Benny Gantz, a blue-and-white president, will help if he is named Israeli prime minister and succeed in forming a government that includes different but liberal political trends in marketing Israel to American Democrats. I have lost a lot of support (among democratic circles) because of Netanyahu´s reactionary right-wing policies in the past few years.
They believe that while the Israeli prime minister is still undecided, American Zionists are celebrating the political blow to Benjamin Netanyahu, and they believe that choosing Bani Gantz will give a new opportunity to show a much better face to Israel.
There is also some excitement in the American media about the fortunes of Bani Gantz, especially since Monday´s joint Arab list Monday, September 23, told Israeli President Reuven Rivlin that three parties from her list and 10 members out of 13 support Gantz, the leader of a blue-white alliance, reinforcing His chances of heading the next Israeli government.
The New York Times editorial says that the most important thing in Netanyahu´s exit is that it will improve Israel´s image among Democrats to stop and reverse the "dangerous shift" in US policy against Israel. An important segment of the Democratic Party is becoming increasingly skeptical of Israel and its "liberal western positions," if not completely hostile. "The exit of Netanyahu, if achieved, could halt this dangerous shift and provide a new Israeli government with the opportunity to regain broad support," he said. Bipartisan scale in the United States. "
The Wall Street Journal, in turn, published a very similar "sentiment" from Mark Millman, an anti-Netanyahu poller who leads a group close to the American Israel AIPAC lobby calling itself the Democratic Majority for Israel. Melman, who has worked with the Blue and White alliance, tells The Wall Street Journal that he has high hopes for Democratic relations with Israel in the post-Netanyahu era: "This is a huge opportunity for Israel to reset its relationship with the Democrats."
New York Times columnist Brett Stevens of the New York Times says the same thing, although historically he retains right-wing ideological ideas. "But Israel this week has shown itself to be a model for the West, a democracy that does not tolerate demagogues." The success of "blue and white" proves that there is a future for centrist democracy in the end.
"Gantz is a novice politician with a quiet charisma that comes with an inner composure; a quality - very rare in modern politics - is not tense that would restore confidence in Israel, as he appreciates the need for long-term separation from the Palestinians, and he hates The left because it has no illusions about Israel´s enemies and understands the need to have force and, if necessary, to use force. "
The bottom line in The Times and the Israel lobby is that they see a new opportunity to market Israel again to American democratic elites.
All these comments, in the prestigious American newspapers, do not carry even a word about the need to end the occupation, or the criminal repressive method practiced by the Israeli occupation authorities against the Palestinians or even the talk about Palestinian human rights.
The various Zionist forums have the same vision. Michael Koblo of the New York Forum on Israeli Policy argued that getting rid of Netanyahu would make Israel easier to market because, for many people on the democratic side, Netanyahu is a soft target, especially as Democrats are still angry with Netanyahu´s speech to Congress in 2015. They see Netanyahu as a Republican in everything but the name, it makes Israel ... an easy target from the democratic side, I think if there is a different prime minister in the short term, it will take a bit of This heat. "
For liberal Zionists, the Gantz government offers hope that there will be no annexation of the West Bank, thus preserving the idea of ​​a two-state solution, although in practice it will not be realized.
Although Gantz has admitted that he will annex large parts of the occupied Palestinian territory, Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the self-proclaimed J Street Israel lobby that wants a two-state solution, says this is an electoral political position and that "it is likely that Gantz listens to the protests of the Israeli security establishment and to be more cautious in his actions than the Likud.
Nevertheless, Ben-Ami admits that Gantz´s government will be a right-wing government. "While Blue and White´s positions on the Palestinian issue remain vague, any government with many right-wing leaders and Knesset members is unlikely to accept a move away from permanent occupation or toward a two-state solution," he says.
The Palestinian issue, or the issue of a two-state solution, did not exist at all in the election campaign that ended last week and is never present in the dialogue to form a new Israeli government. "The Palestinian issue was not on the agenda of these elections," says Yossi Alpher of Peace Now. Unlike Meretz, no one talked about it. Netanyahu on annexing land and settlements and settling scores with Hamas provoked protests from Ramallah and Gaza, but he did not encourage Israeli debate about the elections.
Experts say Blue and White (33 seats) have been nicknamed the centrist coalition in the polls, but it is really the center-right party, and the remaining left seats in the Knesset are the 11 seats that are divided between the Democratic Union and Gesher, and the 13th Arab Joint List.
Tamara Kaufman-Wits, a former State Department official who works at the Brookings Institution in Washington at the New York Forum, explains that Israel is a society less concerned with "democracy and fairness" and more about "nationalism and identity."
She added that Israeli politicians in general are widening the gap between Israel and the Democratic Party, not just Netanyahu. Israeli voters used to punish politicians for isolating the United States in the past, but now, on the contrary, they like it (angering American Democratic politicians). When politicians overturn. "Although you won´t see Benny Gantz doing in Trump what Netanyahu did to Obama in his second term, American Democrats are not moving away from Israel because of Netanyahu only, but because of Israeli policies" against the Palestinians.
"The growing constituencies in the Democratic Party, especially among young Americans who consider themselves Democrats of Latin or African descent, look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a human rights lens," she said. Policies such as "collective punishment, house demolitions, checkpoints, the separation barrier… and this resonate with these constituencies because of their own political lenses. This makes them more critical of Israeli policies."
