There are a lot of stories on Ayelet Shaked, the newly appointed Justice Minister of Israel and about Netanyahu's new government. I expect her appointment will have a significant impact on the status and treatment of Palestinians across Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. In particular, her close relationship to the Hebron settlers could make matters much worse for Palestinians in Hebron.
We'll start with the Times profile: Ayelet Shaked, Israel’s New Justice Minister, Shrugs Off Critics in Her Path
It was as an instructor in the army’s Golani Brigade that she grew close to the religious-Zionist settlers who form the core of her constituency today. Serving in Hebron, one of the most contested areas of the West Bank, cemented her stance on the right, she said. “I just realized there will not be a solution right now” to the Palestinian conflict.
“She said, ‘Erez, don’t talk, let’s do action,’ and we simply went out and removed all the signs of the Labor Party from the streets of Tel Aviv. From 11 until 4 o’clock in the morning,” said Mr. Eshel, who now runs youth leadership academies.
For Ms. Shaked, a former computer engineer, the main thing is “to strengthen the Jewish identity” of Israel, “to have a democratic, Jewish, strong state.”
That translates, in policy terms, into promoting Israeli annexation of most of the occupied West Bank and ousting African asylum-seekers. It means curtailing the power of the Supreme Court, giving politicians more sway over judicial appointments and prohibiting foreign funding of advocacy groups — which could put the main internal critics of Israeli actions out of business. And it entails a “nationality bill” that many see as disenfranchising Israel’s Arab minority, about 20 percent of the population.
Ms. Shaked asked to be asked about Arab citizens. She said they “should be an integrated part of the Israeli society,” denied they face discrimination and said more spots should be created for them to do national service in lieu of the military.
Her approach was shaped in part by the author Ayn Rand. ““The fact that sometimes you think differently than others,” she explained, “but you still need to insist on your views, although you are being accused.”
I discussed the Libertarian view of Israel in an earlier diary:
Ayn Rand v. Murray Rothbard: A deep dive into the Libertarian view of Israel/Palestine
Here's Ayn Rand (who apparently shaped Shaked's views) on Arabs:
The Arabs are one of the least developed cultures. They are typically nomads. Their culture is primitive, and they resent Israel because it's the sole beachhead of modern science and civilization on their continent. When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are. Israel is a mixed economy inclined toward socialism. But when it comes to the power of the mind—the development of industry in that wasted desert continent—versus savages who don't want to use their minds, then if one cares about the future of civilization, don't wait for the government to do something. Give whatever you can. This is the first time I've contributed to a public cause: helping Israel in an emergency. -- Ford Hall Forum Lecture, 1974
By the way, it is not a coincidence that Pamela Geller used that line in an ad:
Ayn Rand also had some interesting views on Native Americans:
They (Native Americans) didn't have any rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using. What was it that they were fighting for, when they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their 'right' to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or a few caves above it. Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent. -- Q & A session following her Address To The Graduating Class Of The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, March 6, 1974
Murray Rothbard and other contemporary Libertarians
had a very different take on Israel.
Haaretz also did a profile of Shaked: What does Israel’s new justice minister really think about Arabs?
For those convinced that MK Ayelet Shaked (Habayit Hayehudi) is a flaming racist and, therefore, entirely unsuitable for her new job, one particular Facebook status update from last summer is providing potent ammunition. Written on June 30, as tensions were escalating between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, it cited an article authored by the late settler leader Uri Elitzur, which included the following passage, widely interpreted as a call by Shaked to murder innocent Palestinians:
“Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. Actors in the war are those who incite in mosques, who write the murderous curricula for schools, who give shelter, who provide vehicles, and all those who honor and give them their moral support. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.”
In a Channel 2 interview program broadcast in January 2012, she was asked the following question: “When your husband the pilot, when he’s up in the air, do you hope he’ll be pounding the Arabs hard with bombs?” Shaked responded first with a laugh and then said, “Yes.”
While she was running My Israel, Shaked learned that Bank Leumi was promoting the sale of a real estate company in Jerusalem to a consortium that included a Palestinian investor. Here’s how she described what ensued in an interview with Haaretz in April 2011, “In order to prevent the sale of the neighborhood to Arab hands, all members of the group [My Israel] were instructed to call senior executives at the bank and protest, and those with accounts at Bank Leumi were instructed to call their branch managers and notify them of their desire to leave the bank.” The campaign ultimately paid off.
It seems Shaked is fine with boycotts that target Palestinians. But she doesn't like boycotts directed at Israel, on BDS
she's quoted in another Haaretz interview as saying "It's 21st century anti-Semitism" and believes the movement should be illegal. The current Supreme Court found a way to agree with her since it approved much of the Knesset Law targetting the BDS movement, as we covered in this diary:
Israel Supreme Court: Boycott/Divest is "Political Terrorism". Publishers can be sued for speech.
As the Times reported in the article above:
They broke with Mr. Netanyahu and started My Israel, an online movement that stopped a bank from making a deal with Palestinian investors; vilified an actor who refused to perform in a settlement; published grisly pictures of a family killed in a terrorist attack; and challenged what Ms. Shaked saw as the news media’s leftist bias.
Bit more about the government and the longer-term history of the settlement movement and its impact on Israel's policy towards Palestinian lands below:
Haaretz also discussed the terms of the coalition agreement which requires increased funding for the settlement movement: AG warns against funding settlement agency in coalition deal
The agreement, signed between Likud and Habayit Hayehudi, states that the [World Zionist Organization’s] Settlement Division’s baseline budget for the next two years will be no lower than its budget for the previous two years. In addition, it says, the division will get an extra 50 million shekels ($13.1 million) a year for the next two years.
But in a letter to Cabinet Secretary Avichai Mendelblit on Thursday, Zilber said that this agreement contradicts a previous legal opinion by the Attorney General’s Office. That opinion said the Settlement Division could no longer be directly funded by the state, either via the regular budget or ad hoc funding approved by the Knesset Finance Committee.
In another warning about the coalition, Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein has informed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it will be difficult to defend the appointment of Shas MK Arye Dery to a cabinet position to the Supreme Court, considering his criminal record.
Haaretz is also saying:
Obama not enthused by some members of Netanyahu's cabinet
The office of the Attorney General of Israel is part of the Justice Ministry and Haaretz is wondering how long Zilber and Weinstein will last with Shaked running things in this editorial: Israel's new and dangerous government
The big winner in the coalition negotiations is Habayit Hayehudi, which took advantage of the prime minister’s distress and, despite its election failure, succeeded in upgrading its position in the cabinet and at the head of Knesset committees. Naftali Bennett, Ayelet Shaked and Uri Ariel will navigate Netanyahu’s fourth government, with Likud, devoid of a platform, policy or plans, being dragged along.
Shaked’s appointment as justice minister is especially troubling, due to her demands to undermine the Supreme Court’s independence and her fervent support for the racist so-called nationality law and the persecution of African asylum-seekers. Habayit Hayehudi people, like many in the Likud faction, want the justice system to serve as a rubber stamp for the coalition’s decisions and not the defender of individual and minority rights. From now on Shaked will head the Ministerial Committee for Legislation and the Judicial Appointments Committee and have considerable influence on the selection of the attorney general who will replace Yehuda Weinstein.
Yitzhak Laor steps back to evaluate the election results with a wider field of view and notes the long history of and the forces driving the Hebron settlers (who form Shaked's base).
Zion shall be redeemed with (in)justice
(
Opinion at Haaretz)
In 1960, Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee chairman Zerach Warhaftig (National Religious Party) explained the problem the government had solved by defining Jewish National Fund land, like the land expropriated using violence, as “national lands” in the Basic Law on Israel Lands.
In 1967 NRP leader Haim-Moshe Shapira predicted the moral fracture from the occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. He understood the place of religion within Zionist ideology, in contrast to nonreligious Israelis who were in denial about the messianic aspects of their Zionism and imagined it to be “completely secular.” Indeed, the crisis began when the occupation did. The preface to the Greater Land of Israel manifesto, which was signed by all the eminent cultural figures of the day, from Natan Alterman to Uri Zvi Greenberg, stated: “We are faithfully committed to the wholeness of our land,” and “no government in Israel is entitled to surrender this completeness” (September 22, 1967). The sovereignty crisis that peaked with Yitzhak Rabin’s murder and with the incitement against Arab voters on the last Election Day was born then.
The occupation added lands and millions of “people who do not belong to the global Jewish people,” in Warhaftig’s words. The territory became mythic. Maps of Greater Israel were hung in schools. The children who grew up on these maps (Ayelet Shaked in the “secular” school system, Naftali Bennett in “state religious” schools) learned not to apologize since the Bible says the land is ours and the Arabs are Amalekites or, to humanists, the “stranger among you.” The Religious Services Ministry has since sanctified more sheikhs’ graves, of, from “Joseph’s Tomb” in Nablus to “The Tomb of Othniel Ben Kenaz” in Hebron. The concrete territory has vanished, leaving only the religious image, essentially Christian, linking biblical texts to a “scientific” map.
