In the past, I knew many left Zionists. They sought social justice, supported peace initiatives with the Palestinians, and believed in Israel’s progressive roots. Indeed, in its early days, Zionism, although a settler colonization project excluding the natives, was associated with the ideas of collectivism and equality.
Labor was the mainstream of the Zionist movement in Palestine. Some of them struggled to reconcile their lofty principles with the reality of settler colonialism, but most enthusiastically built a society apart, excluding the natives. This is what led the late Zeev Sternhell, an authority on the political history of Zionism, to coin the term “nationalist socialism” to distinguish it from the better known National Socialism.
He argued that socialism was nothing more than a tool in the hands of Ben-Gurion and his comrades driven by ethnic and exclusive nationalism. Labor who have held power in Israel for decades have refused the UN decision to let Palestinian refugees return to their homes. They also devised a series of methods of dispossession of the Palestinians and kept them under military rule for 18 years. But they were adept at manipulating progressive discourse and brought their party into the Socialist International.
Radical Zionism and its Opponents
On the other hand, the elected representatives of the radical right do not make lace. Before joining Netanyahu’s government last December, they made no secret of their intentions, laid out their demands and ensured that they would be implemented. While their initiatives targeting the Palestinians are based on a tacit consensus, their electoral promise to weaken the judicial control of the executive and legislative powers provokes mass demonstrations.
The largest of these protests are taking place in Tel Aviv, the most expensive city in the world and the stronghold of those who consider themselves the Israeli left. Protesters accuse the new government of discrediting Zionism and betraying Israel’s founding values.
Supporters of Israel in Western countries share this concern. They go so far as to mobilize Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron to warn Israel against carrying out this judicial reform. Die-hard supporters like Alan Dershowitz worry that “it will be much more difficult for Israel’s advocates abroad to defend Israel.”
Indeed, the new government could destroy the last of two illusions useful for maintaining Western support for Israel. The continued colonization of the territories occupied in 1967 has killed the first, that of a “two-state solution”, even if Western governments continue to support the ghost of it. The current Israeli government deals a deathblow to the second, that of a “democratic Jewish state”. But, contrary to the demonstrators of Tel-Aviv who come alive to defend the democracy, the Palestinians see there only an ethnocracy which oppresses them.
Reputable human rights organizations in Israel and elsewhere have concluded that Israel practices a form of apartheid.
At the end of the XXe century, with Israeli industry and agriculture no longer needing to rely on collectivist forms of colonization, economic policies took a right turn. As socialist Zionist movements wither away, the poverty rate becomes the highest among countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and Israel ends up sharing with the United States the record for socio-economic inequality.
The gap between Arab and non-Arab citizens of Israel is particularly pronounced, with the average income of the latter being three times that of the former. Israeli Arabs, who constitute 20% of the population, own only 3% of the land. This gap is also observed in spending on education and health care. Infant mortality is twice as high among Arab children under 12 months.
Extremism is normalizing
The word “fascist” is no longer just used as an insult hurled in the heat of political battles. Moderate figures have been voicing these concerns for a long time. Isaac Herzog, future president of Israel, warned a few years ago that “fascism touches the margins of our society”. European history shows that ethnic nationalism easily deviates into fascism.
Those protesting in the streets of Tel Aviv are honestly concerned about the “preservation of the soul of Israel” that democracy represents for them. Most of them ignore the incompatibility of democracy with institutionalized discrimination. The extreme right currently in power in Israel reflects the values that constitute Zionism and does not hesitate to affirm them. It is logical that among the Zionists on the left – many in the past – many are no longer Zionists, others remain Zionists, but have abandoned all affiliation to the left. Left-wing Zionism, a political oxymoron with few representatives in the Knesset, is dying before our eyes.
* Yakov M. Rabkin is the author of Understanding the State of Israel (Montreal, Ecosociety).