After Oct 7, the Israeli Right is 60% of the Country, the Left is 13% - Daniel Greenfield

 

​ by Daniel Greenfield

"I guess that makes me a right-wing extremist."

 

The Israeli Left has been shrinking for some time.

The Israeli Labor Party, which used to run the country, has 4 Knesset members. This is not a new situation. This hilarious Latma video mocking the Labor Party for having so few parliamentarians that they can all fit in a taxi dates back to 2011.

I’ve written a good deal about the collapse of the Israeli Left which is attributable to a number of factors including

1. The disastrous “peace process” with Islamic terrorists resulting in a ‘Palestinian’ terror entity
2. The success of the Israeli economy under privatization
3. Immigration. Unlike immigration in the U.S., immigration from the Middle East and Russia to Israel has led to a more conservative electorate.

So these numbers reported by the Free Beacon are not wholly out there. But they do show a post-Oct 7 shift.

The survey found that the rightward ratchet of Israeli politics across decades of Palestinian terrorism and rejectionism has lurched ahead since Oct. 7. Based on political self-identification, the right has grown by 5 percentage points to include 36 percent of Jewish Israelis, or 60 percent when the poll factors in the moderate and hard right. The left has shrunk by 3 percentage points to just 8 percent of the public, or 13 percent factoring in the moderate and hard left. And the center has held steady at about a quarter of the political spectrum.

How did that play out in some of the more liberal communities near Gaza targeted on Oct 7?

Debbie Sharon, 60, a criminal defense attorney from Yated, a town in southern Israel, counts herself among the newly minted right-wingers. She recalled that prior to Oct. 7, she subscribed to the then-prevailing conception that Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 and subsequent economic support for the strip encouraged quiet and might one day lead to peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

“People on the right warned us that the Palestinians don’t think the way we think: They don’t care about peace for their children. They only care about eliminating us,” Sharon said. “But we didn’t believe them. We said, ‘They’re all mad. They’re all right-wing extremists.'”

Earlier this year, Sharon volunteered for Tzav 9, a grassroots movement that sprang up to protest Israel’s provision of humanitarian aid to Gaza during the war. She eventually left the group—which has recently been linked to violence and sanctioned by the Biden administration—saying it had become too divisive. But she stood by her opposition to the aid.

“They can have aid in Gaza when they give us back our hostages. That’s how I feel,” she said. “I guess that makes me a right-wing extremist.”

All in all this sounds like it should be great news, but Israel’s parliamentary system which lacks regional representation ensures that there are a whole range of political parties, many representing narrow and very corruptible interests, which can be used to form coalitions.

The public Left isn’t much of an electoral force, but in the past 15-20 years it mainly operates through fake ‘centrist’ and ‘apolitical’ parties like Yesh Atid or various others fronted by the latest retired general. When these parties get enough votes, they can form a leftist coalition government that pretends it’s centrist.

Additionally, there are a variety of narrow-identity politics parties that are simply for sale. These are particularly useful for breaking off voters who might otherwise vote for conservative parties.

And then there are the Arab Islamic parties.

Finally, the Supreme Court maintains total unilateral absolute power, and efforts to reduce its power fell apart due to massive national protests and then the attacks of Oct 7. The Supreme Court’s calculated decision on a draft for Orthodox students is meant to make the Netanyahu coalition fall apart and be replaced by the Left.

So what should be good news on paper is unfortunately a long way from offering that much in reality.

The Israeli Jewish public is generally conservative, but the system still belongs to the Left.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/after-oct-7-the-israeli-right-is-60-of-the-country-the-left-is-13/

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter