Het Israelisch Fascisme 5

'Israeli Elections: Rise of the Right, the Extreme Right, and the Fascist Right
By Phyllis Bennis

11 February 2009


There is little question that the timing of the December-January Israeli assault on Gaza had everything to do with Israeli elections. (Well, almost everything – there was that little item of finishing the military attack before Barack Obama was inaugurated U.S. president.)
But now the elections are over. And while final tallies are not officially finished, a few things are already clear. The votes for the two top mainstream parties popularly known as “right” and “center” came in virtually neck-and-neck. Tzipi Livni’s ostensibly centrist Kadima Party ended up in first place, one seat ahead of the officially rightist Likud bloc of Bibi Netanyahu. Far more significant – for Israelis, for Palestinians, for U.S.-Israeli relations – was Israeli voters’ choice for third place in the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) line-up.
The great victor in the election was neither Netanyahu nor Livni. The big winner is Avigdor Lieberman, whose racist, indeed fascist, Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Is Our Home) party took third place, leaving the traditionally powerful Labor Party of the once-and wannabe-future Prime Minister Ehud Barak struggling for fourth. Lieberman’s star had been rising for a long time; his party had even won the mock elections held recently by Israeli high school students. His officially racist right was strengthened and legitimated through the election, not newly created. Ironically, it was the skyrocketing popular support for Lieberman’s extremism that pulled enough votes away from the rightist Likud to reverse what until a few days ago appeared to be Likud’s inevitable victory, thus giving Kadima and Livni the titular first place. Only in Israel, perhaps, has political opinion moved so far to the right that Kadima, the party of former Likudniks including General Ariel Sharon – long known as the “Butcher of Beirut” for his role in the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and especially the Sabra-Shatila massacre – could be transformed into a moderate “centrist” party without changing a single tenet. As Palestinian legislator and democracy activist Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi noted on the morning after the election, the vote consolidated Israel’s apartheid system.
(It should be noted that even if her Kadima party wins the most votes, Livni may not become prime minister. The president can choose any party leader he believes has the best chance of putting together a governing coalition. And given the right-wing, militaristic majority in the new Knesset – 64 of 120 seats – that position may still go to Netanyahu. Either way, Lieberman and his fellow extremists will have a powerful kingmaker role.)'
Lees verder: http://www.interlinkbooks.com/pages.php?page=febupdate