WINNING ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY?

Kahanists on the rise: "Everybody hates us, we don't care"

by Colin Liddell

Bibi Netanyahu is set to be Prime Minister of Israel again, this time with the help of Israel's Nazis, according to the Left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz:

Israel is now on the verge of a right-wing, religious, authoritarian revolution, whose goal is to decimate the democratic infrastructure on which the country was built. This may be a black day in Israel’s history.

Haaretz routinely refers to the three partners in Netanyahu's likely coalition – the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism, the Sephardi Orthodox Shas, and the Religious Zionism Alliance as far-right, supremacist, and "Kahanist." These parties look like winning a total of 33 seats, one more than Likud's 32 seats, adding up to 65 seats in the 120-seat Knesset.

Israel, which started out as an oddly Left-wing enterprise and was dominated by its Labour Party for decades, is now slightly to the right of General Franco on most issues. In fact, the Labour Party is now a tiny nostalgic remnant with an all-time low of 4 seats.

Maybe this is what happens to big Centre-Left parties in any country that has a true democratic system, by which I mean proportional representation. But whether or not that's true, Israeli politics is now radically right-wing, nationalist, and even supremacist in a way that many right-wingers in the Anglosphere, seeing their own countries overwhelmed by "invaders" and wokeism, can only look at with envy.

A few years ago, the main division in Israeli politics was between nationalist Jews who thought that Bibi was setting the right tone and nationalist Jews who thought he wasn't, and that Israel needed to dial it back a little. But now Bibi is somewhere in the middle, with a third group who think the guy has to go a lot harder.

So, where is all this Jewish ethnostate supremacism leading? Is it inevitable? Is it even workable in the present world, or is the present world now in some sort of post-Liberal transition to something quite different where it may in fact be workable?

The traditional conundrum that Israel always faced was this: If you do colonialism and apartheid in the post-colonial and post-Apartheid age, then people are going to notice. But alternatively, if you don't do colonialism and apartheid in a region where you are a tiny, hated minority, then you are dead.

With the choice being between being dead and being blamed for doing "current year bad things," it is little wonder that most Israelis have chosen the latter path, and have increasingly drifted to the Right.

In the past, the Left offered Israelis some benefits. Compared to Bibi, Labour was better at appealing to the international community, and, yes, LARPing as victims—some of them even wore eye patches to heighten the effect.

Old school: Toughness with a hint of tenderness 

But they were also careful to make sure the army was badass.

The "we're just waiting for a peace deal with the Palestinians" vibe also chimed better with the whole AIPAC, under-the-radar-support-from-dual-citizens-and-evangelicals thing that made sure America was usually an aligned and benign influence.

But while Left-leaning Israel was great for confusing the international community and winning nebulous sympathy, LARPing as victims and eventual dealmakers had its limitations in the dog-eat-dog world of the Middle East. In such an environment, eventually you have to start seizing and holding defensible territory, and that ultimately means ethnically cleansing or oppressing people on a more consistent basis. For Israel to survive where it does it has to be a what is colloquially known as a "real bastard." So, there is a definite logic to voters choosing Bibi and now his Kahanist colleagues.

In fact, with slightly softer but more presentable options on one side, and more uncompromising options on the other, Bibi may even look like the practical and optical optimum choice. You could even say that the Kahanists are to Bibi what the Duginists and ultranationalists in Russia are to Putin, a bit of scary window dressing that helps a hard-liner look at least a little like a moderate compromiser, even if he isn't.

But where does it all end? While this kind of "realpolitik bastard" approach may have short-term benefits, it also creates certain toxins that build up and poison it, at least if the World order continues more or less as it has done for the last few decades. But also, things may not be so good if the World order changes either.

Left to its own devices, the Middle East is usually a pretty chaotic and divided place. Thanks to the presence of Israel and the bumbling geopolitics of America it may even be more divided and chaotic than it normally is, allowing one faction or state to be played off against another. But, having what is effectively an alien and colonising state in the midst of a civilisational area, can only have an ultimately uniting and galvanising effect. A few years ago, there were signs of this happening, and there still are. Israel's continued trajectory to the Right can only provoke more of this. 

Perhaps the most significant problem, however, is how this swing to the Right will play out in the West. Afterall, it was what the West thought of Apartheid-era South Africa that finally killed it. There we see a Leftist tendency towards "anti-racism" and narratives of "White privilege". These have caused Bibi problems in the past and will cause even more problems for a Kahamist Israel. But, on the other side, the American Right is increasingly dominated by trends that make it a very different beast from the Israel-friendly GOP of yesteryear.

The modern-day US Right-wing is dominated by a mixture of watered-down wokeism, Israel-scepticism (if not crypto-anti-Semitism), and Neo-Isolationism (see Tucker Carlson, et al). Americans are less ready to step up for Israel and more resentful of all the past stepping up for Israel that they believe they did, even if their own interests were often foremost in the mix. 

The real problem is that pro-Israeli feeling in America has been badly mauled by a lot of negative memes. See the Kanye controversy to gauge just how deeply this has bled into the general culture! And, while positive feelings for the country remain, Americans now need to see a much more direct benefit to supporting Israel, which really isn't there anymore, assuming it ever was.

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Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying it here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia).