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I don't. Jews who are paying attention can see the rising anti-semitism on the right. (And in particular, Jews who care about Israel know who was blocking the aid bill). Left-wing anti-semites are more dangerous individually (because they are more violent) but the anti-semitic right arguably includes people like Elon Musk and has far more access to the corridors of power than the Columbia protestors do.
Will more anti-semites be invited to the White House in a second Trump term or a second Biden term (not counting Gulf Arab diplomats etc. who are discreet about their anti-semitism)? It is a surprisingly difficult question to answer.
Anti-semitism on the right really seems to be restricted to a bunch of fringe characters no one in power really wants to be publicly associated with, whereas it's now fully sanctioned by the portion of the left that sees life as a struggle between oppressors and the oppressed. That's not even mentioning that it's probably the driving political issue for the left's most sanctified group (Muslims).
Elon Musk also seems a strange example of someone who might deter Jewish voters - my impression is that since his takeover X/twitter has been far less committed to maintaining the liberal party line and has consequently allowed lots more coverage of left-wing anti-semitic behaviour than would previously have been tolerated.
I would also imagine the possibility of Trump inviting the occasional weirdo to the WH is of less important to the Jews than the fact that he wouldn't keep publicly dressing down Israel like Biden's team has done.
I'm equally sure that pro-Israel Jews would prefer someone who moves aid forward while delivering a mild dressing-down for PR purposes to someone who praises Netanyahu to the skies while using aid as a lever to extract concessions elsewhere from his domestic political opponents. The Biden administration is significantly less critical of Netanyahu's policy in Gaza than the Israeli opposition, which most centrist American Jews find a lot more sympathetic than Likud.
American Jews would certainly prefer for Netanyahu to be deposed and a moderate Labor-led coalition that includes the Arab parties to come to power and recommit to immediately reopening negotiations about a two-state solution and the return of most West Bank settlers.
That is, however, a ridiculous pipe dream. The Israelis have radicalized and international pressure will radicalize them further still. The Israeli left is crushed utterly. Nobody believes peace is possible short of crushing the enemy now. That means American Jews will face a choice between disavowing Zionism utterly and embracing at least lukewarm support for a staunchly pro-Likud agenda that embraces Religious Zionism. Some will pick the former but Israel is important to most Jews and I suspect they will change politically rather than abandon Zionism.
Could you go into this in more detail? It might be worth a top-level post.
It's kind of an old conventional wisdom at this point, but the basic point is that late last century, the Israeli right and left were significantly divided by the question of how to deal with the Palestinian territories, and the Israeli left was discredited when withdrawal from militarily occupying Gaza led to its takeover and militarization by Hamas, ruining the Israeli-left security policy that peace could be achieved by making unilateral concessions to the Palestinians in the name of peace.
For a more extended version-
When the Israelis occupied Gaza and the West Bank in the Six-Day War in 1967, one of the reasons for seizing the territory was both as a military buffer, but also that they could be traded back for peace in the future. This is what happened with the Sinai Peninsula and Egypt, but for various reasons did not happen with the other territories.
Said reasons variously involved the fracturing of Pan-Arabism and the growing divides between the Palestinians and regional Arab states.
During the early cold war pan-arabism was a movement for a common Arab state which even saw some states voluntarily try to associate/join eachother, but ultimately inter-elite disagreements and the shocks of the Arab-Israeli wars fractured that movement to the point that Egypt, which had been one of the leaders of the Pan-Arab movement earlier, refused to take the Gaza Strip when it regained the Sinai as part of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. The Egyptian position was that it's refusal was because it had never held Gaza as part of Egypt before the war, but a not-uncommon belief is that this was because Egypt didn't want the trouble of governing gaza / having to deal with the Palestinians / it made a useful thorn in Israel's side.
In the West Bank, Jordan renounced claims to the West Bank (which it had previously annexed) in the aftermath of the Black September civil war, when the PLO (who was present in Israeli-occupied Israel as well as Jordan) attempted to overthrow the King of Jordan in 1970. The Kingdom of Jordan won that, but the PLO remained in the Israeli-occupied territories, and in 1974, the Arab Leage recognized the PLO- and not Jordan- as the sole representative of the Palestinians, and compelled Jordan to recognize a Palestinian independent of Jordan. Jordan would later formally renounce claims in 1988, as part of cutting monetary expenditures and dissolving a lower house of legislature that was half composed of constituencies in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, i.e. Palestinians. Jordan and Israel would go on to establish relations in 1994, without needing any sort of concession of the West Bank back to Jordan, who it had been captured from in the first war.
What this meant is that come the 90s, when the Cold War was ending and there was no US-Soviet context to the middle east conflict, Israel had achieved peace with its immediate neighbors it had conquered Palestinian territory from, without having actually to trade back Palestinian territory as part of the deal. However, this peace between states wasn't the same as peace: the First Intifada at about the 20 year anniversary of the 1967 war in 1987-1990 was years of violence / murders / increased unrest, and it was clear that it could happen again. As a result, Israeli politics shifted to a question of how to resolve the Palestinian issue. This was the... not start, but how the Two State solution took new life in the post-Cold War environment, with the Left and the Right disagreeing on how to approach it, or whether even if it should.
An oversimplification of this is that the Israeli left was vehemently onboard with the two state solution, and more associated with making compromises- or even unilateral concessions- to advance negotiations. The Israeli right was far more skeptical, alternatively wanting terms that would functionally limit Palestinian sovereignty in their own state (no military allowed, right for Israeli incursion against groups attacking from Palestinian soil) or not wanting to have to do it at all. Then there was how settler politics played into both parties, as settlers were both a way to secure territory that might not have to be returned due to changing facts on the ground (the Israeli right), but also a bargaining chip that could be traded away at the negotiating table (the Israeli left), and of course an actor in their own right.
The so-what here is that in the late 90s, the Israeli left had an politically ascendant moment. Prime Minister Ehud Barak of the Labor Party came into office, at the same time that Bill Clinton was still in office, and they were relatively like-minded enough to put together the Camp David Summit... whose failure was one of the triggering events for the Second Intifada. The exact reasons why it failed are subject to dispute / position / your belief on what Yasser Arafat could actually deliver on behalf of the PLO, but from a more common Israeli perspective, this was a sincere effort with politically-damaging offers at the sort of land-swaps that had been a functional base of negotiations for a good while, and it not only failed, but it blew up into another 5 years of violence.
Part of what ended the 5 years of violence was the Israeli-PLO Sharm El Sheikh Summit of 2005, where President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority- the same Abbas still in power today- had assumed power from Arafat. And this was in part because not only had Arafat died in 2004- and so robbed the Palestinian movement of one of its unifying figures- but in 2004 the Israelis had also done a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
While the Second Intifada was a blow to the credibility of the Israeli left, the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip is what I'd consider to have been the fatal blow to the Israeli left.
While it was conducted by Ariel Sharon- who at the time was part of the conservative/right-wing Likud party- it was so controversial a policy that Sharon's faction left Likud and established the central-liberal Kadima party, which attracted a number of the Labour party members as well. It was as such a policy that was identified with the left/center-left in spirit and practice, as not only was it's proponents the dominant leftist political force of the era, but it was a quid done for no quo. Israeli infrastructure was left behind, including things like greenhouses, and while for awhile it could have been argued that it set conditions for the cease fire the year after, which probably had something to do with Kadima's victory in 2006 to top the government- i.e. the political reward for ending the Second Intifada through good leftist political wisdom, bravery, and...
...and a year later, in 2007, Hamas completed its takeover of Gaza Strip after its own 2006 electoral victory by throwing PLO officials off of skyscrapers, and began a sustained rocket campaign into Israel. By January 2008, it was up to hundreds of rockets a month. The rocket campaign would more or less go on until the Gaza War of 2009-2010, after which the rockets... never went away, but were more varying, and a constant source of tension and unease. For as bad as the Intifada was, it wasn't that degree of regularity in rocket attacks on a weekly basis.
As a result, in Israeli politics, the Gaza Withdrawal became the political kryptonite of the left, a sort of feckless concession that made things worse. Prime Minister Netanyahu first assumed power in 2009 as a result of running on a tough-on-security policy, and ever since the decades of 1990s and 2000s have been the death knell of the Israeli left. After running and winning on the post-cold-war optimism of the 90s, the ideological basis of the leftest approach to Palestinian negotiation/conciliation was discredited. Not only were perceived-as-sincere offers of trades and concessions not only rejected but answered with an Intifada, but further unilateral concessions to amoliate even that only served to facilitate even more violence by even more dedicated partisans.
The Israeli left, associated with both conciliatory approach to the Palestinians (that visibly failed) and a commitment to a two-state solution lost a political generation as Netanyahu spun in power. In so much as they could define themselves still as an alternative to the right, the Israeli left was still defined by its commitment to a Two State solution, and thus as the respectable political faction that outsiders (like various US administrations) could like and work with...
And Oct 7 has rendered even that an albatross, because arguments for a two-state solution with the people who relished in their own ISIS-level brutality doesn't go down well with the electorate. For all that Netanyahu is unpopular and is unlikely to survive the death of his reputation as an effective security providor, Netanyahu is unpopular as a man. The two state solution is now unpopular as even an idea, and that is practically the most defining distinction of the Israeli left in some circles.
Or so the story goes. Perspectives and recollections may differ.
Thanks!
I didn't realize it had gotten that bad in the last few decades. I'd assumed that the Israeli left had come up with a different vision, but it sounds like they never did?
I'd heard talk about Netanyahu being unpopular and his coalition being shaky, prior to Oct 7, but from what you say it doesn't seem like there's anything coherent that could replace him? It's just "stomp hard" or "stomp harder"... :-(
Ye are welcome.
There's always going to be different visions, but there's also a reason that Israeli politics over the last several years began to center around removing Netanyahu as an individual than on the security front. Even in that the Left is damaged goods in that while Netanyahu is almost certainly corrupt, there's nothing particularly partisan-unique about it. Olmert, the guy who was PM for 2006-2009 as sort of the last gasp of the Israeli left, was under corruption prosecution and convicted in a prolonged chain of events that lasted until 2017, making that a non-contrast per see.
Ultimately, the Israeli left's different vision on the security front has always been the importance of the Two State solution both as a matter of appropriateness, as an argued necessity for normalizing relations with the rest of the Arab world, and as key to maintaining relations with the West. However, there again history and the right did no favors: Oct 7 dissuades that a truly autonomous Palestinian polity wouldn't use said autonomy to attack, and one of the purposes of Oct 7 was to disrupt the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia that Netanyahu was nearly achieving despite the dogma. Which leaves the claim of being necessary to maintain relations with the west, which is a fair bit more contentious and starts going into your perspective of the effectiveness of the Israel lobbying and Palestinian protest movements in the West especially since Oct 7.
Before or after 7 October?
Before 7 October, the argument was (and still is) that Netanyahu was preventing the two state solution from solving the issue, so the alternative was to re-commit to the two state solution process. This was just part of the host of the anti-Netanyahu coalition, which included the 'I'm strong on defense but not as corrupt' alternative, the 'Israel should be more secular' perspective, and so on. But no, there was no particular coherent alternative on, say, the West Bank issue, where the politics and the various military / strategic / ideological rationals for the settlements have their own mass and inertia in Israeli politics, but the left wasn't going to do a unilateral withdrawal after how the much smaller Gaza strip worked out.
After 7 October, the main differentiating question is what to do with the Gaza Strip after anti-Hamas operations conclude, which itself is going to depend on what specific context they conclude under. There is anything from outright military occupation, to turning it back over to the PLO eventually, to a multinational security force to keep the peace. There are downsides to all of these, but I also don't believe there's anything coherent enough to match a left/right divide, not least because it's still not clear what context the war will end in.
Yeah, it seemed like the Palestinians were gradually being discarded by the governments of Arab/Muslim states (except perhaps Iran), even if the general population still cared. It reminds me of the way the Chinese government cracks down on nationalist revanchism every so often: partly it's that they don't actually want to invade Taiwan/wherever at this particular moment, but also it feels like they're setting things up so that they get to play "good cop" in international relations ("if you don't work with us, we might lose some domestic legitimacy, and then we'd have to appease those people").
Thanks for providing an infodump. I'm somewhat new here, and I confess that I don't know your position on this whole mess, but you seem like a calm and reasonable person. So I'm going to ask a couple more questions on sensitive topics, in case you still feel like answering. If you don't want to, I completely understand.
I've seen a few videos that appear to be of harmless Gazans being shot dead. I don't think they're fakes. What's up with that? And why aren't they viewed as more of a Abu-Ghraib-level scandal by Israelis and supporters of Israel? I worry that Israeli society has fallen to the level that American society did shortly after Sep 11, where pretty much anything could be justified, and almost no one was willing to dissent. And that parts of the IDF are taking out their anger and frustration in ways that are more about personal vengeance than about any strategic purpose. Here's the two worst ones that I've seen; they're old but they've stuck in my mind. I haven't had the heart to look for more recent ones, and none have been forced into my attention, but I don't know whether that's because they stopped happening, or whether they're just better hidden. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-slams-uk-network-after-claim-unarmed-gazan-was-shot-dead-shortly-after-interview/ https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/26/middleeast/hala-khreis-white-flag-shooting-gaza-cmd-intl/index.html
It seems that factions in Israel supported the initial incarnation of Hamas, decades ago, in order to destabilize the PLO/Fatah. What's your take on that? To me, it seems like either a short-sighted plan that backfired (much like assassinating heads of state, in hopes that whatever replaces them is more controllable), or an extremely cynical ploy to eliminate compromise in favor of the preferred extreme solution. (None of which should be read as relieving Gazans of their ethical responsibility for their own actions.)
Thanks again, in advance, for even considering a response.
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