The Israeli elections may yet be unsettled, but the recent vote tells us one thing for certain: Israelis today hold few shared values with Americans and no value at all toward official US Mideast policy. Bedrock American principles such as equality, liberty for all, civil rights and diversity are irrelevant to the majority of the Israeli electorate. The US vision of Mideast peace receives zero respect.
Of the two Israeli leaders with the most juice, who look like they will be forming a government together, Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud and Avigdor Lieberman of Yisrael Beiteinu, both harshly oppose official US policy, based on fulfilling UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which call for "(i) Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict" and "(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency". Netanyahu has always been a supporter of West Bank Jewish settlements. In fact, even Tzipi Livni of Kadima, who has been called a moderate, supports the continuation of settlements. The settlements violate 242.
Lieberman lives in the settlements. But even worse, he seeks a racist policy of ethnic cleansing of Israeli Arabs and has called for subduing Gaza "like the United States did with the Japanese in World War II" – in other words dropping nuclear bombs. Truly, Lieberman has more in common with the autocratic rulers of Central Asian republics or with Vladimir Putin than with anything American. Meanwhile, Netanyahu supports an even greater economic apartheid and marginalization for Palestinians. Both Netanyahu and Lieberman oppose a two-state solution, another important part of US policy.
Americans also have little in common with the people who vote for such men as Lieberman and Netanyahu, who received 42 percent of the vote. When you add in other right-wing religious parties, the total is well over half. Meanwhile, Kadima is hardly progressive. Israelis are giving up on peace and moving further and further away from the US vision of a just peace in the Mideast. Support for American values are vanishing from Israel.
It’s said by Israel supporters that the Jewish state is the only true democracy in the Middle East, and therefore very important to America and the West. Whether Israel is a true democracy is often debated. But even if so, if this true democracy brings into power unregenerate haters like Netanyahu and Lieberman, it’s of no benefit to the United States. These men and the people who support them are the enemies of American values. And it’s only a matter of time before the American people realize it.