The most disturbing outcome of Israel's general election this week was not the fact that an openly fascist party won the third-biggest tally of seats, or that it is about to become the lynchpin of the next government. It is how little will change, in Israel or abroad, as a result.
Having Religious Zionism at the heart of government will alter the tone in which Israeli politics is conducted, making it even coarser, more thuggish and uncompromising. But it will make no difference to the ethnic supremacism that has driven Israeli policy for decades.
Israel is not suddenly a more racist state. It is simply growing more confident about admitting its racism to the world. And the world - or at least the bit of it that arrogantly describes itself as the international community - is about to confirm that such confidence is well-founded.
Indeed, the West's attitude towards Israel's next coalition government will be no different from its attitude towards the supposedly less-tainted ones that preceded it.
In private, the Biden administration in the US has made plain to Israeli leaders it's displeasure at having fascists so prominently in government, not least because their presence risks highlighting Washington's hypocrisy and embarrassing Gulf allies. But don't expect Washington to do anything tangible.
There will be no statements calling for the Israeli government to be ostracised as a pariah, nor moves to sanction it or to end the billions of dollars in handouts the US provides every year. In a Washington still wracked by the fallout from the 6 January riots, there will be no warnings that Israeli democracy has been sabotaged from within.
Similarly, there will be no demands that Israel commits to more rigorous protections for the Palestinians under its military rule, and no revival of efforts to force it to the negotiating table.
After a little embarrassed shuffling of feet, and maybe a token refusal to meet with ministers from the fascist parties, it will be business as usual - the "usual" being the oppression and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Dead and BuriedNone of this is to play down the significance of the results. Meretz, the only Jewish party that professes to favour peace over the rights of Israeli settlers, has failed to make it over the electoral threshold. Israel's tiny peace camp looks dead and buried.
The secular far-right, the settler far-right and the fundamentalist religious right have secured 70 of the parliament's 120 seats, even if internecine feuds mean not all of them are prepared to sit together. Enough will, however, to ensure that disgraced former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returns to power for a record sixth time.
All but certain to be at the heart of the new government is Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose fascist Jewish Power party represents the brutish, nakedly supremacist legacy of the notorious Rabbi Meir Kahane, who wished to expel Palestinians from their homeland. Netanyahu knows he owes his comeback to the astonishing rise of Ben-Gvir, and he will need to suitably reward him.
Several dozen more seats in the Knesset are held by Jewish parties that belong to the largely secular, militaristic right. Their legislators reliably cheer on what now amounts to a 15-year siege of Gaza, and its two million Palestinian inhabitants, as well as the intermittent bombing of the coastal enclave, "back to the Stone Age".
Not one of these parties prefers a diplomatic solution over the permanent subjugation of Palestinians, their gradual ethnic cleansing from Jerusalem, and the entrenchment of settlements in the occupied West Bank.
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