Bernie Sanders must stop whitewashing Israel's next racist government
Ali Abunimah Power Suits 4 June 2021
The Electronic Intifada
Two men look at each other
Israel's next government is set to be led by Naftali Bennett, pictured right
with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, November 2019. It will be just as
violently racist as every previous Israeli government. Atef SafadiReuters
It is by no means certain that the coalition deal for Israel's next
government headed by the violently racist Naftali Bennett will pass through
the Knesset later this month.
But there can be no doubt that whoever sits in Israel's new government, it
will be racist, very violently racist, like all its predecessors.
It will continue to occupy and colonize Palestinian land in the West Bank.
including Jerusalem, and kill Palestinians whether or not they resist.
It will continue to besiege Gaza and impose collective punishment on two
million Palestinians caged there.
It will continue to treat Palestinian citizens of Israel as enemies of the
state subject to dozens of discriminatory laws, whether or not it has the
support of a few token Arab lawmakers.
It will continue to deny Palestinian refugees their right to return solely
because they are not Jews.
Yet Senator Bernie Sanders barely waited for the ink to dry on the coalition
agreement before rushing out to start whitewashing the government in
waiting.
"Well, it is a very strange coalition," Sanders allowed in an interview with
CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday.
"They have people on the left, people on the right, people in the middle. So
we'll see what happens in terms of that coalition."
All that is true enough, but what Sanders said next is deeply troubling.
"But it is no great secret that I am not a great fan of Benjamin Netanyahu,"
the senator added.
"I think over the years the coalition that he has put together has become
more right-wing and in some cases part of that coalition is overtly racist,"
Sanders added with remarkable caution.
"So I will not be mourning the departure of the prime minister, Mr.
Netanyahu, and I hope that Israel will have a government that we will be
better able to work with."
According to Sanders, the problem in Israel can be reduced to one man:
Benjamin Netanyahu.
As I've noted before, US Democrats who want to appear critical of Israel
without confronting the racism inherent in its Zionist settler-colonial
ideology, now focus their criticism on Netanyahu.
That's the safe and acceptable way to criticize Israel.
It's similar to how the Democratic Party's faux "resistance" pretended that
all of America's problems started and ended with Donald Trump.
It is absurd and offensive for Sanders to suggest that anyone who purports
to care about Palestinian rights would be "better able to work with" this
coalition or any other.
It is ridiculous to make this claim when Bennett of all people is slated as
prime minister.
Bennett has long made clear that he wants to annex most of the West Bank and
that the best Palestinians can hope for from him is apartheid.
"I will do everything in my power to make sure they never get a state," he
has said of the Palestinians. "No more illusions."
Bennett was key in pushing for passage of Israel's 2018 Nation-State Law
that further entrenches apartheid - a law so racist that it even embarrassed
the Israel lobby in Washington.
A coalition of genocidal racists
Bennett - the son of American Jewish colonists from San Francisco - has
always been willing to back up his extreme Jewish ethnonationalism with
violence.
As a young officer, he was involved in Israel's April 1996 massacre of more
than 100 refugees sheltering at a UN base in southern Lebanon.
"I have killed lots of Arabs in my life - and there is no problem with
that," he bragged later.
In summer 2014, while Israel was bombing Gaza, killing an average of 11
children per day, Bennett grotesquely accused Palestinians of
"self-genocide."
In 2018, Bennett demanded that Israel shoot to kill any Palestinian escaping
from Gaza - as many do driven by the desperate economic conditions and sky
high unemployment caused by Israel's siege.
And just last month, he justified Israel's mass killing of civilians in Gaza
by once again echoing the racist lie that Palestinians use civilians as
human shields.
"This is not a government that will disengage [from settlements], will not
relinquish land, and also won't be afraid to carry out military operations
when needed," Bennett said just days ago of the coalition he hopes to lead.
"The political context won't stop us."
Ayelet Shaked, a senior member of Bennett's Yamina party, is no less
virulent and extreme in her racism.
In 2014, she notoriously promoted a call for genocide of the Palestinian
people, "including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages,
its property and its infrastructure."
She's slated as the next interior minister.
Another key figure in Bennett's government-in-waiting is Benny Gantz, tipped
to stay on as defense minister.
Gantz has now led two major massacres in Gaza, the one in 2014, when he was
Israeli army chief of staff, and the one last month - a record of slaughter
and destruction he brags about.
Bennett's finance minister is set to be Avigdor Lieberman, a man with such a
lengthy record of racism and incitement it would take a whole article just
to scratch the surface.
And so on.
Liberal Zionist delusions
So on what basis could Sanders believe that a government populated by such
figures would in any universe be an improvement on Netanyahu's?
Perhaps Sanders still harbors the liberal Zionist delusion that Israel's
vestigial Zionist "left" - part of the coalition - will form some sort of
moderating "peace camp."
The problem is that Israel's alleged peaceniks - figures like assassinated
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, late President Shimon Peres and former foreign
minister Tzipi Livni - have typically been among its most prolific ethnic
cleansers and war criminals.
If Sanders forgets that, Israel's Zionist "left" is keen to remind him.
Last year, for instance, Amir Peretz, then head of Israel's supposedly
left-wing Labor-Gesher-Meretz list admonished Sanders for his mild
criticisms of Israel in recent years.
Sanders' approach was "wrong," Peretz claimed.
Peretz was "defense minister" during Israel's 2006 invasion of Lebanon when
it carpet bombed the country with cluster munitions and killed more than
1,100 people, mostly civilians.
Making excuses for Sanders
I've noticed a tendency by many on the left to make excuses for Sanders, as
if his repeated whitewashing of Israel is the foible of an affable uncle who
means well.
After all, hasn't he also said nice things about Palestinians and been
critical of Israel's attacks on Gaza?
Sadly, Sanders' lip service does not live up to the hype.
During last month's Israeli massacre in Gaza, Sanders announced he had
placed a Senate hold on the sale of $735 million of American weapons to
Israel.
He got positive headlines for his "historic" move, before he quietly dropped
the effort as the sale went through.
That's in line with his record of blowing hot air about Palestinian rights,
while doing nothing effective to support them.
As I documented recently, Sanders has long railed against any effective
Palestinian resistance.
He condemns armed resistance and even opposes BDS - the nonviolent
Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions movement modeled on the
international campaign that helped end apartheid in South Africa.
And when he was recently asked to comment on how major human rights groups
are now acknowledging that Israel commits the crime of apartheid, he refused
to affirm their position.
Instead, he lectured that we should "tone down the rhetoric" about Israel's
crimes.
Tell "Uncle" Bernie
Linda Sarsour, a prominent Democratic Party activist, tweeted on 30 May that
"You won't see any Palestinians celebrating the replacement of Benjamin
Netanyahu with Naftali Bennett, who is a racist right-wing hate monger."
He may even be worse than Netanyahu, she added.
Sarsour is absolutely right.
She responded to Sanders' positive spin on the putative Bennett government
with the question, "Who is gonna to tell Bernie?"
Sarsour was a high-profile surrogate for Sanders during his 2020
presidential campaign, marketing him to Arab and Muslim American voters as
"Amo" Bernie - Uncle Bernie.
Given her closeness to Sanders, I've suggested that Sarsour should tell him
- clearly - to stop whitewashing the incoming racist government.
False marketing
After Israel's 2015 election, I wrote an article headlined "Why I'm relieved
Netanyahu won."
At that time he beat then Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog, who was falsely
marketed in Western media as "dovish."
(That false marketing continues, incidentally, as Herzog has just been
elected to Israel's largely ceremonial presidency).
Of course then, as now, I had no love for Netanyahu.
My argument was that the naked racism of Netanyahu strips away the
opportunity for the so-called international community to hide its complicity
with Israel's ugly crimes behind the charade of a "peace process" or the
facade of a coalition with "moderate" elements.
Sadly, that logic still applies - even with Naftali Bennett set to become
prime minister.
If Netanyahu staying in office is the only way to stop Sanders and other
supposed friends of Palestinians from whitewashing the horrific reality of
Zionism, then so be it.
The "good" news, then, is that Netanyahu still has a week to torpedo the
incoming coalition.