Israel’s hard-right turn has been decades in the making

There was a scrumptious second on Q+A final yr, when the query of Israel got here up, and the important thing panellists — Mark Dreyfus and Andrew Bragg — responded, nearly in unison, that Israel “shouldn’t be an apartheid state”. Singing from the identical songbook.

One wonders how lengthy this shall be attainable with the formation of the brand new authorities, led, as soon as once more, by Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, however this time drawing in events of the acute proper. Within the fifth basic election in three years, events as soon as considered out of consideration for inclusion in authorities noticed their votes double, enough to make it attainable for Netanyahu to assemble an entirely right-wing authorities, relatively than one other cobbled-together “nationwide unity” authorities.

The brand new coalition thus contains the Jewish Energy Occasion and the ultra-religious-right “Revival” Occasion; each teams have praised Zionist terrorism, and spruik numerous types of Jewish supremacism in relation to Arabs. Their leaders, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, respectively, are actually in line for ministries: Ben-Gvir needs the police ministry; Smotrich needs defence. These events have previously urged everlasting annexation of the West Financial institution, and expulsion of Arabs from Israel. Jewish Energy’s Occasion chant was, till not too long ago, “dying to Arabs”, now modulated to “dying to terrorists”.