The New York Times told its readers Wednesday morning that “an ultranationalist religious alliance that backs Mr. Netanyahu was projected to become the third-largest bloc in Parliament, highlighting how the election was construed by many right-wing Jewish Israeli voters––unsettled by Arab participation in Israel’s outgoing government––as a chance to reinforce the country’s Jewish identity. The far-right alliance seeks to upend Israel’s judicial system, end Palestinian autonomy in parts of the occupied West Bank and legalize a form of corruption that Mr. Netanyahu is accused of committing.”
One would expect this kind of cheap propaganda from lesser newspapers, but for the NYT to pack so many half-truths and complete lies into such a limited space suggests their fear may have grown and expanded into a supernatural realm.
I looked up “far-right politics” on Wiki, so you won’t have to, because the media in Israel and around the world have been using it with alarming frequency in describing Otzma Yehudit Chairman Itamar Ben Gvir, and discovered the following:
Far-right politics, also referred to as the extreme right or right-wing extremism, are politics further on the right of the left-right political spectrum than the standard political right, particularly in terms of being radically conservative, ultra-nationalist, and authoritarian, as well as having nativist ideologies and tendencies.
There are several puzzling notions there, especially since the term is being applied with such generous frequency to Ben Gvir. Here are my questions, maybe you can answer them:
- How can you be radically conservative? Isn’t it like being a tall midget?
- What’s the difference between ultra-nationalist and nationalist? Is an ultra-nationalist just a nationalist who squeezes his face really hard while hating people inside his skull?
- Why is the term authoritarian unique to the “far-right?” What about China, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela?
- I looked up “nativism” in Wiki (I do so much for you), and discovered that Nativism is the political policy of promoting or protecting the interests of native or indigenous inhabitants over those of immigrants, including the support of immigration-restriction measures. How does this possibly apply in Israel, the country that turned encouraging immigration into a national ideology? And, should you consider the Law of Return a form of immigration-restriction, then absolutely every Zionist party should count as “nativist,” and by extension “far-right.”
My personal conclusion from the above intellectual drivel is that “far-right” is something leftists call a politician they fear and hate because he or she is gaining popularity. As is often the case, when the left encounters something it cannot defeat on a level playing field, it calls it names. To prove my point, here’s the second paragraph in Wiki’s definition of far-right politics:
Historically used to describe the experiences of Fascism, Nazism, and Falangism, far-right politics now include neo-fascism, neo-Nazism, the Third Position, the alt-right, racial supremacism, National Bolshevism (culturally only), and other ideologies or organizations that feature aspects of authoritarian, ultra-nationalist, chauvinist, xenophobic, theocratic, racist, homophobic, transphobic, and/or reactionary views.
My, oh my. The late George Orwell would have had such a fit if he read this paragraph, he’d ROFL and LOL himself to exhaustion while screaming OMG and other undignified abbreviations.
Wiki also notes that far-right politics are associated with, get ready: oppression, political violence, forced assimilation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide against groups of people based on their supposed inferiority or their perceived threat to the native ethnic group, nation, state, national religion, dominant culture, or conservative social institutions.
In short, the folks who wrote these definitions have bundled all their fears and hatreds into a package that fits their personal prejudices and called it “far-right politics.” And on Wednesday morning, with all of the above polluting their minds, the leftist media set out to educate its readers about the key winner of Israel’s popular vote, Itamar Ben Gvir.
Back home, Haaretz ran an editorial with an equal disregard for accuracy and fairness under the headline, “Kahanism Won.”
Yes, of course, I looked it up for you… According to Wiki, “Kahanism is an extremist Jewish ideology based on the views of Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League and the Kach party in Israel. Kahane maintained the view that the majority of Arabs living in Israel are enemies of Jews and Israel itself, and believed that a Jewish theocratic state, where non-Jews have no voting rights, should be created.”
Naturally, we could argue until we are blue in the face that not a single element of the above definition has found its way into the platform of the Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit party. It doesn’t matter, because every good leftist knows the extreme right is concealing their true intentions to appease their voters, but when we’re not looking, they’re already setting up concentration camps for Arabs and leasing the buses to transfer the same Arabs to the desert (because trains in Israel stink).
Unencumbered by negligible issues such as truth and facts, the raging editorial concludes:
“We hope that the blocs will still change after all the votes are counted and that Netanyahu will not succeed in putting together a nightmare coalition which will depend on the votes of the Kahanists. Israel is now on the brink of a nationalist-religious-authoritarian revolution, whose goal is to assassinate the democratic infrastructure on which the country was built. This may turn out to be a black day in the history of Israel.”
Breathtaking, right? Well, first of all, let’s hope this turns out to be a black day in the history of Haaretz, which I still remember as a benign, liberal-minded, Zionist newspaper. But above anything else, this crude, blind attack on the choices of 12.5% of Israeli voters in a democratic election suggests the left in Israel is out of its mind with fear.
What did you think, they were going to give up their birthright to the country just like that?
