Why was Netanyahu Elected to an Unprecedented Fifth Term in Israel?

An Interview with Mordechai Nisan

by Jerry Gordon and Rod Reuven Dovid Bryant (May 2019)

Israeli Supporters of PM Netanyahu at Likud Party Headquarters, Tel Aviv, April 9, 2019 (Reuters)

Blue – White Alliance headed by former IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, a former Netanyahu Minister of Defense Moshe Ya’alon and secularist Yair Lapid of the Yesh Atid party. 39 parties competed for 120 Knesset seats. The actual vote tally between the Blue – White alliance and Likud was one vote, in favor of Netanyahu; 36 to 35. Netanyahu faces the daunting task of assembling a ruling coalition. Then there is the looming matter of outstanding indictments brought against him on bribery and fraud charges by his appointed Attorney General Yishai Mandeblit following Israeli Police investigations

announced that she was leaving politics.

polled viewed President Trump favorably.

Unlike US Jewish millennials who have evinced troubling views about Israel, their Israeli counterparts voted overwhelmingly for Netanyahu and the center right nationalist coalition. The Wall Street Journal in a post-election analysis noted:

Ahead of the election, Mr. Netanyahu had the support of almost two-thirds of 18- to 24-year-olds and 54% of 25 to 34-year-olds, according to Israel Democracy institute survey.

More than 55% of Israelis now call themselves right wing, up from 40% a decade earlier, the same survey found.

following the Muslim month-long Ramadan observances. Based on comments from the White House diplomatic team of Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, as well as, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at a US Senate testimony there may not be support for the failed “two states solution”.

The once dominant Labor and extreme Leftist Meretz parties in the April 2019 elections were barely able to cross the threshold for representation in the new Knesset. The WSJ report noted how devastating the turn of electoral events were for the Left in Israel:

The Labor party finished with six seats, a historic low. It garnered just 3% of 18- to 24-year olds in a Smith poll.

“Young Israelis have internalized Mr. Netanyahu’s message that the left wing would damage the country if put in power”, said Itai Glazer, a teenage supporter of Meretz, a left-wing organization.

“We live in a world in which the left has never been in power and we’ve never seen what the left can do. We’ve grown up in the world in which we were told the left is a catastrophe,” Mr. Glazer said.

And some young Jewish Israeli voters say they can’t ever envision voting for parties that advocate engagement with Palestinians.

“I think that basically Arabs hate us,” said Elazar Cohn, 20, of Jerusalem. “I don’t think there will be peace.”

Israeli Arabs virtually boycotted the elections. Less than 20 percent of eligible Israeli Arabs went to cast a ballot in the blue boxes at voting booths. They identify more with the struggle against Israel of their Palestinian brethren across the green line than they do with the democratic values of the Jewish nation state. President of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, is the bete noire of PM Netanyahu. Rivlin is accused by the right of lavishing economic, education and social aid to Israeli Arab communities despite their disloyalty. The Rivlin and Netanyahu families despite being Likud stalwarts, have s been a veritable feud for three generations.

With this in mind, we interviewed former Hebrew University Professor and expert on Middle East minorities, Dr. Mordechai Nisan, author of The Crack -up of the Israel Left just before the recent Knesset elections.

The Crack -up of the Israeli Left., published in Canada because it couldn’t be done in Israel. Because the left has controlled the cultural mindset of the Jewish nation.

Rod: Right. So those people living in the United States who are not Jewish will recognize the tenor of what the left is in Israel because the left in the United States is very much the same ideologically. You almost see it mirrored exactly. Our guest is Mordechai Nisan and we are going to be talking about the left, what the politics of the left is like in Israel. We hope to provide our listeners outside of Israel with an understanding of what Israeli politics are all about.

Jerry: Mordechai Nisan, why did you write The Crack-up of the Israeli Left?

Mordechai I wrote The Crack-up of the Israeli Left because it is an accurate description of what has happened to the Israeli left. I have been following Israeli politics for many decades and what became so prominent in my thinking is that the left is out of touch with two basic things. Out of touch with the fundamental definition and identity of the Jewish people, our heritage, our memory, our land, our honor. They seemed to have disconnected from these fundamental aspects of what it means to be a Jewish people in Israel. The second thing that I found was they are out of touch with the region, with the nature of the war with the Arabs, with the character of the Middle East as unstable, vicious and terroristic. They therefore are unable to understand adequately who they are and who the other is, meaning the Arabs within us, around us with whom we must contend.

Rod: For those people that live outside of Israel, especially people in the United States of America, would you consider the Israeli left somewhat like the left that we have represented in politics in the US?

Jerry: Mordechai, what is the story about Mantua Books, the Canadian imprint that published your book?

Mordechai: The great virtue of Mantua Publishing Company in Ontario, Canada is that it is committed to a conservative outlook and philosophy which is relevant in Canada, the United States and elsewhere. In addition, it made a commitment is to be a pro-Israel publisher. Therefore, my book fit in with their agenda. I think it may be their first book on Israel that they have published. My book fit the outlook of Howard Rotberg the founder and publisher of Mantua.

Rod: How did the works of R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. of The American Spectator influence the selection of the title?

Mordechai: I came across R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. and his extraordinary magazine, The American Spectator, many years ago. I subscribed and read it avidly because it is a magazine which combines a conservative outlook on things political and cultural with a very witty humorous satirical writing style. I subsequently got to know Tyrrell from The American Spectator and books he wrote, entitled, The Liberal Crack-up and The Conservative Crack-up. The purpose of the title, The Crack-up of the Israeli Left makes it a kind of humorous title on a serious subject. When you say crack-up in English we are kidding or joking. Yet the subject is serious and really that was the combination that I was looking for.

Jerry: Mordechai, how totalitarian, in your view, are the precepts of the left in Israel?

Jerry: What are some of the examples you discuss in you book about how the left in Israel has historically undermined the core nation state Zionist precepts?

Mordechai: I think the first and obvious example of the left abandoning or undermining Zionism is when it decided with the military victory in the Six Day War of 1967 that the land of Israel was not going to be settled, controlled, incorporated within the borders of the State of Israel. By that I mean the core of the Jewish homeland from biblical times, Judea and Samaria, were not to remain with the Jewish people. They were to be negotiated away to some Arab partner in some delusional peace deal. Once you agree to give up parts of the land of Israel, the essence of the land of Israel, then I think you are really abandoning Zionism. I used the quote in my book from Ben-Gurion in 1937 where he said, “that no Jew has a right to concede any part of the land of Israel because it is the collective possession of the Jewish people from time immemorial until the end of times”. The left decided that they were willing to concede a portion of Judea and Samaria of the land of Israel after 1967, under the leadership of Golda Meir and thereafter under Rabin, Peres and Barak. Then we can say that they abandoned Zionism. I think that is the most staggering example of the left undermining Zionism.

Rod: As most of us know Israel has a very long history of those people that are not Jewish living within the state and living as part of a citizenry. It totally makes sense what you just said, Mordechai. How could someone could go about purchasing your book?

Mordechai: The Crack-up of the Israeli Left is available on Amazon.com. In addition, you might visit local bookstores to see if they will order copies.

Jerry: Mordechai what currently constitutes the liberal left versus the conservative right ideologically in Israel?

Rod: Asian as well.

Mordechai: This is one of these examples which divides the left from the right. We are hopeful that there will be a more effective government on the issue of the infiltrators that this problem can be resolved. The African infiltrators have brought crime, Jewish fear for their well-being in the face of Africans who control the public space in the Southern Tel Aviv neighborhoods. Another issue which divides the left from the right is the place of Arabs in the country. The power of the left in Israel is that they define the narrative. They define what we call the politically correct conversation. The left has promoted the idea that the Arabs should be the Arab citizens of Israel—those who live in the Galilee, Jaffa, Haifa who are indeed citizens of the country should benefit from affirmative action, inverse discrimination. They should be promoted more. They should be given more opportunities, benefits and privileges than even the Jews. In this sense the left has promoted this agenda. The right or the conservative camp in Israel has been virtually unable or unwilling to confront this policy. Even Likud, the center right political party, carrying the nationalist vision in Israel, has not offered an alternative to placating the Arab population in the country. The Likud government has been very generous in providing budgetary outlays for the Arab community. The Arab population in Israel are citizens who were eligible to vote on April 9th. However, many Israeli Arabs may not vote because they are not committed to the idea of Israel as a Jewish state

Rod: How serious do you think the left is to possibly fundamentally changing Israeli’s nationalist view of themselves as the state of the Jewish people. Do you think this is a serious threat?

Jerry: Mordechai, Israelis will shortly go to the polls to elect a new Knesset. The choice is between the Blue White center-left alliance versus the Likud center-right coalition. It is a tight race. What in your view is how one might choose to put a ballot in that blue box to represent the priorities of Israeli voters?

Mordechai: The Crack-Up of the Israeli Left shows how the left diverged from the classical Jewish, Zionist, Israeli values and policies and how the hard core left has turned against the state. Part of the left’s campaign is to call Israelis ‘Nazis’, ‘racists’, to call Israel ‘an apartheid state’, to condemn Israel for the continuation of the conflict with the Arabs. They are part of the BDS worldwide campaign. We must put the left in its place, expose it in its own words and therefore choose a healthy, sane, national Zionist Israel.

Rod: Thank you so much for coming on the show Mordechai. We really appreciate it. You have been listening to Beyond the Matrix here on Israel News Talk Radio and we will see you next week.

Mordechai: Thank you so much.

Listen to the Israel News Talk Radio—Beyond the Matrix interview with Mordechai Nisan.

Watch this brief post-Israeli election NewsMax interview with Mordechai Nisan, author of The Crack -up of the Israeli Left.

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Jerome B Gordon is a Senior Vice President of the New English Review and author of The West Speaks, NER Press 2012. Mr. Gordon is a former US Army intelligence officer who served during the Viet Nam era. He was the co-host and co-producer of weekly The Lisa Benson Show for National Security that aired out of KKNT960 in Phoenix Arizona from 2013 to 2016. He is co-host and co-producer of the Middle East Round Table periodic series on 1330amWEBY, Northwest Florida Talk Radio, Pensacola, Florida. He is producer and co-host for the weekly Israel News Talk Radio-Beyond the Matrix program that airs on-line out of Jerusalem.

Rod Reuven Dovid Bryant is the creator and host of the weekly Israel News Talk Radio-Beyond the Matrix that airs on-line out of Jerusalem. He is he Director of Education and Counseling for Netiv Center for Torah Study in Houston, Texas. He was a successful former Evangelical Christian minister, who advocates Torah-based principles for the non-Jew.

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