The following are my thoughts as a long-term, close-up Gentile observer; I am an Israeli permanent resident but not a citizen and, therefore, not a voter.

When Rome overran the Land of Israel, mass-slaughtering the Jews, besieging Jerusalem and destroying the Temple, the nation Titus and later Hadrian sought to annihilate was remarkably religious; foundationally, if not uniformly, Torah-centred.

At that time there was no Reform Movement (only a move towards Hellenism, which rejected Judaism altogether). Nor was there such a thing as ‘pluralism.’

Thereafter, through nearly 20 centuries in the Diaspora, Jewish communities worldwide were overwhelmingly observant. In fact, in a matchless illustration of historical irony, their stubborn clinging to their religious way of life both fuelled antisemitism and, simultaneously, safeguarded their identity as Jews.

Jews virtually everywhere saw themselves as God’s ‘Chosen People,’ and they understood that the commandments for living given them by God – by which they would indeed be a “light to the Gentiles” – included anti-assimilation as necessary to preserve the nation, and heterosexual marriage and parenting as the established foundation upon which human civilisation had stood from the start – “Be fruitful and multiply.”

Reform Judaism is a new-fangled ultra-progressive variation (it was only spawned in the mid-1800s) that has grown about as far as possible away from its roots. It was this movement that introduced and has championed pluralism in the Jewish world.

In this context, pluralism, liberalism and progressivism come from one stable.

With that said, let’s have a look at what is happening in Israel right now.

If we were to take at face value the coverage in most of Israel’s news media over the past few weeks – and, needless to say, mirrored in the international press – we could anticipate an incoming Netanyahu government containing every form of extremism imaginable: Arab-hating, homosexual-hating, democracy-hating, Reform Judaism-hating, Christian-hating.

Some of the headlines:

• Lapid – Netanyahu wants to dismantle democratic foundations of the country
• Far-right extremist gets Israeli security job as coalition deals struck
• Netanyahu puts extremist homophobic politician in charge of Israel’s Jewish identity
• LGBT activist: Noam party is the ‘Enemy of the State’
• ‘Insanity, Unreal’ – What is being formed here is a bonkers government that could plunge Israel into the abyss
• Netanyahu’s mind-blowing extremist ministerial appointees
• Labor leader Michaeli: There is a direct line between far right’s rise and recent violence in Israel.

Avi Maoz, head of Noam, leads “a viciously homophobic little offshoot of a party.” He is, say his sexually deviant detractors, an “enemy of the state.” Jewish Power Party leader Itamar Ben-Gvir is a “provocateur with a history of racism.” Religious Zionist Party leader Bezalel Smotrich is “an ultranationalist who opposes Palestinian sovereignty and wants to govern Israel by Jewish law.”

Wailed one Diaspora Jew: Why did Israel elect people with hateful views?

Of course, she has the cart before the horse. The hateful people are those individuals Ben-Gvir and Smotrich – and their voters – aim to oppose and resist – to deal with. A person is not hateful if he wants those who seek to murder his people expelled; he simply wishes to remove such killers far from his loved ones; his nation.

This media onslaught on the incoming government is classic ‘progressive’ warfare: Overwhelm those whose world view you oppose by bombarding them with accusations of doing what you – Leftists – excel in. Call the Right obstructionist because they obstruct your wishes, as if your ‘progressive’ practices don’t obstruct theirs.

Progressives really do suffer from a self-hating disease. See how they pervert the picture?

It’s not that you’re pro-family – it’s that you’re anti-homosexual/anti-“gay marriage.”

It’s not that you’re fiercely protective of your own, Jewish, nation – it’s that you’re hatefully anti-Arab.

It’s not that you’re an upholder of the Jewish character of your state – it’s that you are anti-embracing every Tom, Dick and Harry who claims to be Jewish.

It’s not that you’re a Zionist – it’s that you’re an occupier.

It’s not that you’re a pioneer – it’s that you’re a settler.

It’s not that you’re a patriotic Jew – it’s that you’re a racist.

It’s not that you are devout and God-fearing – it’s that you’re a narrow-minded, bigot.

Did you hear Labor Party leader Merav Michaeli say that Jews who want their state to be more Jewish and less internationalist threaten to “plunge Israel into the abyss”?

But isn’t it those who support same sex “marriage,” who encourage the adoption of children by same sex “parents,” who demand that people should have the right to parade virtually naked in public streets, fornicating as they go; who insist that Arabs who hate Jews should be represented in the Knesset; who are resolved to give away their nation’s ancestral lands to their enemies, etc. etc – aren’t they the ones who have been plunging Israel into the abyss?

Left-wingers behave as if they hold the monopoly on deciding who is racist, who is a phobe, who is chauvinist, who is extremist. But it is they who are extremists – they hate as much as anyone does.

They sow hatred against Jews who believe that homosexuality is an abomination because the Tanach says it is. They sow hatred against Jews who insist that Arabs who call for the destruction of Israel should be treated as enemies. They sow hatred against Jews who want to see Israeli Arab terrorists stripped of their citizenship and deported. They sow hatred against those Jews who believe that terrorists who kill Jews should forfeit their lives. They sow hatred against the Jewish communities in Samaria and Judea.

Clear thinking Israelis aren’t duped by these people.And those Jews who embrace their national calling know that they have not been brought back home just to become like the sick and sinful Gentile nations. God has promised them something quite different. It’s not that all their ways and understandings are perfect, and doubtless the new government will have its flaws, just as all its predecessors have had. But this is the journey their nation is on, and it is towards what the nation of Israel was called to be, what it once was, and what it is destined to be again.

For Israel’s God has promised His people that when He brings them home it is, ultimately, to wholly restore them:

“I will turn My hand against you, and thoroughly purge away your dross, and take away all your alloy. I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning. Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city.” Zion shall be redeemed with justice, and her penitents with righteousness. (Isaiah 1:25-27)