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Caroline Glick’s primer on the Israeli election (with an added note about Jews, Arabs, and race) — 37 Comments

1. It is likely that many of today’s Palestinian Arabs (mostly Muslim, but with an important Christian minority) are descended from Jews who converted during the medieval period to Islam. Koestler’s theory about the Khazars still seems to have some adherents, although few scholars take it seriously.

2. j e:

   Anti-Semites and anti-Zionists have long clung to the Khazar theory for the main purpose of discrediting the Jewish claims to the state of Israel. So despite the Khazar theory’s bogus nature, they will not abandon it.

3. I wonder if Lieberman’s game has been to induce Likud’s sachems into compelling Bibi to retire. Both Likud and Yisrael Beitanu claim inspiration from Ze’ev Jabotinsky and the two parties were federated for a run of years. It is odd that Lieberman is being so recalcitrant.

4. Those demographics certainly are the case for my Israel connection. My Ashkenazi mother escaped Poland for Israel. My brother’s Israeli wife’s family are Jews who escaped Morocco and Venezuela, and my Israeli cousin’s husband, with his Jewish family escaped Iraq— where they had lived for 3,000 years. Seems we all escaped.

5. I am accustomed to using Sephardi. A neighbor is a Sephardi from Morocco. She married an American gentile from the naval base in Morocco. One of her children lives in Israel.
   When the mother of a Moroccan Muslim neighbor visited the US, she invited the mother over for coffee. Talk about the old country. But this willingness to socialize with Arabs doesn’t extend to a suicide pact. When talking about Arabs as a political group, she sounds like a card-carrying member of Likud.

6. This week the Washington Post slandered Netanyahu — and Israeli society. The editorial board falsely claimed that the public’s aversion to including the Arab parties in a government is a product of racism. This is a lie. Israelis don’t want to share power with the Arab parties because there is not one Arab party that accepts Israel’s right to exist. T

   She doesn’t mention that Israel’s regular political parties do slate Arab candidates and that Netanyahu’s last government had an Arab minister. When the Bezos Birdcage Liner isn’t lying, they’re using templates. John Leo used to say that the use of templates was SOP for American journalists, which is why so many stories were misreported in predictable ways.

7. As regards the automatic enmity from the Washington Post and New York Times, I would just add that I’ve noted a similar anti-Netanyahu bias in the Jerusalem Post. Very disheartening.

8. An article in The Times of Israel makes the election a bit less “inscrutable”, but not a heck of a lot (at least for me), but it’s interesting in any case — “Swallowing Kulanu and buying off Zehut, Netanyahu ended up losing 300,000 votes”. Some bits:

   Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to remove two competing parties from the playing field ahead of last week’s election do-over backfired spectacularly, near-final results show, with the Likud — despite having absorbed the Kulanu party, and promised Zehut’s leader a ministerial post in return for dropping out of the race — winning 300,000 fewer votes than the three factions picked up separately in April’s vote. …

   Commentators have speculated that some of those Kulanu and Zehut voters ended up voting for Yisrael Beytenu (which rose from five seats in April to eight on Tuesday) instead of Likud, while others may have switched to Blue and White. Indeed some of Zehut’s voters in April were likely traditional left-wing voters enticed by his pro-legalization platform, and may have gone back to supporting left-wing parties on Tuesday. …

   Party heads will meet with President Reuven Rivlin on Sunday and Monday to give their recommendations on who should be tasked with forming the next government. It is not yet clear how many votes Netanyahu and Gantz will each have — and whether they even want to be awarded the task at this stage: many commentators believe the first person tasked with forming a coalition is doomed to fail, and both candidates may prefer to position themselves as second in line. …

   The key figure in breaking the political deadlock is Yisrael Beytenu chief Avigdor Liberman.

   Liberman has vowed to push for a “liberal, nationalist, wide” unity government made up of his own party, Likud and Blue and White and no religious parties. But Likud has ruled out a coalition that does not include other right-wing and religious parties, and Blue and White has said it will not join a coalition led by Netanyahu — a notion Likud officials have stated, at least publicly, is out of the question.

9. I have had, for the past few years before moving to Arizona, a black Jewish dental hygienist. She was born in Ethiopia and was one of the Ethiopian Jews rescued by Israel when she was a child. We have had many conversations about Israel and about American racism. She is married to a white Jewish man and they visit Israel every year where some of her family still lives. She has described the “hate stares” she gets from black women when she is out with her white husband. Racism has nothing to do with the Israelis’ concerns about the loyalties of their Arab citizens.

10. Mizrachi is a better term than Sephardi since most Mizrahi have no Spanish roots. My wife is Sephardi Tur which is a term for those who actually came from Spain. Her father and grandparents spoke Ladino.
    and many true Sephardim are blond and some have blue eyes

11. You mean “hear, hear” not “here, here.”

12. Y81:

    Thanks, will fix.

13. “Israelis don’t want to share power with the Arab parties because there is not one Arab party that accepts Israel’s right to exist.

    There were Arab politicians elected yesterday that have written odes to terrorist murderers on their Facebook pages.

    Arab lawmakers were elected that have met with terror kingpins.

    Arab lawmakers routinely support the Palestinian war against Israel and express support for Hamas.” Caroline Glick

    Rhetorical question; why would a nation harbor declared mortal enemies within its midst?

    I wonder if politics might have anything to do with it? sarc/off

    Any Israeli who imagines that Islam can be reasoned with and that its agents can ever be persuaded to engage in sincere diplomatic negotiations… has provided proof of their disconnection from reality. Nothing less than the consequence of disenfranchisement is appropriate because anything less courts suicide.

    Perhaps after hundreds of thousands die in a WMD attack, Israel will finally feel that it has an unassailable excuse to expel every Muslim from its midst, given that with Islam’s support of lying and deceit no Muslim can be reliably vetted.

14. One of my life-changing experiences was reading the Hamas Covenant (1988) and finding this sentence indented and alone for emphasis at the top of the document:

    Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it” (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).

    Until then I had assumed, because I had never gotten down to brass tacks on the Israel-Palestine conflict, that it was a long-standing grudge match and both sides were wrong and right and it probably canceled out.

    After reading the Hamas Covenant, I knew better.

    Since then Hamas has revised and softened the Covenant, but I’m not fooled.

15. huxley:

    Yes, I originally bought into the “cycle of violence” yada yada yada thing, too. I wish I could recall the article that started opening my eyes, but I believe it was in the early-to-mid-1990s, and it was about what Palestinian children were being taught. Basically, virulent hatred. If I’m not mistaken, the article was in The New Yorker, of all things. In those days I only read TNY, the NY Times, and the Boston Globe, so it had to have been one of them, and it was rather long so I think it was TNY.

16. Link: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp

17. neo: I felt so naive. Good to know I wasn’t alone.

18. Bibi’s agreement with the religious right party is his strategy against Liberman’s play for “Unity gov’t” of Likud (31 seats) plus Blue and White (Gantz, 33 ). Whenever Gantz agrees to have Bibi as PM, and accepts the religious issues those parties “need”, there can be a unity gov’t.

    It ain’t gonna happen. Tho it could, theoretically.

    Bibi’s agreement with the religious parties gives him 55 seats (31+9+8+7). This means he won’t leave them and support Gantz as PM. Bibi stays as PM with religious parties will be OK with him, but Gantz loses with this “unity”. Losing after his party gained a little bit of power by joining the unacceptable PM Bibi seems much less likely than accepting another election.

    Because both Bibi and Gantz know who to blame for a 3rd election — Liberman, and his ex-Russian Jews who were in with Bibi before, but left, and is unwilling to join back up with him. His party is most likely to lose seats in a third election. (These are my speculative opinions that are obvious, but not discussed in Glick’s note.) She says Gantz cannot form a gov’t, and will have to come to terms with that “unalterable reality”. (Really? Can’t be changed?)

    Glick also offers an option that sounds like crossing the floor: ” Either the Blue and White Party — or one of its three factions — joins him, [or Leftist parties do]”
    This fails to clearly state under what conditions, if any, it takes for a member to leave one Party and join another, or for a faction to leave.

    If it’s legal, I’d guess a 6+ faction from Blue & White might join Bibi. But it was formed by 3 smaller Centrist Zionist parties joining together in 2019 – specifically to be against Bibi.

    Each party has a more-or-less charismatic / big ego leader. To me it looks like about 60-40% chances of a new election soon. Maybe after a bit more info happens in the indictments against Bibi – often accused but so far never proven to do illegal things.

19. The genetic studies of Jews are extremely interesting. I recall reading that in the Diaspora, Jewish men (with copies of Abraham’s Y chromosome) would go to a place in Europe, start a business and become successful
    Then find a local wife that was willing to become Jewish.
    Then have Jewish babies, who grow up, and mostly only marry other Jews.

    Each of the Jewish populations, they found, “formed its own distinctive cluster,” indicating their shared ancestry and “relative genetic isolation.”

    How to get the genetic isolation? Exclude/ excommunicate any Jews who don’t marry Jews — like the 3rd daughter in Fiddler on the Roof.

    This marriage discrimination has been ending for a couple of generations in the USA. One of my non-religious friends married a non-religious Jewish woman, with no problems. Trump’s daughter converted to Judaism when she married a Jewish man. I’d be very interested in knowing what the rate of intermarriage is in Israel. It’s pretty rare, and most such Jewish-Muslim couples want to avoid any local discrimination and hate, “marriage treason”. A bit funny that it’s especially against Jewish women marrying Muslim men.

20. “Rhetorical question; why would a nation harbor declared mortal enemies within its midst?” — Geoffrey

    As you correctly note, it’s politics, and it is especially the politics of democratic countries. Soviet Russia, for example, went to great lengths to eliminate its internal enemies. Unfortunately (for them), their methods kept generating more.

    The USA tolerates them (Communists, for example – what a coincidence) because we are a pluralistic society with a Constitution that does not permit political exclusion by ideology, only by acts.
    (Historic and state controversies to the contrary noted.)

    Israel is in the same situation. However, as has been said, it’s better to have your enemies inside the tent etc; because, then, at least they have declared themselves openly to be your enemies.

21. No, AesopFan, this is not better for Israel to keep her enemies inside the tent. Outside the tent they declare their hostility just as openly, but at least Israel can use there aviation and tanks to kill them and need not waste money to arrest, trial and keep them in prisons that look more like health resorts.

22. Does this constitutional protection in USA applies to proponents of Nazi ideology, for example, or not? In Germany there is a special quasi-police force that for sure excludes from political activity such people. And Germany is a democracy, too. In this respect Israel is in a situation which makes German approach more adequate than American. Arab nationalist parties still have representation in Knesset, but nobody invites them into government.

23. The NYT and the MSM, generally, has been slandering Israel for ages.

    Nothing really new, here.

    Maybe it makes them feel good. Maybe it makes them think that they will get Israel and Israelis to behave the way the Left believes they ought to behave (the left-wing press in Israel is no different in this regard).

    For the MSM (and the Left, generally), telling lies to create the “correct” result is VIRTUE pure and simple.

    In other words, non-stop delegitimization (based on falsehoods) is the cutting edge of morality.

    And so, Trump must be destroyed. Kavanaugh must be destroyed. Bibi, too (along Israel if it persists in supporting politicians like Bibi—AKA, as long as Israel insists that it has a right to exist and to defend itself, and does so).

    Matthew Continetti analyses the Democratic Party’s ideology and methodology—in this case, with regard to the continuous Kavanaugh lynching (H/T Instapundit):
    https://freebeacon.com/columns/kavanaugh-and-the-crisis-of-legitimacy/

24. Sergey – (1) the Arab parties are composed of Israeli citizens and therefore cannot be arbitrarily bombed or killed; (2) maybe Israel should follow Germany’s example and ban any political party that openly advocates the destruction of the nation of which they are citizens, but it wouldn’t stop the same people from forming parties without making their purposes explicit — a certain American party comes to mind — and I think it is better to know than to guess who your enemies are.

    They don’t have enough power in the Knesset to influence policy, do they?
    I don’t know enough to be sure, but I wouldn’t think they have enough seats or influence to do anything but grand-stand and protest.

25. Note that there is a lot of controversy concerning Ostrer’s findings (and similar such findings). See this: https://forward.com/news/israel/175912/jews-a-race-genetic-theory-comes-under-fierce-atta/?p=all

    So one should not take Ostrer’s research at face value or assume this his findings are established scientific facts.

26. harumpf:

    No – actually, there is not all that much controversy about it at all. There is widespread agreement on the correctness of Ostrer’s research.

    You gave a link to a 2013 article concerning research from a scientist named Elhaik, who is very much an outlier on the subject and has advanced the old Khazar theory. There is just about no scientific finding that some other scientist hasn’t argued with. But the particular research you cite in that article (by Elhaik) is one that has been quite thoroughly discredited.

    If you or anyone else are interested in reading more about it, there are many sources to look at. I suggest, just for starters, this, this, and this.

    Here is a very interesting criticism of Elhaik’s research that a layperson can easily understand. A quote:

    Let us return to Elhaik’s paper, which turns on comparing the genomes of individuals, especially males. “The complete data set,” he writes, “contained 1,287 unrelated individuals of 8 Jewish and 74 non-Jewish populations.” This is impressive, but it says nothing about the number of Eastern European Ashkenazi Jewish males whose Y chromosomes are central to Elhaik’s analysis. If one searches Elhaik’s website, it turns out that there were exactly 12 Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews in the data set. How many were male? To find out, I had to turn to the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of Tartu. It turns out that there were eight males in the sample. As small as this is, however, it turns out to be huge compared to the data set on Khazar DNA.

    The trouble with obtaining Khazar DNA is that no population group today is recognized to have descended from the Khazars. Elhaik acknowledges this difficulty and deals with it efficiently. According to him, “Caucasus Georgians and Armenians were considered proto-Khazars because they are believed to have emerged from the same genetic cohort as the Khazars.” He bases this claim on “Polak 1951; Dvornik 1962; Brook 2006.” This appears quite convincing unless one is familiar with the names cited—and the ones missing. Polak and Dvornik were important scholars, but their work is a half-century old and outdated, while Kevin Brook is a talented but amateur Khazar enthusiast who has no first-hand knowledge of Central Asian studies. In fact, no contemporary scholarship supports this claim.

    Much more at the link.

    Elhaik’s research is beloved by anyone who has a vested interest in saying Jews don’t have Middle Eastern roots. And that’s a lot of people, for a lot of reasons. But that doesn’t mean anything about whether his science holds water. It doesn’t for many reasons, as it turns out.

    Here are some excerpts from the Wiki summary of some of the criticism of Elhaik:

    Several noted geneticists, among them Marcus Feldman, Harry Ostrer, and Michael Hammer have maintained — and the view has gained widespread support among scientists — that the worldwide Jewish population is related and shares common roots in the Middle East, Feldman stated Elhaik’s statistical analysis would not pass muster with most scientists; Hammer affirmed it was an outlier minority view without scientific support…

    Elhaik’s 2012 study was specifically criticized for its use of Armenians and Azerbaijani Jews as proxies for Khazars and for using Bedouin and Jordanian Hashemites as a proxy for the Ancient Israelites. The former decision was criticized because Armenians were assumed to have a monolithic Caucasian ancestry, when as an Anatolian people (rather than Turkic) they contain many genetically Middle Eastern elements. Azerbaijani Jews are also assumed for the purposes of the study to have Khazarian ancestry, when Mountain Jews are actually descended from Persian Jews. The decision to cast Bedouin/Hashemites as “proto-Jews” was especially seen as political in nature, considering that both have origins in Arab tribes from the Arabian Peninsula rather than from the Ancient Israelites, while the descent of the Jews from the Israelites is largely accepted. The study was also criticized as interpreting information selectively—The study found far more genetic similarity between the Druze and Ashkenazim than the Ashkenazim and Armenians, but Elhaik rejected this as indicating a common Semitic origin, instead interpreting it as evidence of Druze having Turkic origins when they are known to come from Syria.

    Geneticists conducting studies in Jewish genetics have challenged Elhaik’s methods in his first paper. Michael Hammer called Elhaik’s premise “unrealistic,” calling Elhaik and other Khazarian hypothesis proponents “outlier folks… who have a minority view that’s not supported scientifically. I think the arguments they make are pretty weak and stretching what we know.” Marcus Feldman, director of Stanford University’s Morrison Institute for Population and Resource Studies, echoes Hammer. “If you take all of the careful genetic population analysis that has been done over the last 15 years… there’s no doubt about the common Middle Eastern origin,” he said. He added that Elhaik’s first paper “is sort of a one-off.” Elhaik’s statistical analysis would not pass muster with most contemporary scholars, Feldman said: “He appears to be applying the statistics in a way that gives him different results from what everybody else has obtained from essentially similar data.”

    Das, Elhaik and Wexler’s 2016 study was challenged by two prominent scholars of Jewish demography from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Shaul Stampfer, a professor of Soviet and East European Jewry, deemed it “basically nonsense.” Sergio DellaPergola, the primary demographer of the Jewish people at the university, called it a “falsification”, criticizing its methodology, using a small population size and selectively removing population groups that refuted the findings they wanted, namely other Jewish groups such as the Italkim and Sephardic Jews, to whom Ashkenazi Jews are closely related genetically. “Serious research would have factored in the glaring genetic similarity between Sephardim and Ashkenazim, which mean Polish Jews are more genetically similar to Iraqi Jews than to a non-Jewish Pole.” …

    Recently, a study by a team of biologists and linguists, led by Pavel Flegontov, a specialist in genomics, published a response to Das, Elhaik and Wexler’s 2016 study, criticizing their methodology and conclusions. They argue that GPS works to allow inferences for the origins of modern populations with an unadmixed genome, but not for tracing ancestries back 1,000 years ago. In their view, the paper tried to fit Wexler’s ‘marginal and unsupported interpretation’ of Yiddish into a model that only permits valid deductions for recent unadmixed populations. Beider also takes issue with Elhaik’s findings on linguistic grounds arguing that Yiddish onomastics lacks traces of a Turkic component. He concludes that theories of a Khazar connection are either speculative or simply wrong and “cannot be taken seriously.”

    Your final sentence says that “one should not take Ostrer’s research at face value or assume [that] his findings are established scientific facts.” No one is taking it at “face value.” It has been analyzed and found to be sound, and Elhaik’s has been analyzed also and found to be exceedingly poor on just about every level, by nearly every other scientist in the field. As for “established scientific facts,” that’s a strawman. In population genetics, there aren’t all that many, unlike physics. However, Ostrer’s research and that of a host of others – in fact, the vast majority of scientists who have researched this field – are established, accepted, and respected theories and explanations of Ashkenazi Jewish origins that have stood the test of time and science. Not so Elhaik.

27. Pingback:The Israeli Election | Transterrestrial Musings

28. Tom Grey, the strong bias against Jewish women marrying Muslim men in Israel is in large part because Israel still does not have a secular civil family law. Marriages, divorces, burials, birth registries are all governed by the religious authorities of one’s community. Judaism passes through the mother while Islam through the father. So you can see the problem: those children are equally claimed by both religions and, to paraphrase an old professor of mine, are therefore screwed. (Catholic citizens of Israel have been known to convert to Anglicanism to obtain divorce).

29. “…[Ostrer’s research] has been analyzed and found to be exceedingly poor on just about every level…”

    Neo, seems to me you’re going to have to rewrite that. It doesn’t say what I believe you wanted to say.

30. Barry Meislin:

    Yes, thanks. Some words went missing (haste/waste). I’ve made the additions.

31. GAME CHANGER UPSET
    Everyone was wrong about the Arab Party List; however, they have only endorsed Gantz (although that apparently is a first), and are not yet forming part of a government. I think.

    https://libertyunyielding.com/2019/09/23/knessets-arab-bloc-endorses-benny-gantz-in-race-to-form-government/

    The historic move marked the first time in nearly three decades that the Arab parties backed a candidate for prime minster, reflecting their contempt for Netanyahu, who was accused of fomenting hatred of the Arabs during his re-election campaign.

    I can’t access the AP report quoted; here’s the Guardian.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/22/israeli-arab-parties-back-benny-gantz-for-pm-breaking-with-precedent

    In announcing the decision, Joint List leader Ayman Odeh said the alliance’s decision was not an endorsement of Gantz’s policies but a move to oust Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister.

    It was the first time that majority Arab parties had endorsed a candidate for prime minister since 1992, when they backed Yitzhak Rabin, who went on to sign the Oslo accords with the Palestinians.

    Netanyahu has repeatedly been accused of political rhetoric and actions amounting to racism toward Israel’s Arab population. “We have become illegitimate in Israeli politics in the Netanyahu era,” Odeh told Israeli president Reuven Rivlin when informing him of the endorsement. “We are this time recommending Benny Gantz to form the next government.”

    Prominent Arab parliament member Ahmad Tibi said “history is done: We’ll do what is needed to bring down Netanyahu.”

    But the success of the Arab parties’ mission to end Netanyahu’s long dominance of Israeli politics was far from certain.

    If it is true as alleged, that all of the Arab parties support the dismantling of Israel and the destruction of the Jews, I’m not surprised Netanyahu took a stance opposing them. Whether that is racism or sanity appears to be in contention among the Middle East punditry.
    As Ann said on the Ukraine story: whose spin are ya gonna believe? — because none of us, and likely no one else, knows the truth from the facts.

    Lieberman, who could potentially play a king-maker role, said on Sunday that he would not endorse either Netanyahu or Gantz for now. He has insisted on a unity government between his party, Netanyahu’s rightwing Likud and Gantz’s centrist Blue and White.

    He added that for the time being he could not back Netanyahu because the premier is willing to form a coalition with Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties, which he accuses of seeking to impose religious law on the secular population.

    Lieberman also said he could not back Gantz for now because he might reach a deal with either the ultra-Orthodox or Israel’s Arab parties, which he called “enemies”.

    Given the choice between a more-orthodox religious regime that is at least of the same religion that Israel was founded to preserve (currently and anciently), and a regime dedicated to a religion that vehemently opposes that mission, I personally do not see how any Jewish Israeli can waffle over the point.

32. The Beeb is a little more restrained than the Guardian – but it has a really great visual graphic of the votes.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49790505

    Ayman Odeh, leader of the Joint List, told President Rivlin that his alliance’s priority was to prevent Mr Netanyahu from serving another term.
    …
    This is a significant exercise of political power by Israel’s Arab citizens.

    President Rivlin is consulting party leaders about whom he should ask to lead the country after last week’s inconclusive election results. The Arab parties put in a strong showing, becoming the third largest force in the legislature.

    Their support will not give Benny Gantz and his Blue and White alliance a majority, but it will give him a boost in negotiations about who gets the first chance to form a government.

    The leader of the Arab grouping, Ayman Odeh, said it wasn’t endorsing Mr Gantz and his polices: but was moving to try and block Benjamin Netanyahu from securing another term, and to send a clear message that Israel’s future must include the full and equal participation of its Palestinian citizens.

33. Some clarifications on endorsing vs joining coalition:
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/elections/.premium-israel-election-results-arab-alliance-endorses-gantz-for-pm-lieberman-won-t-back-anyone-1.7870827

    Odeh also wrote in a New York Times opinion piece explaining the decision: “I have argued earlier that if the center-left parties of Israel believe that Arab Palestinian citizens have a place in this country, they must accept that we have a place in its politics [. . .] We have decided to demonstrate that Arab Palestinian citizens can no longer be rejected or ignored. Our decision to recommend Mr. Gantz as the next prime minister without joining his expected national unity coalition government is a clear message that the only future for this country is a shared future, and there is no shared future without the full and equal participation of Arab Palestinian citizens.”
    …
    Netanyahu said that “exactly what we’ve been warning of” has happened. “Now, there are two options: Either a minority government backed by those who reject Israel as a Jewish and democratic state and praise terrorists … would be formed, or a broad national unity government,” he said, vowing to “work as much as I can to form a broad national unity government. There’s no other solution.”

34. Some dissension in the ranks, and speculations about collusion.
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-behind-the-scenes-why-arab-parties-did-not-fully-endorse-gantz-1.7890128

    Mtanes Shehadeh, head of the Balad faction of the Joint List, confirmed to Haaretz on Monday that he had personally approached the director-general of President Reuven Rivlin’s bureau with the message that the faction objected to recommending Benny Gantz for prime minister. Balad wanted to make sure its members’ names were removed from the list of those who had given the Kahol Lavan leader their endorsement, Shehadeh said.
    …
    Meanwhile, some sources in Balad suggested that their letter dissociating from the Gantz recommendation had been written with Tibi,Odeh and Kahol Lavan’s agreement, as Gantz’s party did not wish to be the first to be asked to form the government. But Odeh, Tibi and Kahol Lavan have denied any such collusion.
    …
    Members of Hadash, another party in the Joint List, also objected to recommending Gantz to the president. MK Aida Touma-Sliman posted on Facebook: “This is Gantz’s fateful moment. Either he’s an alternative or he’s a Netanyahu double. We can’t be expected to recommend Gantz, after which he’ll rush to form a unity government. We demand a path that leads to a horizon that includes a hope for peace, justice, an end to the siege of Gaza, true equality, national and civil.”

    Touma-Sliman’s remarks were also seen as directed against Odeh. But all party members of the Joint List alliance said they remain united despite these differences.

35. https://www.foxnews.com/world/gantz-netanyahu-israel-unity-talks-president-rivlin

    In a break from custom, a coalition of Arab parties endorsed Gantz, marking the first time in nearly three decades that the group had recommended a candidate. Arab parties typically have withheld from endorsing a candidate because they have pushed back against any suggestion they were legitimizing Israeli policies, which they have claimed discriminated against Palestinians. Arab leaders said they made their decision with the goal of toppling Netanyahu.

    Three Arab lawmakers said Monday they were withdrawing their endorsements for Gantz, which left him with less support than Netanyahu.

36. https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/291733/dont-cheer-on-the-joint-list

    When the Joint List, the Arab party that emerged as Israel’s third largest in the recent round of elections, endorsed Benny Gantz as its candidate for prime minister on Sunday, pundits took to every available perch to declare the moment historic. After all, no Arab party has ever endorsed a Jewish leader, and Ayman Odeh, the party’s Obama-esque leader, seized the moment properly by tweeting a line from Psalms. To many, this felt like a breath of fresh air, a surge of coexistence and compromise after Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line policies.

    The hosannas, however, are premature: The Joint List, sadly, remains a vehemently anti-Zionist party whose members have often expressed their support for convicted terrorists. All it takes is a brief look at the party and its principles to learn why Gantz—whose Blue and White party is currently Israel’s most popular, with 33 Knesset seats—should immediately and forcefully reject this endorsement.
    …
    That a party like the Joint List—which is fiercely anti-Zionist and advocates turning Israel from a Jewish state into a binational one—can emerge as the nation’s third largest is a testament to Israel’s robust and vibrant democracy, the very one perpetually eulogized by sophisticated columnists in liberal newspapers the world over. But there is only one thing Benny Gantz must now do with this endorsement, which is reject it vociferously and unequivocally. For all its rhetorical juggling and masterful use of social media, the party hasn’t changed its basic stance, one that calls for the destruction of Israel as it currently stands. Nor has it taken any steps to discipline its many members for cheering on terrorists and murderers. It should be denounced and ostracized, even—or particularly—in these uncertain political times.

    That this joint list party is the third largest in Israel is not just “a testament to Israel’s robust and vibrant democracy,” – it’s an indicator of serious, serious problems in its social constituency.

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