[ The goal of Israel’s fascist right is to establish a religious
dictatorship run according to their openly oppressive principles,
explicitly targeting Palestinians, LGBTQ people, women, and most every
marginalized group in Israel.]
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ISRAEL’S NEW GOVERNMENT LEARNED FROM THE U.S. FAR RIGHT  
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Shiri Eisner
January 1, 2023
+972 Magazine
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_ The goal of Israel’s fascist right is to establish a religious
dictatorship run according to their openly oppressive principles,
explicitly targeting Palestinians, LGBTQ people, women, and most every
marginalized group in Israel. _

Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu (front row) pose for a group picture of the new government
with Israeli Ministers at the President's Residence in Jerusalem,
December 29, 2022., photo: Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90 // +972 Magazine

 

It seems there hasn’t been a single day since the beginning of the
coalition negotiations to establish a new Israeli government that has
not seen a horrifying new policy proposal from the people who, as of
last week, rule our lives
[[link removed]]. Between
handing over the police to Itamar Ben Gvir
[[link removed]],
placing the economy and the Civil Administration into the hands
of Bezalel Smotrich
[[link removed]], and
extracurricular programming in the hands of the LGBTQ-phobe Avi Maoz
[[link removed]] —
it has been hard to keep up.

Over the last week, much of the media’s focus has surrounded one of
the newest decrees: an amendment to Israel’s anti-discrimination
law, allowing business owners to deny service
[[link removed]] and
doctors to deny treatment for reasons of “religious beliefs.”
While the law appeared in the coalition agreement between Likud and
one of Israel’s Haredi parties, it was MKs Orit Strock and Simcha
Rothman from the far-right Religious Zionism Party who spoke openly
about applying the law to the LGBTQ community.

All of these appointments, plans, and declarations are terrifying,
especially when considering that the real avalanche of legislative
horror is still ahead of us. What has been lost in the local and
international furore over these latest policy proposals, however, is
the extent to which the Israeli far-right is borrowing from the
American far-right in its crusade against LGBTQ identities.

First of all, let us recognize one basic fact: the goal of Israel’s
fascist right is to establish a religious dictatorship run according
to their openly oppressive principles, explicitly targeting
Palestinians, LGBTQ people, women, and most every marginalized group
in Israel. They will use every iota of power they are handed, and then
try to gain more. Thus, they are therefore guaranteed to take
advantage of this power to the fullest extent possible.

Their ability to do so will be defined by the United States, and
specifically President Joe Biden, who has the power to put pressure on
the Israeli government, including through threats of sanctions. It is
thus the White House that will decide how far the fascists will be
“allowed” to go.

 

Simcha Rothman (left) and Orit Struck (right), both members of the
far-right Religious Zionism Party, seen in the Knesset on May 9, 2022.
(Yonatan Sindel/Flash90  //  +972 Magazine)
Given the current limits on their power, what can the far right do?
They can take a page out of the U.S.’s anti-LGBTQ playbook and begin
passing laws against the community, as well as other marginalized
groups.

As opposed to the popular notion of the United States as free
democracy, it is in fact one of the world’s more conservative
countries in the global north. For example, the “right” to
discriminate against or refuse service to LGBTQ people has for years
been the focal point of public controversy; in fact, the U.S. Supreme
Court is currently presiding over a case
[[link removed]] relating
to this very issue — and under its current, far-right composition,
is likely to rule in favor of discrimination. Similarly, federal law
does not protect LGBTQ or other marginalized populations from being
refused medical treatment, including in circumstances of life or
death. The same goes for the “right” of schools to censor the
existence of LGBTQ identities and erase the issue from curricula.

In other words, all of the anti-LGBTQ policies that members of the
incoming Israeli government have recently proposed are fully
concurrent with the existing situation in the United States. From
here, then, it is easy to trace the trajectory of discrimination
awaiting LGBTQ people in Israel in the coming months and years if the
new government gets its way — following in the U.S.’s footsteps.

EXPORTING THE WAR ON TRANS PEOPLE

The U.S. is facing a wave of transphobic legislation aiming to
eradicate the existence of trans and nonbinary people from public life
(and in general). Over the last two years, lawmakers have put forth
nearly 300 transphobic bills
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state legislatures, mostly focusing on barring trans and nonbinary
youth from participating in sports, erasing their identities in
schools, and barring gender-affirming care for children and youth
(which, it is important to note, does not include any invasive,
surgical, or permanent interventions at these ages).

In February of this year, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued
a directive
[[link removed]] instructing
social workers to treat gender-affirming care for children and youth
as a form of parental violence, and to remove children receiving this
care from their families. In March, Idaho passed a law
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renders gender-affirming care a felony punishable by life in prison
for parents who allow their children to access it. In April, Alabama
passed legislation prohibiting doctors from providing gender-affirming
care to patients under the age of 19, with similar laws enacted
in Tennessee
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[[link removed]]. In
June, Louisiana passed a law
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transgender girls and women from participating in women’s sports,
with similar laws passed in Arkansas
[[link removed]], Florida
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and other states. Also this year, Alabama
[[link removed].], Oklahoma
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and Tennessee
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made it illegal for students and staff from using school bathrooms or
locker rooms that don’t correspond to the gender they were assigned
at birth. The list goes on and on.

Another law in Florida that has been making headlines of late has
received the moniker “Don’t Say Gay.” Recently signed into law
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Governor Ron DeSantis, it bans discussion of non-heterosexual and
cisgender identities in kindergartens and schools through third grade.
 

Demonstrators take part in the ProtectTransKids protest in front of
the White House to protest discrimination against LGBTQ children in
public schools, Washington D.C., February 22, 2017. (Ted Eytan/CC
BY-SA 2.0  //  +972 Magazine)
It is important to note the discourse surrounding this type of
legislation: the people advancing such bills often utilize the
rhetoric of “protecting our children,” with the
buzzword “grooming”
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increasingly deployed by the U.S. far right to describe public
displays of queer identity, and particularly transgender identity. In
a cynical and rather heartless manner, supporters of transphobic and
LGBTQ-phobic legislature have extracted this term from its original
context — referring to pedophiles establishing relationships with
minors in order to gain their trust so that they can later abuse them
— and co-opted it for their cause, now using it to describe any
legitimization of LGBTQ identities as brainwashing, and portraying
children as victims of the “transgender ideology”
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the “gay agenda.”

This type of discourse is already seeping into the statements of
Israeli fascists. For example, a flyer
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the anti-LGBTQ hate group “Choosing Family” asks: “Do you, too,
believe that children shouldn’t be exposed to sexual content?”
Similarly, earlier this year, far-right radio host Shimon Riklin
[[link removed]] described the
distribution of a trans children’s book, explaining the personal
story of a real transgender girl named Jazz, as a brainwashing ploy,
asking: “Why isn’t there a law in the State of Israel against this
bunch of wackos who want to touch our children?” and calling them
“perverted.” Another recent dramatic development in this direction
has been the persecution
[[link removed]],
both locally and nationally, of a nine-year-old transgender boy in
Givat Shmuel for simply going to school along with cisgender children.
As part of this persecution, an anti-trans conference
[[link removed]] held
in the city included a discussion about the “dangers of the
transgender ideology.” We can expect that, after its establishment,
such events will receive further support from the government itself.

FROM CONVERSION THERAPY TO ROE V. WADE

U.S. federal law also provides no protection against conversion
therapy, a dangerous practice that targets LGBTQ youth and seeks to
change their sexual or gender identities. Although several states have
enacted laws against this practice, it is legal in most states. This
allows for severe institutionalized abuse of LGBTQ children and young
people, causing trauma and far worse; according to various studies,
conversion therapy doubles the risk of suicidality among LGBTQ people,
who are anyway at greater risk than heterosexual and cisgender people.

Conversion therapy has been hotly debated in Israel over the last few
years, with legislative attempts made
[[link removed]] and
failed to provide protection against it. Avi Maoz, the leader of
anti-LGBTQ party Noam, is one of Israel’s biggest proponents
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therapy, while Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has openly supported
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in the past, including as part of official Knesset discussions.
Another disconcerting move on this front is the far right’s
intention to lower the bar [[link removed]] on
the certification of various therapeutic professions, so as not to
require academic studies. One disturbingly likely result of this would
be to enable people offering conversion therapy to present themselves
as legitimate therapists. In any event, one can now expect no legal
protection against conversion therapy, but rather attempts to
legitimize it.
 

Activists protest in Washington Square Park during the Abortion Rights
Rally following the reversal of Roe V. Wade, New York City, June 24,
2022 (Elvert Barnes Photography/CC BY-SA 2.0  //  +972 Magazine)
And lest we forget the area of reproductive rights, and the U.S.
Supreme Court’s dramatic ruling
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Roe vs. Wade, thus eliminating protection of the right to abortion.
This, in turn, has led states like Texas, Alabama, and Louisiana to
ban abortions almost entirely, causing enormous injury to the
reproductive health of women and anyone with a uterus, often posing a
risk
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their lives. Yet another risk is that of imprisonment in the event of
a miscarriage — something that has already happened
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practice, even prior to the SCOTUS ruling.

While in Israel, no one seems to be openly speaking about banning
abortion just yet, the fascists certainly seem to have their eyes on
the prize. Abortion is listed among the medical treatments that parts
of the Israeli far right proposes can be legally refused
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grounds. If such a decree passes into law, entire hospitals would be
permitted to refuse performing abortions or even treating
miscarriages. Since the right to abortion is not protected by law
(having an abortion requires the approval of a committee under strict
criteria), snatching it away would not be difficult.

SMOTRICH’S AMERICAN DREAMS

But the Israeli far-right won’t stop there. Just ask Smotrich, who
published an op-ed
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the conservative Wall Street Journal this week in which he writes that
the new government will make Israel more like the U.S. To do so,
Smotrich says, Israel will enact legislation that allows business
owners to refuse service to certain customers on the basis of their
religious conscience — that is, to pass a law that allows for
blatant discrimination against LGBTQ people and other marginalized
groups.
 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks with Finance Minister Bezalel
Smotrich in the Knesset, December 20, 2022. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90
 //  +972 Magazine)
But that’s not all, Smotrich also promises to promote
hyper-capitalist and union busting policies, protect the “individual
rights” of West Bank settlers (without, of course, extending any
rights to Palestinians living under the brutality of Israel’s
apartheid regime), and limit the power of the judiciary against the
whims of the new far-right government. All of this, Smotrich writes,
is inspired by the American model.

And the scariest part? All of these things will remain true so long as
Joe Biden remains in power. Should Donald Trump or even Ron DeSantis
win the 2024 U.S. presidential election, it could give the Israeli
far-right the green light to establish the _halachic_ dictatorship
of their dreams. Then the real persecution of marginalized groups in
Israel will start.

And yet, we still have time to prepare. As opposed to many in the U.S.
left, Israeli leftists are deeply familiar with authoritarian systems.
As a Jewish apartheid state, Israel has never been a democracy, which
means we already hold much knowledge about the ways that its racist
and discriminatory systems work. For us, though this will certainly be
a significant, even shocking, escalation, it will not be a surprise
— nor will it find us empty handed.

The volume may intensify, but the basic mode of operation remains the
same. We know it. We have lived it. We have fought against it, and we
will continue to fight it. Because no matter how long it will take
—and we are in this battle for the long haul —we are going to win.

_[SHIRI EISNER is a bisexual, feminist and genderqueer writer and
activist. They are the author of the Lamba-nominated book 'Bi: Notes
for a Bisexual Revolution.']_

Read More:

* LAND GRABS. HOMOPHOBIA. RADICALIZED POLICE: WHAT TO EXPECT FROM
ISRAEL’S FAR-RIGHT GOVERNMENT
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* Israel
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* Benjamin Netanyahu
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* Haredi parties
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* Bezalel Smotrich
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* Avi Maoz
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* Simcha Rothman
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* Palestinians
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* LGBTQ
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* homophobia
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* transgender
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* Women
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* women's rights
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* abortion
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* Right-wing agenda
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* zionism
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* Biden Administration
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