Why America’s Dangerous Right-wing Demagogues Are Welcome in Israel - Haaretz
There’s a perverse logic behind the Israeli right busily importing reactionary, outrage-mongering U.S. ‘influencers’ touting ideas alien to Israel’s social and political culture, from this week’s controversial visit by anti-trans author Abigail Shrier to Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro
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On Sunday, a talk by American author Abigail Shrier marking the launch of the Hebrew edition of her controversial book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, which has been widely criticized as transphobic, is taking place in an undisclosed location in the Tel Aviv area.
This comes after a Tel Aviv venue reversed its decision to host an event organized by right-wing publishing house Sella Meir, featuring Shrier on the occasion of their publishing her book in Israel.
Sella Meir’s founder, Rotem B. Sella tweeted that the trans “phenomenon” as he termed it, “is on the verge of reaching Israel and poses a threat to the…future of our children.”
The cancellation of the original event triggered a backlash, with Sella stating that he and others won’t be deterred by “a bunch of thugs. Don’t let darkness win.”
The organizers and their supporters on Israel’s right and religiously conservative circles decried the cancellation as evidence of cancel culture. Emanuel Shilo, editor of the settler newspaper “Besheva,” tweeted: “It was clear that this event would be cancelled, because LGBTQ organizations are the number one censors in the country and in the world. Freedom of expression? Yes, but only for their opinion.”
It’s worth noting the right has consistently banned and barred events, targeted groups and individuals on the left.
Centering a freedom of speech argument around this is one of the most recent examples of how the Israeli right is adopting ideologies from the American reactionary right and importing them to Israel to sow moral panic and demonize certain social and political groups.
Like their American counterparts, Sella and his peers have been disseminating their ideas through abusing free speech protections, a cornerstone of a liberal society.
The Israeli right has also adopted false equivalencies as its way to justify its own agenda. During a recent interview, when Meir Rubin, CEO of the Kohelet Forum – the group spearheading the judicial overhaul plan – was questioned about his stance on proposed legislation which in its most extreme interpretation could enable hotels to refuse LGBT guests, he drew a comparison to someone asking a tattoo artist for a tattoo a swastika, suggesting that that tattoo artists should not be forced to do something they felt to be an anathema.
The same perverse logic applies here. Shrier’s work which has been criticized widely by physicians, psychologists, LTBTQ activists, transgender people and parents of transgender children, arguably incites against a group that already faces increased risk of violence and self-harm.
The flap over Shrier’s talk raises a broader question: what caused the Israeli right, which seems so seemingly strong in its own ideology, to search for ideas from abroad? Why has it embraced the ideologies of Christian white-supremacists and free-market atheists?
Ironically, the collapse of the peace process proved to be an existential crisis not just for the Israeli left but also for the right. The right has been in power for over twenty years. However, it appears that its central current focus is blaming the left for what it cannot achieve, like annexing the West Bank, closing down the Israeli Public Broadcasting Channel, defunding human rights organizations and laying blame at the feet of an activist Supreme Court.
The seemingly endless Netanyahu reign exemplifies the lack of vision in providing meaningful solutions for Israelis. The discourse revolves around deterrence and security, both reactive strategies that arguably only perpetuate the cycle of violence.
Frustrated by this lack of direction, some within the Israeli right have turned to adopting a reactionary vision from the United States wholesale, without reflection or reservation.
Sella’s baseless claim that what the terms the “the transgender trend” is on the brink of flooding Israel implies a concerted effort by the left to alter the social fabric of Israel.
Ironically, it is Sella himself, through his publication that features alt-right superstars and receives funding from the U.S-based Tikvah Fund, which also supports the Kohelet Forum, who seems to have a clear agenda for reshaping Israeli society.
As Ziva Shternhell contends, entities such as Sella Meir’s “objective is to penetrate the systems of government in order to institute a worldview that combines rightist nationalist political ideology with economic neoliberalism.”
Through initiatives like Sella Meir, the Israeli right has been introduced to the ideas of the American alt-right. Darlings of the movement, like Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro have both spoken to audiences in Israel. There are also Israeli right-wing websites like Mida and Perspectiva which champion climate denial, libertarianism, gun rights and anti-abortion policies.
The Christian-tinged moralism has even been embraced by Zionist-religious figures like TV host Erel Segal who dedicated one of his Glenn Beck-style diatribes on Israel’s Channel 14 (that models itself on Fox News) to the specter of transitioning in minors.
This is more evidence of American far-right style fictitious moral panic mongering being used here.
The existence of a trans community is an anathema, especially in Israel, which for the religious right marks redemption and for the secular-reactionary wing, a kind of Jewish-only libertarian utopia. This is not only a social norm which the right is championing, but legislation, as seen by the Nation-State bill which enshrines Jewish supremacy.
The Israeli right has not only come to embrace the American reactionary, red-pill of the MAGA mindset but even acts as a fig leaf condoning its blatant antisemitism.
Just last week Israel’s Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli praised Elon Musk for making remarks with antisemitic undertones about the Jewish-Hungarian philanthropist George Soros.
I’d argue we’re in a dangerous crossroads where the Israeli right is willing to sacrifice the Jewish global community in its pursuit of a semi-autocratic, Jewish supremacist state.
These “Made in America” ideologies and would-be influencers' main effect is to boost the chauvinism, racism, and rejection of human rights embraced by the Israeli right.
In this distorted worldview, progressive ideals are viewed as symbols of elitist, out of touch and unpatriotic, while alt-right ones are presented as a championing equality and freedom.
This brings us back to the battle for Israel’s future because in essence, isn’t this what the argument for the judicial coup is? That the courts, in their adherence to Basic Laws that were meant to protect principles of human dignity and liberty are actually hurting the right’s efforts to exclude groups who aren’t Jewish whether they be Palestinians, refugees with Jewish roots from Ukraine or asylum seekers from Africa?
The fusion of Israeli reactionary thinking with the ideas of right-wing
American ideologues is not only peculiar, but fundamentally anti-Israel. It threatens to unravel the fabric of Israeli society, transforming it into a religious oligarchy where basic services like education, welfare, and healthcare are segregated, minorities have no protection and are excluded from public life.
The embrace of the dangerous ideas imported from America is a recipe for violence, corruption, and destruction of the last remnants of Israel as a democracy.
Those trying to convince Israelis that these ideas are homegrown should be exposed for these concepts really are: rotten and without place in this land.