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The Collapse of Zionism
The
Collapse of Zionism
Ilan Pappé
21 June 2024 Politics
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/the-collapse-of-zionism
Hamas’s
assault of October 7 can be likened to an earthquake that strikes an old
building. The cracks were already beginning to show, but they are now visible
in its very foundations. More than 120 years since its inception, could the
Zionist project in Palestine – the idea of imposing a Jewish state on an Arab,
Muslim and Middle Eastern country – be facing the prospect of collapse?
Historically, a plethora of factors can cause a state to capsize. It can result
from constant attacks by neighbouring countries or from chronic civil war. It
can follow the breakdown of public institutions, which become incapable of
providing services to citizens. Often it begins as a slow process of
disintegration that gathers momentum and then, in a short period of time, brings
down structures that once appeared solid and steadfast.
The
difficulty lies in spotting the early indicators. Here, I will argue that these
are clearer than ever in the case of Israel. We are witnessing a historical
process – or, more accurately, the beginnings of one – that is likely to
culminate in the downfall of Zionism. And, if my diagnosis is correct, then we
are also entering a particularly dangerous conjuncture. For once Israel
realizes the magnitude of the crisis, it will unleash ferocious and uninhibited
force to try to contain it, as did the South African apartheid regime during
its final days.
1.
A first
indicator is the fracturing of Israeli Jewish society. At present it is
composed of two rival camps which are unable to find common ground. The rift
stems from the anomalies of defining Judaism as nationalism. While Jewish
identity in Israel has sometimes seemed little more than a subject of
theoretical debate between religious and secular factions, it has now become a
struggle over the character of the public sphere and the state itself. This is
being fought not only in the media but also in the streets.
One camp can
be termed the ‘State of Israel’. It comprises more secular, liberal and mostly
but not exclusively middle-class European Jews and their descendants, who were
instrumental in establishing the state in 1948 and remained hegemonic within it
until the end of the last century. Make no mistake, their advocacy of ‘liberal
democratic values’ does not affect their commitment to the apartheid system
which is imposed, in various ways, on all Palestinians living between the
Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Their basic wish is for Jewish citizens
to live in a democratic and pluralist society from which Arabs are excluded.
The other
camp is the ‘State of Judea’, which developed among the settlers of the
occupied West Bank. It enjoys increasing levels of support within the country
and constitutes the electoral base that secured Netanyahu’s victory in the
November 2022 elections. Its influence in the upper echelons of the Israeli
army and security services is growing exponentially. The State of Judea wants
Israel to become a theocracy that stretches over the entirety of historical
Palestine. To achieve this, it is determined to reduce the number of
Palestinians to a bare minimum, and it is contemplating the construction of a
Third Temple in place of al-Aqsa. Its members believe this will enable them to
renew the golden era of the Biblical Kingdoms. For them, secular Jews are as
heretical as the Palestinians if they refuse to join in this endeavour.
The two
camps had begun to clash violently before October 7. For the first few weeks
after the assault, they appeared to shelve their differences in the face of a
common enemy. But this was an illusion. The street fighting has reignited, and
it is difficult to see what could possibly bring about reconciliation. The more
likely outcome is already unfolding before our eyes. More than half a million
Israelis, representing the State of Israel, have left the country since
October, an indication that the country is being engulfed by the State of
Judea. This is a political project that the Arab world, and perhaps even the
world at large, will not tolerate in the long term.
2.
The second
indicator is Israel’s economic crisis. The political class does not seem to
have any plan for balancing the public finances amid perpetual armed conflicts,
beyond becoming increasingly reliant on American financial aid. In the final
quarter of last year, the economy slumped by nearly 20%; since then, the
recovery has been fragile. Washington’s pledge of $14 billion is unlikely to
reverse this. On the contrary, the economic burden will only worsen if Israel
follows through on its intention to go to war with Hezbollah while ramping up
military activity in the West Bank, at a time when some countries – including
Turkey and Colombia – have begun to apply economic sanctions.
The crisis
is further aggravated by the incompetence of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich,
who constantly channels money to Jewish settlements in the West Bank but seems
otherwise unable to run his department. The conflict between the State of
Israel and the State of Judea, along with the events of October 7, is meanwhile
causing some of the economic and financial elite to move their capital outside
the state. Those who are considering relocating their investments make up a
significant part of the 20% of Israelis who pay 80% of the taxes.
3.
The third
indicator is Israel’s growing international isolation, as it gradually becomes
a pariah state. This process began before October 7 but has intensified since
the onset of the genocide. It is reflected by the unprecedented positions
adopted by the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court.
Previously, the global Palestine solidarity movement was able to galvanize
people to participate in boycott initiatives, yet it failed to advance the
prospect of international sanctions. In most countries, support for Israel
remained unshakable among the political and economic establishment.
In this
context, the recent ICJ and ICC decisions – that Israel may be committing
genocide, that it must halt its offensive in Rafah, that its leaders should be
arrested for war crimes – must be seen as an attempt to heed the views of
global civil society, as opposed to merely reflecting elite opinion. The
tribunals have not eased the brutal attacks on the people of Gaza and the West
Bank. But they have contributed to the growing chorus of criticism levelled at
the Israeli state, which increasingly comes from above as well as below.
4.
The fourth,
interconnected indicator is the sea-change among young Jews around the world.
Following the events of the last nine months, many now seem willing to jettison
their connection to Israel and Zionism and actively participate in the
Palestinian solidarity movement. Jewish communities, particularly in the US,
once provided Israel with effective immunity against criticism. The loss, or at
least the partial loss, of this support has major implications for the
country’s global standing. AIPAC can still rely on Christian Zionists to
provide assistance and shore up its membership, but it will not be the same
formidable organization without a significant Jewish constituency. The power of
the lobby is eroding.
5.
The fifth
indicator is the weakness of the Israeli army. There is no doubt that the IDF
remains a powerful force with cutting-edge weaponry at its disposal. Yet its
limitations were exposed on October 7. Many Israelis feel that the military was
extremely fortunate, as the situation could have been far worse had Hezbollah
joined in a coordinated assault. Since then, Israel has shown that it is
desperately reliant on a regional coalition, led by the US, to defend itself
against Iran, whose warning attack in April saw the deployment of around 170
drones plus ballistic and guided missiles. More than ever, the Zionist project
depends on the rapid delivery of huge quantities of supplies from the
Americans, without which it could not even fight a small guerrilla army in the
south.
There is now
a widespread perception of Israel’s unpreparedness and inability to defend
itself among the country’s Jewish population. It has led to major pressure to
remove the military exemption for ultra-Orthodox Jews – in place since 1948 –
and begin drafting them in their thousands. This will hardly make much
difference on the battlefield, but it reflects the scale of pessimism about the
army – which has, in turn, deepened the political divisions within Israel.
6.
The final
indicator is the renewal of energy among the younger generation of
Palestinians. It is far more united, organically connected and clear about its
prospects than the Palestinian political elite. Given the population of Gaza
and the West Bank is among the youngest in the world, this new cohort will have
an immense influence over the course of the liberation struggle. The
discussions taking place among young Palestinian groups show that they are
preoccupied with establishing a genuinely democratic organization – either a
renewed PLO, or a new one altogether – that will pursue a vision of
emancipation which is antithetical to the Palestinian Authority’s campaign for
recognition as a state. They seem to favour a one-state solution to a
discredited two-state model.
Will they be
able to mount an effective response to the decline of Zionism? This is a
difficult question to answer. The collapse of a state project is not always
followed by a brighter alternative. Elsewhere in the Middle East – in Syria,
Yemen and Libya – we have seen how bloody and protracted the results can be. In
this case, it would be a matter of decolonization, and the previous century has
shown that post-colonial realities do not always improve the colonial
condition. Only the agency of the Palestinians can move us in the right
direction. I believe that, sooner or later, an explosive fusion of these
indicators will result in the destruction of the Zionist project in Palestine.
When it does, we must hope that a robust liberation movement is there to fill
the void.
For more
than 56 years, what was termed the ‘peace process’ – a process that led nowhere
– was actually a series of American-Israeli initiatives to which the
Palestinians were asked to react. Today, ‘peace’ must be replaced with
decolonization, and Palestinians must be able to articulate their vision for
the region, with Israelis asked to react. This would mark the first time, at
least for many decades, that the Palestinian movement would take the lead in
setting out its proposals for a post-colonial and non-Zionist Palestine (or
whatever the new entity will be called). In doing so, it will likely look to
Europe (perhaps to the Swiss cantons and the Belgian model) or, more aptly, to
the old structures of the eastern Mediterranean, where secularized religious
groups morphed gradually into ethnocultural ones that lived side-by-side in the
same territory.
Whether
people welcome the idea or dread it, the collapse of Israel has become
foreseeable. This possibility should inform the long-term conversation about
the region’s future. It will be forced onto the agenda as people realize that
the century-long attempt, led by Britain and then the US, to impose a Jewish
state on an Arab country is slowly coming to an end. It was successful enough
to create a society of millions of settlers, many of them now second- and
third-generation. But their presence still depends, as it did when they
arrived, on their ability to violently impose their will on millions of
indigenous people, who have never given up their struggle for
self-determination and freedom in their homeland. In the decades to come, the
settlers will have to part with this approach and show their willingness to
live as equal citizens in a liberated and decolonized Palestine.
Read on:
Haim Haneghi, Moshe Machover & Akiva Orr, ‘The Class Nature of Israeli
Society’, NLR I/65.
Wed 24 Apr 2024 : We need an exodus from Zionism
We need an exodus from Zionism
Naomi Klein
This Passover, we don’t need or want the false idol of
Zionism. We want freedom from the project that commits genocide in our name
Wed 24 Apr
2024 14.27 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/24/zionism-seder-protest-new-york-gaza-israel
I’ve been
thinking about Moses, and his rage when he came down from the mount to find the
Israelites worshipping a golden calf.
The
ecofeminist in me was always uneasy about this story: what kind of God is
jealous of animals? What kind of God wants to hoard all the sacredness of the
Earth for himself?
But there
is a less literal way of understanding this story. It is about false idols.
About the human tendency to worship the profane and shiny, to look to the small
and material rather than the large and transcendent.
What I want
to say to you tonight at this revolutionary and historic Seder in the Streets
is that too many of our people are worshipping a false idol once again. They
are enraptured by it. Drunk on it. Profaned by it.
That false
idol is called Zionism.
Zionism is
a false idol that has taken the idea of the promised land and turned it into a
deed of sale for a militaristic ethnostate
It is a
false idol that takes our most profound biblical stories of justice and
emancipation from slavery – the story of Passover itself – and turns them into
brutalist weapons of colonial land theft, roadmaps for ethnic cleansing and
genocide.
It is a
false idol that has taken the transcendent idea of the promised land – a
metaphor for human liberation that has traveled across multiple faiths to every
corner of this globe – and dared to turn it into a deed of sale for a
militaristic ethnostate.
Political
Zionism’s version of liberation is itself profane. From the start, it required
the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and ancestral lands in the
Nakba.
From the
start it has been at war with dreams of liberation. At a Seder it is worth
remembering that this includes the dreams of liberation and self-determination
of the Egyptian people. This false idol of Zionism equates Israeli safety with
Egyptian dictatorship and client states.
From the
start it has produced an ugly kind of freedom that saw Palestinian children not
as human beings but as demographic threats – much as the pharaoh in the Book of
Exodus feared the growing population of Israelites, and thus ordered the death
of their sons.
Zionism has
brought us to our present moment of cataclysm and it is time that we said
clearly: it has always been leading us here.
It is a
false idol that has led far too many of our own people down a deeply immoral
path that now has them justifying the shredding of core commandments: thou
shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet.
We, in
these streets for months and months, are the exodus. The exodus from Zionism
It is a
false idol that equates Jewish freedom with cluster bombs that kill and maim
Palestinian children.
Zionism is
a false idol that has betrayed every Jewish value, including the value we place
on questioning – a practice embedded in the Seder with its four questions asked
by the youngest child.
Including
the love we have as a people for text and for education.
Today, this
false idol justifies the bombing of every university in Gaza; the destruction
of countless schools, of archives, of printing presses; the killing of hundreds
of academics, of journalists, of poets – this is what Palestinians call
scholasticide, the killing of the means of education.
Meanwhile,
in this city, the universities call in the NYPD and barricade themselves
against the grave threat posed by their own students daring to ask them basic
questions, such as: how can you claim to believe in anything at all, least of
all us, while you enable, invest in and collaborate with this genocide?
The false
idol of Zionism has been allowed to grow unchecked for far too long.
So tonight
we say: it ends here.
Our Judaism
cannot be contained by an ethnostate, for our Judaism is internationalist by
nature.
Our Judaism
cannot be protected by the rampaging military of that state, for all that
military does is sow sorrow and reap hatred – including against us as Jews.
Our Judaism
is not threatened by people raising their voices in solidarity with Palestine
across lines of race, ethnicity, physical ability, gender identity and
generations.
Our Judaism
is one of those voices and knows that in that chorus lies both our safety and
our collective liberation.
Our Judaism
is the Judaism of the Passover Seder: the gathering in ceremony to share food
and wine with loved ones and strangers alike, the ritual that is inherently
portable, light enough to carry on our backs, in need of nothing but each
other: no walls, no temple, no rabbi, a role for everyone, even – especially –
the smallest child. The Seder is a diaspora technology if ever there was one,
made for collective grieving, contemplation, questioning, remembering and
reviving the revolutionary spirt.
So look
around. This, here, is our Judaism. As waters rise and forests burn and nothing
is certain, we pray at the altar of solidarity and mutual aid, no matter the
cost.
We don’t
need or want the false idol of Zionism. We want freedom from the project that
commits genocide in our name. Freedom from an ideology that has no plan for
peace other than deals with murderous theocratic petrostates next door, while
selling the technologies of robo-assassinations to the world.
We seek to
liberate Judaism from an ethnostate that wants Jews to be perennially afraid,
that wants our children to be afraid, that wants us to believe the world is
against us so that we go running to its fortress and beneath its iron dome, or
at least keep the weapons and donations flowing.
That is the
false idol.
And it’s
not just Netanyahu, it’s the world he made and that made him – it’s Zionism.
What are
we? We, in these streets for months and months, are the exodus. The exodus from
Zionism.
And to the
Chuck Schumers of this world, we do not say: “Let our people go.”
We say: “We
have already gone. And your kids? They’re with us now.”
Naomi Klein
is a Guardian US columnist and contributing writer. She is the professor of
climate justice and co-director of the Centre for Climate Justice at the
University of British Columbia. Her latest book, Doppelganger: A Trip into the
Mirror World, was published in September
This is a
transcript of a speech delivered at the Emergency Seder in the Streets in New
York City
Updated Dec. 11, 2023: A Fraught Question for the Moment: Is Anti-Zionism Always Antisemitic?
A Fraught Question for the Moment: Is
Anti-Zionism Always Antisemitic?
From the halls of Congress to America’s streets and
universities, a once largely academic issue has roiled national discourse,
inciting accusations of bigotry and countercharges of bullying.
Jonathan
Weisman
By Jonathan
Weisman
Published
Dec. 10, 2023
Updated
Dec. 11, 2023, 7:05 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/us/politics/anti-zionism-antisemitism.html
The brutal
shedding of Jewish blood on Oct. 7, followed by Israel’s relentless military
assault on Gaza, has brought a fraught question to the fore in a moment of
surging bigotry and domestic political gamesmanship: Is anti-Zionism by
definition antisemitism?
The
question deeply divided congressional Democrats last week when Republican
leaders, seeking to drive a wedge between American Jews and the political party
that three-quarters of them call their own, put it to a vote in the House. It
has shaken the country’s campuses and reverberated in its city streets, where
pro-Palestinian protesters bellow chants calling for Palestine to be free from
the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
It surfaced
in Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate, when Nikki Haley, the former
South Carolina governor, said, “If you don’t think Israel has a right to exist,
that is antisemitic.” The following night, lighting the national menorah behind
the White House, Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, who is
Jewish, warned, “When Jews are targeted because of their beliefs or identity,
and when Israel is singled out because of anti-Jewish hatred, that is
antisemitism.”
Zionism as
a concept was once clearly understood: the belief that Jews, who have endured
persecution for millenniums, needed refuge and self-determination in the land
of their ancestors. The word still evokes joyful pride among many Jews in the
state of Israel, which was established 75 years ago and repeatedly defended
itself against attacks from Arab neighbors that aimed to annihilate it.
If
anti-Zionism a century ago meant opposing the international effort to set up a
Jewish state in what was then a British-controlled territory called Palestine,
it now suggests the elimination of Israel as the sovereign homeland of the
Jews. That, many Jews in Israel and the diaspora say, is indistinguishable from
hatred of Jews generally, or antisemitism.
Yet some
critics of Israel say they equate Zionism with a continuing project of
expanding the Jewish state. That effort animates an Israeli government bent on
settling ever more parts of the West Bank that some Israelis, as well as the
United States and other Western powers, had proposed as a separate state for
the Palestinian people. Expanding those settlements, to Israel’s critics,
conjures images of “settler colonialists” and apartheid-style oppressors.
So for some
Jews, the answer to the question is obvious. Of course anti-Zionism is
antisemitism, they say: Around half the world’s Jews live in Israel, and
destroying it, or ending its status as a refuge where they are assured of
governing themselves, would imperil a people who have faced annihilation time
and again.
“There is
no debate,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the
Anti-Defamation League, which has been defining and monitoring antisemitism
since 1913. “Anti-Zionism is predicated on one concept, the denial of rights to
one people.”
Many
Palestinians and their allies recoil just as fiercely: The equating of
opposition to a Jewish state on once-Arab land — or opposition to its expansion
— with bigotry is to silence their national aspirations, muffle political
dissent and denigrate 75 years of their suffering.
But perhaps
nowhere is the question more fraught than among Jews themselves. Younger,
left-leaning Jews, steeped in the cause of antiracism and terms like “settler
colonialism,” are increasingly searching for a Jewish identity centered more on
religious values like the pursuit of justice and repairing the world than on
collective nationalism tied to the land of Israel.
Many older
liberal Jews have also struggled with the Israeli government’s lurch to the far
right, but they see Israel as the centerpiece and guarantor of continued Jewish
existence in an ever more secular world.
“We’re
living in an increasingly post-religious age, and any Jewish community that
walks away from the Jewish people, and its most articulate expression of our
times — the Jewish state, the state of Israel — is walking away from their own
future,” said Ammiel Hirsch, the senior rabbi of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in
Manhattan and the founder of Amplify Israel, which seeks to emphasize the
Jewish state in Jewish worship.
For
Republicans, the issue is simple and convenient. The raising of anti-Zionism in
the debate over antisemitism amid the Israel-Hamas war pushes aside the
presence of white-nationalist bigots on the fringes of the Republican coalition
— like Nick Fuentes, the avowed neo-Nazi who dined with Kanye West and former
President Donald J. Trump last year — and instead forces Democrats to defend
the pro-Hamas demonstrators on their own coalition’s fringes.
So on
Tuesday, when G.O.P. leaders led by Representative David Kustoff of Tennessee,
one of the House’s two Jewish Republicans, put to a vote a resolution
condemning all forms of antisemitism and flatly stated “that anti-Zionism is
antisemitism,” the 216 Republicans who voted yes included two who have been
accused of antisemitism and white-nationalist flirtations, Representatives Paul
Gosar of Arizona and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. (The one Republican who
voted no, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, has now been labeled
antisemitic by the White House.)
For the
broader Democratic community, by contrast, the debate has been wrenching,
pitting allies against one another, splintering more conservative Jewish
Democrats who absolutely believe anti-Zionism is antisemitic from progressive
Democrats, especially Democrats of color, who argue just as strongly for the
latitude to criticize Israel, and leaving a huge middle unwilling to draw
bright lines.
Thirteen
Democrats voted no, including Israel’s fiercest critics in Congress, Ilhan Omar
of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New
York. Ninety-five voted yes, but 92 Democrats voted “present,” among them
prominent Jews like Jerrold Nadler of New York, Jamie Raskin of Maryland and
Jan Schakowsky of Illinois.
“Folks,
this isn’t complicated: MOST antizionism — the type that calls for Israel’s
destruction, denying its right to exist — is antisemitic. This type is used to
cloak hatred of Jews,” Mr. Nadler wrote on social media after the vote. “Some
antizionism isn’t that. Thus, it’s simply inaccurate to call ALL antizionism
antisemitic.”
In fact, it
is complicated. Jonathan Jacoby, the director of the Nexus Task Force, a group
of academics and Jewish activists affiliated with the Bard Center for the Study
of Hate, said the group had wrestled with the issue for several years now,
seeking a definition of antisemitism that captures when anti-Zionism crosses
from political belief to bigotry. He warned that shouting down any political
action directed against Israel as antisemitic made it harder for Jews to call
out actual antisemitism, while stifling honest conversation about Israel’s
government and U.S. policy toward it.
The
definition of antisemitism as drafted by the International Holocaust
Remembrance Alliance and embraced by the Trump White House includes phrases
that critics say squelch political — not hate — speech:
Denying the
Jewish people their right to self-determination, such as by claiming that the
existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
Applying
double standards by requiring of Israel behavior not expected or demanded of
any other democratic nation.
Comparing
contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
The Nexus
definition agrees that holding Jews around the world responsible for Israeli
government actions, as pro-Palestinian protesters did last week outside an
Israeli restaurant in Philadelphia, is Jew hatred. It also holds that it is
antisemitic to reject the right of Jews alone to define themselves as a people
and exercise self-determination, as some on the left do in arguing that Jews
are a religion, not a nation.
But Nexus
pushes back sharply on some aspects of the I.H.R.A. definition, stating,
“Paying disproportionate attention to Israel and treating Israel differently
than other countries is not prima facie proof of antisemitism” and “Opposition
to Zionism and/or Israel does not necessarily reflect specific anti-Jewish
animus.”
Yehuda
Kurtzer, the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Jewish research
organization, said that Judaism had always contained elements of religion and
nationhood, and that Jewish identity had toggled between the two over the
millenniums. It is unsurprising that the two strains can seem baffling, he
said.
Since the
rise of violent white supremacy that accompanied the political movement of Mr.
Trump, Jewish intellectuals have viewed right-wing antisemitism “as dangerous
to Jewish bodies,” Mr. Kurtzer continued. The 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue
massacre that took 11 Jewish lives was perpetrated by an adherent to the “great
replacement” theory, a conspiratorial fiction designed to create race hatred by
holding that Jews are importing Black and brown people to supplant white
Americans.
Amid such
carnage, left-wing antisemitism, driven by opponents of the Jewish state, was
seen as more academic, a threat to Jewish identity, but not to Jewish safety,
he said.
But Mr.
Kurtzer said those distinctions disappeared with the massacre of some 1,200
Jewish Israelis in October — because Hamas’s actions were the end result of
denying Israel’s right to exist. “Oct. 7 should have the effect of saying
absolute hatred of Judaism for our national claims is violent and legitimizes
violence,” he said.
In other
words, virulent anti-Zionism and virulent antisemitism ultimately intersect, at
a very bad address for the Jews.
Still,
Democrats worry that the debate is blurring the line between political speech
and hate speech. Tibetans pressing for freedom from the Chinese are considered
unserious or even repugnant in Beijing, just as Native American activists
demanding to reclaim parts of the United States might be to the owners of that
land. But are they bigoted?
Ms. Omar
said the Republican resolution that she opposed “conflates criticism of the
Israeli government with antisemitism” and “paints critics of the Israeli
government as antisemites.”
To the
young Jewish activists of left-wing groups like IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for
Peace, which have themselves been accused of antisemitism, the search for a
Jewish identity unrooted in the land has not been complicated. Jews, after all,
survived without a state for nearly 2,000 years after the Romans destroyed the
Second Temple in Jerusalem and scattered the inhabitants of the Holy Land to
the four corners of the earth.
Eva
Borgwardt, the 27-year-old political director of IfNotNow, said she graduated
high school wanting to be a rabbi. Now she speaks of a renaissance of Jewish
identity in the United States, a “diasporic” chicken farm, queer Talmudic
studies and a Judaism based on good works — including the securing of equal
rights and protections for Palestinians.
“For Jews
questioning Zionism, the issue is protecting the rights of a minority from a
state determined to eliminate them,” she said. “What could be more Jewish than
that?”
Mr.
Greenblatt, of the Anti-Defamation League, reacted angrily to that argument.
“Please
don’t tell me my grandfather, whose entire family was incinerated in Auschwitz,
wanted to go back to the diaspora,” he said.
To which
younger, leftier Jews might respond by asking what it even means to suggest
that American politics should be focused on securing a safe haven for Jews
abroad when the First Amendment ensures that the United States is such a safe
haven.
In all of
this, a generational divide is palpable. Older Jews lived through the trials
and triumphs of the early Jewish state. Middle-aged Jews remember the hope of a
peace that recognized the legitimate aspirations of the Jewish and Palestinian
people, embodied in the Oslo accords of the 1990s, and a diplomatic process
that was pursued vigorously until the early years of the 21st century.
The young
Jews joining pro-Palestinian demonstrators in the last two months know only an
Israel they see as powerful, violent against Palestinians and ruled by leaders
far to their right.
“I was born
after the Oslo accords had fallen apart,” Ms. Borgwardt said. “I’ve never known
any kind of actual hope for a Zionism that does not demand occupation,
apartheid and the oppression of Palestinians to fulfill the identity of the
Jewish state.”
The
prevalence of that view has prominent Jews and mainline rabbis extremely
worried. Labeling Jews who question the centrality of Zionism antisemitic will
do nothing to keep them from abandoning Judaism altogether, said Ms.
Schakowsky, a veteran congresswoman.
“I think
there is a contempt for active, engaged American Jews who think it’s not just
about Israel existing,” she said, “but Israel existing in a context that does
include the Palestinians.”
Jonathan
Weisman is a politics writer, covering campaigns with an emphasis on economic
and labor policy. He is based in Chicago. More about Jonathan Weisman
Nov. 4, 2022: The Israel We Knew Is Gone
OPINION
THOMAS L.
FRIEDMAN
The Israel We Knew Is Gone
Nov. 4,
2022, 1:00 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/04/opinion/israel-netanyahu.html
Thomas L.
Friedman
By Thomas
L. Friedman
Opinion
Columnist
Imagine you
woke up after the 2024 U.S. presidential election and found that Donald Trump
had been re-elected and chose Rudy Giuliani for attorney general, Michael Flynn
for defense secretary, Steve Bannon for commerce secretary, evangelical leader
James Dobson for education secretary, Proud Boys former leader Enrique Tarrio
for homeland security head and Marjorie Taylor Greene for the White House
spokeswoman.
“Impossible,”
you would say. Well, think again.
As I’ve
noted before, Israeli political trends are often a harbinger of wider trends in
Western democracies — Off Broadway to our Broadway. I hoped that the national
unity government that came to power in Israel in June 2021 might also be a
harbinger of more bipartisanship here. Alas, that government has now collapsed
and is being replaced by the most far-far-right coalition in Israel’s history.
Lord save us if this is a harbinger of what’s coming our way.
The
coalition that Likud leader Bibi Netanyahu is riding back into power is the
Israeli equivalent of the nightmare U.S. cabinet I imagined above. Only it is
real — a rowdy alliance of ultra-Orthodox leaders and ultranationalist
politicians, including some outright racist, anti-Arab Jewish extremists once
deemed completely outside the norms and boundaries of Israeli politics. As it
is virtually impossible for Netanyahu to build a majority coalition without the
support of these extremists, some of them are almost certain to be cabinet
ministers in the next Israeli government.
As that
previously unthinkable reality takes hold, a fundamental question will roil
synagogues in America and across the globe: “Do I support this Israel or not
support it?” It will haunt pro-Israel students on college campuses. It will
challenge Arab allies of Israel in the Abraham Accords, who just wanted to
trade with Israel and never signed up for defending a government there that is
anti-Israeli Arab. It will stress those U.S. diplomats who have reflexively
defended Israel as a Jewish democracy that shares America’s values, and it will
send friends of Israel in Congress fleeing from any reporter asking if America
should continue sending billions of dollars in aid to such a
religious-extremist-inspired government.
You have
not seen this play before, because no Israeli leader has “gone there” before.
Netanyahu
has been propelled into power by bedfellows who: see Israeli Arab citizens as a
fifth column who can’t be trusted; have vowed to take political control over
judicial appointments; believe that Jewish settlements must be expanded so
there is not an inch left anywhere in the West Bank for a Palestinian state;
want to enact judicial changes that could freeze Netanyahu’s ongoing corruption
trial; and express contempt for Israel’s long and strong embrace of L.G.B.T.Q.
rights.
We are
talking about people like Itamar Ben-Gvir, who was convicted by an Israeli
court in 2007 of incitement to racism and supporting a Jewish terrorist
organization. Netanyahu personally forged an alliance between Ben-Gvir’s Jewish
Power party and Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of the Religious Zionism party,
which turned them (shockingly for many Israelis) into the third-largest party
in the country — giving Netanyahu the allies Likud needed to win a
parliamentary majority in this week’s election.
Smotrich is
known for, among other things, suggesting that Israeli Jewish mothers should be
separated from Arab mothers in the maternity wards of Israeli hospitals. He has
long advocated outright Israeli annexation of the West Bank and argued that
there is “no such thing as Jewish terrorism” when it comes to settlers
retaliating on their own against Palestinian violence.
Netanyahu
has increasingly sought over the years to leverage the energy of this illiberal
Israeli constituency to win office, not unlike how Trump uses white nationalism,
but Netanyahu never actually brought this radical element — like Ben-Gvir, who
claims to have moderated because he has told his supporters to chant, “Death to
terrorists,” instead of, “Death to Arabs” — into his ruling faction or cabinet.
As more of Netanyahu’s allies in Likud split with him over his alleged criminal
behavior and lying, however, Bibi had to reach further and further out of the
mainstream of Israeli politics to get enough votes to rule and pass a law to
abort his own trial and possible jail time.
Netanyahu
had fertile political soil to work with, the Yediot Ahronot Israeli newspaper
columnist Nahum Barnea explained to me. There has been a dramatic upsurge in
violence — stabbings, shootings, gang warfare and organized crime — by Israeli
Arabs against other Israeli Arabs, and Israeli Arab gangs and organized crime
against Israeli Jews, particularly in mixed communities. The result is that,
“like in America, ‘policing’ has become a huge issue in Israel in recent
years,” said Barnea — and even though this upsurge started when Netanyahu was
previously prime minister, he and his anti-Arab allies blamed it all on the
Arabs and the national unity Israeli government.
One
election billboard summed up Netanyahu’s campaign. It was, as Haaretz reporter
Amos Harel reported, a “gloomy-looking one with the caption: ‘That’s it. We’ve
had enough.’ It depicts outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid and his coalition
partner, Mansour Abbas of the United Arab List.”
Abbas is
the rather amazing Israeli Arab religious party leader who recognizes the State
of Israel and the searing importance of the Holocaust, and who was part of the
now-fallen unity government.
As Harel
put it: “The ‘had enough’ message seems to have sunk in among supporters of
Likud, Religious Zionism and the ultra-Orthodox parties. It’s likely that the
message also helped Netanyahu win Tuesday’s election.” Among the critical
factors, Harel wrote, was “hatred of Arabs and the desire to keep them out of
positions of power.”
But
Netanyahu was also aided by the fact that while the right and the far right
were highly energized by both growing fears of and distrust of Arabs — whether
Israeli Arab citizens or Palestinians in the West Bank — their centrist and
center-left opponents had no coherent or inspiring countermessage.
As Barnea
put it to me: “Israel is not divided down the middle,” with 50 percent being
pro-Netanyahu and the other 50 percent with a unified message and strategy
opposing him. “No, Israel is divided between the 50 percent who are
pro-Netanyahu and the 50 percent who are pro-blocking Netanyahu. But that is
all they can agree on,” Barnea said. And it showed in this election. And it
wasn’t enough.
Why is all
of this so dangerous? Moshe Halbertal, the Hebrew University Jewish
philosopher, captured it well: For decades members of the Israeli right, a vast
majority of whom were “security hawks,” have believed that the Palestinians
have never and will never accept a Jewish state next to them and therefore
Israel needed to take whatever military means were necessary to protect itself
from them.
But Israeli
hawkishness toward the Palestinians, explained Halbertal, “is now morphing into
something new — a kind of general ultranationalism” that not only rejects any
notion of a Palestinian state but also views every Israeli Arab — who make up
about 21 percent of Israel’s population, nearly 20 percent of its doctors,
about 25 percent of its nurses and almost half its pharmacists — as a potential
terrorist.
“What we
are seeing is a shift in the hawkish right from a political identity built on
focusing on the ‘enemy outside’ — the Palestinians — to the ‘enemy inside’ —
Israeli Arabs,” Halbertal said.
Netanyahu’s
coalition has also attacked the vital independent institutions that underpin
Israel’s democracy and are responsible for, among other things, protecting
minority rights. That is, the lower court system, the media and, most of all,
the Supreme Court, which Netanyahu and his allies want brought under the
political control of the right, “precisely so they will not protect minority
rights” with the vigor and scope that they have, Halbertal said.
At the same
time, not only is this election a struggle about the future of Israel, he said,
but also “about the future of Judaism in Israel. The Torah stands for the
equality of all people and the notion that we are all created in God’s image.
Israelis of all people need to respect minority rights because we, as Jews, know
what it is to be a minority” — with and without rights. “This is a deep Jewish
ethos,” Halbertal added, “and it is now being challenged from within Israel
itself. But, when you have these visceral security threats in the street every
day, it becomes much easier for these ugly ideologies to anchor themselves.”
This is
going to have a profound effect on U.S.-Israel relations. But don’t take my
word for it. On Oct. 1, Axios published a story quoting what sources said
Senator Bob Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat who leads the Foreign Relations
Committee, told Netanyahu during a trip to Israel in September. In the words of
one source, the senator warned that if Netanyahu formed a government after the
Nov. 1 elections that included right-wing extremists, it could “seriously erode
bipartisan support in Washington.”
That is now
about to happen.
I have
reported from Israel for this newspaper for nearly 40 years, often traveling
around with my dear friend Nahum Barnea, one of the most respected, sober,
balanced, careful journalists in the country. To hear him say to me minutes ago
on the phone that “we have a different kind of Israel now” tells me we are
truly entering a dark tunnel.
zionism and ethno-nationalism
Role in the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict
The arrival
of Zionist settlers to Palestine in the late 19th century is widely seen as the
start of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Zionists wanted to create a Jewish
state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian
Arabs as possible.In response to Ben-Gurion's 1938 quote that "politically
we are the aggressors and they [the Palestinians] defend themselves",
Israeli historian Benny Morris says, "Ben-Gurion, of course, was right.
Zionism was a colonizing and expansionist ideology and movement", and that
"Zionist ideology and practice were necessarily and elementally
expansionist." Morris describes the Zionist goal of establishing a Jewish
state in Palestine as necessarily displacing and dispossessing the Arab
population. The practical issue of establishing a Jewish state in a majority
non-Jewish and Arab region was a fundamental issue for the Zionist
movement. Zionists used the term "transfer" as a euphemism for
the removal, or ethnic cleansing, of the Arab Palestinian population. According
to Benny Morris, "the idea of transferring the Arabs out... was seen as
the chief means of assuring the stability of the 'Jewishness' of the proposed
Jewish State".
In fact, the
concept of forcibly removing the non-Jewish population from Palestine was a
notion that garnered support across the entire spectrum of Zionist groups,
including its farthest left factions from early on in the movement's
development. The concept of transfer was not only seen as desirable but also as
an ideal solution by the Zionist leadership. The notion of forcible transfer was
so appealing to this leadership that it was considered the most attractive
provision in the Peel Commission. Indeed, this sentiment was deeply ingrained
to the extent that Ben Gurion's acceptance of partition was contingent upon the
removal of the Palestinian population. He would go as far as to say that
transfer was such an ideal solution that it "must happen some day".
It was the right wing of the Zionist movement that put forward the main
arguments against transfer, their objections being primarily on practical
rather than moral grounds.
According to
Morris, the idea of ethnically cleansing the land of Palestine was to play a
large role in Zionist ideology from the inception of the movement. He explains
that "transfer" was "inevitable and inbuilt into Zionism"
and that a land which was primarily Arab could not be transformed into a Jewish
state without displacing the Arab population. Further, the stability of the
Jewish state could not be ensured given the Arab population's fear of
displacement. He explains that this would be the primary source of conflict
between the Zionist movement and the Arab population.
End of the Mandate and Expulsion of the Palestinians
Towards the end of the war, the Zionist leadership was
motivated more than ever to establish a Jewish state. Since the British were no
longer sponsoring its development, many Zionists considered it would be
necessary to establish the state by force by upending the British position in
Palestine. In this the IRA's tactics against Britain in the Irish War of
Independence served as a both a model and source of inspiration.[t] The Irgun,
the military arm of the revisionist Zionists, led by Menachem Begin, and the
Stern Gang, which at one point sought an alliance with the Nazis, would lead a
series of terrorist attacks against the British starting in 1944. This included
the King David Hotel bombing, British immigration and tax offices and police
stations. It was only by the war's end that the Haganah joined in the sabotage
against the British. The combined impact of US opinion and the attacks on
British presence eventually led the British to refer the situation to the
United Nations in 1947.
The UNSCOP found that Jews were a minority in
Palestine, owning 6% of the total land. The urgency of the condition of the
Jewish refugees in Europe motivated the committee to unanimously vote in favor
of terminating the British mandate in Palestine. The disagreement came with
regards to whether Palestine should be partitioned or if it should constitute a
federal state. American lobbying efforts, pressuring UN delegates with the
threat of withdrawal of US aid, eventually secured the General Assembly votes
in favor of the partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states
which was passed 29 November 1947.
Outbursts of violence slowly grew into a wider civil
war between the Arabs and Zionist militias. By mid-December, the Haganah had
shifted to a more "aggressive defense", abandoning notions of
restraint it had espoused from 1936 to 1939. The Haganah reprisal raids were
often disproportionate to the initial Arab offenses, which led to the spread of
violence to previously unaffected areas. The Zionist militias, employed terror
attacks against Arab civilian and militia centers. In response, Arabs planted
bombs in Jewish civilian areas, particularly in Jerusalem.
The first expulsion of Palestinians began 12 days
after the adoption of the UN resolution, and the first Palestinian village was
eliminated a month later.[135] In March of 1948, Zionist forces began
implementing Plan D, which warranted the expulsion of civilians and the
destruction of Arab towns and villages in pursuit of eliminating potentially
hostile Arab elements.According to Benny Morris Zionist forces committed 24
massacres of Palestinians in the ensuing war, in part as a form of
psychological warfare, the most notorious of which is the Deir Yassin massacre.
Between 1948 and 1949, 750,000 Palestinians would be driven out of their homes,
primarily as a result of these expulsions and massacres.
The British left Palestine (having done little to
maintain order) on May 14 as planned. The British had done little to
fascilitate a formal transfer of power;a fully functioning Jewish quasi-state
had already been operating under the British for the past several decades. The
same day, Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the state of Israel.
World must act to prevent ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Gaza, António Guterres warns
World
must act to prevent ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Gaza, António Guterres warns
Secretary
general makes appeal as civilian casualties mount amid intensive Israeli
strikes on north
Patrick
Greenfield in Cali, Malak A Tantesh in Gaza and Julian Borger in Jerusalem
Wed 30 Oct
2024 18.05 GMT
The UN
secretary general, António Guterres has warned Israel could carry out the
“ethnic cleansing” of Gaza if the international community does not make a
determined stand to prevent it.
Guterres
made his appeal at a time of mounting civilian casualties from the Israeli
bombardment of northern Gaza. A strike on Tuesday in Beit Lahiya district
killed at least 93 people, in what the UN said was just one of at least seven
“mass casualty incidents” across Gaza in the past week.
At the same
time, aid deliveries to Gaza are reported to have fallen to their lowest level
since the start of the war, leading to growing allegations that Israel’s true
intention is to drive the remaining Palestinian population out of at least part
of Gaza.
The UN
secretary general, speaking on the sidelines of the COP16 biodiversity
conference in Colombia, suggested that the “ethnic cleansing” of Gaza had been
prevented until now by its people’s refusal to succumb to the intense pressure
to flee their homes and by Arab resolve not to accept mass population
transfers.
“The
intention might be for the Palestinians to leave Gaza, for others to occupy
it,” Guterres told the Guardian. “But there has been – and I pay tribute to the
courage and the resilience of the Palestinian people and to the determination
of the Arab world – [an effort] to avoid the ethnic cleansing becoming a
reality.
“We will do
everything possible to help them remain there and to avoid ethnic cleansing
that might occur if there is not strong determination from the international
community,” he added.
Jordan’s
foreign secretary, Ayman Safadi, last week told the US secretary of state,
Antony Blinken that ethnic cleansing was already happening in Gaza. Israel’s
military denies systematically trying to force Palestinians from the territory.
There has
been broad international condemnation of Tuesday’s bombing of a five-storey
residential building in Beit Lahiya, in which there were many children among
the 93 fatalities. The US called it “a horrifying incident with a horrifying
result” and on Wednesday the French foreign ministry said it condemned the
bombing and “recent Israeli strikes on hospitals in the north”.
“The siege
imposed on north Gaza must be ended immediately,” the French statement said.
The Israel
Defense Forces (IDF) said it was aware of the reports of civilian casualties in
Beit Lahiya and was looking into it.
Israel’s
defence minister, Yoav Gallant, urged IDF troops to “continue exerting as much
[military] pressure on Hamas as possible” to bring about the return of Israeli
hostages. The Mossad director, David Barnea, met his CIA counterpart, Bill
Burns, and the Qatari prime minister, Mohammed Al Thani, in Doha earlier in the
week amid reports of a new proposal for a short-term truce to allow some
civilian respite and the return of hostages held by Hamas, but there was no
confirmation of a breakthrough after five months of talks.
Israel kept
up its bombing campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah, calling on the resident
population to leave the Baalbek region in the north-east of the country.
Lebanon’s health ministry later said at least 19 people, including eight women
were killed in separate Israeli strikes in the region.
Hezbollah’s
new leader, Naim Qassem, said on Wednesday he would agree to a ceasefire with
Israel under terms Hezbollah found acceptable but said a viable deal had yet to
be presented.
In Gaza, the
intense bombardment of Beit Lahiya continued with 19 people killed in separate
strikes overnight, and 10 more deaths on Wednesday. The injured people and the
dead were taken on donkey carts to the nearby Kamal Adwan hospital, which is
barely functional after medical staff have fled or reportedly been detained,
and medical supplies and fuel are almost completely depleted.
“Only two …
out of 20 health service points and two hospitals, Kamal Adwan and Al-Awda,
remain functional, although partially, hampering the delivery of life-saving
health services,” the UN humanitarian affairs agency, OCHA, said in a daily
bulletin.
“Across the
Gaza Strip, October has seen very limited food distribution due to severe
supply shortages,” the agency said. It said 1.7 million people, 80% of the
population, did not receive rations.
Philippe
Lazzarini, the head of the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa),
said on X: “Today, even as we look into the faces of children in Gaza, some of
whom we know will die tomorrow, the rules-based international order is
crumbling in a repetition of the horrors that led to the establishment of the
United Nations, and in violation of commitments to prevent their recurrence.”
On Monday,
the Israeli Knesset voted to ban Unrwa operations in the country within the
next three months, in defiance of near-unanimous global appeals, which could
further prevent aid distribution in Gaza and the West Bank.
Introduction: IMF hails Reeves’ ‘sustainable’ tax rises; Resolution Foundation says budget marks ‘decisive shift from planned cuts’
2h ago
07.53 GMT
Introduction:
IMF hails Reeves’ ‘sustainable’ tax rises; Resolution Foundation says budget
marks ‘decisive shift from planned cuts’
Good
morning. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has welcomed the measures
announced by Rachel Reeves in her budget yesterday.
In an
unusual move, the influential Washington-based financial watchdog backed the
increases in investment and spending on public services as well as
“sustainable” tax rises. A spokesperson said:
We support
the envisaged reduction in the deficit over the medium term, including by
sustainably raising revenue.
Last night,
a spokesperson said the fund welcomed the government’s “focus on boosting
growth through a needed increase in public investment while addressing urgent
pressures on public services.
The
Resolution Foundation, a UK thinktank, has published its analysis of the budget
and given it a guarded welcome. It said the UK budget has delivered “short-term
living standards pain in the hope of long-term growth-based gains”.
The
London-based foundation said the first Labour budget in nearly 15 years marked
a “decisive shift” from the planned cuts set out by the last government, with
better-funded public services and greater public investment coming from higher
taxes and more borrowing.
But the
budget has not yet delivered a decisive shift away from Britain’s record as a
‘stagnation nation’, with the outlook for growth and living standards remaining
weak in this Parliament.
By
prioritising extra spending on public services and investment, the chancellor
is borrowing an extra £32bn a year by the end of the parliament, with another
£41bn coming from tax rises.
Mike Brewer,
interim chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, said:
Rachel
Reeves’s first ever Budget was never going to be a crowd-pleaser, given the
profound and often conflicting challenges she faced, from failing public
services to perilous public finances, weak growth and stagnating living
standards.
The
short-term effect of these changes will be better funded public services – not
just across schools and the NHS – but, critically, also in our justice system.
But families are also set for a further squeeze on living standards as the rise
in employer National Insurance dampens wage growth.
With Britain finally turning the page on its longstanding failure to invest thanks to a £100bn boost to public capital spending, the hope is that this short-term pain will eventually turn into a long-term living standards gain. But if it doesn’t, future budgets won’t be any easier to deliver, especially if further tax rises are needed
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