Conrad Black: The Steady Encroachment of Islamic Extremism
As Israel has a slate vote rather than a constituency election system—in which the parties nominate a list of candidates in the order of their preeminence within each party—each party that passes the threshold for representation in the Knesset (parliament) of 3.25 percent of the popular vote gets the same percentage of the 120 legislators that it gains in the popular vote.
In order to clear the threshold, all manner of political movements and organizations merge as the election approaches to enhance their possibilities of representation, and there is endless and fierce internecine jockeying within the many political movements for prominence on the party electoral candidates’ lists.
The predictions of an overwhelming rejection of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has held that office for an unequalled 19 years, proved to be wildly inaccurate as his Likud party led the polls with 27 percent of the popular vote among the 11 parties that cleared the threshold for representation, and his bloc in the Knesset is only a couple of legislators behind the chief opposition bloc, a coalition of parties led by centrist leader Gadi Eisenkot.
Both blocs include people and parties that have frequent disagreements within and among each other.
There was also a record turnout of Arab votes in the election, which makes utter nonsense of the widespread and fraudulent allegation that Israel is in any sense an “apartheid state.”
The remarkable feature of the Israeli election is that although the Arab parties were fiercely contested as to their legitimacy prior to the election—with the left-wing and completely independent Israeli Supreme Court dismissing many apparently plausible claims that some of the Arab parties didn’t support Israel’s existence—they ended up with 19 members in the 120-member Knesset.
This puts them in a position either to determine and greatly influence the choice of government, or to force both of the major blocs, Netanyahu’s and Eisenkot’s, to forget the fierce vitriolic character of their opposition and form a grand coalition, with the Arab parties excluded but constituting the principal opposition.
Short of Israel holding another election, either of the above scenarios is a rare event in Israeli history—the latter having occurred only once. And while many have celebrated the clear evidence it gives of Israel’s comparative tolerance, civility, and dedication to democracy, especially in comparison with terrorist organizations that agitate at its borders and the hideously barbarous regime in Iran which has sustained them, it is another startling indication of the political march of militant Islam in the case of some of the parties involved.
This is a phenomenon that has been observed with mounting alarm in many European countries and even in far-off Australia, as well as in the United States and Canada, the traditional high ground of unassailable democratic practices almost permanently resistant to the destructive incursion of anti-democratic minorities tyrannizing smaller minorities and disrupting the polity.
In Germany, the Alternative for Germany party, which has been stigmatized as extreme though it is co-led by an articulate Thatcherite, Alice Weidel, and now seems unstoppable in its march to at least a share of power, appears to be the last trench defense against the assertion of an unfeasible level of influence from mainly Muslim migrants in Germany.
If Weidel would just temper her partisanship for Russia over Ukraine, based on her party’s desire for cheaper oil and gas, a coalition with the barely governing Christian Democrats would become possible and a turn of the tide of political Islam would impend.
More difficult is the United Kingdom’s apparent loss of the capacity for self-government with seven failed prime ministers in 10 years. The governing Labour Party’s current standing in what is now a five-national-party race is a little below 30 percent, and is dependent upon the Muslim vote for any chance of reelection.
In consequence, the UK government’s response to anti-Semitic outrages has left much to be desired. As of now, the left-wing parties—Labour, Liberal Democrat, and Green—outnumber the centre-right Conservatives and Reform by about 5/4, with most of the rest completely unreliable Scottish separatists and other provincial groups. In these fragmented conditions, with most of the premier political figures stark mediocrities, Islamic extremism is making steady progress locally and nationally.
It may reasonably be hoped that the U.S. midterm elections will be a defeat for the recent malignant phenomenon of Islamo-Marxism; the Trump administration has certainly rolled back anti-Semitism.
Canada more closely resembles Britain: although the Liberal Party is not as dependent upon the Muslim vote as the British Labour Party, it still gives more weight to aggressive Islam than it does to the long-established and painfully achieved rights of fair treatment of Canada’s Jewish community.
Israel must lead the democratic world in containing and repulsing the wolf of militant Islam skulking forward in the lamb’s clothing of democracy. It will be interesting—and vital to the West—to see how the Jewish state achieves this.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/conrad-black-the-steady-encroachment-of-islamic-extremism-6115220?&utm_source=MB_article_paid&utm_campaign=MB_article_2026-11-05-ca&utm_medium=email&est=tvzwtcKPfXsKYxGmK66qg3WOIAh%2BiVBcocmmAztO9xRJiPJcqpy%2FTdO%2BwvBvc%2F59zdxu&utm_content=opinion-news-1
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