Israel

On the late afternoon of September 29, 2000 (nearly 20 years ago now), I took a cab from Jerusalem into Bethlehem to visit with an old friend and his family, the owners of a well-known Bethlehem hotel. The streets were bustling; buses filled with tourists roared up the main Jerusalem-to-Bethlehem road towards the Church of the Nativity (the reputed birthplace of Jesus), and the city’s gift shops were jammed. My plan was to stay the night, but my friend (a Palestinian Christian who’d moved to Bethlehem from Philadelphia), shook his head: ‘No room at the inn,’ he said, and smiled at his joke. ‘In fact, you won’t find a room anywhere in the city.’ I was surprised. In all of my years traveling to the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, I’d never had trouble finding a place to stay.

On Sunday, Beto O’Rourke claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t ‘represent the true will of the Israeli people.’ Israel is a democracy in which every citizen has the right to vote, a fact of international trivia apparently lost on O’Rourke. Although it’s easy to criticize Bibi for many of his recent remarks — and for his recent decision to welcome the racist Jewish Power party into the mainstream, it’s silly to argue that he doesn’t represent the true will of the Israeli people. The Israeli people have spoken for more than a decade: they like to have Bibi at the helm. It’s possible the Israeli people will have something new to say in their election today.

Freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar has received a lot of attention after she claimed that the relationship between the United States and Israel was ‘all about the Benjamins’ and that Israel supporters promote ‘allegiance to a foreign country.’ Omar apologized for her remarks, then doubled-down on them a few weeks later. The House proposed a toothless condemnation of anti-Semitism, then settled on a meaningless resolution condemning hate. While many have pointed out the dangerous insinuations behind Omar’s remarks, the nut of her accusation has remained more or less unexamined: do foreign nations and their money influence our policy, and is our foreign policy unduly influenced by money from Israel and Jews?

In the digital world, you are what you like. So why was Rashida Tlaib’s official Instagram page following an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist with links to a mosque notorious for its terrorist connections? The account, ‘Free.Palestine.1948’, belongs to a British Muslim who is an accomplished promoter of extremism. Photos of Benjamin Netanyahu with Adolf Hitler are juxtaposed, and a rat superimposed on the Israeli flag.

Benjamin Netanyahu is manipulative, petty and deceitful. He is determined to win, regardless of the damage wrought by victory. He has few of the habits of the admirable statesman, and most of the hallmarks of political genius. This charmless man has steered Israel through the Obama presidency and the Arab Spring; presided over an economic and hi-tech boom; avoided open war with Iran and contained Hamas; and expanded Israel’s diplomatic links in Asia, South America, Africa and, in smaller but significant ways, with previously hostile Sunni Arab states. All that may no longer be enough.

Is Israel a Jewish state, or is it just a state of Jews? Just how Jewish can a state be without interfering with its core democratic ideals? Does a Jewish state necessarily mean a religious state? These are the sorts of questions that Jews around the world have been asking themselves since the modern state of Israel evolved from dream to reality. The questions are complicated; the answers more so. In the last few days, these questions have been given renewed importance and urgency.  The answers have inspired deep fissures within the state of Israel and within the broader Jewish community. This Monday marked 25 years since Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish terrorist, entered the cave of the Patriarchs and shot up a room full of Muslims at prayer.

Over his last decade in power, Benjamin Netanyahu has easily seen off all challengers. The Labour Party has gone through four leaders during this period, whose main achievement has been to transform the party which founded Israel 70 years ago in to an irrelevant relic. ‘Centrist’ leaders who tried to enter the vacuum left by Labour had their brief moments but failed to threaten Netanyahu’s primacy. Netanyahu has had three key elements working for him. His own personal standing as ‘Mr Security,’ Israel’s only remaining responsible grown-up, with the experience of navigating the country through treacherous geopolitical waters. The base of his Likud party which has held together, despite the growing national fatigue from his overbearing presence.