Netanyahu is NOT supporting Mizrachi Israelis with this “Reform”

As I have written about before, my biggest fear is that too many people are turning a blind eye to the major underlying issues and ramifications of the Judicial “Reform” in Israel.

One of the reasons for this is that the right wing has quickly adopted the most vile practices of Trump-era politics: weaponizing politics along nativist and cultural lines as a means to mask horrible policy.

Right now, the right-wing punditry in Israel is abusing longstanding cultural divides between Mizrachi Israelis (meaning not of European descent) against the Ashkenazi Israelis (meaning of European descent) as a way of deflect the conversation away from actual politics.

As Aron Heller points out in his recently in the NYT, right-wing Israeli politicians, and their supporters, have long ago abandoned any reasoned discussion about policy in favor of incendiary language meant to rile up their base. The right-wing is actively divided the country into two by claiming that the center-left is treating Mizrachi Israelis as second class citizens. The right-wing is also (fraudulently) utilizing this as justification for the “Reform”.

This is effectively deterring the conversation away from the actual implications of the “Reform”.

As Heller mentions, Trump-era politics includes all of the nastiness you would expect, including flagrant lies, gaslighting, misinformation, and deception. Right wing Israeli pundits have incorporated these measures quickly, to various degrees of success:

Above is from the Twitter account of Yinon Magal — the Israeli version of Tucker Carlson — except Yinon is much less savvy. Yinon writes: “Protests of the Right in favor of the Reform, according to drone footage of Channel 14… 1.5 Million Protesters” (Note — there were less than 10K “pro” reformers that night, and all in Jerusalem. There were an addition 600K “against” reformers in every other city in Israel)

The response says: “Hi Yinon, I actually took that photo. The photo was taken after Neta Barzilay won the Eurovision song contest”.

But I want to add something critical on top of what Heller writes. The right-wing politicians in Israel have also incorporated another important aspect from Trump-era politics: Flat out neglect and abuse of their base.

While Netanyahu and his cronies are riling up Mizrachi Israelis against the rest of the country, they are also actively ignoring the needs of the Mizrachi Israelis.

It is very easy to see this in practice. There are currently over 140 proposed laws on the docket. Go over all of them and you will see that NONE mention anything relating to Mizrachi Israelis.

There are hundreds of clauses in the ratified coalition agreements. Go over all of them and you will see that NONE mention anything relating to Mizrachi Israelis.

There is not one single proposed law, nor one single clause that mentions support for Mizrachi Israelis.

No mention of affirmative action. No mention of social welfare support. No mention of cost-of-living. No mention of assistance to the periphery.

Zero.

The gap between Mizrachi and Ashkenazi Israelis is deep rooted, and even though things have been improving, there is still a long way to go. But the reality is that the right-wing government is doing absolutely nothing to address this, and actually has no plans to address this at all.

I will put this bluntly:

Netanyahu and the right-wing politicians in Israel are actively screwing over their own base.

Netanyahu and the right-wing politicians in Israel are NOT supporting Mizrachi Israelis.

And let me add one more point, just in case there are readers out there who support this “Reform”, or readers out there who think the right-wing actually cares about Mizrachi Israelis.

You are being played for suckers.

The right-wing does not care about you at all — you can see it for yourself stark omitions of the laws and clauses.

Support whatever you like, but at least do it with eyes open and don’t be suckers, because Netanyahu is playing you for fools.