Berkley
Forum
Jewish
Religious Nationalism in Israel and the Racist Exclusion of Palestinians
By: Nadeem
Karkabi
August 6,
2021
Palestinian
Citizens and Religious Nationalism in Israel
To
understand the recent violent events in Palestine/Israel, it is important to
return to the historical formation of Jewish nationalism in Palestine and the
emergence of Israel as a Jewish state. Although Zionism was originally a
secular national movement influenced by modern European thought, it embedded
Jewish religion as inseparable from Jewish nationality. More than simply an
ethnic category that cohesively defined a diverse target population of settlers
against the native Arab population in Palestine, Judaism as a religion was
important for Zionism to legitimize its settler-colonial project based on a
biblical narrative of return. Moreover, to accommodate the ultra-Orthodox
movement as part of the Jewish collective in Palestine, the Zionist secular leadership
symbolically wove the observance of Shabbat and the laws of kashrut into the
fabric of the state. However, it left the Orthodox rabbinical court to decide
who qualifies as a Jew, based on matrilineal descent or rabbinically sanctioned
conversion. Thus, according to Zionism, Judaism has been defined as a national
category exclusively based on biological ethnicity (or race) and religion.
More than
simply an ethnic category that cohesively defined a diverse target population
of settlers against the native Arab population in Palestine, Judaism as a
religion was important for Zionism to legitimize its settler-colonial project.
The State of
Israel was established in 1948 after the displacement and dispossession of the
majority of the native Palestinian population, in what is termed the Nakba
(catastrophe). Defined as a democracy for the Jewish people, Israel
structurally excluded the Palestinian Arab minority who remained within its
borders, even when they were granted Israeli citizenship in 1952. This
discrimination was legally institutionalized through the Law of Return, which
encouraged the settlement of Jews from all over the world, while not allowing
the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes. Moreover, the state
confiscated the properties of “absent” Palestinian refugees and redistributed
them to Jews. Ironically, this also included the properties of Palestinian “present
absentees,” who were internally displaced and remained within the borders of
the Israeli state.
The Zionist
racialization of Jews, based on religious grounds, came along with a racialized
definition of Arabs. While Arab identity is mostly constructed according to
cultural affiliation, primarily based on language, it became uniquely defined
in Israel as a racialized “ethnic” category. Aiming to contain Palestinians in
Israel by denationalization, the state defined them as “Israeli Arab” and
fragmented them into religious sub-minorities, such as Muslims, Christians, and
Druze.
While
religion has been a tool for defining an indigenous inferiority based on racial
grounds, it also served in the 1950s and 1960s as a mediator to bring Jewish
immigrants from Arab countries into the settlers’ collective in Israel. Looking
like Arabs and speaking Arabic, Arab Jews were de-Arabized upon their arrival
in Israel and nationally “ethnicized” as Jews on the basis of their religion.
Turned into Mizrahi (Oriental) Jews, they gave up their original Arabic culture
and language in exchange for Hebrew, and became more religious to qualify as
part of the Jewish nation in Israel and to distance themselves from Palestinian
Arabs.
Looking like
Arabs and speaking Arabic, Arab Jews were de-Arabized upon their arrival in
Israel and nationally 'ethnicized' as Jews on the basis of their religion.
However,
ethnicity in Israel has also been used as a racialized construct of eda
(congregation), through which an internal hierarchy between Ashkenazi and
Mizrahi Jews was created, based on Orientalist categories of cultural motza
(origin). To distinguish between the “modern” European settler of higher class
and “traditional” Oriental settlers of lower class, ethnicity as a construct of
cultural racialization was translated into class. Many Mizrahim were settled in
distant ma'barot (encampments) with little infrastructure and in “development
towns” on the periphery, where they had to compete with Palestinians for manual
labor and scarce opportunities.
With the
additional conquest of Palestinian (and other Arab) lands in 1967, Israeli
politics gradually became divided between the “left-wing” Mapai (and later
Labor) Party and the “right-wing” Likud Party. Whereas the first represented
the old secular Ashkenazi hegemony, which eventually sided with the failed
negotiations of the two-state solution in the 1990s, the latter allied with the
expansionist religious nationalist settler movement, which sided with imposing
sovereignty over Eretz Yisrael Hashlema (Complete or Greater Israel), including
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. When the Likud eventually overthrew Mapai in
the famous election of 1977, it was thanks to the Mizrahi vote, which was seen
mainly as a class vote against the Ashkenazi elite. While the Israeli “left”
sided with the establishment of a Palestinian state—solely to overcome the
demographic problem of controlling a large population of Palestinians, without
implementing full equality to Palestinian citizens in Israel—the Israeli
“right” became the loyal representative of the Zionist settler-colonial project
as an expansionist ideology that aims to sustain Jewish domination over
Palestinians, based on theological and racist perceptions of Jewish privilege.
This
“right-wing” coalition, along with Jewish Orthodox parties, has, since the new
millennium, gradually become the dominant force in Israeli politics.
Unapologetic about Jewish supremacy over Palestinians in the entirety of the
land, Benjamin Netanyahu’s extreme right-wing governments have brought forward
a series of anti-democratic laws since 2009. The Jewish nation-state law,
approved in 2018, is the latest of these laws; it solidified the definition of
Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people and structurally legitimized
the discrimination against its Palestinian citizens. With religious nationalism
becoming mainstream in Israel, it has become evident that the Zionist
settler-colonial project distinguishes little between Palestinian citizens in
Israel and Palestinian subjects living under military rule in the West Bank or
a militarized siege in the Gaza Strip.
The Zionist
settler-colonial project distinguishes little between Palestinian citizens in
Israel and Palestinian subjects living under military rule in the West Bank or
a militarized siege in the Gaza Strip.
In recent
years, Israeli governments have been debating how to annex parts of the West
Bank without legally incorporating its Palestinian population as part of the
Israeli polity, with Donald Trump’s “peace plan” being the latest such attempt.
In tandem, a growing number of Gar'in Torani (Torah nucleus) groups of
religious nationalist settlers have been established in so-called mixed cities,
or cities severely cleansed of their native Palestinian residents in 1948. Akin
to similar practices in occupied Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Hebron in the West
Bank, these groups aim to reclaim properties of Palestinian citizens inside
Israel—in Jaffa, Lyd, Acre, and elsewhere—by terrorizing Palestinians with the
goal of leading to a silent transfer. Although unable to displace Palestinians
by using provocative, at times violent, everyday actions, these settlers are
supported by Jewish Israeli real estate agents who seek to make a profit from
gentrifying these lucrative coastal towns. These agents, whether private companies
or settler organizations, have been approaching Palestinians living in these
cities to sell their homes at undervalued prices and move elsewhere, usually to
overcrowded Palestinian villages.
The last
round of violence, in May 2021, was horrific because the settler violence
appeared with new intensity, on a larger scale, and with greater legitimacy.
Backed by the Israeli police and government, members of the newly elected (in
March 2021) Jewish supremacist settlers’ party Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), as
well as other Jewish fascist organizations, such as Lehava and La Familia,
provoked the confrontations in Sheikh Jarrah and elsewhere in Jerusalem.
Settlers, joined by many disenfranchised Mizrahi youths, also raided mixed
cities, overtly targeting anything Palestinian—from private property, to
businesses, to people. Over 1,500 Palestinians were arrested, in what can be
termed political prosecution, yet only six Israeli Jews were arrested and charged
in relation to the horrific attempted lynching of a Palestinian driver, Said
Moussa, which appeared live on Israeli TV Channel 11.
The last
round of violence, in May 2021, was horrific because the settler violence
appeared with new intensity, on a larger scale, and with greater legitimacy.
In another
incident, a settler who cold bloodedly shot Moussa Hassouna dead in Lyd was
arrested but soon released, after Minister of Internal Security Amir Ohana
praised him, and other armed settlers, for helping the “authorities’ power to
immediately neutralize threat and danger.” None of the settlers who severely
damaged Palestinian homes, businesses, and cars were brought to face justice.
As no action was taken to stop such incidents, many Palestinians in Israel feel
exposed in the face of state and settler violence.
Despite the
grave situation, this moment united Palestinians around the realization that
they are facing the same settler-colonial structure. After long decades of
geopolitical fragmentation, it became clear that Israeli settler colonialism
does not distinguish between different Palestinians, be they citizens or
occupied subjects, as much as it distinguishes between settlers and natives. In
this sense, this is not a civil war, but a settler supremacist and expansionist
regime that is willing to do anything it takes to achieve the elimination of a
large indigenous population, under the façade of liberal democracy.
It is
important to listen to and act upon the current Palestinian call: “Aan
lil-Nakba a-la tastamer” (It is time for the Nakba not to continue).
Considering
settler colonialism as a structure, not an event, many scholars have been
pointing out that the Palestinian Nakba is not simply an event of the past, but
is ongoing, to this day. Therefore, it is important to listen to and act upon
the current Palestinian call: “Aan lil-Nakba a-la tastamer” (It is time for the
Nakba not to continue).
Nadeem
Karkabi
Dr. Nadeem
Karkabi is a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the University of
Haifa. His research focuses on Palestinian performative culture, as well as on
the interrelations between language, race, religion, and nationalism among
Mizrahi Jews who perform Arabic music in Israel.
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