Israeli elections

Jews sans frontieres has posted an excellent guide to the important elections in Israel tomorrow. There is a good chance that far right former prime minister Netanyahu will win the elections along with significant gains for fascist sympathizer Avigdor Lieberman, leader of Yisrael Beiteinu.

Here is an excerpt:

"Finally, Israel Beiteinu is the Russian party, whose leader is the former Kahanist Avigdor Lieberman. It held 11 seats in the last Knesset and seems to be the rising surprise of the elections, overtaking Labor as the third largest party. It pushes the Likud compromise from the direction of the populist right, using open racism as the major selling point.

The summary is this. The secular Ashkenazi founders of Zionism built a racist society based on their own political, economic and cultural domination. Since the seventies, that domination has been increasingly challenged by Jews of lower status and different backgrounds. Because racism against Palestinians is the glue that holds the nation together, all Jewish challenges to the founders' hegemony are expressed as a competition in racism. Parties step in front of the electoral mirror and ask,

mirror mirror on the wall, who's the most racist of us all.

The only restraining factor is the fear of alienating the Western alliance that support Israel. The rise of the "extreme" right (as if Labor isn't extreme) expresses a number of trends: 1) the continuing assertion of Palestinian presence in the land 2) an intensification of the internal social struggle among Jewish Israelis 3) the continuing decline of the secular Israeli block and 4) the growing confidence that Israel need not worry about negative repercussions from the U.S. and Europe.

Some say that this confidence is a misreading of the international moment. I hope so but I wouldn't be so sure."