A few weeks ago, I took part in a discussion after a film screening at the SOAS Israel Society in London. The film concerned the Wannsee Conference, where the “final solution” was planned, and the screening was organised by a member of the society, a barrister doing his PhD at the LSE. Of those present, three were men (myself included), and six were women, including one of the principal organisers of the society, a theater student who, as we remembered much too late, had said before the discussion she’ll want to talk about Holocaust education in Israel; and another principal organiser, a history student, who, among other things, has been exploring issues of complicity and real-time denial by combatants conducting ethnic cleansing in the War of 1948.

The credits rolled, and the barrister made some introductory remarks explaining the political and legal history after the events of the film. He then opened the floor to the rest of the group. Nobody spoke, so I pitched in. The third man, a history PhD student in his forties, picked up, and the moderator rejoined him.

Fifteen minutes into the discussion, it hit me that only we men in the room were talking.

Once I realised I was part of the problem, I contended myself with withdrawing from conversation. I was hoping one of the women present would step into my space, but in reality, all I did was let the two other men seamlessly fill up that space with their own conversation. And while women did join the discussion towards the end, they still spoke considerably more briefly (even if more to the point) than the men. The fact the men were in their thirties to forties, mid-career (myself) or PhDs and most of the women were postgrad or undergrad students under 25, didn’t help either. Whenever the discussion died down and no one would say anything, I would permit myself to pitch in with a comment, assuming that someone has to say something and no one was saying anything, so I might as well. I was usually rejoined by one of the men, followed by the other, and the dynamic cheerfully resumed itself.

After the discussion ended, one of the organisers said there should be a sign or a gesture established in the group that would mean “men, stop talking.” I agreed emphatically and was immediately confronted with the fact I didn’t actually do anything to stop what was going on.

So why didn’t I? After all, I realized the dynamic as it was happening, and there were a few things I could’ve done. I could have stopped the discussion and called out the dynamic that was taking place; I could have taken over briefly as moderator by directly asking one of the women present to contribute insights based on the knowledge that I already knew she had. I’m normally reasonably (though by no means exhaustively) aware of gender dynamics in groups I’m in, and have little reservations about calling them out – although, crucially, one of the women present usually does it before I have to.

This was the first element that allowed me to put my guard down: two of the women present were friends and feminist activists who normally plunge into discussions, lead them, and call out gender dynamics when they see them. Having them there allowed me to eschew responsibility and to wait for them to take the lead (which I tried to prompt by, um, vigorous eye contact). So long as they weren’t saying anything (ran the unarticulated tranquilliser at the back of my mind) things weren’t that bad, surely.

What I didn’t realize as this was happening, though, was the second factor: the sheer power and impenetrability of that centrifuge of three men talking – three older and “more experienced” men  – and how difficult the vortex can be to breach, no matter who else is in the room. I’m putting “more experienced” into quotation marks because it’s not necessarily about genuine or relevant experience: much of the man-talk in the room centred on expertise on international law and on film trivia. In fact, as far as political and societal analysis of the type many of us hoped to get out of the discussion was concerned, I myself often look up to some of the women present. But what was taking place a certain type-casting on which gender dynamics operate: the content or relevance of our demonstrated expertise was much less important than the fact we were Three Experienced Men Talking – you know, just like we talk in any number of other meetings, on male-only (or 90 percent male) panels at conferences, at dinners, at parties, and on TV. Merely falling silent does not make you less complicit in that, not least because it allows the two other men to take the space you meant to leave for others to step into, but didn’t say so explicitly.

And retrospectively, this was the third reason why I allowed myself to slip into the gender dynamic I normally manage to go against: while dear friends and fellow activists, these two men were older and more “experienced” than myself – PhD students both, one a barrister – and, in terms of their own personal style of conversation, could go on talking for some time while making a point. In other words, I felt as if I was being talked out of the discussion and had to compete to retain my place in it, thus contributing my own share to the male-domination dynamic of the talk. At the same time, a portion of self pity and anxiety allowed me (hilariously) to frame myself as part-victim of the same dynamic, thus relieving me of the responsibility to do something about it.

Moreover, the fact I was vacillating between falling completely silent and making the occasional intervention merely legitimised the dynamic. Trying to steer their conversation away from technical jargon by engaging with it – in a bid to buy my place within the conversation before turning it – only reinforced it; while the fact three people were talking rather than two made it seem less unnatural and made it more difficult for those excluded to intervene.

Finally, and this was the fourth element: all this allowed me to tune out the gender-dynamic awareness I normally try to maintain, and not to snap back into focus until the discussion was already over. I only realized most of the things listed above on the tube ride home; at the time, I was oblivious enough that when noticing the history student next to me seething silently, I passed her a sympathetic note asking if she was tired – implicitly shifting onto her the responsibility for not speaking out rather than onto the dynamic in which I myself was participating.

So what are the interim lessons learned? They go beyond specifically male privilege alone and can apply to any situation where, on the one hand, you, whatever your gender identity is, find yourself benefiting from a hegemonic dynamic taking place, even if it’s a hegemony you renounce and sincerely hope to deconstruct – and on the other hand, participants from the wrong end of the dynamic appearing to be unable to break through it, at this point in time.

Lesson one is that privilege is much like alcoholism: you can be dry for years or spend a lifetime unlearning it (which I have by no means done, only having begun to think seriously about gender in the last couple of years or so), and still find it incredibly easy to slip off the wagon. It’s not a surprising parallel, because both concern addiction to an immediate sense of empowerment. If anything, male privilege is more insidious because you don’t actually articulate it. You (hopefully) don’t negotiate with yourself like you do with alcohol: “Oh, I’ll partake in the pleasure of patriarchy in a small way, just this once, no one’s going to know.” Not thinking about it or being distracted momentarily is enough to slip into it, setting in action half-dormant processes that are always there to carry you much further than you anticipate.

A second lesson learned is that as a member of a hegemonic group you’re never “just a participant”; you can’t say that you’re not the chair of a given meeting, or that you can safely leave it in the hands of members of the non-hegemonic group to dismantle the dynamic that benefits you at their expense.

You need to engage with this dynamic proactively, but (and this is the third lesson learned) do so while being honest about the manner in which you do and the results you’re expecting or are likely to achieve. Sometimes (god knows) dramatic interventions are necessary. You can stop the discussion, call out the privilege and explicitly vacate the floor for those who haven’t spoken yet. But even on occasions that seem to leave you little other choice, this type of intervention risks silencing the silent even further. It essentializes everyone, explicitly or implicitly requesting them to speak as representatives of their group rather than bring in their own nuanced contribuition.

Other times, the setting you risk producing is even more patronising than the original privilege dynamic – more patronising because you take the argument meant to subvert the privilege, and turn it to your own benefit, casting yourself as the “nice” and even “contrite” member of the hegemony who graciously enables the members of the oppressed group present to have their say, touchingly at his own expense. To start with, you won’t really be helping the situation much or actually rejecting your own privilege since you construct the space you make for others to speak in as a space dependent on your power. On a lesser note, you’re likely to evoke both the enmity of the non-privileged (who don’t need to feel like they’re being done a favor) and of the privileged, who will feel you aggrandizing yourself at their expense and being somewhat of a caste-traitor.

An alternative to this clusteruck is a series of consistent but small and strategic interventions. Instead of merely retreating into silence or making contributions in form of statements, ask open questions, whether of the group (inviting those who haven’t spoken yet to pitch in), or directly of members who you know have knowledge to contribute but who haven’t spoken yet (whether directly, if you can do it conversationally and comfortably enough, or implicitly, so as not to put them on the spot). There’s almost no intellectual contribution to a debate that can’t be restated as a question, very often improving considerably in the process.

At other times, don’t feel out of place to cut a particular fellow-privileged short if you feel they’re taking over. Remember, if you’re a member of a privileged group, you’re never just a participant; you always have more power, and therefore more responsibility than “just” a participant, if such a thing exists. Fourthly, be mindful of the fact that since the balance is already tipped in your favor, almost anything you do can turn to your advantage, and keep guard against it; once you break the dynamic that needed breaking, don’t take over the discussion and make it your so responsibility, and therefore your power, to keep it on the track. Step back in only when you feel it’s necessary for you to do so, just like you did before.

Fifthly and finally, never let your guard down. Make it a habit to assess, consciously and routinely (say, every 15 minutes) what power dynamic is happening here and whether you can also contribute – not fix it singlehandedly, but contribute – towards making it a much more equitable one. So long as the hegemonic order relevant to the group persists, the power it feeds into you doesn’t disappear – and neither does your personal share of responsibility, to yourself and to your friends and allies, to dismantle it.

Former Defense Minister Moshe Arens yesterday told Ma’ariv he thinks the separation wall – which snakes its way around the West Bank and has been responsible for cutting tens of thousands of people from their livelihoods and from each other – should be torn down. “The wall is no longer of any use and it’s only doing Israel harm,” he told the website. “It’s obvious today that the separation wall [sic] is completely useless. It’s damaging Israel in the international arena and it causes hardship for the Palestinians in their day-to-day lives.” Arens, a noted hawk who has served as defense minister in three different Likud cabinets (Begin, Shamir and Netanyahu), attributed construction of the wall to hysteria rather than strategic thinking. “There was panic. When terror attacks occur almost every day, sometimes twice a day, and the Shin Bet comes to you and tells you it’s impossible to block terrorism without a wall, you get convinced. I was also convinced, but today it’s clear there is no connection between the wall and the cessation of attacks.”

The former defense minister instead attributed the slump in Palestinian political violence to IDF activity within Palestinian areas and the collaboration of Palestinian police forces, adding that “the wall is ugly. It’s like a scar on the face of the Land of Israel. There have been walls before and they fell down.” Finally, he said, “we should remember many Jews live beyond the wall,” and some fear the wall might someday become a political border.

In my mind, the last argument is the most important – both for Arens himself and for the settler politicians who rallied to his support. MK Yoni Chetboun of Habayit Hayehudi party (led by annexationist Naftali Bennett) argued to Ma’ariv that “the wall actually increases motivation for terrorism among the Palestinians by projecting a message of weakness, defensiveness and entrenchment.” Chetboun, who sits on the pivotal Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, credited the wall with a “short term” role in stopping waves of attacks, but said, “what Israel needs is freedom of action within the Palestinian cities, not walls and fences… in some places there’s no operational logic to the wall, and it seems the considerations driving the planners of the wall were made with political motives and with regard for the future border line.”

Orit Strock, possibly the most notorious right-wing hardliner on the Habyait Hayehudi list, said that “building the fence was a mistake that should be mended… Israel spent a fortune on a wall that, according to all the reports by the IDF and the Shin Bet, is not what prevented the terror attacks. Terrorism prevention was made possible and is still made possible today through the presence and activity of the IDF in the Arab cities of Judea and Samaria.”

There are some political subtexts here that indicate shades of opinion within the Right, and are therefore worth highlighting. Arens himself is a noted supporter of the one-state solution and has written and spoken in support of annexing the West Bank and granting full civil rights (including the right to vote) to its Palestinian residents on many occasions (this op-ed from 2010 is particularly worth a read). As a result, he has no problem referring to the barrier by the derisive and highly accurate moniker, “the separation wall.” Of the three, Arens also is the only one who explicitly refers to the hardships the wall causes to Palestinians (which, if nothing else, obviously generates a security liability in the long run) and offers some credit to the Palestinian Authority’s security forces for clamping down on Palestinian armed groups. Chetboun, the next to the right, doesn’t mention Palestinian needs or contributions, but at least refers to them by their proper name.  Strock, finally, doesn’t even recognise the Palestinians as a nation – to her, they are mere residents of “Arab” cities within [Jewish] Judea and Samaria and what’s needed is not only “freedom of action,” but actual “presence” of the IDF within those cities. In short, she is advocating a straightforward resumption of complete, direct military control over the West Bank, without even the fig leaf of the Palestinian Authority.

What all three have in common, however, is the concern that the wall might one day demarcate a political border with a Palestinian state, thus affecting the “Jews beyond the wall” (step forth, Jon Snowowitz) and the IDF’s freedom of action there. Considering that the wall, built entirely on the increasingly vacant pretext of “security,” already eats up much of the miserly territory afforded to Palestinians under the two-state solution paradigm, this reluctance to give up even the little that’s left might seem appalling to two-staters. But the comments of the left wingers quoted in the piece paint the two-state camp in Israel in an even more depressing light.

The Left clings to the wall 

MK Eitan Cabel (Labor) paid tribute to Arens’ achievements, but lamented the “wrong” motivations for his desire to bring down the wall. “It’s actually another step towards the bi-national state in which he believes. It’s not the wall that makes us look bad across the world, but the profound diplomatic deadlock caused by Netanyahu. The only thing that will bring down the wall is an agreement with the Palestinians. The wall is a terrible thing from a humanitarian point of view, but that’s not the reason why Arens wants to remove it.” Chairman of Peace Now, Yariv Oppenheimer, also chips in: “Those who want to completely dismantle the fence seek to create the reality of a single, bi-national state, either non-Jewish or non-democratic. The fence must be moved to the future border based on the 1967 lines and the land taken away from Palestinians from its construction must be returned to them.”

The wall and the entire separation paradigm (“we’re here, they’re there,” as Ehud Barak once put it ) is first and foremost a center-left construct; it’s not for nothing that the most avid champions of the wall were Barak himself and Ehud Olmert. Both progressive public figures seemed more threatened by the remote prospect of a bi-national state than concerned with anything like equality or justice, even in the short-term – otherwise there should have been no problem for them to demand both the immediate demolition of the wall and a return to two-state negotiations.

Oppenheimer’s desire to rebuild the wall on the 1967 border is particularly bizarre, considering he advocates a peace agreement with the Palestinians that would make such a gargantuan fortification superfluous, and considering such reconstruction would necessitate the confiscation of yet more land, causing further hardship.

But it is Cabel’s comments that shed the starkest light on the current condition of the center-left’s two-state project. With the rise of the annexationist Right, the Left, which should have been demanding the demolition of the wall forthwith has now come to hinge upon the wall as its last hope for preserving a nation-state through separation. The size, viability and contiguity of the Palestinian state that will result from this can go to hell, as can the immediate needs of the Palestinians who are catastrophically affected by the wall. Eventual separation is now such an urgent priority that everything and everyone else can wait – let the wall stay where it is, so long as we get two separate states in the long run.

New room for manoeuvre 

The division of opinion here indicates once again the slow redrawing of the political map in Israel: The Right is emerging as the more politically daring and flexible, ready to radically challenge the status quo and offer significant changes, up to and including enfranchisement of Palestinians and/or bi-national power-sharing, even if it is unlikely to offer or accept full individual and collective rights from the get-go. The old Left is becoming more entrenched and conservative-nationalist, determined to preserve the status quo without any profound or systemic changes.

For better or worse, it seems the agenda in the next few years will be set by Arens, Bennett and co., and if the wall is indeed brought down, it won’t be through the efforts of the mainstream Left. The more interesting question is how Palestinians will respond to this change: will they continue to ally themselves broadly with the partitionist, fading Left, which is happy to drive them into ever narrower confines (with friends like these…), or will they utilize and push to expand the much broader room for maneuver inadvertently being created by the annexationist Right.

Ben Zygier, alleged Mossad agent who was held without trial in Israeli prison and found dead in 2010 (photo from ABC Australia video)

It’s always difficult to try and discern the full picture when all you have is a few pieces of a puzzle, not necessarily even pieces belonging to the same box. But this is precisely the trouble with censorship and gag orders: it forces us to make do with what we have and to use only information already in the public domain. With this in mind, I’d like to draw attention to a story that developed in parallel to that of Prisoner X and had numerous factors that could (though not necessarily should) allow for some overlap.

In January 2012, a few days after another assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist, Foreign Policy published an expose by Mark Perry, an expose that met with a fierce backlash and clampdown reminiscent of the one experience by Israeli media over the last few days. Drawing on testimonies and memos from senior intelligence officials in the Bush Jr.  and Obama administrations, Perry revealed that as recently as 2008, and perhaps even to this day, Israeli agents “touting American passports and flush American dollars” posed as American intelligence operatives in order to recruit members of Sunni terrorist organization Jundallah, infamous for attacks within Iran (targeting both officials and ordinary civilians). According to the report, the recruitment took place in Pakistan, but also in Morocco, London and elsewhere.

What do we know about Ben Zygier? Apart from biographical details preceding his involvement with the Mossad, we know that he changed his name several times: first to Ben Alon when immigrating to Israel, and then, in a new Australian passport, to the nearly-homonimic Ben Allen; later still, he also added Benjamin Burroughs to the list. We know that using at least one of the latter two identities, Zygier visited Syria, Lebanon and Iran; and that his name changes and his movements, along with those of several other dual Australian-Israeli nationals, were enough to arouse the suspicion of Australia’s own national security service, the ASIO. According to The Age, in early 2010 Zygier was even confronted by Fairfax Media correspondent  Jason Katsoukis, who discovered Zygier was one of three Australians who ran  a front company set up by Mossad in Europe (possibly in Italy), selling electronic equipment to Iran and elsewhere.  Katsoukis asked Zygier upfront if he was working for the Mossad, an allegation an “incredulous” Zygier heatedly – and, it now appears beyond reasonable doubt, falsely – denied.

Around the same time, in Februray 2010, Jundllah’s leader, Abdolmajid Rigi, found himself in the hands of the Iranian security services. At the time, Iran claimed he was taken off a plane traveling from Kyrgizstan to Dubai and forced to land in Iran. Pakistan’s ambassador to Tehran, however, took partial credit for the capture and Al Jazeera and later Perry reported he was taken in Pakistan and transferred to Iran with the silent agreement of the Americans (who, whatever Israel’s relationship with Giri’s men and unlike in the case of another anti-Iranian terrorist group, the MEK, were never particularly enamoured with Jundallah). In Iran, and, as Perry notes, probably under duress, Rigi gave an interview in which he voiced suspicions that Western agents he had met were not who they said they were. “When we thought about it we came to the conclusion that they are either Americans acting under NATO cover or Israelis,” he said at the time. Later, an Israeli source told Laura Rozen that whoever met Rigi in Morroco in 2007 posed as NATO agents.

Rigi was hanged in Tehran on June 10, 2010. On June 14, 2010, the first report about Prisoner X – Ben Zygier -Alon-Allen-Burroughs appeared in (and quickly disappeared from) Israeli media, although it’s likely he was arrested earlier on, between the Fairfax interview and Rigi’s death. In other words, during the same time, the leader of a group with reported ties to Israeli intelligence and an Israeli agent with a profile and behaviour patterns similar to those of agents allegedly initiating and maintaining such links both found themselves in prisons. If the Perry report is true –  and bar vitriolic and ad-hominem denials from state officials, I’ve seen nothing to conclusively prove that it is not – Rigi’s capture would have been a huge blow to Israel’s alleged investment in Jundallah, and the question of how the Pakistanis got to him would necessarily have arisen.

Again, this is pure speculation. Just because the Iran operation is the only one we know about, doesn’t mean it’s the one Zygier was involved in; a person can betray or compromise an organisation  without the result appearing in the media in the form of a botched operation. Still, being forced to work with what we already know and just for the sake of the argument, a hypothesis can conceivably be proposed that Zygier was suspected of somehow undermining the  Jundallah operation. Whether he did sodeliberately or not is impossible to establish or even hypothesise on without further information, although it would seem Zygier’s biography to this point (strongly Zionist family and education, ideological immigration to Israel, and so on) would preclude an outright defection to Tehran. The extraordinary  secrecy around his identity could simply be a precaution designed to prevent other assets he recruited from realising who he really was. Several Israeli outlets are currently emphasising another possibility – that Zygier’s activity and his arrest had something to do with the killing of Hamas’s Mahmoud Mabhouh in Dubai, the story of which exploded in the media also in early 2010, and which certainly involved several Australian passport-holders.

Unlike the possibility that Zygier was a false-flag Mossad operator deployed in the Iranian or the Gulf theatres, which can be plausibly sustained by the (knownat) overlaps listed above and the lack of information to contradict them, the exact nature of his offence – real, imagined or suspected – can only be guessed that: indeed, it may well be possible that the Mossad did not know either, and that at the time of his suicide, the state may well have still been trying to establish if the transgression he was suspected of was deliberate sabotage or an unfortunate mistake. Indeed, the same degree of caution should at this stage, apply to the nature of Zygier’s tragic death, precisely because it seems so “obvious” an alleged suicide in a “suicide-proof” cell “must have been” murder, and despite one of the key hints at Zygier’s fate was an op-ed by a senior intelligence analyst in Haaretz abstractly musing about prison murders disguised as suicides. The constantly monitored suicide-proof cell is a compelling idea; it was a single-inmate cell (so no bunk bed), and obviously without anything as appealing to a desperate man as a lamp-hook.

Nearly a year before Zygier’s death, however, disgraced TV star Dudu Topaz killed himself in another suicide-proof cell in the same city. Despite the presence of other prisoners and constant monitoring of the cell, Topaz used the very short cord of an electric kettle to create a pressure noose around a water tap less than a metrer above the floor, sit down on the shower floor, and break his own neck. His death was covered in graphic, grotesque detail by Israeli media for weeks, and it’s unlikely Zygier would not have heard of it. Although the death certificate specifically lists “asphyxiation,” the Topaz affair should illustrate that suicide is not impossible in almost any circumstance. Notably, both Topaz’s and Zygier’s cells enjoyed constant CCTV surveillance of their entire respective spaces – except the shower stalls.

Then again, the only official execution in Israeli history, outside Eichmann’s, was of an officer field-marshalled for treason (posthumously exonerated); and accidental death under torture should not be excluded.

Speculation is the key word to this entire report. Over the past two days several versions of what happened to Zygier have been hinted at on social networks – some even more galling than what we know, some considerably more mundane, and none, so far, from identifiably credibly sources (I  myself certainly haven’t heard anything new and convincing, directly or indirectly). However, gag orders on new information mean I cannot even report the hints of rumours floating about, or to use them to counterbalance or challenge the picture I presented above. Furthermore, the question of the degree of Zygier’s guilt, and of the degree of the state’s responsibility for his death should be treated with double caution: not only precisely because both are so appealing to the imagination, but also because of deference to his family.

Whatever he has done, Zygier was also a brother, a son, a husband and the father of two young children. We can only imagine that after such a devastating loss, the questions of his guilt or innocence, and the degree of ill will involved in his death while in the ostensibly safe and accountable hands of a state, become all the more paramount for the bereaved family, especially a family as patriotic as Zygier’s seems to have been. Assertions concerning either should not be thrown about idly. But what we do know about Zygier’s arrest and the incredible amount of silence surrounding his detention and his death make the entire affair of crucial public interest. If left unmolested and unmonitored, what happened to Zygier could, actually, happen to any of us or our loved ones – although the state now says Zygier had a team of three lawyers we do not know just how the state came round to clamp down on him as relentlessly and hermetically as it did, and whether its suspicions were convincing to the critical eye of any kind of an accountable monitor.

It is crucial, therefore, that facts are brought to light why Zygier met such a gruesome fate, and how. Whether they are brought to light by the state coming to its senses and accountability, or by journalistic work as dogged as the ABC’s, is up to us citizens – public servants, parliamentarians, and crucially, journalists, from Israel or from anywhere abroad.

Related:
‘Prisoner X’: Censorship and gag orders in the age of new media
Disappearing articles and the dead prisoner affair (‘Mr. X’): A timeline

For an alternate analysis of the Prisoner X story, read Michael Omer-Man’s account here

———-

An earlier version of this post appeared in Hebrew on Tal Schneider’s blog “The Plog”. 

Yair Lapid with “Yesh Atid” activists (photo: Yotam Ronen / activestills.org)

LIKUD VICTORY RALLY, TEL AVIV – After months of predictions for a comfortable right-wing win, Israel reeled tonight at a surprising near-gridlock between the “Right” and “Left” parliamentary blocs, with the Netanyahu-Liberman union barely scrambling past 30 seats, instead of the 45 42 they held between them in the departing parliament. But Netanyahu’s ratings were in steady decline ever since the union pact in late November and not least thanks his petty and paranoid attacks on settler leader Naftali Bennett.  The true surprise of the landslide vote was ultra-centrist candidate Yair Lapid. Lapid, a TV personality who avoided taking any remotely controversial stand on almost any issue, careened past rivals right and left to end up with 17 to 19 seats, rendering him the kingmaker of these elections. Bennett himself, the other golden boy of the 2013 elections, is currently forecasted to win 12 seats, a solid achievement but a far cry from the utopian poll projections of 15-19. Kadima, the centrist party that led Israel to wars in Lebanon and Gaza during its first term in the Knesset, and imploded in a series of ill-judged political manoeuvres at the end of its second term, has not made it to a third term at all, evaporating from Israeli politics with zero seats in the exit polls.

On the Left, Shelly Yacimovich doubled Labor’s seats but fell far, far behind her promise to oust Netanyahu or even to restore Labor as a significant force in Israeli politics. To add insult to injury, after making every possible effort to depoliticise and centralise Labor’s toxic brand, she was overtaken by an ad-hoc party led by a man who lacks any of the political structures, networks and traditional strongholds of Labor, but whose neutral and consensual public image made him more apolitical than she could ever hope to be. The great winner on the left side of the map is Meretz, raised from the dead by new leader Zehava Galon to go from three to seven seats; unlike Labor, Meretz never harboured illusions about premiership, so it can be content with its significant victory. Hadash, the only Jewish-Arab party running, is left with four seats, having failed to rejuvenate its front ranks and thus also failed to capitalise on the social justice movement in which its activists played a significant part (stay tuned for separate stories on social justice and Hadash tomorrow).

Theoretically (or rather, purely arithmetically), Lapid is now in a position to make a bold bid for premiership. Although earlier attempts to herd the centre-leftist cats into a unified bloc ahead of the elections failed miserably, the tantalisingly small gap between the Left and Right in the exit polls could give Lapid enough of a momentum – to hammer together a centre-left government of small parties, to persuade Shas to switch sides (by reminding them they’d hold much more sway in such a fractured coalition than in a strong right-wing one), and to solicit the external support of Arab parties (among which Hadash is usually lumped), eventually creating something akin to Rabin’s government in 1992. But, to the tune of “you are no Jack Kennedy,” Lapid is no Rabin, and 2013 is not 1993. Lapid is risk-averse and lacks a political program or vision; while the negotiated two-state process, a novel idea in Rabin’s time, has been tested and failed in the 21 years since. What’s more, hostility towards the Arab parties is immeasurably greater than it was in the 1990s. Any party overpowering the Right with these parties’ support will be seen as an usurper. Lapid may well launch a bid for premiership – but this is likely to be a negotiation ploy designed to mark him as not just a coalition member, but a partner in a “national unity” government, a title with considerably more clout and gravitas.

Poison, sir?

The more likely outcome, then, is a strong right-wing government with Lapid’s party as its safety belt and fig leaf. In such a scenario, Lapid can look forward to appointment as foreign minister, which would reward him with prestige and the limelight he is long accustomed to, and would reward Netanyahu with a telegenic, charismatic and unoriginal moderate face in the world arena. If Netanyahu sees Lapid more as a rival than a partner, however, he might offer him the Finance Ministry instead – a poisoned chalice if there ever was one. While a highly prestigious position and well in tune with (upper class) Lapid’s self-appointed role as emissary of the middle class, the Treasury is the least enviable fiefdom Netanyahu can offer anyone. Israel is facing an NIS 40 billion deficit and is poised on the brink of an austerity drive set to affect primarily Lapid’s own electorate; getting him to deliver the blow to his own crowd will neutralise him even more effectively than leaving him out of government. The same, with slight amendments, applies to Naftali Bennett and several other candidates; the Finance Minister appointment will tell us where Netanyahu sees the greater threat – from the Centre or from within the Right – and who he considers his most dangerous rival.

If she holds by her vow never to enter Netanyahu’s government (even if he offers her, say, the Finance Ministry), Yacimovich now has the opportunity to forge a combative and determined opposition. Such a move, if played patiently and committedly, will pay off with interest over the long term, especially in the wake of the anticipated austerity drive. This move can be impeded not only by tempting offers from Netanyahu, but primarily from within Labor – the most patricidal (or matricidal) party in Israeli politics. The knives will be out for the leader whose campaign was characterised by self-promotion and by a neglect, to put it mildly, of some of the strongest potential Labor candidates who came into the party of their own accord (Stav Shaffir and Merav Michaeli being the lead examples,) in favour of loyal but utterly lacklustre apparatchiks.

Tomorrow morning Israel will wake up to the real results fairly similar to the exit polls (despite the latter’s margin of error), and while a complete tie between Right and Left or a slight advantage to the Left can generate a modest momentum for an attempted leftist government, the right-by-centre-right coalition is the likeliest outcome. The only question is how tough a negotiator Lapid will prove to be – he could condition his entry into government on, say, complete exclusion of all ultra-Orthodox parties – and how protracted negotiations will be as a result. This might be more significant than a mere inconvenience: Israel is currently without a budget (Netanyahu threw down the cards on budget negotiations in the spring as pretext for gambling on elections) and is weighed down by a 40-billion-shekel deficit. Delay in putting together the team that will cover up that black hole will make the fabled Israeli stock exchange very antsy and drive a pin into Israel’s financial stability balloon – setting the stage for a much more heated contestation over economy, far from the Right’s familiar playing field.

Israel’s Labor party, widely viewed as the closest thing to an alternative to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, announced the results of its primaries on Friday, and its slate for the Knesset. The party is led by ex-journalist Shelly Yachimovich, the first woman in that position since Golda Meir led Labor’s antecedent Mapai in the 1960s-1970s. Unlike in Golda’s day, when Mapai saturated the country’s politics inside out and ruled nearly every institution, from parliament to union to local councils, this position is now far from an enviable one.

While Labor is currently set to just about double its eight seats to 18-20, and while the party is capitalising on the widespread social discontent brought to the fore by the 2011 J14 protests, it remains a far cry from challenging Netanyahu-Lieberman’s projected bloc of 34-40. For better or worse, Yachimovch’s chances of stepping deeper into Golda’s shoes and becoming prime minister are slim, and the largely lackluster list assembled under her leadership confirms this.

The entire realistic list (the top 20) is below. The most important aspect of it is the least remarkable: it is composed mostly of either stale old-timers clinging onto their seats by sheer power of habit, or party functionaries utterly unknown outside Labor circles. This will be addressed at the bottom of the post; what follows are notes on the newcomers.

*Make way: The most important and highest-ranking among the newcomers is journalist Merav Michaeli (no. 5), easily one of the most thoughtful among Haaretz columnists and one of the two-three most prominent feminist voices in Israeli mainstream media. Although a celebrity and an extremely popular figure on the Left, Michaeli was reportedly stonewalled by Yachimovich and had to fight tooth and nail to get into the top 2o - without cattle-trading that we know of, without endorsements* against the resentment of party functionaries old and new.  Her close alliance with Yachimovich’s arch-rival Amir Peretz notwithstanding played an important part in keeping her on the ballot, but her election to the no. 5 – the top place reserved for women on the ballot, against party functionary and Yachimovich favorite Michal Biran -is nothing short of outstanding and propels her to the national political stage. Keep an eye on this newcomer.

*J14 confirms its failure to gather parliamentary momentum: When Labor launched its current bid for premiership it tried hard to pitch itself as the parliamentary voice of the 2011 protests; Yachimovich is even using photos of the completely extra-parliamentarian J14 protest in her campaign. But only two names that attained prominence in J14 are in the opening 20 on the slate, with one of those widely seen as a hack and an opportunist (student federation leader Itzik Shmuli, no. 12), and the other a committed but novice activist betting all she can on old-style politics and more than halfway down in the quicksand of that mirage of centrism.

That other one is Stav Shaffir (no. 9), the most popular and prominent among the “leadership” of J14 to run for parliament. Although her place in the Knesset appears to be guaranteed, activists and observers alike were left alarmed by the rapidity with which this fresh, streetwise candidate adopted the guarded language and political arsenal of a middle-of-the-road party functionary. Just a few months ago, Shaffir was still the young woman with a placard and a bullhorn who caused a prominent right-wing MK to nearly implode in self-parody, and who later traveled across the country with a few comrades in a second-hand car to try and see first-hand what hardships ordinary Israelis encounter away from the cameras – a highly commendable and extremely rare exercise. Today, she seems to have ditched much of what made her new and appealing in a scramble for the old political center, writing in Haaretz about her Palmach-veteran grandfather and her encounter as a child with Yitzhak Rabin, circulating a picture of herself seated in an IDF helicopter as an air force cadet (praising the struggle of women to become combat pilots, and Israeli feminism in general), and being extra-careful around contentious issues – not even criticising the IDF during the recent escalation in Gaza.

Despite the centrist lurch and despite being initially embraced by Yachimovich, Shaffir also had to fight a trench war to reach a realistic foothold in the party, at one point reportedly making a pact with the very embodiment of old politics, Mubarak crony Binyamin Ben Eliezer (no. 6). Friends and supporters still believe in Shaffir’s commitment and principle and see all these as sacrifices necessary to get elected in a centrist party running against a right-wing party; but the temptation to compromise for power only becomes stronger as one rises, and Shaffir will be challenged in the next year or two to show that she can stop sowing and start reaping. The first challenge could arise as early as the coalition talks, when Labor will more likely than not find itself as one of the fig leafs Netanyahu will be able to choose from to decorate his next, even more right-wing government.

Another J14 figure, Prof. Yossi Yonah, who chaired a group of academics advising the J14 movement, is at no.21 and is not likely to enter parliament.

*Nino Abesadze (no. 2o), is the only Kadima MK (at a time when Kadima was the opposition flagship) to explicitly ally herself with the J14 protest, spending all available time in the tent camps and generally building herself up as an approachable, down-to-earth MK whose enthusiasm and accessibility stood out starkly amongst Kadima’s desolate political landscape. She is also the leftmost Russian speaker in the departing Knesset, and, if Labor does scrape up 20 seats, the leftmost Russian speaker in the next one. She has also committed to bring Russian speakers forward as equal, integrated participants rather than a dependent and a beleaguered minority sector.

*On the face of it, three to four candidates associated with J14 were elected into fairly realistic spots on the ballot (unless something unexpected happens, like a union with Livni’s tautological party, which would push all Labor candidates down a notch). Why the headline? Because J14 was  such a powerful tidal wave against old politics that to see it wither down to a trickle of candidates clambering ashore does not feel like a triumph,to put it mildly. If a movement gets hundreds of thousands into the streets, breaks barriers, changes the political discourse, but in the end leaves the rest of the work to mostly the same wheelers and dealers it originally excluded from its activities, this means the movement, as a movement, failed to materialise into a genuine political force (whether it should’ve is a different question – I think it did not). J14′s primary contribution is injecting socio-economic discourse into the debate, but as Labor’s sycophantic conduct during the Gaza operation showed, it has not succeeded to construct or commandeer a political vehicle to maintain that discourse against assaults by the militarised-nationalist one.

*Miki Rosenthal, a tenacious investigative journalist who took on one of Israel’s most powerful tycoon dynasties, the Ofer Brothers, is at no. 13, and unless hobbled by his own party, can use his newfound position to very interesting effect inasmuch as links between major capital and government are concerned.

But as mentioned above, except another newcomer or two yet to acquire political notoriety, the rest of the list are party hacks young and old. This offers stark testimony both to the resilience of old Labor politics and to the true measure of the Labor leader’s political aptitude. Although this might well be the last election in which media pay Labor the courtesy of even pretending it’s a national force, Yachimovich let herself be bound hand and foot by intra-party commitments that bear no relevance to the actual electorate, and by repeatedly being overcautious when one should’ve been bold. Instead of bringing powerful new voices and leading them as first among equal, most of the truly exciting newcomers, especially Michaeli, had to fight for every inch of influence. The true results of these primaries will be tested over the next four years, but the old-new face of the Labor party makes it clearer than ever that the true merit of opposition to the next Netanyahu government will be measured by individuals, not by parties – not even the flagship one.

The full (realistic) Labor list: 

1. Shelly Yachimovich
2. Isaac Herzog
3. Amir Peretz
4. Eitan Cabel
5. Merav Michaeli
6. Binyamin Ben-Eliezer
7. Hilik Bar
8. Omer Bar-Lev
9. Stav Shaffir
10. Avishai Braverman
11. Erel Margalit
12. Itzik Shmuli
13. Mickey Rosenthal
14. Michal Biran
15. Nachman Shai
16. Moshe Mizrahi
17. Danny Atar
18. Ghaleb Majadele
19. Nadia Hilo
20. Nino Abesadze
21. Yossi Yonah

—

*This post has been updated and improved- when I sent it in, I wasn’t yet aware of Tal Schneider’s post detailing the alliance between Michaeli and Peretz; and an elaboration on J14 has been added following Elizabeth’s comment.

In Gaza, meanwhile, IDF navy and air force continued to bomb the city, striking another media building and killing 12 people by the late afternoon. Among the reported victims were a two-year-old child and a father with his two children.

Activestills has photos from the scene of the Tel Aviv bombing:

The aftermath of an explosion on a bus in central Tel Aviv, November 21, 2012. (photo: Yotam Ronen/Activestills.org)

Emergency services at the scene of an explosion on a bus with passengers on board. At least 17 people were injured in a blast on a bus in central Tel Aviv. (photo: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

Emergency services at the scene of an explosion on a bus with passengers on board. At least 17 people were injured in a blast on a bus in central Tel Aviv. (photo: Keren Manor/Activestills.org)

Municipality workers cleaning the scene of explosion on a bus in central Tel Aviv. At least 17 people were injured in the blast. (photo: Keren Manor/Activestills.org)

Scene from Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, superimposed with members of the Israeli cabinet. (Amir Schiby)

“And once again the screen is awash with men, battalions, battalions of men, swarms of men; commander men and commentator men, calming men and threatening men, men with a rich past in positions of command, men with greying temples, men with a rich past in position of command and greying temples, Ashkenazi men and Mizrahi men, men who know what’s best now, men who have no idea what’s going on now, men who talk much but say little, stern-gazed men, stern-faced men, men with a knife between their teeth and a quiver in their loins, men who lost their teeth, men who know “their” mentality all too well, men who’ve spent sleepless nights in roles that are best keep silent, men who are best kept silent, explicit men and implicit men, men yanked from among the mothballs, from the kitbag, leftovers from primaries, parachuted CEOs, retired generals, retired experts, retired men, chewing men and swallowing men and men regurgitating, men with frameless glasses, men who start each sentence with “I would suggest that all of us…”, men horny as hell, men horny for hell, for blood and for bombs, men for whom this is their finest hour, men who flower now, youthful men, men whose old age is worthy of their youth, men who’s erection never rests, men whose erection, whose erection, whose erection, whose erection, men who ate from the same tin bowl, men who have known each other since —-  and even since ——, men who say wars are not for sissies, men who lack the female touch, men whose heart is untouched by the breath of a sleeping baby, whose manly, sane, reasonable, baboon-like, warmongering reasoning is unclouded, men who are retired war criminals, who meet in the studio with smiles of relief, hello War Criminal A, hello War Criminal B, men who know how to read aerial snapshots and even utter the words ‘aerial snapshots’ without a blink, men who don’t  blink, grey-eyed men, with eyes that have already seen everything, men who are no easily moved by a residential building being blown sky-high, men who know everything has a price, men who tell us what the leaders are planning, men who love saying the word “leaders,” men who know maybe about one hundred words, maybe two hundred, but what does it matter when these are the right words, men like machines, men with broad shoulders and a belly that’s kept out of the frame, men specialising in restoring deterrence and not in restoring human beings, men who set fires and don’t stick around to put them out, putting out is for sissies,  men without occupational concerns, men who for whom this is their occupation, to observe and explain and justify human wrecks, men drawn to the smell of blood, men who never remember that last time, when they also came and said and promised, men who’s manhood is only longer than their memories, men who announce this is the time to unite, meaning that it’s time for men to unite, agains the women and the children and the fags, men who declare a war on non-men, men who talk of “spaces” and “sectors” as if they were demonstrating geometrical theorems, men squirting testosterone all over the screen, men who move forces, men who like sending wishes of swift recovery and god forbids the wounded should ever run out on them, men who like wounded men, true are the lover’s wounds, men with a bass or a baritone voice, preferably bass, a little rough and a little hoarse, men on the skewer, men medium-rare, men who are hunters, not gatherers, men who understand the other side understands but one language because they themselves understand but one language, men made in the same mould, on either side, men who hate each other the more they become like one another, men who have us all by the balls because they don’t have any of their own, men who push buttons, launchers, men who hit targets and tick them off, men who don’t see people behind the targets, who don’t see bereaved families behind the ticks, men who calculate grief like they calculate munitions and market losses, men who are good at calculating, men with connections in high places, highly connected men, finally contented men, men who will soon depart the studio, wipe off the make-up, get out into the darkening evening, into their despicable anonymity, men who will do anything to come back, next time, to that same brilliantly lit, shining, electrifying studio, who will do anything to be again, if only for one moment, real men, they’ll really do anything, wreck anything.”

One of the experiences thankfully muted by distance from Israel-Palestine is the shock’n'awe assault on one’s senses by the Israeli mainstream media, with its hordes of “responsible”, “reliable”, “eminent” commentators. Apart from the fact that they all toe the government line and cannot accept even a shred of criticism, there’s something incredibly “manly” (in the depressingly bland, atavistic gender role sense of the word) about the whole spectacle. Watching TV during wartime in Israel is like something between a stint in a reserve unit and being trapped in a hellish old boy’s club with tuxedos and cringe-worthy innuendos. Ben Gurion University academic Idan Landau captures it perfectly. The text above was posted on his blog yesterday; its translation here is with his permission.

Click here for more +972 coverage on the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Yesterday, a Facebook page titled “Creepshots” posted a photo of a woman in a short skirt with the caption “begging to be raped“:

Although almost all 45 comments (at time of writing) were negative and most promised to report the photo to the Facebook admins, 24 hours later it was still there, and users who attempted to report it today got the following response:

“Status: Content Not Removed

Details:Thank you for your report. We carefully reviewed the photo you reported, but found it doesn’t violate our community standard on hate speech so we didn’t remove it.”

Here, for example, is a screenshot of the response given to one user:

And here is another:

And another:

And so on and so on.

How on earth is “begging to be raped” not considered hate speech by Facebook? Seriously, it’s more than just getting them to remove the picture now: Users deserve to know just why the Facebook employee who reviewed the block request did not think this caption was beyond the pale.

The assassination of Ahmad Jabari, the architect of both the recent Gilad Shalit prisoner swap and, more importantly, the détente that prevailed between Israel and Hamas for the past several years, is an uncharacteristically high-risk gamble by the Netanyahu and Barak duo. It’s uncharacteristic not only because Netanyahu, in the past, has been extremely careful not to upset the apple cart and has repeatedly dialed up the violence in the Gaza Strip and dialed it down again, but also because this round was already being calmed down via an Egypt-brokered ceasefire when the assassination got the go-ahead.

My own hunch, and that of several Israeli observers, is that Barak is the prime mover behind this recent escalation. His has been a consistent voice for stronger Israeli military action in previous rounds of escalation in Gaza, and he stands more to gain from a large-scale military operation. Netanyahu is winning the elections with one hand tied behind his back; Barak and his splinter Independence Party, by contrast, have barely been scratching the electoral barrier. Appearing as a decisive, wily and sophisticated military mind next to a wallowing Netanyahu can only do Barak that much good, and Israeli Twitterati have already replaced “Pillar of Defense” the cringe-inducing, Freud-evoking codename for the operation with “Independence War.”

Here’s a nagging feeling I’ve been having all day long: I appreciate many, many people feel badly disappointed by Obama, and especially by his conduct in the Middle East. (If I had any hopes of him when he was elected I’d be in the same place.) His assassination policies are nothing short of horrific, he’s been completely browbeaten by Netanyahu, and he left the Bahraini revolutionaries to rot – and that’s just part of it. I also reckon many of the people disappointed by such policies also feel uncomfortable with the United States’ imperialist role and conduct as a whole. But here’s the rub: If you let Obama’s foreign policy and its practical indistinguishability from Romney’s to push you over to the Green Party or to discourage you from voting altogether, you’re playing the imperialist game. I think I speak for more than just myself here when I say that while we appreciate your concern for our little corner of the world, we feel kinda mortified when you prioritise us over something infinitely more important and closer to home: Women’s rights.

A couple of weeks ago, Noam made a convincing enough case on the lack of substantial difference between the two candidates on the Middle East front:

Shortly after president Obama was elected, he promised not to turn his back on the Palestinian people. It was a brave statement, considering that in some places, even mentioning the word Palestinians is a non-starter. Yet those turned out to be empty words, when it was revealed that the administration couldn’t stand the political price that the Israeli prime minister made it pay at home. After some back and forth between Jerusalem and Washington, the president appointed Dennis Ross – the man most associated with the diplomatic failure of the last couple of decades – to head  Middle East policy, or more accurately, to win favors with the Lobby and the heads of the Jewish communities. The president then blocked a largely symbolic Palestinian statehood bid at the UN, and ended up vetoing a Security Council resolution on the settlements that was a copy of previous State Department declarations.

….I do not expect the United States to pick sides in Israeli politics and I don’t want it to be anti-Israel. I expect it to be anti-occupation. In this particular sense, the Obama administration was much worse than Bush’s, who forced the road map upon both sides, and made Israel abandon its plan to build in the E1 region northeast of Jerusalem. Naturally, Bush was operating in a different environment, but as even former head of Mossad Ephrayim Halevi notes, for some reason Republican administrations are always more effective at keeping Israeli expansionist tendencies at bay. Maybe we should keep this in mind. In terms of policy – and not just rhetoric – I am not that sure anymore that a Romney administration would be that different from Obama’s.

But unlike in Israel-Palestine, where Obama failed miserably to assert even an iota of influence over the state whose military budget he practically owns and where Romney would not behave any differently, on women’s rights Americans are faced with a clear and present danger. Romney wants to overturn Roe v. Wade – this is a certainty, not some hypothetical new war in the Middle East the States are not likely to be able to afford anyway. Can you imagine the scope and depth of influence that would have on the lives of Americans, first and incalculably foremost American women but also their children, their partners and medical professionals of all genders? Can you imagine the return of the backdoor illegal abortion clinic, the dodgy pill, the proverbial coat-hanger, the slow and horrible deaths on makeshift operating tables? Can you imagine the Supreme Court being instilled with the soul of anti-abortionist murderer Scott Roeder? Because this is what a Romney administration would do, and those who vote for Stein today will be left with same feeling Naderites carry since the 2000 elections, only with an extra guilt factor – it was hard to foresee the full scope of malevolent and criminal stupidity indulged in by the Bush Jr. administration, but Romney’s plans for a shock-and-awe war on women are already there for all to see.

If this wasn’t enough, Romney also wants to defund Planned Parenthood and the Affordable Care act; in terms of taking care of its own citizens, the U.S. is already less than an excuse for a modern-day industrialised state, but this would push your heads down decisively into third-world status. By not voting or by voting for the Green Party you’re actually lending a shoulder to the election of a president far to the right of Richard Nixon, who ensured federal funding for PP in the first place, and, yes, quite obviously, you’re slamming the door of the healthcare system into the face of hundreds of millions of compatriots bled white by America’s parasitic health insurance sector.

The American two-party system is deeply and fundamentally flawed. The parties are stagnated, obese and mind-bogglingly unrepresentative; there needs to be not just a third party, but a fourth and a fifth and a sixth, and rubbing this idea into the face of the mainstream candidates is important. But the decentralisation of electoral politics is a generation-long project that needs work throughout the year, not just during election cycles; ticking the Green Party (or any other party) box on the ballot is merely one of the actions you can take and statements you make in its favour. The price for making this particular statement this time could come out far too dear; insisting on making it at the price of the rights, health and very lives of millions of women is not only misguided, it’s plain narcissistic. True, the candidates have taken women’s rights hostage. But no one in their right mind would allow hostages to get shot by way of feeling they made a point to the hostage takers.

Noam ended his argument of non-endorsement with a plain admission: “Luckily, I don’t get to vote.” You’re not so lucky – you have a responsibility. Not towards us in the Middle East and across the world: Towards your near and dear ones, especially, especially, especially towards the women among them. This responsibility is infinitely greater than any and all ideas of America’s role in the world. Just for today, forget about the Middle East and all your other overseas dominions, heave a deep sigh, down a pill or two and go vote for Obama. The rest of us will deal with your foreign policy later.

 Click here for more +972 coverage on the U.S. election