On Gideon Levy's Netanyahu article

As I mentioned yesterday the prospect of Benjamin Netanyahu's impending election as Israel's Prime Minister is deeply disturbing. My disappointment hasn't exactly been alleviated by Gideon Levy's nihilistic call for Netanyahu's election. Levy wants Netanyahu to be elected so the "the veil will be lifted and the nation's true face revealed". The revelation would ostensibly be that Israel is a State founded upon the racist ideology of Zionism and that the majority of the population support the continuation of the brutal occupation of Palestine. That the idea of peace was a masquerade. That while Israel said it was "focused on peace and the end of the occupation", it did everything it could to "further entrench the occupation and distance any chance of a potential agreement".

So, with Netanyahu's election, Levy surmises that the world will finally be able to see Israel for what it is.

I like Gideon Levy quite a bit. I saw him deliver an impassioned talk in Montreal a few years ago without any notes. As one of the few Israelis reporting regularly from the Occupied Territories he's a rare voice for justice in a nation mostly deaf to the plight of their neighbours. A plight they've created.

But let me tell you why his article yesterday scares me.

In many ways, he's right. The election of Netanyahu will make Israel's contempt for a just peace with the Palestinians all the more apparent. What he doesn't mention is the strength of Avigdor Lieberman as well. Compared to Lieberman, Netanyahu looks like Israel's Barack Obama. Lieberman is the leader of the ultra-right wing Yisreal Beiteinu ("Israel is our Home"). His jump in the popular vote could make him, once again, a key player in the Knesset and secure him another big Cabinet position. As an advocate for the forcible transfer of Arabs from Israel (also known as "ethnic cleansing") his prominence in the Government should be another blow to the "masquerade" that Levy refers to.

But it won't.

What scares me most about Levy's hope for Netanyahu's election isn't that Netanyahu will make the Occupation more brutal (which it probably will). My fear isn't that his election reminds us that Israeli society, while not monolithic, is still by and large contemptuous of Palestinians (which it is). My fear is not that his election will lift the veil on the fraud that is the "peace process".

My fear is that the world will see this and still not care.