Brudley Burston : As an Israeli, I am ashamed that my prime minister is a racist
As an Israeli, I am ashamed that my prime minister is a racist - A Special Place in Hell
All
this week, he made us one consistent promise: In his coming term as
prime minister, there will be no hope. It is one promise that we have
all come to believe...
haaretz.com
This week, push came to shove.
This week, we saw how things really work.
How our prime minister really thinks. What he's willing to do, how far
he's willing to go, how many of us he's willing to sell out, slander,
abuse, for the sake of hanging on to the thing that matters to him more
than anything: his job.
After this week, we can never again say that we didn't quite know who Benjamin Netanyahu is.
As an Israeli, I am ashamed that my prime minister is a racist.
On Election Day, knowing that the whole
country would see it or hear about it, he warned on a range of social
media, "The rule of the Right is in danger. The Arab voters are moving
in droves toward the polling places. The NGOs of the Left are bringing
them in buses."
How should Jews respond to the threat of
Arab hordes advancing on ballot boxes? The posts were explicit: Rush to
the polling places, grab your loved ones and get them there as well, to
vote Likud.
"With your help, and with God's help, we
will put up a nationalist government which will safeguard the state of
Israel," my prime minister wrote.
Lest there be any question of how we
should view this, when he took the stage for his victory speech
lateTuesdaynight, Netanyahu invited singer Amir Benayoun to come up and
join him. The prime minister's message was clear: If you are religious
and write a racist song
("Ahmed Loves Israel," which refers to Arabs as scum and murderers), a
song so incendiary that President Reuven Rivlin feels he must revoke
your invitation to the President's Residence, your place is right here,
right now, by my side.
I am ashamed to know that the prime
minister of Israel is either a racist, which is a horrible thought, or
that he incites racism in others for the sake of votes - which is worse.
I am ashamed that my prime minister is a
cheat. I am angry that in order to win, on the eve of the election, his
campaign defied a judge's ruling and knowingly defrauded thousands of
Israelis into thinking that rival Kulanu party leader Moshe Kahlon was
messaging them to switch their vote to Netanyahu.
I am ashamed that my prime minister can humiliate and exploit Moshe Kahlon, an earnest and honorable man, and get away with it.
As an Israeli, I am ashamed that my prime minister is a liar, a huckster, a calculating, desperate coward, a schmaltz merchant.
Now we finally know what he meant, just last October, when he told President Obama that he remained "committed to the vision of peace of two states for two peoples."
He explained it allon Mondaynight, when,
standing behind bulletproof glass in the square where Yitzhak Rabin was
assassinated, he addressed a rally of thousands of right wing Jews, many
of them bused in from the West Bank at the expense of the Israeli
taxpayer.
Just after telling the crowd that they
should avoid incitement, that he was prime minister even of Israelis who
don't agree with him, and that "We pride ourselves on upholding the
unity of Israel," he made it all clear:
There are already two states for two
peoples. There are the People of Us - that is Zionists, which is to say
Jews who are right-wing, who prize settlements above all else, and who
resist all compromise, forswear any concession, oppose all negotiation,
and who will vote for Benjamin Netanyahu when he declares that there
will be not one settler uprooted, even from outposts which Israel itself
has declared illegal.
And then there are the People of Them.
All of the rest of us. People he calls anti-Zionist. People whom he
describes as haters of Israel. Dark forces, treacherous, in league with
foreigners.
"Yes," the uber-secular prime minister
told the crowd, suddenly putting himself forward as the pious,
commandment-keeping, mezuzah-kissing SuperJew, explaining who "We" are:
"We keep the traditions of Israel."
Then the man who is bought and paid for
by a gambling billionaire took it up a notch. "They have V 15, but we
have the People." They have the money, but we have something more
important, he concluded.
"It won't be money that decides this. Rather, it will be heart, soul, belief."
We're all going to need it.
I am ashamed that my prime minister
believes - and is quietly pleased - that many young people who love
their country, have served their country, have endangered their lives
for our sake, but who are not part of Us - not settlers, not
ultra-Orthodox, not right-wing, and in many cases, not Jewish - will
solve their own problems of housing and providing for a new family, by
leaving Israel.
I am ashamed that my prime minister
perceives, and accepts, that many people who are indigent, elderly,
chronically ill, will meet the challenges of a neglected and failing
health care system, by dying.
I am ashamed that my prime minister is
declaring that millions of Palestinians are unentitled to rights,
beginning with the right to have a say as to the kind of government and
country they want to live in.
Most of all, I am ashamed that what my
prime minister does, works. I am ashamed that racism works here, with my
people. As a Jew, I believe that if all we are left with, is bigotry
and fear, it will be the end of us.
All this week, Benjamin Netanyahu made us one consistent promise: In his coming term as prime minister, there will be no hope.
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