Double Decolonization and the Loss of Hegemony

Nahum Karlinsky in Defining Israel: A Forum on Recent Attempts to Determine Israel's Character

Spring

Spring in Israel is beautiful but brief. Red anemones carpet the Negev fields; the hills around Jerusalem are painted with pink-white blossoms of almond, pear, and apple trees, like an impressionist painting; the clear chilly air exudes the fragrance of wild flowers and the hymns of birds and newly-energized bees. You only have two or three weeks to give in to this intoxicating magic before the hot east wind, the Sharkia arrives, bringing with it the harsh reality of summer, somehow unexpected and always unwelcome.

I was driving from Kiryat Gat, the development town in the northern Negev where I grew up, to Jerusalem where I attended university. Beside me sat the bright-eyed young woman who would later become my wife. I wanted to share with her the landscape of my childhood and youth, the thrill of spring in the Negev. Retracing the defining experiences of my early years, I took her to the “secret” spot where my brothers and I loved to play and picnic: a hidden well with several palm trees that thrived on its waters; hedges of cacti — the famous prickly pears known as sabras — lining the slopes of the wadi; dilapidated and overgrown stone ruins.

The magic dissipated abruptly. She spoke quietly: “You know, this was someone’s home. You know, this was a Palestinian village before 1948 … .” No, I did not know. Or, rather, I did not want to know. But from that moment on, I could not “un-know.” The Sharkia had arrived.

Since that day, and subsequent journeys of discovery, I have not been able to overlook the evidence that had been there all along, hidden in plain sight, lurking in Israel’s blind spot. I cannot ignore the Palestinian histories, embedded in neighborhoods like Talbiyeh, Katamon, or the Greek Colony of Jerusalem, in Beer-Sheva, Jaffa, or in Kiryat-Gat itself, which was built on the lands of al-Faluja and ‘Iraq al-Manshiyya. Yet at the same time, this legacy does not contradict my deep attachment to my homeland or the weight of thousands of years of Jewish history that I carry with me.

Summer

Unlike the brevity of spring, summer in this part of the world feels endless. At times, the only escape from the scorching heat that sits on your shoulders like a heavy weight is to immerse yourself in the cool waters of the Mediterranean.

Last summer I was sitting with my brother in his modest home, overlooking the Mediterranean, contemplating that option. He lives in one of the Kibbutzim that border Hamas-controlled Gaza. But swimming was not an option. It was early July 2014 and a war between Israel and Hamas had just begun.

The combative rhetoric that fell upon us from both the government and the army promised a swift and decisive victory, like the one of 1967, a victory that would crush Hamas once and for all. But we had our doubts, since Hamas rockets fell upon the kibbutz until the very last day of the war. Hamas had not been vanquished and the immense gap between the high rhetoric and our sobering reality was clear to all.

At the same time, that sobering reality did not come as a complete surprise. The consistent erosion of the image of the invincible Israeli warrior and the declining ability of the Israeli army to win decisive military victories together have been part of the Israeli discourse and consciousness, since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

However, a totally new feature surfaced during the 2014 war between Hamas and Israel: the radical Jewish religious-fundamentalist turn, which transformed this military confrontation into what can be characterized as the first religious-oriented war of the modern State of Israel. This shift was accompanied by an unprecedented hyper-nationalist campaign against Arabs in general, and against the Arabs citizens of the State of Israel in particular. Thus, the 2014 Hamas war brought to the surface the existence of deeper and broader currents in the Israeli-Jewish society, currents that also carry the proposed basic laws that go by the name Israel is the Nation State of the Jewish People.

Winter and Amalek

One current is the denial of the Arabs the right “to be” on their homeland. Before the war, during the fighting, and even in its aftermath, Arab citizens of Israel were targeted in the streets of Israel’s mixed towns, especially in Jerusalem. Their social media accounts were monitored by vigilante Jewish citizens; Facebook, Twitter, and readers’ comments on online news outlets became sites of hate speech and verbal violence. Calls demanding the boycott of Arab-owned businesses grew in number and volume — most conspicuously voiced by Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman.

This campaign took place in spite of the fact that the dominant trajectory of Arab-Jewish relations in the State of Israel over the last forty years — as Sammy Smooha convincingly argues — had been steadily moving towards “mutual rapprochement,” anchored by the general Israelization of the Arabs in Israel. Smooha’s pioneering scholarship demonstrates that the Arabs in Israel see themselves as Israeli citizens, affirm Israel’s right to exist, do not wish to leave the state, support friendly relations between Jews and Arabs, and that the Israeli component in their self-identification overwhelmingly trumps its Palestinian counterpart.

Even so, the hyper-nationalist rhetoric and the violent physical campaigns against Arabs during the summer of 2014 enflamed old hostilities and incited new ones. In many ways, for the first time since 1948, the attacks against Arab citizens of Israel succeeded in presenting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as encompassing the entire area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

The second deep current is the emphasis on the exclusive Jewishness of the state, the extreme manifestation of which is the messianic National Religious theology. Signs of this worldview’s penetration into mainstream Israeli society and politics appeared even before the 2014 Gaza war. However, its most glaring expression was during that war. A day before the opening of the Israeli offensive, Colonel Ofer Winter, commander of the Givati Brigade, sent to his soldiers a declaration explaining the purpose of the war and its justification in purely religious terms. While the Israeli government presented the war as an act of self-defense, Winter, who was educated in one of the government-funded National Religious army preparatory academies, presented it as a religious war against the entire “Gazite” people. The “Gazites,” the ancient Philistines (Joshua 13:3) who were identified by Winter as modern days Palestinians, were portrayed by him as a nation that “curses, reviles, and defames the God of the battalions of Israel.” In other words, to Winter the war is not a war in defense of the modern Jewish and democratic State of Israel, but rather a religious war against those who blaspheme the God of Israel.

In other parts of his order, Winter evoked the words that according to Jewish law a special Priest (Kohen Mashuakh Milkhama) is supposed to say before Israel launches a war. Perhaps most worrying, Winter used language one might interpret as identifying the Palestinians as Amalek — one of the ancient nations that, according to the Hebrew Bible, should be completely wiped off the face of the earth. This possible interpretation can be inferred from the very identification of the “Gazites” as a nation that defames the God of Israel, a trait characteristic of Amalek, and from the usage of the loaded term le’hakhrit—to make extinct—that is mentioned in Jewish law many times in reference to what one should do to the seed of Amalek. (It should be stressed, however, that since Maimonides’ rule on this issue, rabbis have forbade the fulfillment of this commandment in our times).

Be that as it may, in sermons delivered during the war and now available online, and in a clear deviation from the accepted halakha, a few leading rabbis of the radical wing of the National Religious camp (which leads this camp these days), supported Winter and interpreted the war as a special “commanded war” (milkhemet mitsva) for the conquest of the Land of Israel and against Amalek, who were identified as the Palestinians (here and here). Amalek is defined as any nation that “wants to kill Israel” or that prevents the people of Israel from settling the Land of Israel. Indeed, on the website of a leading National Religious youth Yeshiva, Yeshivat Netiv Meir, and in direct relation to the 2014 war in Gaza, the identification of both the ancient Philistines and the modern Palestinians as Amalek is made very clear: “we are at war now against the modern Philistines, Amalek of Eretz Yisrael.”

Other rabbis categorized all the Palestinians in Gaza as rodefim (pursuers), namely that all are equally suspected of supporting or encouraging violent acts against Israeli Jews. According to Jewish law, in extreme situations one is even required to kill a rodef. In fact, a continuity exists here, as already during the First Intifada (1987-1993), leading Rabbis of the National Religious camp began to categorize all Palestinians as rodefim.

In other words, the same worldview that produced the Jewish Underground of the 1980s, a messianic organization that conspired to blow up the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosque in the hope that such an act would hasten the coming of the Messiah, which is the same worldview that allowed its followers to openly contemplate declaring Prime Minister Rabin as a moser (informer), has now reached the highest ranks of the Israeli army.

Winter’s declaratory order clearly undermined the chain of command and the authority of the democratically-elected government of Israel. One would have supposed, then, that Winter’s superiors would have removed him from his command immediately. Yet they did not. Not only was he allowed to remain in command, but he also became the Israeli “face” of the war. The army deliberately embedded journalists with him, advertised pictures of him taken during combat, and his interviews, comments, and pictures became a central part of Israel’s public relations campaign. The religious fervent did not subside when the 2014 Gaza war ended. During the following months — leading to up to the crisis of the nation-state laws — more Israeli settlements were established in the midst of one of Jerusalem’s neighborhoods, Silwan, and an intensifying campaign launched by right-wing members of the Knesset and Jewish religious activists for the establishment of the Third Jewish Temple on Haram al Sharif, the Temple Mount, brought Jerusalem to the brink of a dangerous religious conflict.

For an outside observer, the debate over the bills and the general radicalization of Israeli politics and discourse, manifested so clearly during the 2014 Gaza war and its aftermath, may seem irrational, self-destructive, and a danger to Israel’s vital interests. However, this supposedly irrational conduct is completely rational if we shift our angle of vision: this mode of behavior is characteristic of states in the final stages of their colonial decline.

Double Decolonization  

Israel of early 2015 is in the throes of the last phases of decolonization — a continuous process of military decline and withdrawal, which began as early as 1967 but became most apparent at the time of the Yom Kippur War. Indisputably, the 1973 war marks a watershed in the balance of power between Israel and its neighboring Arab countries.

The war shattered the myth of the invincible Israeli army, and, in fact, the Six Day War was the last military campaign that Israel actually won. Starting with the War of Attrition (1967-1970) between Egypt and Israel, Israel was never able decisively to win any war with its Arab neighbors, including the two Palestinian uprisings (Intifadas) against Israeli military occupation. Some wars Israel did not win; others, she lost.

The watershed events around 1973 also instigated a parallel, inner process of cultural and social decolonization. The foundational hegemonic regime and culture of the state, Ben-Gurion’s mamlakhtiyut(statism), has been continuously challenged or shattered since 1973. This inner decolonization prompted the rise of diverse heretofore-marginalized groups that did not conform to the hegemonic socialist, secular brand of Jewish nationalism. Hence, Jews who came from Muslim and Arab countries (Mizrahim), women, Holocaust survivors, and religious Jews of both “traditional” and ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) communities, began to express their distinct identities.

The social and economic system of the state also changed from its socialist orientation to a capitalist-driven system. Moreover, growing numbers of Israelis immigrated away from Israel, creating an Israeli diaspora that undermined the very premise of Zionism’s ideal of “negating the Diaspora.” In addition to its impact on the Jewish population of Israel, this process of inner decolonization facilitated the integration of Israel’s Arabs citizens into the social and economic fabric of its society, while encouraging them to demand collective recognition much like other groups.

This process also brought about the emergence of the political and ideological right in Israel, previously suppressed during much of Ben-Gurion’s tenure as Prime Minister. Significantly, the emergence of the messianic Religious Nationalist movement, Gush Emunim, took place not after 1967, but rather in 1974, as a reaction to the fear that Israel was losing ground in the territories occupied by it during the Six Day War.

Today, Israel’s mamlakhtiyut has lost its hegemonic hold on the majority of Israel’s population. The decline of the symbolic and authoritative “center” of mamlakhtiyut lowered the cultural and social walls between Israeli sub-cultures, and a more multicultural and even hybrid type of culture began to emerge. Thus, Mizrahi music and cuisine became dominant societal features while the economic and social gaps between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim narrowed. Secular Jews became more traditional, and espoused diverse religious approaches, from “new age” Judaism to the Haredi type. Haredi communities, on their part, have experienced an ongoing process of Israelization, similar to the one Israel’s Arab citizens went through.

At the same time, Israeli society has failed to construct an alternative “core” that might replace Ben-Gurion’s statism. A major reason for this relates to the accelerated pace of the external process of decolonization, which is much faster than its inner counterpart, and hence does not leave sufficient time to the inner process to forge a new collective identity.

Israeli society has failed to construct an alternative “core” that might replace Ben-Gurion’s statism

Postcolonial studies have stressed the psychological difficulties that colonizers encounter when they face the reality of decolonization. Colonizers, who habitually impose their will on the colonized by force, refuse to accept the fact that at a certain turning point the colonized peoples are unafraid of them and are undeterred by their might. Consequently, the colonizers resort to using even more force, hoping that this will allow the situation to revert back to its previous “normal” state.

Brute force nonetheless only feeds the process of decolonization. Violence hardens core traits of national and personal identities, like language, religion, and family relations. In contrast, as scholars of conflict resolution and reconciliation have shown, addressing the emotions of the other side — especially their self-esteem and their personal and collective honor — can help bridge gaps and even halt the process of withdrawal and retreat.

Since 1973 Israel’s usual reaction to its apparent loss of influence has been to use more force. Yet, there were two exceptions to this mode of behavior: Menachem Begin’s 1979 peace treaty with Egypt and Yitzhak Rabin’s 1993 Oslo Accords with the PLO. Undoubtedly, in both agreements, vital security, economic, social, and political interests played a major role. It is also clear that in both cases the main goal was to nip the decolonization process in the bud.

Prime Minister Begin understood that Israel could not afford to keep an open military confrontation with Egypt. Indeed, the peace agreement with the largest and most influential Arab country has proven itself to be a cornerstone of Israel’s security. Rabin, who was Defense Minister when the First Intifada broke out and was instrumental in the failed attempts to crush it, also realized that this perpetual cycle of violence only weakened Israel. Significantly, both leaders used symbolic language and gestures that addressed the other side’s emotional needs for recognition and respect.

Rabin’s assassination by Yigal Amir, a religious Jew who was immersed in the more extreme version of National Religious theology, succeeded in halting the Oslo process and prevented the establishment of a Palestinian State in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It did not, however, stop the process of decolonization. Rather, it exacerbated and accelerated it.

The Second Intifada (2000-2005) was more violent and bloodier than the first one. Lead by the hawkish veteran army general Ariel Sharon as Prime Minister, Israel launched a wide-range military campaign against the Palestinians in an effort to crush the uprising. After five long years in which thousands of people on both sides were killed and wounded, Israel evacuated its settlements from the Gaza Strip and from an area in the northern West Bank. In contrast to the first Palestinian uprising, this time Israel’s withdrawal was unilateral and no agreement with the Palestinian leadership was reached. In addition, Israel built a wall between it and Palestinian communities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The decolonization path was clearly marked on the ground.

Denial and Coercive Hegemony

There is no doubt that Israel has legitimate security concerns regarding the possible establishment of a Palestinian state just 12 miles from Tel Aviv. Significantly, since the 2005 unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, the debate’s focus has shifted away from security concerns to notions of perception and consciousness. The reality of Israel’s continued weakness, and the inability of the majority of Israeli Jews and their leaders to accept that reality and take the emotional and conscious leap that Begin and Rabin took, has lead Israelis to adopt a variety of psychological defense mechanisms. The two most conspicuous ones can be termed as “soft” and “coercive” denials. The “soft” denial is expressed in many ways. Through the imagining of Tel Aviv as a Western, liberal, and conflict-free “bubble” in which one conducts one’s life as one would conduct his or her life in New York City. Through the popularity of TV “reality shows” that help viewers block actuality from their gaze. Through the establishment of various political parties that attend to the middle class and consciously avoid any references to the reality of the withdrawal and retreat process.

“Democracy” is a codeword for the mirror on the wall that should be smashed

The “coercive” type of denial, on the other hand, is engaged in an aggressive cultural battle. Thus, the Israel is the Nation State of the Jewish People bills are just the last phase, so far, of this campaign. Following the Italian intellectual and leader Antonio Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony, this campaign should be seen as an attempt aggressively to impose on the Israeli society a right-wing religiously informed coercive hegemony. Any form of Israeliness or Zionist outlook that accepts the reality of the existence of a Palestinian collective is defined as illegitimate, non-Jewish, and anti-Israeli. “Democracy” is therefore a codeword for the mirror on the wall that should be smashed. It is a codeword for the danger inherent in free speech and freedom of expression, or in institutions that enable these notions to take place, like universities or the judicial branch.

A variety of non-governmental organizations, like the Institute for Zionist Strategy and Im Tirtzu, that were established either during the withdrawal from Gaza or after Israel’s unsuccessful Second Lebanon War in 2006, target civil-rights NGOs and Israeli academia. Supporters of these organizations and their ideology secretly filmed classes of “suspected” faculty and the heavily edited film was then broadcasted on Israeli TV on prime time, purportedly showing the “betrayal” of Israeli academics of Zionist ideology. Moreover, these organizations have close personal and ideological ties with cabinet members and members of the Knesset. For example, these organizations monitored the syllabi of courses given at political science departments at Israel’s universities and the Knesset’s educational committee—in a frontal attack on free speech in Israeli universities—convened a special meeting to examine “non-Zionist views in the Academia.” The battle over the monitoring of thought crimes and the organizations that support these “crimes” was also waged in the Knesset itself, in a long list of anti-democratic laws and proposals.

In a final example—one with which I have intimate familiarity—almost two years ago, the Council for Higher Education, which is controlled by the ministry of education, tried to shut down the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, claiming that its faculty was Post-Zionist or even Anti-Zionist. Consequently, the university was forced to make changes to the department’s syllabi and to hire new faculty. However, it seems that the government backed down from this attempt only after it realized that closing down the department would only add more fuel to the already blazing BDS movement against Israel.

The Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People bills should be seen, therefore, as yet another desperate effort to deny the reality of Israel’s decolonization and of the existence of a Palestinian people that regards the same land as its homeland. It is not a coincidence that the first bill was brought before the Knesset just a few months before the Palestinian Authority began its drive at to gain acceptance for Palestine as a full member of the United Nations. The declaration in some versions of the proposed law that “the right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is uniquely that of the Jewish people” was created to challenge that reality. Subsequent bills, and especially Netanyahu’s version, went even further. In Netanyahu’s proposal, his statement that the “Land of Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and the place where the State of Israel has been established,” insinuates that the territorial boundaries of the State of Israel are equal to the entire Land of Israel and that only the “Jewish people” has national rights over it.

Ethnic Cleansing or Hopeful Spring?

Obviously, the bills are only declaratory in nature. The international community has already indicated that it will oppose them. An increasing number of European parliaments have been passing resolutions that recognize Palestine as a State. The Palestinians themselves, including Arab citizens of Israel will obviously not recognize the bills or accept them. Finally, one may assume that many Israeli-Jews will reject these bills as well.

However, rhetoric plays an important role in ethnic and national conflicts. “Hypernationalist mobilization rhetoric,” writes Chaim Kaufmann, “hardens ethnic identities to the point that cross-ethnic political appeals are unlikely to be made and even less likely to be heard.” Thus, the bills purposely antagonize “outsiders” and raise boundaries between Israelis and Palestinians. In addition, the bills also aim to coerce moderate Israelis to choose between two polarized sides rather than opt for a conciliatory “third way.”

Such an emotionally charged atmosphere is fertile ground for the commitment of atrocities and eventually ethnic cleansing. The cases of Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and other sites in our contemporary world, as well as the scholarship on ethnic and national conflicts, attest to this observation. Does Israel stand at such crossroads? The answer is not decisively negative. The political right, which has been controlling Israeli politics over the last forty years, projects a strong sense of despair and frustration at the reality of Israel’s continuous process of decolonization. As a result, some openly discuss options of “exchange of population” or “transfer” of all Arabs, including Israeli citizens, to areas beyond the borders of the state of Israel. Some influential rabbis of the National Religious camp even use terms like “cleaning” the Land of Israel of Arabs. It is not unthinkable to assume that under certain circumstances such phrases and openly discussed options will be translated into actions.

Luckily, the processes of inclusion—of creating a new and more inclusive, tolerant, multicultural and hybrid forms of Israeli identity—are gaining more ground, as more people realize that, indeed, force did not solve Israel’s main existential issue. The struggle over the creation of a new Israeli symbolic “center” has not been decided yet.

As things stand, the passing winter blessed the land with abundant rain and even some snow. Spring, the season when the elections to the Knesset will take place, promises to be as beautiful as ever. In blessed years, the hot and cruel Sharkia passes over the land, and the transition to a moderate and welcoming summer is smooth and joyous.

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