• Hyperreality@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    And it was already low before the war. His right-wing coalition failed to gain a majority of votes, even if they won the Knesset.

    There were also wide-spread protests against the judicial reform he was trying to push through. Relevant wikipedia article:

    Since the beginning of the protest movement against the judicial overhaul, The Times of Israel has written that protesters were faced with a continuous question of “how much, if at all, should the demonstrations focus on Palestinian rights?” … hundreds of Israeli and American academics published a statement claiming that the ultimate purpose of the judicial overhaul was to “annex more land, and ethnically cleanse all territories under Israeli rule of their Palestinian population”. The statement characterized that the Palestinian population living under the Israeli-occupied territories in the West Bank and Gaza as living under apartheid, and it criticized Jewish American leaders for paying insufficient attention to this “elephant in the room.” … One of the group’s members told Haaretz that the overhaul had led the protestors to connect the judicial overhaul to the occupation after looking at the politicians pushing the reforms, who are all settlers: Smotrich, Rothman and Ben-Gvir. On 9 September 2023, a statement signed by over 3,500 Israeli academics, artists, writers and former officials called on U.S. President Joe Biden and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to avoid meeting with Netanyahu, claiming that the ruling government undermined Israeli democracy and was “ignoring the historical conflict that is tearing Israel apart – the forceful domination of the Palestinian people.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Israeli_judicial_reform_protests

    For those wondering about Ben-Gvir, another copy-paste:

    Itamar Ben-Gvir … is an Israeli lawyer and far-right politician who serves as the Minister of National Security. … Ben-Gvir, a settler in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has faced charges of hate speech against Arabs and was known to have a portrait in his living room of Israeli-American terrorist Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers and wounded 125 others in Hebron, in the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre. … He was also previously convicted of supporting a terrorist group known as Kach, which espoused Kahanism, an extremist religious Zionist ideology. … Under his leadership, the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), a party which espouses Kahanism and anti-Arabism, won six seats in the 2022 Israeli legislative election … He has called for the expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel who are not loyal to Israel. Ben Gvir is “widely known for his openly racist, anti-Arab views and activities” … led several visits to the Temple Mount as activist and member of Knesset, contentious marches through Jerusalem’s Old City Muslim Quarter, and set up an office in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood which witnessed several evictions of Palestinians. On 3 January 2023, he visited the Temple Mount where the al-Aqsa Mosque is located, spurring an international wave of criticism that labelled his visit purposely provocative. As a lawyer, he is known for defending Jewish radicals and terrorists on trial in Israel. … Prior to entering politics, he defended Jews spitting at Christians as a “an ancient Jewish custom”. … Ben-Gvir is married to Ayala Nimrodi… The couple has five children, and they live in the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba/Hebron, which is deemed illegal under international law, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itamar_Ben-Gvir