The relationship between the United States and Israel runs deep. US President Harry Truman reacted within minutes of Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948, the first head of state to recognize that new nation. Senior WWII veteran US military officers, like Al Schwimmer, a New York native, and Mitchell Flint, born in Kansas, literally created what became the Israeli air force. Golda Meir (born Golda Mabovitch), moved from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to what was to become Israel, becoming prime minister in 1969. The United States has been Israel’s champion, her major supplier of military hardware throughout her existence, supporter against UN challenges, and these two nations have historically been exceptionally close allies since inception.
So many American Jews have been passionate Zionists, believing in and supporting the very essence of Israel, a Jewish homeland established with historical Biblical roots. Through battles with neighboring Arab states and internal and often violent struggles with local Palestinians, who have yearned for their own independent state, Israel has prospered. In 1993, during the Clinton administration and with strong US support, Israel and the local Palestinian authority agreed to the notion of a separate Palestinian state under the Oslo Accords.
Despite its often-violent relationship with local Palestinians, who divided themselves into extremists under Hamas rule in Gaza and the more accommodating leadership under the Palestine Liberation Organization, until the Trump administration, the notion of a two-state solution – Palestine would be formed on what is known as the West Bank (see above map) – was accepted by the United States and Israel. Theoretically, Jerusalem would remain an open city as the centerpiece of Judaism, Islam and Christianity. The Trump administration, courting a Jewish vote, moved US recognition of Jerusalem is the true capital of Israel and effectively joined the Benjamin Netanyahu regime’s de facto repudiation of the two-state solution under the Oslo Accords. Jewish settlements in the West Bank, always a threat to that two-state solution, instantly expanded. During Israeli elections, Netanyahu’s “brotherhood” with Donald Trump was anything but subtle, as the above Israeli election-era billboard illustrates.
The Biden administration has mildly returned to supporting the two-state solution, which is now almost impossible. Last year, Netanyahu, under the cloud of a corruption prosecution, lost his PM position… but by crafting a coalition with his extreme religious right returned power as PM on December 29th. He pledged concessions to those anti-Palestinian members of the Israeli parliament (the unicameral Knesset), within his ultra-orthodox rightwing coalition, that began to formalize the full and unqualified annexation of the West Bank as a permanent part of Israel, making it clear that Israel was a Jewish state with Jewish values, and taking steps to give the Knesset the right to overrule Israel’s Supreme Court by a simple majority vote, long viewed as major check and balance against autocratic tendencies. Without a constitution, the judicial system was seen as a necessity to promulgate democracy and human rights. Was this anti-democratic move becoming the new Israel?
As told by Tracy Wilkinson, writing for the March 22nd Los Angeles Times, this fast-track effort toward autocracy – led fiercely by Netanyahu and his new political allies – has alienated a large segment of American Jews and a very significant portion of the Israeli population itself: “With massive street protests, a mutiny by elite military reserve officers and outrage from diplomats, academics and former officials, Israel seems steeped in epic crisis.
“Shock waves over radical plans by the new right-wing Israeli government are also cascading thunderously in the U.S., alienating Jewish Americans while raising questions about the Biden administration’s ability — or willingness — to confront the troubles… Israel’s figurehead President Isaac Herzog warned bluntly of civil war… ‘The abyss is within touching distance,’ Herzog said last week, making the bleak assessment after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a proposed compromise over his coalition’s efforts to weaken the Israeli Supreme Court and national judiciary.
“Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption, wants to subjugate judges to politicians and make it easier for members of the Knesset, or parliament, to overturn court decisions. But the debate now goes much deeper than the judiciary to the essence of democracy itself, critics say… ‘This is not just a political crisis; this is an existential crisis,’ Rabbi Noah Farkas, president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, said hours after returning from an urgent trip to Israel late last week [mid-March]… Though both sides have legitimate grievances, he said, the questions being raised are starkly fundamental… ‘What does Jewish mean? Zionist? What does being an Israeli mean?’ Farkas said.
“‘This is a coup d’etat,’ Alon Pinkas, who served as a senior foreign policy advisor in several Israeli administrations, said in an interview from his home in Tel Aviv. He and those who voice similar sentiment believe that the changes Netanyahu and his ultra-Orthodox and extreme nationalist ruling partners are planning would create a new form of government in Israel. It would be a regime changer, they say, creating something akin to a religious autocracy instead of the “Jewish and democratic state” that has long characterized how Israel legally defines itself.” On March 23rd, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition approved legislation that would protect the PM from being deemed unfit to rule because of his corruption trial and claims of a conflict of interest surrounding his involvement in the judicial changes. Protecting a politician from corrupt actions?
The US government, loath to take on its traditional ally, protested… mildly. “The Biden administration is warning Israeli officials against moving ahead with legal changes that would green light the reestablishment of settlements in the West Bank, a flashpoint with Palestinians that the U.S. warns will inflame violence during a heightened point of tensions.
“State Department Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel said in a lengthy statement Tuesday [3/21] that the U.S. is ‘extremely troubled’ over the advancement of legislation in the Israeli Knesset that rescinds parts of a nearly two-decade old law that prohibited Israeli communities to be built on specific territory in the West Bank.” The Hill, March 21st. While Netanyahu backed off a bit from out-and-out annexation of the West Bank, to please the Biden administration, he certainly did not address his fundamental changes to check and balances. The denigration of Israel’s judiciary to be subject to reversal by the very legislative body it was supposed to contain, also signaled a troubling shift to American politicians into autocracy. The Knesset could become the highest court in the land, politicians making political decisions depending on who voted for them?
While Benjamin Netanyahu is a long away from dictators like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un, he is looking a lot like illiberal leaders such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and, had his inspired Capitol insurrection and pressured efforts to overturn the 2020 election worked as planned, even Donald Trump. It is sad to watch once clearly democratic countries slide into autocracy, a transitioning label called “anocracy,” where clear and usually religiously “justified” minorities believe that they are the only constituency that can set national values and govern.
I’m Peter Dekom, and Israel’s strong jerk to the autocratic right should be a severe lesson to comparably biased Americans, very much the emblem of the MAGA GOP, of how fragile democracy really is.
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