusively for the media. The minister of education, Naftali Bennett\u2014Chairman of the Jewish Home party, a key ally in Netanyahu\u2019s far-right coalition and a leading advocate for annexing Palestinian lands\u2014is now instructing schools that \u2018studying Judaism is more important than math and science.\u2019 A novel describing a love affair between a Palestinian boy and a Jewish girl has been banned from school curricula.<\/p>\n

The minister of justice, Ayelet Shaked, also a member of the Jewish Home party, is second only to Bennett in her ultra-Zionist ardor. She is now spearheading an attack on Israeli democracy\u2019s last frontier, the Supreme Court, condemning it for rulings such as last April\u2019s decision holding that Israel\u2019s natural-gas policy was unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

More recently, Shaked approved the \u2018loyalty in culture bill,\u2019 which would make government cultural funding contingent on the recipient\u2019s \u2018loyalty\u2019 to the Jewish state. Right-wing groups supporting annexation, meanwhile, receive lavish support from the government, as well as from foreign Jewish donors.<\/p>\n

Notions of loyalty are used as weapons not just against artists. A newly passed bill\u2014clearly aimed at Israeli Arabs\u2019 representatives in the Knesset (parliament)\u2014would allow MKs to be dismissed for disloyalty to the state. NGOs focused on human rights and peace-seeking are scrutinized as foreign agents.<\/p>\n

For Israel, democracy has always been a strategic asset, because a democratic Israel was a natural fit in the Western alliance. Whereas the West lost no time in imposing sanctions on President Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia following its annexation of Crimea, it has not punished Israel\u2019s occupation of Palestinian lands. The more Israel embraces Putin-inspired practices, however, the weaker becomes its connection to its strategic rearguard in the West.<\/p>\n

It remains to be seen whether the unpredictable Trump will meet Israel\u2019s expectations. What is clear is that by weakening its democratic credentials, Israel imperils its lifeline to the West\u2014including post-Trump America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a half-century of occupying Palestinian territory, Israel is succumbing to its deepest ethno-centrist impulses, and increasingly rejecting recognized boundaries. Israel is now on its way to join the growing club of illiberal democracies, and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":484,"featured_media":30486,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[203,106,240,730,926],"class_list":["post-30485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-culture","tag-democracy","tag-israel","tag-media","tag-palestine"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIlliberal Israel | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/illiberal-israel\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Illiberal Israel | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"After a half-century of occupying Palestinian territory, Israel is succumbing to its deepest ethno-centrist impulses, and increasingly rejecting recognized boundaries. 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