IT LOOKS like US presidential hopeful Donald 'Build the Wall' Trump will be heading to Israel some time soon. I suppose at least on the issue of walls Mr Trump may find some like-minded company there. Clearly encouraged by what he sees as progress at home in unifying a hostile Republican Party, aides suggest The Donald’s visit to Israel will happen before the GOP convention in July.
Should his visit go ahead, Mr Trump would be out to try and convince politically liberal Jewish people that he is the man for the White House while simultaneously assuring Middle East hawks that he is their man too.
This will not be easy for a politician who has all the diplomatic tact of Pol Pot.
On arrival in Israel Mr Trump might also be in for a bit of a surprise, for right now Israel is a country where political acrimony, division and bitterness are even more pronounced than that generated in the US by Mr Trump’s presidential campaign.
Cast an eye over some of the headlines in the Israeli press and they tell their own story. Most of these newspaper stories and columns concern themselves with high-powered resignations and reshuffles within the government and military. These are all inextricably tied up with what many Israelis see as the country’s unprecedented slide towards a dangerous ultra-nationalism.
It all seems eerily prophetic given a conversation I had last year in Jerusalem with Ilan Baruch and Dr Alon Liel, two former Israeli ambassadors to South Africa.
Back then they expressed their grave concern about the political drift of their country. Both feared the marginal politics espoused by extremists in their society had now become mainstream.
“Israel runs the risk of turning into a pariah state and faces growing delegitimisation,” was how Mr Baruch summed up their worries.
They are not alone and recent events in Israel have only added to the weight of their argument. It may have been a long, slow process but it has come to a head in the last few weeks after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu performed an abrupt political volte-face in expanding his coalition government.
It was a move that had many Israelis reeling in shock.
Instead of creating a national unity government between the centre-left Zionist Union opposition party and Mr Netanyahu’s ruling Likud, he instead reached out to Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu party. This is where it got very messy.
Under the agreement the ultra-nationalist, hardline and polarising party leader Mr Lieberman was offered the role of defence minister whose incumbent, Moshe Ya'alon, resigned both his post and place in the Knesset.
For those Israelis on what remains of the political centre it was the worst possible news.
Yet more evidence of Israel’s lurch to the right and another nail in the coffin of any peace process with the Palestinians.
To put the highly provocative appointment of Mr Lieberman’s into some kind of political context, the man now in charge of the Israeli army and the military occupation of Palestinians in the West Bank is himself a Jewish settler.
This former bouncer-cum defence minister has himself spent very little time in the military. Hell bent on expanding settlements, he vows there will never be a Palestinian state. Add to this the fact that he wants to re-occupy Gaza, and threatened to assassinate the leader of Hamas and you get some idea of how volatile this makes things.
Come to think of it perhaps he might have more in common with Mr Trump than first meets the eye.
You know how much of an alarming political shift is going on in Israel when the country’s Maariv newspaper, right-wing itself, dubs Israel’s current government the “most right-wing and extremist” in the country's 68-year history.
As for the more liberal of news outlets, the pages are full of op-eds both horrified and terrified in equal measure. Many point to the fact that it is not only at government level that sinister ultra-nationalist politics are manifesting themselves.
Writing in Israel’s oldest daily newspaper the liberal Haaretz, journalist Larry Derfner, makes the case that the rise of a neo-fascist right is already well embedded in the country and worse than in most of Europe.
“In the 21st century, the forces of belligerent, xenophobic ultra-nationalism have a much stronger, more secure hold on power in Israel than they do in any Western country,” Mr Derfner contests.
What ails Israel he says “is the sort of condition that’s just made for a long-term takeover by belligerent, xenophobic ultra-nationalists.”
Other more prominent Israelis often from the most unlikely quarters within the military and political establishment echo Mr Derfner’s observations.
Israel's most decorated soldier and a former defence minister Ehud Barak was quoted recently as saying that the country has been “infected by the seeds of fascism”, adding that it should be “a red light for all of us regarding what's going on in the government.”
Then there were the remarks made during a speech last month during Holocaust Remembrance Day by Israeli Deputy Chief of Staff Yair Golan, who likened recent developments in Israeli society to the processes that unfolded in Europe before the Holocaust.
“If there's something that frightens me about Holocaust remembrance it's the recognition of the revolting processes that occurred in Europe in general, and particularly in Germany, back then – 70, 80 and 90 years ago – and finding signs of them here among us today in 2016,” said Golan.
In Israel of course such comments are tantamount to taboo, but it is perhaps a measure of how divisive the country’s politics have become that such a senior figure would even consider such a comparison.
With international eyes focused elsewhere in the Middle East these tumultuous changes in Israeli politics have gone comparatively unnoticed and the depth of their implications have not yet been fully recognised or understood.
Many Israelis are concerned as to where all this is leading and the course their country is on. “I feel, for the first time, after this week that I’m not sure I want my children to stay here," said Roni Daniel, a respected television military correspondent for Israel’s Channel Two recently.
This coming from a commentator who is thought of as a bellweather of 'Middle Israel.'
Writing in Haaretz yesterday another well-known commentator, David Rosenberg, made the observation that thus far Donald Trump’s “foreign relations experience consists mainly of building a golf course in Scotland.”
Yes, it will indeed be interesting to see what Mr Trump makes of Washington’s long-time allies when he gets to Israel.
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