Israel: Overview of the Current Political Crisis

The following article appeared in today's online edition of World Politics Review, and was written by Avner  Inbar (academic director of Molad, a liberal think-tank in Jerusalem) Inbar's interpretation of events, like any other, partly reflects his own positions; but it strikes me as a fair description and analysis that provides more context than almost all coverage in MSM, especially in the US. 

It places the conflict over the fate of the Judiciary in a context of competing and irreconcilable ideologies and visions of Israel. Broadly, there are 2 factions on the Right he describes; "Bibism" and "Religious Zionism." The former often accommodates the latter but is not the same as it, and ultimately incompatible with it. The liberals in Israel, who Avner claims have been largely silent in recent years under "Bibi,"constitute a large segment of the population of Israel, and their relative complacency, says Inbar, has given way to outright alarm as they see democratic institutions under threat and ever more power going to a Right  that accommodates radical Zionists once considered fringe, and in some cases illegitimate or illegal as explained below. I share it because it strikes me as a reasoable and thoughtful piece that backs up from the merely momentary news, and reflects on this as a crossroads for Israel as it reckons with its history while struggling to define its future.

Briefing Middle East & North Africa

Israel’s Protests Are a Battle Over the Meaning of a Jewish State

Avner Inbar

The so-called judicial reform launched by the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has roiled Israeli society, setting off massive protests that possibly constitute the largest social unrest the country has ever seen. Whole swaths of Israeli society that were previously proudly apolitical have taken to the streets, including the business sector—most notably, the booming high-tech industry—and military reservists. Start-up companies are withdrawing their funds from Israeli banks, and air force pilots are withdrawing from active service.

The energetic and resolute reaction by a liberal public that had been considered politically moribund for years likely took Netanyahu by surprise. Netanyahu expected smooth sailing, having secured a robust majority in the  Knesset  with a new coalition that finally delivered on his promise of a government that is “fully right-wing.”

The election that brought Netanyahu back as prime minister in November—Israel’s seventh in 10 years—was called when the previous government fell apart under relentless pressure from the right. The coalition of then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett comprised parties from the right, center and left that were united only in their determination to keep Netanyahu from power.

In addition to having little in common on a policy level, the coalition was assailed by Netanyahu and other elements of the Israeli right as treasonous for having included Ra’am, the first Arab party to ever enter a government in Israel. The gist of the attacks against Bennet’s coalition was that a legitimate government of the Jewish state cannot rest on the support of an Arab party, and possibly not even include one. Ultimately, the coalition collapsed after several members of Bennet’s own right-wing party defected, leaving him short of a majority in the Knesset.

But the question of what, exactly, being a Jewish state means looms even larger these days, as Israelis are realizing what the “fully right-wing” version entails. With the electoral collapse in November of the anti-Netanyahu elements represented by Bennet, the Israeli right is now divided into two camps.

The first and most dominant camp in terms of political representation is the personality cult around Netanyahu—called “Bibism,” after Netanyahu’s nickname. It can be roughly described as a populist movement completely devoid of any political content, held together by a shared resentment toward the left and purported cultural elites as well as animosity toward Palestinians. It remains to be seen what will become of Bibism after Netanyahu’s eventual departure from political life. What is clear, however, is that it does not represent a substantive ideology.

The right’s second faction is a highly ideological movement espousing a clear vision of Israel—in short, everything that Bibism is not. Over the past three decades, this faction—the national-religious movement, or religious Zionism—has become the most dynamic and, in ideologically terms, the dominant political force in Israel.

Two processes enabled its rise to power: the left’s cultural and ideological implosion following then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s 1995 assassination and the failure of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process; and the secular right’s embrace of the vacuity of Bibism. While Bibi’s supporters vastly outnumber adherents of religious Zionism, the latter deftly positioned themselves as a political vanguard that shapes and steers the right as a whole, including Netanyahu himself. While the current judicial reform has been portrayed in part as a way for Netanyahu to neuter the judiciary at a time when he faces multiple criminal proceedings for corruption, it is spearheaded by the religious Zionists, who see an independent judiciary—especially a Supreme Court that can overturn laws passed by the Knesset—as an obstacle to their goals.

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Religious Zionism as currently constituted emerged in 1967, when Israel’s occupation of the West Bank after the Six-Day War ignited the messianic aspirations of a previously moderate and marginal national-religious community. Their political theology allegedly vindicated by the unexpected triumph in the war, religious Zionists began to view themselves as the true heirs to the secular pioneers who established Israel, summoned, as it were, to assume leadership of the Jewish state.

Over the course of its political and cultural accension over the past generation, the national-religious movement radicalized even further, with the most stringently religious element—known as  Hardal, or national-haredi—becoming internally hegemonic. The current political alliance between the national-religious party, currently called simply Religious Zionism, and the Jewish Power Party [ Otzma Yehudit - ed]—a nationalist party descended from the Kahanist movement movement, which was outlawed in Israel as a terrorist organization—would have been unimaginable in the past and is a testimony to religious Zionism’s descent into overt racism and fanaticism.    

Until now, the national-religious movement’s chief undertaking since 1967 had been promoting settlements in the occupied West Bank. The settlements are a tremendous tactical achievement, matched only by the magnitude of their strategic failure. More than half a century after the first Jewish settlers moved into Hebron, their ultimate goal—annexation of the West Bank—is not close to being realized, despite widespread concerns that it is unavoidable.

This is because the earthly realization of religious Zionism’s messianic ambitions requires the absorption and, eventually, naturalization of millions of Palestinians into the Israeli body politic, an endeavor that is entirely inconsistent with the modern Zionist idea of the Jewish state. Though the settlers sometimes elide this issue by suggesting that Palestinians could be forcibly removed from the West Bank or denied full citizenship rights under annexation, the former is unrealistic and the latter unsustainable. The settlement project is much likelier to bring the modern Jewish state to ruin than to extend its sovereignty to the entirety of what the religious Zionists consider to be the Holy Land, or Greater Israel.

As a result, religious Zionism is at odds with mainstream Zionism, which has always viewed the Jewish state as a vehicle for the realization of the Jewish people’s right to national self-determination. This commitment rested on the assumption that Jews will one day be a sufficient majority in their state to enact their self-determination through democratic institutions. It furthermore relied on the essential Zionist belief that Judaism is not only or even mainly a religion, but is first and foremost a nationality. To be a Jewish state, therefore, Israel need not have any necessary relationship to the Jewish faith.

Such a Jewish state is democratic in two crucial ways. First, it is committed to the self-determination of Jews through democratic institutions. Second, it promotes their freedom to define their collective “Jewishness” as they please. Zionism, in short, was always committed to the resolution of the “Jewish problem” by the establishment of a modern, democratic, free state.

Religious Zionism rejects this essential Zionist belief that Judaism primarily denotes a national rather than a religious kinship. Consequently, it rejects the modern conception of the Jewish state as essentially democratic and free. It doesn’t view the Jewish state as a vehicle for the realization of Jews’ right to self-determination, but as a vehicle for the Jewish people’s divine calling. For the national-religious movement, Israel is not a normal state but, in the words of Rabbi Avraham Isaac Kook, “the foundation of God’s throne on earth.” This is a profoundly undemocratic conception, since it means that the Jewish citizens of Israel—let alone its non-Jewish citizens—are not free to conduct their affairs as they please. They must, rather, play their predetermined role in what religious Zionists perceive as a divine drama set in motion by the Jewish people’s reintroduction to political power.

The irreconcilable difference between these two conceptions of the Jewish state is the source of the social strife that is currently unfolding in Israel. It is also the reason that a compromise between the two sides is unlikely. After nearly three decades of political dormancy, the liberal public in Israel is waking up to the inherent consequences of the rise of the religious right.

The protests are currently focused on the right’s attack on the independence of the judiciary. But if they lead to a real reckoning with the underlying theological-political doctrine of religious Zionism and its connection to Israel’s occupation of Palestine, they may bring an end to the rise of the religious right. Beyond the crucial battle on democratic values and checks and balances lies a fundamental disagreement about the very meaning of a Jewish state.