This week, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, failed to expand Israel’s racist marriage law.

The law prohibits spouses of Palestinian citizens of Israel from obtaining citizenship.

This means that Palestinians in Haifa, Acre or Jaffa are effectively prohibited from marrying Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza and Arabs from a series of other “enemy” states.

I say “indeed” since technically they could get married, but would then be forced to live apart since Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are prohibited from living inside “Israel proper” by a whole host of other laws. racist.

The law does not apply to marriages of Israeli Jewish citizens with Jewish Israeli settlers in the West Bank. It is undoubtedly a racist law that discriminates against Arabs.

It was introduced as a supposed “emergency” law in 2003, but so far it has been renewed every year without fail. However, this means that the Knesset must vote every year to ensure the law remains in full force.

But what happened this week was not a drastic and sudden change of mind on the part of Israeli lawmakers. Rather, it was a matter of the opportunism of the new opposition, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, the last prime minister. The vote to extend the law failed by the narrowest margin possible, 59 to 59.

Read: Israeli Knesset member calls for killing people in mixed marriages

Netanyahu and his political allies in the opposition support the law in principle and have voted to extend it several times in the past. They simply sought to embarrass the fragile new coalition government led by Naftali Bennett (another far-right racist and former coalition partner Netanyahu).

Only a tiny minority of six Knesset MPs voted against the law on principle. They were Palestinians from the United Arab List group.

In a crude reminder of how all Zionism is racism – and not just right-wing Zionism promoted by demagogues like Netanyahu and Bennett – even the so-called “left” Meretz party has voted to expand the racist marriage law.

Meretz is part of the new coalition government led by far-right racist Bennett, so there was an element of political expediency in Meretz’s vote for the racist law. But above all, it was ideological: the Meretz is a Zionist party, so it passed a Zionist law.

“המחנה האנטי ציוני, האנטי לאומי, להטביע את אזרחי ישראל בים פלסטיני” – כך כינה @ YairGolan1 האופוזיציה: “אתם בוגדים בחזון הציוני” pic.twitter.com/kcfssI74d6

– כנסת (@KnessetT) July 5, 2021

One of their lawmakers, Yair Golan, lashed out against the opposition in the Knesset.

He accused Netanyahu and his far-right allies in the opposition (such as Kahanist party leader Itamar Ben-Gvir) of being in the “anti-Zionist, anti-nationalist camp” and “betraying the Zionist vision”.

A retired senior military officer, Golan has spoken in openly racist terms of the opposition supposedly wanting to “drown Israeli citizens in a sea of ​​Palestinians.” Some leftists. It was a phrase that could just as easily have come out of Katie Hopkins or Tommy Robinson’s mouths.

And it wasn’t just Meretz.

Arise Israel, an activist group that had been one of the leaders of long-standing anti-Netanyahu protests, also attacked the opposition in racist terms. This is the consequence of Zionism: the institutionalization of racism throughout a society at all levels.

, נגד הקואליציה. לכם.

– ישראל (@kumiiisrael) July 5, 2021

Seeing a video of an opposition politician Bezalel Smotrich, another Kahanist, declaring his refusal to vote with the government on the racist marriage law, the group responded on Twitter accusing him of: “Vote against the State of Israel and against the security of the ‘State of Israel… shame on you. “

When I revealed the story of Assaf Kaplan, the Israeli spy hired by the Labor Party to help run its social media “eavesdropping” campaign, the Zionists struggled to find a defense. That didn’t stop them from trying, however, with one weakly describing Kaplan as an “anti-Netanyahu protester.”

Off topic. As their behavior in Israel shows this week, the Zionist “left” is just as racist as the Zionist right. New Israeli President Isaac Herzog is another example.

The failed Israeli Labor Party leader now holds the mostly ceremonial role. He is hailed as a sane centrist in the West.

But this is the same guy who said Jews marrying non-Jews are a ‘real bane’, was once a spy in the cybercrime and violent blackmail operation Unit 8200, and ran an open election ad. racist in which his comrades gushed that he “understands the Arab mentality” because he saw “the Arabs” through “the sight of a gun”.

Progressive Israel!

Read: Another Palestinian couple have been separated due to Israeli restrictions

The opinions expressed in this article are the property of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.