Limmud: Israel foreign politics
Nov. 20th, 2018 09:19 amI'm being slow in writing up the limmud talks, but they were all so interesting I still wanted to.
This was obviously always going to be somewhat difficult, and if I already knew more about it, I probably wouldn't have wanted to listen to more, but as I knew very little, I was interested to hear. There were details I didn't really absorb, and although I got a general gist, I'm probably going to screw this up -- please post corrections in the comments.
The talk was by a senior political correspondant for Haaretz, a left leaning major Israeli newspaper, where much of her career is following the Prime Minister as part of the press corp, including going all round the world to wherever he's doing diplomacy with.
The background is that Israel politics has been drifting right over the last couple of decades, under quite a disliked Prime Minister. Contributing factors include the collapse in scandal of the centre left, and the large scale immigration of ancestrally Jewish people from Russia, who on average are less invested in Israel as a traditional homeland, and more invested in living somewhere reasonably safe. And even if many Israelis disagree, the drive for "all original Israel land should be Israel for religious reasons" and "we're being regularly bombed, we need to fight back" are ongoing.
But recently, the disturbing observation has been Israel forming friendly overtures with disturbing right wing governments like Saudi Arabia and those in eastern europe. And I mean, how did we get into that situation? If you had to pick two governments in the world you think might give Israel no time, you'd think a hardline muslim theocracy and a neonazi populist movement would be the top of the queue.
But often, pragmatism and being a right wing ideologicracy trumps the specifics of the ideologies. And I mean, both countries benefit from the legitimacy of having links with each other. If Israel can get even one EU country decisively on-side, they can block the EU from condemning Israel for things, or recognizing Palestine. For people who are concerned with protecting Israel, and don't care much that what Israel is doing to Palestine is awful, those are all the obvious things to do.
The questions at the end were always going to be a bit of a "this is not so much of a question, more of an extended political rant touching on extremely hot-button topics" fest. Considering the topic, they were surprisingly polite. There were several, "do you agree that the way Israel has been treating X topic is good/bad?" with the only response being "this isn't really what I'm an expert in, but if I understand right, I definitely agree."
And one basically saying, "How can you criticise the prime minister for doing that when Israel doesn't get more support elsewhere? What else do you suggest he could possibly do?" which got a lot of muttering from the audience and a summarised rehash of the session. And I mean, it was good to get an idea of the range of opinion in the audience, even if everyone was never going to come to an agreement in one panel.
That last 'question' did make a point of saying they didn't justify what Israel was doing to Palestine with settlements etc, so I infer that nobody did, or if they did, they didn't feel comfortable saying so openly.
Trapped in a sack
It was depressing thinking why many countries seem to have lurched too far right recently. Is it just always happening but happens to have a run of examples that look like a trend recently? Is it that we're aging out of the generations that remember "never again"? Is it economic upset leading to a reinforcing "economy doing badly -> more insular politics -> economy does worse" spiral?
That last one in particular was bothering me. As I said several times, it's common that when people feel insecure, they're more likely to prioritise finding mutual safety with "their people". If you've grown up where having enough food for your family was touch and go, you're likely to naturally prioritise ensuring that that doesn't happen, and however personally charitable you are, the idea of trusting the government to make sure everyone has enough is one you're very suspicious of. But more government investment, more international trade, more links between different groups, and less destructive conflict is good for everyone -- if we trust each other enough to have it.
But you build trust slowly, and being desperate can destroy it quickly :(
This was obviously always going to be somewhat difficult, and if I already knew more about it, I probably wouldn't have wanted to listen to more, but as I knew very little, I was interested to hear. There were details I didn't really absorb, and although I got a general gist, I'm probably going to screw this up -- please post corrections in the comments.
The talk was by a senior political correspondant for Haaretz, a left leaning major Israeli newspaper, where much of her career is following the Prime Minister as part of the press corp, including going all round the world to wherever he's doing diplomacy with.
The background is that Israel politics has been drifting right over the last couple of decades, under quite a disliked Prime Minister. Contributing factors include the collapse in scandal of the centre left, and the large scale immigration of ancestrally Jewish people from Russia, who on average are less invested in Israel as a traditional homeland, and more invested in living somewhere reasonably safe. And even if many Israelis disagree, the drive for "all original Israel land should be Israel for religious reasons" and "we're being regularly bombed, we need to fight back" are ongoing.
But recently, the disturbing observation has been Israel forming friendly overtures with disturbing right wing governments like Saudi Arabia and those in eastern europe. And I mean, how did we get into that situation? If you had to pick two governments in the world you think might give Israel no time, you'd think a hardline muslim theocracy and a neonazi populist movement would be the top of the queue.
But often, pragmatism and being a right wing ideologicracy trumps the specifics of the ideologies. And I mean, both countries benefit from the legitimacy of having links with each other. If Israel can get even one EU country decisively on-side, they can block the EU from condemning Israel for things, or recognizing Palestine. For people who are concerned with protecting Israel, and don't care much that what Israel is doing to Palestine is awful, those are all the obvious things to do.
The questions at the end were always going to be a bit of a "this is not so much of a question, more of an extended political rant touching on extremely hot-button topics" fest. Considering the topic, they were surprisingly polite. There were several, "do you agree that the way Israel has been treating X topic is good/bad?" with the only response being "this isn't really what I'm an expert in, but if I understand right, I definitely agree."
And one basically saying, "How can you criticise the prime minister for doing that when Israel doesn't get more support elsewhere? What else do you suggest he could possibly do?" which got a lot of muttering from the audience and a summarised rehash of the session. And I mean, it was good to get an idea of the range of opinion in the audience, even if everyone was never going to come to an agreement in one panel.
That last 'question' did make a point of saying they didn't justify what Israel was doing to Palestine with settlements etc, so I infer that nobody did, or if they did, they didn't feel comfortable saying so openly.
Trapped in a sack
It was depressing thinking why many countries seem to have lurched too far right recently. Is it just always happening but happens to have a run of examples that look like a trend recently? Is it that we're aging out of the generations that remember "never again"? Is it economic upset leading to a reinforcing "economy doing badly -> more insular politics -> economy does worse" spiral?
That last one in particular was bothering me. As I said several times, it's common that when people feel insecure, they're more likely to prioritise finding mutual safety with "their people". If you've grown up where having enough food for your family was touch and go, you're likely to naturally prioritise ensuring that that doesn't happen, and however personally charitable you are, the idea of trusting the government to make sure everyone has enough is one you're very suspicious of. But more government investment, more international trade, more links between different groups, and less destructive conflict is good for everyone -- if we trust each other enough to have it.
But you build trust slowly, and being desperate can destroy it quickly :(