{"id":230424,"date":"2021-03-29T11:50:58","date_gmt":"2021-03-29T11:50:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=230424"},"modified":"2021-03-31T07:32:33","modified_gmt":"2021-03-31T07:32:33","slug":"israeli-politics-and-the-metaphysics-of-the-shtetl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=230424","title":{"rendered":"Israeli Politics and the Metaphysics of the Shtetl"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gilad Atzmon \u2013 gilad.co.uk March 29, 2021<\/strong><\/h1>\n

The ongoing political stalemate in Israel brings to mind an old recycled Jewish joke that reads as follows:<\/p>\n

Q: How many synagogues are needed in a village with one Jew?<\/p>\n

A: Two, one to go to and one to boycott!<\/p>\n

Self identified Jews, and especially non-religious one, are hardly defined by what they are but mostly by that which they oppose. They are basically defined by means of negation: the list of ideas, thoughts, philosophies and people whom they reject, contest and boycott.<\/p>\n

This unique state of being describes accurately the political paralysis in Israel. Roughly two-thirds of Knesset members are hard-core right wingers. They agree with PM Benjamin Netanyahu on pretty much every crucial political matter including the most radical chauvinist interpretations of Jewish nationalism. In a normal civilized democracy this would be enough to form the strongest possible government.\u00a0 But in Israel they are already preparing for their fifth consecutive election, as they have failed to form a stable government in the last three years.<\/p>\n

Like in the old Jewish joke they boycott each other. Netanyahu\u2019s past allies such as Avigdor Lieberman and Gideon Sa\u2019ar, who are actually to the right of Netanyahu, are committed to one goal: stopping the most popular Israeli right-wing politician. They prefer to join Netanyahu\u2019s bitterest enemies in the vanishing Israeli \u2018left\u2019 just to make sure that Netanyahu finally disappears\u00a0from the political arena. They will use every political maneuver to topple the man who, more than anyone else, transformed Israel into a right-wing regional superpower. Not many can deny that it is Netanyahu who reduced some world decaying powers into Israel\u2019s obedient remote colonies.<\/p>\n

How are we supposed to interpret this animosity within Israeli politics? How is it possible that right-wingers are determined to destroy their political twins? The genius philosopher Otto Weininger observed in his book Sex and Character that what we hate in others is that which we despise in ourselves. \u00a0According to Weininger, this is why the most dedicated homophobes are often latent gays themselves. Similarly, according to Weininger,\u00a0the most devoted Jews-haters are themselves Jews.<\/p>\n

It was Otto Weininger\u2019s brilliant observation that helped me grasp that it was me whom I hate the most. It was Weininger who helped me realize that the most profound study of Jewish ID politics may be achieved by means of self-reflection.\u00a0It was Weininger who explained why it is that the Jews who contributed to humanity the most (such as Jesus, Spinoza and Weininger himself)\u00a0were often described by fellow Jews as \u2018self-haters.\u2019\u00a0 It is more than likely that those who despise Netanyahu within the Israeli political realm actually hate in Netanyahu that which they despise in themselves. They are all deeply compromised; Netanyahu is just slightly more gifted in being compromised. He harnessed this gift into an astonishing political career.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu, in the most peculiar way, has brought to light everything the state has tried to conceal and suppress. It is Netanyahu that transformed Israel into a \u2018Jewish State,\u2019 understanding already in the 1990s that it is actually \u2018Jewishness\u2019 that unites Israeli Jews, as opposed to an \u2018Israeliness\u2019 that means less and less as time goes by. It was this realization that created that most resilient bond between Netanyahu and the Israeli orthodox parties. But Netanyahu is an elastic political character; when he realized that a coalition of \u2018the Jews\u2019 is not enough to win him the election he successfully bonded with the Islamic Party (Ra\u2019am).<\/p>\n

In a very short time ahead of the last election, Netanyahu managed to break the Israeli-Arab\u2019s rising political power, with Ra\u2019am separating from the United Arab List. \u00a0If Netanyahu manages to form a government at this stage, it is almost certain that he will do this with the support of the Islamic Party. Some Jewish nationalist\u00a0parties on the far right of Bibi\u2019s \u2018potential\u2019 coalition have declared that governing with the Islamist party is unimaginable<\/a>. Yet the Jewish orthodox party Shas announced that the possibility of uniting with Ra\u2019am isn\u2019t at all a\u00a0remote option. Again we see\u00a0a repetition of the synagogue joke above. The Jewish Orthodox prefer to sit with pious Muslims rather than with Jewish LGBTQ enthusiasts\u00a0of the pseudo-Left type.<\/p>\n

The Israeli Left is obviously made of the exact same material as their orthodox twins.\u00a0 The so-called \u2018Left\u2019 party Meretz already signaled that it is willing to sit in a coalition with the ultra-right Sa\u2019ar and Bennett<\/a> just to make sure that Netanyahu is ousted. They will join one Synagogue just to boycott the other.<\/p>\n

One may wonder\u00a0at this stage whether this absurd theater is a manifestation of some tribal irrational behavior. I don\u2019t believe it is. The entire Israeli political establishment benefits from the current political chaos. Netanyahu knows that his lawyers will manage to postpone his trial indefinitely as long as Israel is heading towards elections. His Likud Party members also know that without Netanyahu at the helm, their party would evaporate into dust.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu\u2019s enemies in the Right know that the public do not believe in them or their abilities, and with good reason. Centrist parties are also a vanishing political power. The disappearance of Netanyahu and the rise of a wall-to-wall right-wing coalition is a death sentence for them. The Israeli Left doesn\u2019t even deserve our attention as it is nonexistent by now and what is left out of it is treacherous to every recognized left value. Israel\u2019s Left is more concerned with Identitarian matters and LGBTQ fights than anything that is remotely working class-related, labour and social oriented or concerned with Israeli-Arab reconciliation.<\/p>\n

The truth of the matter is that everybody around Netanyahu expected him to win this election and form a coalition. The image of \u2018success\u2019 in the \u2018fight against Covid\u2019 was orchestrated by Netanyahu in the most profound manner and even this didn\u2019t translate into a victory. The truth of the matter is that for Netanyahu and the rest of the Israeli political world, the continuing paralysis is a survival strategy.<\/p>\n

This detachment between the masses and their oligarchs is not new to the Jewish universe. This is exactly how the Shtetl, the Diaspora Jewish town, was run. In the Shtetl, the rich and the oligarchs married their daughters to the young rabbinical prot\u00e9g\u00e9s just to form a very successful bond between wealth and authority. Consequently, the history of the Jewish Ghetto is a story of a great divided society of a cognitive and social partition between the people and the elite, between the \u2018Rothschilds,\u2019 so to say, and the rest: \u201chewers of wood and drawers of water<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel was born to amend the Jewish fate and correct the Jewish Diaspora\u2019s\u00a0destiny. It was made into a reality by left-leaning Zionist ideologists and agitators who vowed\u00a0to equalize Jewish society, to make Jews \u2018people like all others.\u2019 They tried to defy capitalism with labour, agriculture and new ethics. But the reality of the Jewish State proves the complete opposite. In just a few decades Israel has morphed into the worst shtetl of them all. \u00a0It manifests\u00a0every aspect Zionism vowed to eradicate. It is corrupted, divided and run by an aloof society that cares for itself and itself alone.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Self identified Jews, and especially non-religious one, are hardly defined by what they are but mostly by that which they oppose. Gilad Atzmon explains<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":109,"featured_media":230426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/109"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=230424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":230425,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230424\/revisions\/230425"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/230426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=230424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=230424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=230424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}