Israel lurch to the right

Israel today stooped to a new low, yet at the same time gave perhaps its truest insight in recent years into the pervading mind set of its politics. Having failed to return a majority party in the recent general elections (you remember, the ones where leaders of the different parties fell over themselves to see how glad they could appear at the slaughter of innocent lives in Gaza), Benjamin Netanyahu (leader of the ‘winning’ Likud party) is now scouting round for prospective coalition partners. Although the situation may yet change, as it stands today part of Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling collation would be the Yisrael Beiteinu party, with the notable appointment being it’s leader Avigdor Lieberman becoming foreign minister. Even within Israeli politics Yisrael Beiteniu are considered very right wing, and Lieberman is widely considered to be one of the most extremist and reactionary politicians in the country. Amongst his past utterances have been a call for Israel to redraw its borders to hand over Arab areas to the Palestinians while retaining major settlement blocs (a form of forced transfer, an illegal land grab, and the sort of ghettoisation old Adolf would have been fond of), and his suggestion for all Arabs remaining in Israel to be forced to sign loyalty oaths or lose their right to vote (a policy that is both racist and fascist). Other notable occurrences in Lieberman’s politic career have been his conviction for assaulting a twelve year old Arab boy, and his call for any Arab member of the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) who meets any representative of Hamas to be executed (note his call only extends to Arab members of parliament, and that his call is for people meeting the democratically elected government of a neighboring country to be executed). Indeed this latter action so upset fellow Knesset members that two resigned, including Labour minister Ophir Pines-Paz, who resigned stating that Lieberman was tainted "by racist declarations and declarations that harm the democratic character of Israel”.

Other notable utterances by Lieberman have included his reflection on how to deal with Palestinian resistance: “if it were up to me I would notify the Palestinian Authority that tomorrow at ten in the morning we would bomb all their places of business in Ramallah, for example.” (which is a premeditated statement of intent to commit war crimes as both the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, and the use of excessive force, and the targeting of civilians are illegal in law). Even more blood-chilling than this was his later statement in July 2003, when reacting to a proposal to give an amnesty to approximately 350 Palestinian prisoners including members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, when Lieberman commented "It would be better to drown these prisoners in the Dead Sea if possible, since that's the lowest point in the world," Lieberman continued, stating his willingness, as Minister of Transport, to supply buses to take the prisoners there”.

Interestingly, this won’t be the first time Lieberman has been in a coalition government – he walked out of the last one he was in in protest at the peace process. So here you have a country that claims to be a beacon of peaceful democracy, surrounded on all sides by barbaric Arab terrorists, and yet repeatedly votes for people that make statements of mind-boggling cruelty, who are anti-Arab, anti a two state solution, anti dialogue, anti peace, pro war and ultimately racist and fascist. Nowhere else in the world, not even in America, would politicians with such right wing views get elected to office, let alone invited to join the ruling government, let alone be offered the job of Foreign Minister.