March 4, 2019: Campaign wheeling and dealing in Israel

By Michael Regenstreif

With Israel’s system of proportional representation and its many political parties – many of which are focused on a single issue or represent a specific cultural or religious community, and many of which come and go – it’s virtually impossible for any party to form a majority government without bringing together a coalition.

For example, Benjamin Netanyahu put together a governing coalition with the support of other parties in 2015 – mostly by promising control of certain cabinet ministries to other parties – after his Likud Party received 23.4 per cent of the vote to win 30 of the Knesset’s 120 seats.

Two deals between parties announced late last month could have major effects on the outcome of the April 9 Israeli election, and on the wheeling and dealing between parties that will take place after the votes are counted in order to assemble a governing coalition.

The first deal merges three centrist parties – two of them newly-formed – under prominent military and political figures to create the new Blue and White Party (named for the colours of the Israeli flag). Combining to form what could be the most significant new political force in Israel in many years were Benny Gantz’s Israel Resilience Party (a former general, Gantz was chief of the Israel Defense Forces’ general staff from 2011 to 2015); Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid Party (a former journalist, Lapid served as Israel’s finance minister from 2013 to 2014); and Moshe Ya’alon’s Telem Party (Ya’alon is also a former general and chief of the Israel Defense Forces’ general staff who served as Netanyahu’s minister of defence from 2013 to 2016).

Gabi Ashkenazi, another former general and chief of the Israel Defense Forces’ general staff, is also part of the Blue and White Party’s leadership team.

Under terms of the merger Gantz and Lapid would rotate the prime-minister-ship after two-and-a-half years.

The Jerusalem Post reported that polling immediately after the merger was announced suggested that the Blue and White Party could overtake Netanyahu’s Likud and perhaps win 36 seats to become the leading party in the race to form a governing coalition.

The other deal brings together two parties on the right and extreme right: Jewish Home and Otzma Yehudit. Jewish Home was part of Netanyahu’s 2015 coalition but its two most prominent members – Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked – recently split off to form the New Right Party.

Otzma Yehudit (Jewish power) is an extremist party which advocates the relocation of West Bank Palestinians and Israeli Arabs to Arab countries – in other words, ethnic cleansing. The party is the successor to Meir Kahane’s Kach Party – a party that has been banned from running for the Knesset due to its racist ideology since 1988 and banned outright since 1994.

The electoral threshold for a party to obtain seats in the Knesset is 3.25 per cent of the popular vote – which would mean four seats. Polling has suggested that neither the current version of Jewish Home or Otzma Yehudit would crack the threshold on its own – but jointly they may win four or five seats.

And as the leading parties scramble to assemble a governing coalition after the election, those four or five seats would be crucial for Netanyahu’s chances. Knowing this, it was Netanyahu himself who reportedly brokered the deal by apparently promising two seats at his cabinet table to the joint ticket.

While it’s highly unlikely that a cabinet position would go to one of the Otzma Yehudit candidates, it’s frankly appalling that Netanyahu would broker a deal that would lend political legitimacy to a group that should never have moved beyond the fringe.

And there is still another wild card which could affect the outcome of the election as Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit is widely expected to announce this month whether he will accept police recommendations that Netanyahu be indicted on several corruption charges. Although the prime minister denies the validity of the allegations against him and has said he will not stand down if indicted, it remains to be seen if his support will weaken significantly enough if he is indicted to change the outcome of the election. Some Israeli analysts suggest that it would.

August 25, 2008: One of the worst hate-sites on the Internet is Jewish

By Michael Regenstreif

Much has been made in recent years about efforts to stop the spread of hatred on the Internet. We’ve had articles in the Bulletin, for example, about Richard Warman, an Ottawa-based lawyer and activist who has been successful in having a number of antisemitic hate-sites on the World Wide Web shut down.

One of the vilest hate-filled sites I’ve come across recently is actually a Jewish site located at masada2000.org. The site, which refers to all Arabs as “a cancer” who should be removed from Israel and from the territories – which it considers to be part of Israel – is run by followers of the late Meir Kahane, the Brooklyn rabbi who founded the extremist Jewish Defense League in New York in 1968 before moving to Israel where he formed the Kach political party.

Kahane ran for election to the Knesset as leader of Kach in 1976 and 1980, but failed to win enough votes for even one seat. In the 1984 election, Kach finally garnered enough votes for that single seat and Kahane became an MK. Over the next four years, Kahane’s racist rhetoric so offended most Israelis that he was banned from running in the 1988 election and Kach was outlawed. Kahane, who was jailed several times in both the United States and Israel for his activities, met his end in 1990 when he was murdered in New York City following a speech.

Although Kahane was killed, his movement has survived on the fringes of Israeli and Diaspora societies. Baruch Goldstein, the American-born doctor who massacred Muslims praying at a mosque in Hebron in 1994, was a follower of Kahane. So, too, was Yigal Amir, the Israeli assassin of Yitzhak Rabin. Both Goldstein and Amir are regarded as heroes by Kahane’s followers. Since the mid-1990s, both Kach and its offshoot, Kahane Chai, have been designated by both Israel and the United States as terrorist organizations.

One of the most despicable sections of masada2000 is something called the Self-Hating and/or Israel-Threatening List. You can figure out the acronym the site likes to use for itself from the capitalized letters in its name.

The list, more than 7,000 names in length, is McCarthyesque in the way it designates “self-hating” Jews. Virtually every leftist you’ve ever heard of is on the list. Names you’d expect like Norman G. Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky. But one need not be anti-Zionist like Finkelstein or Chomsky to be on the list. It overflows with the names of prominent Zionist Jews, including many North American rabbis and Israeli politicians, who are listed because they have advocated peacemaking with the Arabs. Shimon Peres, the president of Israel and a former prime minister is on the list. So is Ehud Olmert, the current prime minister. Dalia Rabin-Pelosoff, a former deputy minister of defence and the daughter of Yitzhak Rabin, is there. So is Yuval Rabin, her brother.

Thomas Friedman, the astute New York Times op-ed columnist is on the list along with several Canadians including Rabbi Dow Marmur, rabbi emeritus of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, and Victor Goldbloom, the first Jewish cabinet minister in Quebec, a former federal commissioner of official languages and the current Quebec regional president of Canadian Jewish Congress.

And if it weren’t enough to be slandered as a self-hating Jew just by having one’s name on the list, many of the entries are annotated with disgustingly racist and/or homophobic commentaries.

The whole masada2000 site is shameful. What it truly exposes is the Kahanists themselves. They are Jews with a philosophy as ugly as the Ku Klux Klan’s.

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I’m very excited about Mira Sucharov’s new column – Values, Ethics, Community – making its debut in this issue of the Bulletin. Mira, an associate professor of political science at Carleton University, has lately been one of our book reviewers and was assigned to review a collection of essays for this issue called Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice. Her review – which is on page 28 – gives us much to think about as a community, as segments of the community, and as individuals. I invited Mira to use the review as a starting point for a new Bulletin column. She accepted and her initial column appears opposite the review.

There is no one way to respond to most, if not all, of the issues, questions and concerns that Mira raises, and will raise, in this and future editions of the Bulletin. While we’re always open to letters about anything that appears in our pages, we’re particularly interested in your response to the issues Mira will be raising. E-mail is the best way to send your letters. My address is mregenstreif@ ottawajewishbulletin.com.

Another new feature we’re beginning in this issue of the Bulletin is a series of community volunteer profiles being written by Benita Siemiatycki of the Jewish Ottawa InfoCentre.

Finally, this edition of the Bulletin marks the final appearance of Saul Silverman’s Global Shtetl column. For the past eight years Saul’s column has explored the often-fascinating Jewish Internet. On behalf of everyone at the Bulletin, I’d like to express our deep appreciation to Saul for his columns and insights as we continue to learn our way around the global shtetl the Internet has turned our world into.