Nate Bear Do Not Panic
Israel’s general election on Tuesday is a contest between two fascists whose only disagreement is how to more efficiently commit genocide and ethnically cleanse the Palestinians. If Netanyahu loses to his opponent, Gadi Eisenkot, don’t be fooled by the liberal political and media establishment when they try to sell it as a turning of the page.
And they will.
Much of their efforts in this direction will rest on the fact that Eisenkot is an Israeli Jew of Moroccan descent. Watch out for the specific phrase “of Moroccan descent.” I guarantee you will see and hear it. Establishment media will try to employ identity politics to make liberals feel that a fascist with browner skin and a familial connection to a majority-Muslim country is a better fascist. They might even say something about his thick Israeli accent in an effort to separate him from Netanyahu whose polished, American accent helps give away the colonial game. In fact, the Guardian has already done exactly this. In a piece last week they hyped his “unpolished” character, his Moroccan heritage and working class roots, while mostly avoiding his long history of murderous actions.
Right now the polls are pretty much neck-and-neck, the outcome a flip of the coin. But if Eisenkot and his electoral bloc does win, he, and they, are likely to be as savage, perhaps even more so, than Netanyahu and his electoral bloc. We know this because Eisenkot is a solidly military man with a mass-murderous past. In 2014 he was appointed by Netanyahu to head the IDF, and from October 2023 to June 2024 was a member of Netanyahu’s cabinet. Yes, that’s right. Netanyahu’s possible replacement as prime minister of Israel was appointed by Netanyahu to head Israel’s genocidal military, and he also served in Netanyahu’s government for eight months of the genocide.
As I said, this election is simply fascist 1 versus fascist 2, each trying to prove how much they hate Palestinians, and Muslims more broadly.
While Netanyahu has been pointing to the genocide of Gaza and the attacks on Iran as reasons for his re-election, Eisenkot boasts of his more than forty years murdering or directing the murder of Palestinians, Lebanese and Muslims across the Middle East. He joined the Israeli military in 1978 and didn’t leave until he retired as IDF chief of staff in 2019. He made his name as the creator of the so-called “Dahiya doctrine” during his time as an IDF commander in Lebanon. This military strategy involves the use of overwhelming and disproportionate force against civilian populations to drive them into submission. It is named after the Beirut neighbourhood it was used in, under the command of Eisenkot, from July to August 2006. During this rampage the Israeli military murdered around 1,200 civilians.
Eisenkot was also head of the IDF during the Great March of Return in 2018 when thousands of Palestinians in Gaza marched peacefully, day after day, to the border fence, demanding the end of the blockade on the territory and more freedom to leave Gaza. In response the Israelis killed 183 unarmed Palestinians, including 35 children. All were sniped to death from the watch towers along the fence. Thousands were maimed. A UN report said the Israeli soldiers deliberately aimed for lower limbs to disable people. There were zero Israeli casualties. This is a page from the UN report, documenting specifically “the body part targeted.”
Eisenkot is a monster and since entering politics in 2021, he has relied on his mass murderous history to build a support base. He has never criticised the genocide, because he supports it, and like Netanyahu he opposes the creation of a Palestinian state. In August he explicitly tweeted his opposition to a Palestinian state in an effort to show Israelis that he would represent continuity on this issue. This came after Netanyahu said Eisenkot would “establish a Palestinian state before GTA 6 comes out,” referring to the popular video game due to be released next month. This is the level of the debate. One-upmanship on commitment to apartheid.
Other than not establishing a Palestinian state, Eisenkot’s big pitch is that he’ll “destroy” Hamas (which hasn’t fired a weapon in anger in over a year) within 18 months. His big promise, therefore, is to return to the murderous heights of the genocide before the phoney ceasefire, a ceasefire which has allowed the genocide to continue at a lower level away from the headlines. And we know from his past command of the IDF that these aren’t idle threats.
Like Netanyahu, Eisenkot also supports the expansion of settlements in the West Bank to ensure “the Jewish character” of Israel is preserved, and now in the final days of the election campaign he has begun using the phrase “Benjamin is Palestine,” accusing Netanyahu of being too pro-Palestinian. Just think about that. Netanyahu’s opponent is accusing Netanyahu, the butcher of Gaza, the architect of genocide and internationally wanted war criminal, of being too pro-Palestinian! This is unmistakably the discourse of a fascist state.
The disagreements between Netanyahu and Eisenkot concern largely superficial domestic issues. Their most controversial dispute is over the expansion of conscription to the ultra-orthodox community, which Netanyahu opposes (because they are a key support base), and Eisenkot supports.
And if Eisenkot wins and manages to form a government, it will include people like far-right West Bank settler Avigdor Liberman who has repeatedly said there are “no innocents in Gaza” and last year urged Netanyahu to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran. The blood-thirsty Liberman would most likely be defence minister in an Eisenkot government.
An Eisenkot government would also include Yair Lapid, a former foreign minister and Israeli prime minister, who last year said protests against Israel were fuelled only by propaganda and that there was no genocide or starvation in Gaza. Lapid is also, like almost all Israeli politicians, a massively murderous hawk on Iran, calling earlier this year for Israel to “destroy all of Iran’s oil fields and energy industry on Kharg Island.” Targeting civilian energy infrastructure is a war crime. He has also called for the destruction of Hezbollah, which is also a call for more mass murder in Lebanon.
Israel is a society of psychopaths led by psychopaths.
The only glimmer of hope is that it looks likely neither bloc will have enough seats to form a coalition government, which may put the brakes on their genocidal plans for a while. However, with Netanyahu unable to be replaced via the ballot box, it could simply rouse the country to rally around him, especially if the US-Israel once again attack Iran and Netanyahu uses it as a pretext for forming a “unity war cabinet,” as he did after October 7th.
Don’t let mainstream voices trick you into believing that Israeli good guys exist who’ll change the direction of this diseased colonial outpost.
The only guaranteed outcome from this election is more mass murder, and the continued genocide of the Palestinians.
After Tuesday the question won’t be whether Israel stops killing innocents, the question will be how many innocent people Israel kills, and where, in the coming days, weeks and months.