WINNING ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY

by Colin Liddell

Bibi Netanyahu is Prime Minister of Israel again, and the Dissident Right is both delighted and appalled. This is because Bibi is what we British call a "Marmite politician," someone who is either loved or loathed, like the tar-like beef yeast extract from which the term comes. In fact, not only is he a Marmite politician, but he is also the PM of a Marmite country. So, whatever happens in Israel is going to have a divisive outcome.

(One more "in fact"—if you look at a map of the Middle East (above), Israel looks exactly like a dagger slicing the vast Islamic world into two large sections.)

But what do we learn from this latest election? There are a number of things that are clear which lead to some less obvious things.

The most obvious thing is the almost complete destruction of the Left in Israel. The Israeli Labour Party, which for many years was the dominant political force in Israeli politics, is now a tiny, nostalgic remnant. This is what happens to big Centre-Left parties in any country that has a true democratic system, by which I mean proportional representation.

Israeli politics is now overwhelmingly right-wing, nationalist, and even supremacist in a way that many in the Dissident Right, seeing their own countries overwhelmed by invaders, can only look on at with envy.

Aw, c'mon, how can you not love this man?

The main division in Israeli politics is now between (1) nationalist Jews who think that Bibi is setting the right tone and (2) nationalist Jews who think he isn't quite hitting it off.

The recent push by the Blue White Alliance was mainly a movement by the latter group. All they wanted was to have a leader who, ahem, toned it down a little, someone who did Bibi but without quite so much Netanyahu.

So, the question here is now this:

Is Bibi overdoing the Jewish ethnostate supremacism or not?

Of course, if you just hate Jews, as many in the collapsed Alt-Right do, then the answer is "Yes (and also please stop breathing, Jews)."

A complementary question would be:

Would someone else, like Benny Gantz (leader of the Blue White Alliance), do it any better?

The conundrum that Israel faces is very simple. It is 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 noticed 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 were better at appealing to the international community and LARPing as victims—some of them even wore eye patches to heighten the effect—while also making sure the army was badass. They also chimed better with the whole AIPAC, under-the-radar-support-from-dual-citizen-congresspeople vibe that Ilhan Omar recently called out.

But while great for confusing the international community and winning nebulous sympathy, LARPing as victims is not always the best policy in the dog-eat-dog world of the Middle East. Eventually you have to start seizing and holding defensible territory, and that ultimately means moving or oppressing other peoples.

Ouch!

Netanyahu still tries to put a moral gloss on it all, claiming that the next Palestinian bottle rocket will flatten Tel Aviv, but basically he is engaged in realpolitik. For Israel to survive where it does it has to be what is colloquially known as a "real cunt." Ben Shapiro channels this pretty well. So there is a definite logic to voters choosing Bibi, although many of them would like to achieve the same effects with a slightly lesser or more presentable "cunt," which is why Gantz did so well in the election.

But where does it all end? While this kind of realpolitik approach is great for the short-term, it also creates certain toxins that build up and poison it.

Left to its own devices the Middle East would probably be a pretty chaotic and divided place—and thanks to the divide-and-conquer strategy of Israel and "complications" from American foreign policy, it may even be more divided and chaotic than it normally is. 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.

There have even been signs of this happening recently. Hezbollah won last year's Lebanese elections mainly as a reaction to Netanyahu's policies, while some commentators have also attributed Assad's growing strength to the fact that Israel has provided him with a convenient foil.

But the bottom line is this:

In a world where Leftist values of "anti-racism" and narratives of "White privilege" dominate, Israel's realpolitik approach is going to run out of road pretty soon. 

To the world of dual-citizen congresspeople and fat donor money politicians signing off on massive aid budgets to Israel, the advent of Ilhan Omar and all she represents must sound like a death knell. But you couldn't have Ilhan without Bibi. Both are part of the contradictions created by the Israeli equation coming into play. A state that can only survive on nationalism, ethnonationalism, and supremacism needs a world in which these values are not scared and homeless beggars.