Today is election day in Israel.
I think this election will be one of the most important in Israel's history. Likud is ahead in the polls with a slight margin over Kadima. Yisrael Beitnu, Avigdor Lieberman's ultra-nationalist/fascist party sits in third. Here is Haaretz's latest poll figures. Keep in mind, governments in Israel are formed through coalitions. Haaretz's is referring to the two most likely coalitions: a right-wing, religious bloc, and a "centrist-left" bloc.
The final Haaretz poll before the election suggested a strong right-wing bloc, comprising Likud with 27 seats, Yisrael Beiteinu on 18 seats, ultra-Orthodox Shas with nine seats and a combined veteran party National Union and fledgling Habayit Hayehudi (the Jewish home) on six seats. According to the poll, a center-left bloc would only be able to muster 54 seats, six short of the 61-seat threshold needed to form a majority coalition. This bloc would consist of Kadima with 25 seats, Labor on 14 seats, New Movemment-Meretz on 7 seats, Jewish-Arab party Hadash on three seats, the United Arab List-Ta'al on three seats and predominantly Arab Balad with two seats.
There are two things that make me say that this is the most important election in Israeli history since Begin's Likud party defeated Labour in 1977.
1. Yisrael Beiteinu is projected to win 18 seats. If you've been reading my posts from the last couple of weeks you know that Yisrael Beiteinu is Avigdor Lieberman's party. If this poll is accurate, fewer Israelis are going to vote for the founding "natural governing party" of the State of Israel (Labour), than they will for a party whose platform calls for ethnic cleansing. I think that this is a monumental shift in Israeli voting patterns. The emergence of Kadima as a centrist party alternative to Labour on the left and Likud on the right becomes a historical footnote when more people vote for a fascist party than the party of David Ben Gurion.
Lieberman has drawn comparisons to French National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen for his open hatred of non-Jews. But his position that all non-Jewish Israeli citizens (meaning the Arab-Israelis who live in Israel, about 20% of the population) should have to take a Loyalty Oath is a first step in his preferred solution to the Palestinian question. Lieberman wants all Arab Israelis to be forcibly transferred to Jordan. Keep in mind that nearly all Arab-Israelis are descendants of Palestinian residents who did not leave or were not evicted in 1948 and have lived in Israel all of their lives, since non-Jews cannot immigrate and become Israeli citizens.
Mainstream media in North America, to their credit, have seen the proposition of the Loyalty Oath and made the Le Pen comparison. Of course, no one would dare make the inevitable next step and admit that a fascist proposing ethnic cleansing as a "solution" to the bothersome presence of a different race merits the comparison to another famous European racist.
2. This election is also significant because it comes on the heels of the Israeli military "offensive" in the Gaza Strip. Forget for a second, if you can, that the IDF killed or wounded 1500 children, and that most of the dozen Israeli casualties were soldiers killed by friendly fire. This was an all out assault on a civilian population in retaliation for rockets fired into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip.
And it was incredibly popular in Israel. So much so, it appears, that the parties that launched the assault, Kadima (Prime Minister Ehud Olmert) and Labour (Defense Minister Ehud Barak) that killed more than a thousand Palestinians, won't win the elections. It seems that what Israel needs is a government more eager to kill and to maintain the Occupation, not one that even maintains the pretense of a "Peace".
I'd like to say that this comes as an ironic counterpoint to the Barack Obama's election in the United States. I'd like to say that while the US, Israel's biggest fancier and unquestioning champion has chosen "Hope" as a political ideology, Israel has chosen the opposite. But the deep cynic in me doesn't think that this is true. If an Avigdor Lieberman didn't emerge at the height of suicide bombings in Israel, what has happened now, fifteen years later that sees a society prepared to elect a Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu coalition?
The answer to my own question borrows from another Obama saying: "Yes, we can". Israel can have it all. Occupation, a non existent Palestinian body politic, economic prosperity, and maybe, one day, and Arab free Israel. And they can do this because so many of us, in other parts of the world, will let them.
