In view of the political drama surrounding Benjamin Netanyahu’s departure, a novum in Israeli politics almost faded into the background: For the first time in Israel’s history Mansour Abbas’ United Arab List (Ra’am) became part of a coalition government.
However, Ra’am faces the difficult task of walking a fine line between catering to its Palestinian voters and being a reasonable partner to Israel’s extreme right.
Even though Palestinians make up almost 20 percent of Israel’s population, a voice for the minority has traditionally been largely excluded from the political decision-making process.
Their representatives were personae non-gratae, undesirables, not only in ultra-orthodox and right-wing circles but also for secular left and liberal parties.
After the March 2020 elections, Ra’am offered to support a centre-left coalition under Benny Gantz. However, Gantz turned down the offer – for fear of being torn apart by the right-wing camp as an Arab fraterniser and instead entered a coalition with his rival Netanyahu – a choice he will have regretted by now.
Thanks to Netanyahu, who in the past was often inclined to politicise the Arab question ad nauseam and stir up antipathy against them, Ra’am is now a member of the Israeli government.
“A taboo was broken, ironically by the Netanyahu camp, which tried – and failed – to get Arab support for Netanyahu’s coalition. The methods used were quite despicable,” Benyamin Neuberger, professor emeritus of political science at The Open University of Israel, told Al Jazeera.
However, Netanyahu legitimised Ra’am, allowing the anti-Netanyahu camp – the Bloc for Change – to get Ra’am to join the coalition.
“From now on, any coalition with Arab parties has become legitimate – and this for the first time in Israeli history,” said Neuberger.
Mansour Abbas, leader of the United Arab List, also known by the Hebrew acronym Ra’am, votes at a polling station in Maghar, Israel [File: Mahmoud Illean/AP]
Within the system
However, it was not merely the political landscape that has witnessed a change but also Israel’s society. In February 2020, polls indicated only 23 percent of Jewish voters would support the idea that the country’s Arab parties support an Israeli government. In April 2021, a poll found now 48 percent of Jewish voters had warmed up to the idea.
Ra’am thus became increasingly cognizant that it can achieve more within the system.
Usually, the Palestine question would dominate the election programmes of the Arab parties, but turnout among the Arab community remained relatively low. This year’s turnout marked the worst in history, at 44.6 percent.
Nonetheless, this indifference to politics forced Arab parties to usher in a paradigm shift, away from prioritising Palestinians in the occupied territories and towards improving the living conditions of their voters, the Palestinian citizens of Israel. It is a strategy change that made sense, given that voting Palestinian citizens appear to be interested in their own fate, first and foremost.
The Arab parties are responding to the changing mood of their voters, who are increasingly interested in bread-and-butter issues: rising criminal violence in the Arab towns and villages; education; social services; discrimination in employment and municipal budgets, said Neuberger.
“Ra’am was successful in going with the trend.”
However, while Ra’am has benefitted from this new reality in Israel, the status quo will not necessarily represent the future. Fundamental concerns among Jews towards Ra’am remain regarding defence, public security, and foreign policy.
Ra’am naturally advocates for creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital. It also supports equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel. However, Ra’am is also ideologically aligned with Egypt’s now-banned Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas in Gaza. The latter, in particular, raises difficult questions the coalition will need to find an answer to, particularly if a conflict with Gaza would erupt again.
Ra’am walks a fine line, particularly regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict.
However, Neuberger said the primary change in this matter will not be brought about by Ra’am, but by the fact the centre and, even more so, the left has become part of a coalition that agreed on a compromise with the rightist part of the coalition.
“This compromise has made it easier for Ra’am to join the coalition,” he said.
‘Ideological concessions’
Nonetheless, having joined forces with Israel’s far-right will undoubtedly be seen as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause by some. In an attempt to negate this notion, Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas has shown his proclivity for following a blueprint the ultra-Orthodox religious party SHAS previously advocated, said Neuberger.
“Abbas will make ideological concessions, such as acceptance of Zionism and recognition of the Jewish state, in exchange of support for its party interests, for example funding for its schools.”
However, given the reality that Ra’am only holds four seats in the Knesset, the coalition will still cater more to the Jewish majority, which seems natural.
The fundamental change seems to be that from now on, the Arab minority will matter more than it used to do in the past, said Neuberger.
For his party’s vote, Abbas demanded additional funds for the Arab sector. Co-Prime Ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid agreed and doubled the budget of the five-year plan for developing Israel’s Arab sector to 35bn shekels ($10.75bn).
Moreover, Ra’am secured the subsequent recognition of three illegally established Bedouin villages in the Negev desert, a constituency that consists mainly of religious or nationalist Palestinian citizens of Israel. It marks a pivotal change in Israeli politics – Knesset representation with the power to move issues in Palestinian favour.
“This is the first time in Israel’s history that an Arab national party is part of the government and that the government is dependent on its vote for formation, survival and legislation. This is an unprecedented situation – unlike the Rabin’s coalition in 1992-95 when Arab parties supported the government from the opposition,” Sammy Smooha, professor of sociology at the University of Haifa, told Al Jazeera.
“Ra’am’s main purpose in this coalition is to serve as the main representative of the Arabs in Israel and to be more representative than other Arab leadership bodies such as the Joint List, the Council of Heads of Arab Local Councils, and the Higher Fellow-Up Committee.”
As such, Ra’am will likely insist on implementing other policies such as the allocation of land for Arab public needs and housing, the war against violence and crime in the Arab sector, and the building of an Arab university in the Galilee, said Smooha.
Particularly the crime issue is increasingly devastating the Arab communities, with homicide unwaveringly mounting.
However, the representation will not make up for the apparent encumbrances in Ra’am’s way.
Bennett, who once called Abbas a “terrorist supporter”, advocates Jewish settlement policy and is a vehement opponent of a Palestinian state. Indeed, most coalition partners are right-wing nationalists who may be critical of Netanyahu’s persona, but not necessarily of his policies.
How many concessions are conceivable in such an environment?
The political involvement of an Arab party alone is hence unlikely to lead to reconciliation between Jews and Muslims. The latest religious unrest has shown how fragile coexistence remains.
However, with the historic coalition agreement, Palestinian citizens of Israel are no longer pariahs. In the long run, some pundits say, it could bring Jewish and Arab citizens closer together – if this extremely heterogeneous coalition can be maintained.
‘New dynamics’
Moreover, the involvement of Ra’am has the potential to contribute to a certain relaxation of the fronts, as radical steps such as annexation of occupied territories could mean the end of the coalition.
“The new dynamics is that the government cannot ignore the Arab minority’s needs and goals in the civic area and can endanger its survival if it crosses the red lines in the national area,” said Smooha.
These red lines will be omnipresent in Israel’s new government, namely the aforementioned civic and socioeconomic demands or a subsequent Israel war in Gaza, said Smooha.
However, the chances of both red lines being crossed were “not high”, he added.
Despite the promising change in Israeli politics, Ra’am now finds itself in a precarious position in which its leeway to manoeuvre between ideology and reality appears rather limited.
Its role and conduct in the coalition are likely to affect whether Arab parties in government will indeed be seen as legitimate moving forward, or whether it will be filed as a failed experiment and hinder any future progress.
NEW YORK (AP) — In a new video posted early Election Day, Beyoncé channels Pamela Anderson in the television program “Baywatch” – red one-piece swimsuit and all – and asks viewers to vote.
In the two-and-a-half-minute clip, set to most of “Bodyguard,” a four-minute cut from her 2024 country album “Cowboy Carter,” Beyoncé cosplays as Anderson’s character before concluding with a simple message, written in white text: “Happy Beylloween,” followed by “Vote.”
At a rally for Donald Trump in Pittsburgh on Monday night, the former president spoke dismissively about Beyoncé’s appearance at a Kamala Harris rally in Houston in October, drawing boos for the megastar from his supporters.
“Beyoncé would come in. Everyone’s expecting a couple of songs. There were no songs. There was no happiness,” Trump said.
She did not perform — unlike in 2016, when she performed at a presidential campaign rally for Hillary Clinton in Cleveland – but she endorsed Harris and gave a moving speech, initially joined onstage by her Destiny’s Child bandmate Kelly Rowland.
“I’m not here as a celebrity, I’m not here as a politician. I’m here as a mother,” Beyoncé said.
“A mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in, a world where we have the freedom to control our bodies, a world where we’re not divided,” she said at the rally in Houston, her hometown.
“Imagine our daughters growing up seeing what’s possible with no ceilings, no limitations,” she continued. “We must vote, and we need you.”
Harris used the song in July during her first official public appearance as a presidential candidate at her campaign headquarters in Delaware. That same month, Beyoncé’s mother, Tina Knowles, publicly endorsed Harris for president.
Beyoncé gave permission to Harris to use the song, a campaign official who was granted anonymity to discuss private campaign operations confirmed to The Associated Press.
Outside of sports and a “Cold front coming down from Canada,” American news media only report on Canadian events that they believe are, or will be, influential to the US. Therefore, when Justin Trudeau’s announcement, having finally read the room, that Canada will be reducing the number of permanent residents admitted by more than 20 percent and temporary residents like skilled workers and college students will be cut by more than half made news south of the border, I knew the American media felt Trudeau’s about-face on immigration was newsworthy because many Americans would relate to Trudeau realizing Canada was accepting more immigrants than it could manage and are hoping their next POTUS will follow Trudeau’s playbook.
Canada, with lots of space and lacking convenient geographical ways for illegal immigrants to enter the country, though still many do, has a global reputation for being incredibly accepting of immigrants. On the surface, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver appear to be multicultural havens. However, as the saying goes, “Too much of a good thing is never good,” resulting in a sharp rise in anti-immigrant sentiment, which you can almost taste in the air. A growing number of Canadians, regardless of their political affiliation, are blaming recent immigrants for causing the housing affordability crises, inflation, rise in crime and unemployment/stagnant wages.
Throughout history, populations have engulfed themselves in a tribal frenzy, a psychological state where people identify strongly with their own group, often leading to a ‘us versus them’ mentality. This has led to quick shifts from complacency to panic and finger-pointing at groups outside their tribe, a phenomenon that is not unique to any particular culture or time period.
My take on why the American news media found Trudeau’s blatantly obvious attempt to save his political career, balancing appeasement between the pitchfork crowd, who want a halt to immigration until Canada gets its house in order, and immigrant voters, who traditionally vote Liberal, newsworthy; the American news media, as do I, believe immigration fatigue is why Kamala Harris is going to lose on November 5th.
Because they frequently get the outcome wrong, I don’t take polls seriously. According to polls in 2014, Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives and Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals were in a dead heat in Ontario, yet Wynne won with more than twice as many seats. In the 2018 Quebec election, most polls had the Coalition Avenir Québec with a 1-to-5-point lead over the governing Liberals. The result: The Coalition Avenir Québec enjoyed a landslide victory, winning 74 of 125 seats. Then there’s how the 2016 US election polls showing Donald Trump didn’t have a chance of winning against Hillary Clinton were ridiculously way off, highlighting the importance of the election day poll and, applicable in this election as it was in 2016, not to discount ‘shy Trump supporters;’ voters who support Trump but are hesitant to express their views publicly due to social or political pressure.
My distrust in polls aside, polls indicate Harris is leading by a few points. One would think that Trump’s many over-the-top shenanigans, which would be entertaining were he not the POTUS or again seeking the Oval Office, would have him far down in the polls. Trump is toe-to-toe with Harris in the polls because his approach to the economy—middle-class Americans are nostalgic for the relatively strong economic performance during Trump’s first three years in office—and immigration, which Americans are hyper-focused on right now, appeals to many Americans. In his quest to win votes, Trump is doing what anyone seeking political office needs to do: telling the people what they want to hear, strategically using populism—populism that serves your best interests is good populism—to evoke emotional responses. Harris isn’t doing herself any favours, nor moving voters, by going the “But, but… the orange man is bad!” route, while Trump cultivates support from “weird” marginal voting groups.
To Harris’s credit, things could have fallen apart when Biden abruptly stepped aside. Instead, Harris quickly clinched the nomination and had a strong first few weeks, erasing the deficit Biden had given her. The Democratic convention was a success, as was her acceptance speech. Her performance at the September 10th debate with Donald Trump was first-rate.
Harris’ Achilles heel is she’s now making promises she could have made and implemented while VP, making immigration and the economy Harris’ liabilities, especially since she’s been sitting next to Biden, watching the US turn into the circus it has become. These liabilities, basically her only liabilities, negate her stance on abortion, democracy, healthcare, a long-winning issue for Democrats, and Trump’s character. All Harris has offered voters is “feel-good vibes” over substance. In contrast, Trump offers the tangible political tornado (read: steamroll the problems Americans are facing) many Americans seek. With Trump, there’s no doubt that change, admittedly in a messy fashion, will happen. If enough Americans believe the changes he’ll implement will benefit them and their country…
The case against Harris on immigration, at a time when there’s a huge global backlash to immigration, even as the American news media are pointing out, in famously immigrant-friendly Canada, is relatively straightforward: During the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration, illegal Southern border crossings increased significantly.
The words illegal immigration, to put it mildly, irks most Americans. On the legal immigration front, according to Forbes, most billion-dollar startups were founded by immigrants. Google, Microsoft, and Oracle, to name three, have immigrants as CEOs. Immigrants, with tech skills and an entrepreneurial thirst, have kept America leading the world. I like to think that Americans and Canadians understand the best immigration policy is to strategically let enough of these immigrants in who’ll increase GDP and tax base and not rely on social programs. In other words, Americans and Canadians, and arguably citizens of European countries, expect their governments to be more strategic about immigration.
The days of the words on a bronze plaque mounted inside the Statue of Liberty pedestal’s lower level, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” are no longer tolerated. Americans only want immigrants who’ll benefit America.
Does Trump demagogue the immigration issue with xenophobic and racist tropes, many of which are outright lies, such as claiming Haitian immigrants in Ohio are abducting and eating pets? Absolutely. However, such unhinged talk signals to Americans who are worried about the steady influx of illegal immigrants into their country that Trump can handle immigration so that it’s beneficial to the country as opposed to being an issue of economic stress.
In many ways, if polls are to be believed, Harris is paying the price for Biden and her lax policies early in their term. Yes, stimulus spending quickly rebuilt the job market, but at the cost of higher inflation. Loosen border policies at a time when anti-immigrant sentiment was increasing was a gross miscalculation, much like Trudeau’s immigration quota increase, and Biden indulging himself in running for re-election should never have happened.
If Trump wins, Democrats will proclaim that everyone is sexist, racist and misogynous, not to mention a likely White Supremacist, and for good measure, they’ll beat the “voter suppression” button. If Harris wins, Trump supporters will repeat voter fraud—since July, Elon Musk has tweeted on Twitter at least 22 times about voters being “imported” from abroad—being widespread.
Regardless of who wins tomorrow, Americans need to cool down; and give the divisive rhetoric a long overdue break. The right to an opinion belongs to everyone. Someone whose opinion differs from yours is not by default sexist, racist, a fascist or anything else; they simply disagree with you. Americans adopting the respectful mindset to agree to disagree would be the best thing they could do for the United States of America.
PHOENIX (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent proponent of debunked public health claims whom Donald Trump has promised to put in charge of health initiatives, said Saturday that Trump would push to remove fluoride from drinking water on his first day in office if elected president.
Fluoride strengthens teeth and reduces cavities by replacing minerals lost during normal wear and tear, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The addition of low levels of fluoride to drinking water has long been considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century.
Kennedy made the declaration Saturday on the social media platform X alongside a variety of claims about the heath effects of fluoride.
“On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water,” Kennedy wrote. Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, “want to Make America Healthy Again,” he added, repeating a phrase Trump often uses and links to Kennedy.
Trump told NBC News on Sunday that he had not spoken to Kennedy about fluoride yet, “but it sounds OK to me. You know it’s possible.”
The former president declined to say whether he would seek a Cabinet role for Kennedy, a job that would require Senate confirmation, but added, “He’s going to have a big role in the administration.”
Asked whether banning certain vaccines would be on the table, Trump said he would talk to Kennedy and others about that. Trump described Kennedy as “a very talented guy and has strong views.”
The sudden and unexpected weekend social media post evoked the chaotic policymaking that defined Trump’s White House tenure, when he would issue policy declarations on Twitter at virtually all hours. It also underscored the concerns many experts have about Kennedy, who has long promoted debunked theories about vaccine safety, having influence over U.S. public health.
In 1950, federal officials endorsed water fluoridation to prevent tooth decay, and continued to promote it even after fluoride toothpaste brands hit the market several years later. Though fluoride can come from a number of sources, drinking water is the main source for Americans, researchers say.
Officials lowered their recommendation for drinking water fluoride levels in 2015 to address a tooth condition called fluorosis, that can cause splotches on teeth and was becoming more common in U.S. kids.
In August, a federal agency determined “with moderate confidence” that there is a link between higher levels of fluoride exposure and lower IQ in kids. The National Toxicology Program based its conclusion on studies involving fluoride levels at about twice the recommended limit for drinking water.
A federal judge later cited that study in ordering the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to further regulate fluoride in drinking water. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen cautioned that it’s not certain that the amount of fluoride typically added to water is causing lower IQ in kids, but he concluded that mounting research points to an unreasonable risk that it could be. He ordered the EPA to take steps to lower that risk, but didn’t say what those measures should be.
In his X post Saturday, Kennedy tagged Michael Connett, the lead attorney representing the plaintiff in that lawsuit, the environmental advocacy group Food & Water Watch.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine organization has a lawsuit pending against news organizations including The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy is on leave from the group but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.
What role Kennedy might hold if Trump wins on Tuesday remains unclear. Kennedy recently told NewsNation that Trump asked him to “reorganize” agencies including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and some agencies under the Department of Agriculture.
But for now, the former independent presidential candidate has become one of Trump’s top surrogates. Trump frequently mentions having the support of Kennedy, a scion of a Democratic dynasty and the son of former Attorney General Robert Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy.
Kennedy traveled with Trump Friday and spoke at his rallies in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Trump said Saturday that he told Kennedy: “You can work on food, you can work on anything you want” except oil policy.
“He wants health, he wants women’s health, he wants men’s health, he wants kids, he wants everything,” Trump added.
