The Settlers’ Dream Government

Analysis of the coalition agreement between the Likud and the Jewish Home party (Bayit Yehudi)

The coalition agreement between the Likud and the Jewish Home party (Bayit Yehudi) reveals the plans of the new government and indicates its intentions. Beyond increasing the budgets and development of settlements, the government intends to address sectorial interests relating to the national religious public and to finance ideological educational activities aimed to fortify the right side of the political map. In addition, the government intends to initiate actions to restrict freedom of expression, to weaken the High Court of Justice and impair Israel’s democracy.

I am a product of the '60's. I demonstrated against the Viet Nam war, marched for civil rights and against racism. I have boycotted lettuce and grapes, in support of the United Farmworkers; Dow, for manufacturing napalm during the Viet Nam war; Coors, for discriminatory hiring practices against people of color and gays; Nestlé, for its aggressive campaign to sell breast milk substitute to young mothers in developing countries; Target, for its significant contributions to Tom Emmer, the rightwing candidate for Minnesota Governor whose agenda included positions I abhorred on everything; and Walmart, for its poor labor practices (except when my mother Ruth Epstein, who turns 100 this August, insists on going there “for the bargains”).

You get the picture. And while I don't support the boycott of Israel or Israeli-made products, I do support boycotting products made in settlements – and I urge others to do the same. In taking this position, I stand with friends, colleagues, and loved ones in Israel – including Shalom Achshav (Peace Now), the veteran Israeli peace movement. I seek out Israeli wine at my local stores, but only buy it if it comes from one of the vineyards inside the Green Line.

I boycott settlements – and urge others who care about Israel to do likewise – because settlements and their expansion is the greatest obstacle to achieving a two-state solution for Israel and her Palestinian neighbors, and thus the greatest threat to an Israeli future that is Jewish, secure, and democratic.

Israel’s new government should be seen as a call to action for anyone who cares about Israel’s future, about its character and about its wellbeing. This call applies not only to citizens of the state of Israel, but also – maybe even mainly – to those who are looking at Israel from outside, and, as outsiders, are best positioned to put a mirror before the Israeli public, to serve as a reality check.

The reality is that this government distinctly represents and expresses what the enlightened world, including progressive Americans who care deeply about Israel, have in recent years grown to resent about Israel’s conservative political elite.

The reality is that this political elite, characterized by a combination of jingoistic nationalism and religious conservatism, ethnocentrism and xenophobia, intolerance of dissent and disrespect for basic democratic principles, represents a set of values that is diametrically opposed to the values that most Americans, particularly young Americans, hold dear. More to the point, the reality is that this combination of reactionary beliefs, often zealously proclaimed in the name of Judaism, is the very antithesis of what most American Jews define as “Jewish values.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is grabbing positive headlines these days: first with reports that he wants to go back to negotiations with the Palestinians, and second with reports that he has expressed support for the Arab Peace Initiative (API). Or more accurately, he told EU Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini that he wants negotiations with the Palestinians over settlement blocs, and he told the press that he likes the "general idea" of better relations between Israel in the Arab world. Or, in essence, twice recently Netanyahu called the world stupid.

How stupid? Netanyahu's tactics are so shameless that they bring to mind a bit performed by Richard Pryor in his 1982 performance, "Live on the Sunset Strip." Pryor recounts how his wife caught him with another woman. He tells her: "I don't care what you think you saw... Are you gonna believe me or your lying eyes?"