When you have to read carefully between the lines for actual news

From Lapid Concedes in Israel, Paving Way for Netanyahu’s Return to Power by Patrick Kingsley.  The subheading is After five elections in less than four years, Israel will have a stable government for the first time since 2019. But Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition could test the constitutional framework and social fabric.

Fascinating to read with a critical eye.  There is a lot to unpack if you are willing to invest the effort to get past the narrative while trying to find the facts.  I don't have any particular dog in this fight.  Ever since its foundation, and in part fueled by repeated wars with its neighbors, Israel has drifted to the right and has become increasingly obsessive about defense on the ground.

Anyone in their position (geographical, demographic, and financial) likely would behave similarly.  There is a lot of tragedy to be shared around.  

The New York Times has long had a beef with Netanyahu so their reporting always has to be read with an even more critical eye than usual.  And not just Netanyahu but Israel as well.  Almost to the point of anti-semitism.  

Reading this long piece skeptically, there are a couple of hidden juxtapositions which are interesting.  NYT is focused on establishing a narrative of a sudden descent into far right fascism with the election of Netanyahu.  There are many intimations of pending dangers from the far right nature of Netanyahu's government.  

But it doesn't sound like there is anything is amiss.  The NYT is concerned about the far right nature of the Netanyahu government but that government apparently reflects changes in the desires and goals of the Israeli electorate.  It seems like the NYT is regretting the decline of leftwing parties rather than expressing concern about democracy per se.  They are indulging in speculative alarmism rather than identifying specific policies about which they are concerned.

In some senses, the concession of defeat on Thursday evening from the departing prime minister, Yair Lapid, marked a return to the familiar. Mr. Netanyahu has governed Israel for most of the past quarter century. While previously in office, he presided over a rightward drift within Israeli society — the same social shift that propelled him back to power.

Israel moved right and Netanyahu has moved right with the electorate.  Democratically, all seems well.  Except that the NYT is nervous about the Jewishness of the electorate.

In other ways, his return is a leap into the unknown. During his previous stints, Mr. Netanyahu helped entrench the occupation of the West Bank, empowered the far right and oversaw the collapse of peace negotiations with the Palestinians. But he almost always governed in coalition with at least one centrist party, setting a limit on how far right his governments could move.

His decision this time to ally only with far right and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties, unrestrained by any centrist forces, takes Israel into unmapped territory. It remains to be seen whether that frees Mr. Netanyahu to follow the agenda of his far-right allies, or if it forces him to act as a brake on their most extreme excesses. 

 

“Netanyahu has always used in elections a stark fusion of Jewish identity and ultranationalism,” said Anshel Pfeffer, a biographer of Mr. Netanyahu. “But allying himself with Jewish supremacists has created a new far-right entity he never envisaged and doesn’t know how to accommodate in his government.” 

  

So is the concern that everyone is moving right or that within the right coalition, there are Orthodox Jews?  Given the NYT's past near anti-semitic criticisms, it is a little hard to tell.  

And then there is the conflict in NYT positions, especially its philosophical position within the US.  Here, the NYT is all in for group identity.  They are very supportive of Black identity groups and Native American identity groups and historically been very supportive of Hispanic identity groups (until they started voting Republican).  But group identity apparently has its limits.  Jewish group identity apparently is not approved.  

Throughout the reporting, the NYT keeps having to acknowledge that Netanyahu apparently does reflect the will of the people and that his election has been beneficial in that has returned some much-needed political stability to the region.  Just not through the parties the NYT might have wanted.  

The parties that the NYT might be disposed to support simply had a bad election.

Mr. Lapid’s alliance won only 51 seats, amid a near wipeout for the Israeli left. Meretz, a leftist party that has long been a mainstay of the Israeli peace movement, failed to meet the threshold for winning any seats.

Kingsley keeps raising red flags but then not providing evidence for why his alarm is warranted.

While the coalition led by Mr. Netanyahu would provide a stable government, it could nevertheless unsettle Israel’s constitutional framework and tear at its social fabric.

How might it unsettle Israel's constitutional framework and how might it tear at the social fabric?  We don't know and aren't told.

“These are difficult days,” said Aida Touma-Suleiman, a Palestinian lawmaker in the Israeli Parliament. “This isn’t the ordinary, classic right that we know. This is a change — in which a racist, violent right wing threatens to turn into fascism.”

A racist, violent, right-wing government which threatens to turn into fascism?  Where have we heard that reporting before?  Oh, yes.  That's how the New York Times views what is happening in America.  Are they simply using the same ideological template to describe in Israel what they see as happening in America?

For all the hyperventilating fear-mongering by the NYT here, there is no pending civil war, there is no pending fascism, there is no apparent racism.  It is all manufactured delusion.  If their reporting from Israel is as off-base as what they report in the US, then what exactly is the reality in Israel?

And in Italy?  And in Hungary?  And in all the other countries in Europe where the timorous and trembling glances of NYT reporters see emerging fascism and nationalism and white supremacy?  

Sometimes the reporting is just perplexing.

Internationally, analysts say his return amid such a hard-line coalition would test some of Israel’s diplomatic relations, most notably with the United States and with the Persian Gulf states with which Israel recently formed alliances.

Mr. Netanyahu himself oversaw the creation of those ties during his last spell in office. But his new coalition allies’ priorities are likely to heighten tensions with the Palestinians, which could embarrass Israel’s Arab and American partners.

The Abraham Accords were among the most unexpected international achievements of Israel, its Middle Eastern neighbors and the Trump administration.  A framework for peace between many of Israel's Arab neighbors and Israel.  It was a huge step forward and Netanyahu was the Israeli leader who helped make them happen.

And the NYT is concerned that his reelection might bring them down because now his governing alliance is more Jewish than it was?  Well, I suppose that is possible but it would seem unlikely that a leader would undermine his own achievement.  What is it that the NYT reporters see that everyone else does not?

They [the alliance parties] also want to end Palestinian autonomy in parts of the occupied West Bank and have a history of antagonizing the Palestinian minority within Israel itself, a track record that has raised fears that the new government could roil Jewish-Arab tensions in Israel and curb any remaining hope of an end to the occupation.

Foreign-policy experts predict that Mr. Netanyahu, once back in office, will be forced to tread an awkward path between mollifying hard-line allies at home and avoiding confrontations with international partners that support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The State Department has already hinted that the Biden administration has reservations about Mr. Netanyahu’s likely coalition partners.

Finally we get to something substantive.  Yes, there is a conflict between Israeli Jew's desire for survival and security and Palestinian desires for autonomy.  This has been the tragedy of the region since 1948 and is not new.  Israel's continuing efforts to improve their security has come at the expense of Palestinian autonomy but it is unclear whether there was any viable alternative.  

And that search for security by Israel has taken some interesting turns which challenge the assumption that the interests of the Palestinians are compatible with peace.  Since 1967, international negotiators have lobbied for the creation of a Palestinian state based on Gaza and the West Bank.  When Israel finally granted Gaza autonomy in 2005, that should have been an opportunity to demonstrate that there was a path towards peace.  

Instead, Gaza has become a humanitarian tragedy and a base for almost unceasing attacks by Palestinians on Israel.  Everyone wants there to be a different and better path towards peace and coexistence but in the hard realities of the world, it is hard to see what that path might be.  

"Foreign policy experts"?  Please.  Are those the same experts that predicted that Ukraine would collapse before the efficient might of the Russian army?  That said that peace in the Middle East could not happen right up until the Abraham Accords were signed?  

And Biden administration concerns about the coalition?  Both Obama and Biden have been overwhelmingly focused on a will-o-wisp treaty with collapsing Iran and have been harsh critics of every Israeli government for the past fifteen years.  Again, there is nothing new there.  

This is reliably true reporting.

But, Mr. Miller said, “At a minimum, Biden and Netanyahu will likely annoy the hell out of one another.”

Because Biden (and Obama before him) have been perpetually annoyed by all Israeli governments.

There is a hidden news element in the reporting below.

Mr. Netanyahu was the primary architect of the landmark diplomatic relationships that Israel forged in 2020, during the Trump administration, with Bahrain, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. His re-election is not expected to upend those new ties, even if it presents them with new challenges.

Though none of Israel’s new partners have renounced the Palestinian cause, analysts say that Persian Gulf leaders consider their own national interests to be a greater immediate priority.

“From the perspective of any of the Gulf states, normalization is tied to their long-term strategic plans and has little to do with the day-to-day of Israeli politics,” said Elham Fakhro, a research fellow at the Center for Gulf Studies at Exeter University in England

What Kingsley is hinting at is a hard reality for the Palestinian supporting NYT.  Netanyahu (and Trump) made a major step forward in regional peace with the Abraham Accords.  Those accords are not threatened by Netanyahu's election (despite Kingsley earlier hinting that they might be in peril) because the accords are in everyone's mutual interests.  Except, of course, for the Palestinians who are once again becoming friendless in the Middle East.  

All the other sovereign countries see a shared threat in the actions of Iran, the darling of the Biden administration's eye, and the Abraham Accords were, in some ways, as much a mutual defense treaty as they were a mutual peace treaty.  

But his [Netanyahu's] election may make it harder to formalize ties between Israel and the most influential Arab country, Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government recently made small diplomatic gestures to Israel, like allowing Israeli planes to fly through its airspace, but said it would not agree to full diplomatic relations until the creation of a Palestinian state.

True enough.  But as Saudi Arabia has demonstrated lately, they are perfectly happy to push back against Biden administration insults and policies.  They have just publicly snubbed the Biden administration by proceeding with OPEC rises despite Biden appeals.  Who is to say that the Israeli-Saudi Arabian talks won't come to some mutual beneficial agreement given that both countries face threats from Iran and criticisms from the Biden administration?

Kingsley's reporting is incomplete and has to be filtered through a lot of independent knowledge of the recent past (thirty years) as well as awareness of the NYT's own unstated biases towards Palestinians, against Israel (verging on anti-semitism), and support of the Biden administration campaign for accommodation of Iran.  

If you don't have that knowledge, Kingsley's reporting is at best misleading.  Most of his sources appear to be academic and political critics, rather than a full scan of supporters and critics.  The NYT having a negative opinion of Netanyahu is neither new nor news.  

My interpretation is that on balance the Netanyahu election will be good for Israel and the Middle East.  There will continue to be a pragmatic engagement by Israel with Arab neighbors which will mature commercially and in terms of improving defense coordination.  That the Netanyahu coalition of parties will be challenging to manage but is stable enough to provide 2-3 years of progress (far better a prospect than any of the past five governments in the past four years).  That Palestinian support in the Middle East will continue to decline among Arab nations owing to their increasing alliance with Iran.