Terrorism And Israeli Governments Left Vs Right

I think that maybe we should establish some facts straight with Palestinian terror attacks and Israeli governments so perhaps bear with me on this one.

1. There is probably going to be a terror wave regardless of who is in the government. Lots of security analysts have mentioned it was coming for over a year now. It is Israeli society’s fault for ignoring the “Palestinian problem” for over a decade and just kicking that can down the road.

2. Rightwing populists don’t have solutions for terrorism. Ben Gvir wildly swinging his handgun around at Arabs and threatening to shoot them isn’t going to prevent terror attacks. It’s a complex problem that involves law enforcement, political solutions, macro-development, etc. The optimist in me hopes that when Ben Gvir fails to stop terrorism that Israelis will stop voting for racists peddling easy solutions. But the realist in me thinks that voters will just gravitate to the next racist demagogue selling them populist snake oil.

3. Bibi and Ben Gvir’s desire to dance in blood every time there was a terrorist attack under the Bennett government remains a disgusting and cynical use of terror for political gain. They absolutely deserve to have any terror attacks that happen on their watch shoved back in their face by the other side because of this. It’s an absolute shame the other side is too moral to do this.

4. One of the concerns that I have is that terrorism is easy to use as an excuse to dismantle democracy. Bibi can easily hide under it to do what he wanted to do for his own corrupt purposes and there might be less pushback from the US than is needed to prevent it. On the other hand, Bibi needs someone to blame for the terror wave so he might just leave the Supreme Court alone for the moment as his foil.