One puzzle of the Israeli elections last week was the failure by the losing Zionist Camp to raise the Palestinian issue. Yitzhak Herzog, the leader of the camp, promised to go to Ramallah and negotiate with Mahmoud Abbas; but that was about all he said, his agenda was economic issues. Then in the last days of the campaign Benjamin Netanyahu made a huge issue of the Palestinian question, saying that Herzog was going to give away lands to Palestinians, and Netanyahu won going away. So Netanyahu defined the debate. Herzog ran scared.

This abdication was a theme at J Street’s conference yesterday. Guy Ziv of American University said that the situation was reminiscent of 1992, when centrist Yitzhak Rabin had defeated rightwinger Yitzhak Shamir by supporting the Madrid peace process. But Herzog had shown none of Rabin’s leadership. Stav Shaffir, a young Labor member of Knesset, made a similar point: “we [Zionist Camp] didn’t say what we believed loudly enough.” Herzog had failed to frame an urgent political manner in urgent terms: that Israelis need to “separate” from the Palestinians, Shaffir said, because a Palestinian majority between the river and the sea will undermine the Jewish state. Of course many Zionists have warned about this before; the Jewish state will be delegitimized by apartheid, or by democracy. But Herzog failed to make that case to his own people when he had a chance.

Why did Herzog fail? I believe he was afraid of his own people. A week ago I was in Rabin Square for a rally by the Netanyahu forces, and they were terrifying. The people I met in the street said racist and foolish things about Arabs, both Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett made religious statements bordering on lunacy about the Jewish right to the land, and they were preceded on the dais by Daniella Weiss, a settlement leader who has supported “pricetag attacks,” Jewish violence aimed at deterring the Israeli government from uprooting settlers.

I wrote then that Netanyahu’s base contained “fascist” strains, and at J Street yesterday, that theme was taken up by Nabila Espanioly of Hadash, who appealed to Americans to help Israel fight fascism. We need to build a global network “against fascism and against racism inside Israel,” she said. “I know that’s a hard word…. We should be working together against the fascism, because it’s coming and it’s [at] our door.”

Noam Sheizaf issued a similar appeal. He called out intolerant statements that Israeli politicians had expressed that very day at J Street; Yoel Hassan of Zionist Camp had described Netanyahu as “very gentle” in the war on Gaza last summer. Then Sheizaf warned:

“We’re headed for a very difficult four years…The American progressive community will have a role to play… We expect you to be there.”

While Sam Bahour explained today that Netanyahu had succeeded by cultivating “radical” elements in Israeli society. Those radical elements joined by Netanyahu are the very same mix that incited against Rabin when he spoke of giving up land 20 years ago– and then was assassinated on the site of that rally I attended. The lesson is surely not lost on the leaders of Zionist Camp. Israel is a violent society, and right-wing assassinations have played an important role in its evolution.

The terrible thing about fascism is that it works. People respond to fascistic appeals, and politicians who might take fascism on quail at the prospect. Herzog ran scared because he was afraid to take on these elements in his own society.

I believe that fascism is inherent when a society is constituted as Israel is, with Jews having the rights, and Palestinians, naturally, refusing to accept the order. The best antidote is a real democracy.