It Could Happen Here Weekly 256

At the top of that Q&A, there's a photo of a Palestinian farmer in Rantis, a village outside of Raballah, walking past his olive groves.

And hanging over him are two giant campaign banners.

One is Benjamin Netanyahu, and the other is for Gaddy Eisenkant, the former army chief who wants Netanyahu's job.

That Palestinian farmer can't vote for either of them.

He can't vote in this election at all.

But whoever wins will help decide whether settlers come for his olive groves this harvest, whether the army stands there and watches, and whether there's a road outside of his village next year.

That's the Israeli election in one picture.

It's coming up on October 27th, and for Palestinians, the options range from bad to catastrophic.

Now let me explain why without burying the lead.

Every serious contender in the Israeli election supports the occupation, and nobody is promising to end the war on Gaza.

Jewish Currents also published an explainer on the Israeli elections that I'll link in the show notes.

And the news editor at Jewish Currents writes in that piece that he almost ran the election guide under the headline, the vote doesn't matter.

But he says when he talked to Palestinians, he changed his mind.

Although the Israeli political landscape is abysmal, Palestinians will suffer different impacts based on who wins.

And so obviously they're watching this closely.

It comes down to two names.

It's Ahmad Ben-Kavir and Bezalel Smotrich.

Ben-Kavir runs the national security right now, which means the police and the prisons, and he's responsible for a lot of the abuses that have happened.

And Bezalel Smotrich, which is the head of the religious Zionist party, he's the finance minister, and he has enormous sway over the West Bank.

Netanyahu losing doesn't end the occupation, but it almost certainly takes those two out of their ministries.

If you're a political prisoner or a farmer in some of the rural areas in the West Bank, that isn't abstract.

An organizer in Jaffa, Abdel-Shahada, told Jewish Currents that nobody is talking about change anymore.

People are just asking, how do we just survive this point in history? That's very bleak, and it's also realistic.

Crisis Group frames this as a contest between different right-wing ways of running a country that already controls everything from the river to the sea.

The occupation isn't on the ballot, but I think its intensity is.

At the top of that Q&A, there's a photo of a Palestinian farmer in Rantis, a village outside of Raballah, walking past his olive groves.

And hanging over him are two giant campaign banners.

One is Benjamin Netanyahu, and the other is for Gaddy Eisenkant, the former army chief who wants Netanyahu's job.

That Palestinian farmer can't vote for either of them.

He can't vote in this election at all.

But whoever wins will help decide whether settlers come for his olive groves this harvest, whether the army stands there and watches, and whether there's a road outside of his village next year.

That's the Israeli election in one picture.

It's coming up on October 27th, and for Palestinians, the options range from bad to catastrophic.

Now let me explain why without burying the lead.

Every serious contender in the Israeli election supports the occupation, and nobody is promising to end the war on Gaza.

Jewish Currents also published an explainer on the Israeli elections that I'll link in the show notes.

And the news editor at Jewish Currents writes in that piece that he almost ran the election guide under the headline, the vote doesn't matter.

But he says when he talked to Palestinians, he changed his mind.

Although the Israeli political landscape is abysmal, Palestinians will suffer different impacts based on who wins.

And so obviously they're watching this closely.

It comes down to two names.

It's Ahmad Ben-Kavir and Bezalel Smotrich.

Ben-Kavir runs the national security right now, which means the police and the prisons, and he's responsible for a lot of the abuses that have happened.

And Bezalel Smotrich, which is the head of the religious Zionist party, he's the finance minister, and he has enormous sway over the West Bank.

Netanyahu losing doesn't end the occupation, but it almost certainly takes those two out of their ministries.

If you're a political prisoner or a farmer in some of the rural areas in the West Bank, that isn't abstract.

An organizer in Jaffa, Abdel-Shahada, told Jewish Currents that nobody is talking about change anymore.

People are just asking, how do we just survive this point in history? That's very bleak, and it's also realistic.

Crisis Group frames this as a contest between different right-wing ways of running a country that already controls everything from the river to the sea.

The occupation isn't on the ballot, but I think its intensity is.