by Ramzy Baroud / June 2nd, 2021
The political discourse of Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, is similar to that of an ineffectual king who has been isolated in his palace for far too long. The king speaks of prosperity and peace, and tirelessly counts his innumerable achievements, while his people are dying of starvation outside and pointlessly begging for his attention.
But Abbas is no ordinary king. He is a ‘president’ by name only, a designated ‘leader’ simply because Israel and the US-led international political system insist on recognizing him as such. Not only had the man’s political mandate expired in 2009, it was quite limited even prior to that date. At no point in his career did Abbas ever represent the entire Palestinian people. Now, at 85 years, chances are Abbas will never serve this role.
Even by the standards of previous Israeli coalitions, the new government that’s just been announced includes strange bedfellows.
The eight parties in the coalition range from the right-wing nationalist Yamina party to social-democratic Labor and left-wing Meretz. And for the first time in Israeli history, the coalition includes an Arab-Israeli party, Ra’am, whose four Knesset (parliament) seats enable the coalition to reach a majority.
Another oddity of the new government is that Yamina leader Naftali Bennett will have the first two-year turn of a rotating four-year prime ministership with Ya’ir Lapid, leader of centrist party Yesh Atid.
GERMÁN GORRAIZ LÓPEZ
Lapid’s Rainbow coalition government would be the last hope to prevent the disappearance of formal democracy in Israel and its replacement by a
theocratic-military regime that will mean that large sectors of secular and urban Israeli youth must choose to swell the list of settlers remotely controlled by the Haredim or migrate to the West.
Lapid and the “secular revolution”
The Israeli society of the XXI century (80% of Jews compared to 20% of Arab population), would be a melting pot of races, customs, languages and values that would only have in common their Jewish origin and in which a coup would be taking place from the silent hand of an ultra-orthodox minority, the “
Stephen Fry. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Jewish British actor and comedian Stephen Fry shared on Thursday what he described as a “brilliant” essay that bashed Israel and described the country as an embarrassment to Jews.
“It’s hard for me to think of the State of Israel as anything but a
shanda fir di goyim … a Jew that embarrassed the Jews, and thus justified Gentile persecution and hate,” wrote 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning author Benjamin Moser in an essay published on his Substack newsletter on Tuesday, titled “A trip to Hebron.”
Fry posted on Twitter on Thursday a link to the essay and wrote, “This is quite brilliant, as Benjamin Moser so often is. Aside from being a wonderful piece of writing in itself, it has clarified so much for me.”