Looming elections: can the centre hold?

GEOFF SIFRIN

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rightist Likud party, which has been in power since 1977, alternating with Labour, has declared a snap election for 9 April. He leads a confident country at the pinnacle of its economic and political power.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa heads the African National Congress, and presides over a depressed country in desperate economic and political crisis which wants him to save it from going over the cliff. Elections will be on 8 May.

Every democratic society has radicals on the extremes and a centre holding it together. It is instructive to compare the two countries. Centrist South Africans fret over Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema, who claims to be on the left, but behaves like a fascist thug in a red overall, playing to the masses’ grossest emotions, like Hitler once did.

Israel has radicals who would throw all the Palestinians out of their land, but has a powerful centre skilled at knowing where the red lines are, and what would lead to war.

Netanyahu’s motives for calling the election are not so much about policies, but personal: his concern about criminal charges against him for bribery, which the police have already recommended. If it were possible, he would probably have held elections sooner, so he would be doing so as the leader of a popular, recently re-elected party. The Likud will almost definitely win. It’s a sad development. Israel’s previous great leaders, such as Menachem Begin, lived in small apartments, and would never have flirted with corruption.

Netanyahu is a man accustomed to the trappings of power, but with his tail between his legs. According to polls, more than 50% of Israelis want him out. And, his fight with the radicals, whether settlers or the ultra-orthodox, constantly threatens to bring his government crashing down.

Ramaphosa represents the moderate left in his country. He is a resolute firefighter with a clean record, aiming to douse the meltdown from the failure for nine years of disgraced former President Jacob Zuma to govern effectively. But he has powerful political and tribal enemies. Will he have sufficient time in office to do it?

The left in Israel is in disarray, both moderate left and radicals. It won’t recover anytime soon. But the centrist and extreme right has risen dramatically.

Bezalel Smotrich, for example, is the leader of Israel’s furthest-right faction, the National Union party, and part of what he calls the “strong backbone” of the tent of the right. He could be called the Israeli equivalent of the racist, anti-white Malema. The media call him the “blue-eyed, bearded settler”, the youthful face of unashamed political and religious extremism. A second-generation settler, he was born in the Golan Heights, and grew up in Beit El.

He is criticised as racist, homophobic, messianic, and undemocratic – serious charges in Israel’s democracy. In 2005, the Shin Bet arrested him on suspicion of organising violent protests against the Gaza disengagement. He has declared himself a “proud homophobe”, and organised an anti-gay “beast parade” in Jerusalem to protest against a gay pride parade, featuring goats and donkeys to ridicule the celebration of so-called “deviant acts”.

To South Africans and the vast majority of ordinary Israelis, this comes across as bizarre. Smotrich would be unwelcome in South African politics. His views would be declared unconstitutional and branded as hate speech.

What attitude should Jews adopt towards the Malemas and Smotriches of this world? We vote in South Africa, but think hard about Israel. Everyone must straddle the line between distaste and support.