Alienating Arabs, and a Last-Minute Campaign for Video Cameras at Polling Centers, May Have Cost the Likud the Election

Following Israel’s most recent election, the Likud party finds itself at a disadvantage in comparison with its situation after the earlier elections in April. Evelyn Gordon contends that center-right voters defected to other parties or stayed home on election day because of mistakes made by the Likud’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu:

I’ve defended Netanyahu for years against false charges of anti-democratic conduct. . . . But during the latest campaign, he unquestionably adopted undemocratic tactics.

Take, for instance, . . . his proposal to allow cameras in polling stations to monitor voter fraud, which he tried unsuccessfully to ram through the Knesset a week before September’s election. The idea itself wasn’t illegitimate; even some leftists support it in principle. But the timing undeniably was.

[Netanyahu] also forgot the critical distinction between the Arab parties and the Arab electorate. The parties are a collection of Islamists, Communists, and radical Palestinian nationalists whose Knesset members actively work to undermine the Jewish state. . . . But most ordinary Israeli Arabs aren’t anti-Israel; in fact, 65 percent say they’re proud to be Israeli. . . . And while identity politics still drives most to vote for Arab parties, the majority are dissatisfied with those parties. Thus, not only do they not deserve to be tarred as enemies, but Israel has an interest in encouraging them to desert the Arab parties.

Instead, Netanyahu drove them straight into those parties’ arms by repeated invective against “Arabs,” which Arab voters naturally interpreted as referring to themselves even when he presumably meant the parties. . . . As a result, 82 percent of Arab voters backed the Arab parties’ Joint List, up from 70 percent in April [for the two separate Arab lists], and Arab turnout soared. . . . That Netanyahu’s behavior didn’t cost Likud even more votes is because he has been a superb prime minister.

Read more at Evelyn Gordon

More about: Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Arabs, Israeli Election 2019, Israeli politics, Likud

Why South Africa Has Led the Legal War against Israel

South Africa filed suit with the International Court of Justice in December accusing Israel of genocide. More recently, it requested that the court order the Jewish state to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip—something which, of course, Israel has been doing since the war began. Indeed, the country’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC) has had a long history of support for the Palestinian cause, but Orde Kittrie suggests that the current government, which is plagued by massive corruption, has more sinister motives for its fixation on accusing Israel of imagined crimes:

ANC-led South Africa has . . . repeatedly supported Hamas. In 2015 and 2018, the ANC and Hamas signed memoranda of understanding pledging cooperation against Israel. The Daily Maverick, a South African newspaper that previously won an international award for exposing ANC corruption, has reported claims that Iran “essentially paid the ANC to litigate against Israel in the ICJ.”

The ANC-led government says it is motivated by humanitarian principle. That’s contradicted by its support for Russia, and by [President Cyril] Ramaphosa’s warmly welcoming a visit in January by Mohamed Dagalo, the leader of the Sudanese-Arab Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia. Ramaphosa’s smiling, hand-holding welcome of Dagalo occurred two months after the RSF’s systematic massacre of hundreds of non-Arab Sudanese refugees in Darfur.

While the ANC has looted its own country and aided America’s enemies, the U.S. is insulating the party from the consequences of its corruption and mismanagement.

In Kittrie’s view, it is “time for Congress and the Biden administration to start helping South Africa’s people hold Ramaphosa accountable.”

Read more at The Hill

More about: International Law, Iran, South Africa