10.11.2022
Far right triumphs
Tony Greenstein refuses to shed a tear for the virtual disappearance of the hypocritical Zionist ‘left’. They provided cover for Israel’s racism and kept alive the bogus two-state solution
While no-one on the left can be happy with the increase in the number of seats for the Religious Zionism Party and Jewish Power (Otzma Yehudit) from six to 14, making it the third largest bloc in the Knesset, at least now there can be no hiding behind the pretence of peace negotiations to justify the continuation of the occupation of territories.
Apologists for Zionism, like the Board of Deputies will claim that what has happened is an aberration and that they are “gravely concerned” at the election of Otzma Yehudit.1 In one sense that is true - but only because of the damage to Israel’s reputation. Labour Friends of Israel have gone one better in stating that it was only 10% who voted for the fascists or that Israel is suffering from the same growth in the far right as other countries and we should therefore not be surprised.
Keir Starmer - a “Zionist without qualification” - told Jewish News that the rise of Israel’s far right would not alter his belief in a “strong relationship between Britain and Israel”.2 For once I think he is telling the truth. I suspect that if Israel were to announce a policy calling for the killing of all Palestinian first-borns that Starmer’s faith in Britain’s relationship with Israel would be as strong as ever. Indeed he would probably praise Israel’s moderation in allowing the remainder of Palestinian children to live!
The phenomenon we have seen in Italy, Sweden and other European countries of a growing far right has nothing whatsoever to do with what we are seeing in Israel, where the far right’s origins lie in Zionism, Jewish supremacy and settler colonisation.
Israel’s far right is likewise not fascist - fascism comes to power in order to defeat and destroy the organisations of the working class. Indeed, arguably it is worse than fascist: its support comes to a large extent from Israel’s Jewish working class. Zionism, like all forms of settler colonialism, involves an alliance between the settler working class and ruling class. Otzma Yehudit is not advocating making Histadrut, the Jewish trade union, illegal, for instance.
Similarly with racism - in Israel it does not originate in antagonism towards outsiders or refugees, but from Zionism itself, the founding ideology of the state. It was not Otzma Yehudit leader Itama Ben-Gvir who said that “Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people - and only it”, but prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.3 It was not Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionism Party who said that Palestinians are “like animals - they aren’t human”4 - but rabbi Eli Dahan, who later became Israel’s deputy defence minister and ran on the Likud ticket.
Racism in Israel is a consequence of settler-colonialism - every single Zionist party from the ‘left’ Meretz to Likud subscribes to the idea of a Jewish state, which people need to understand is inherently racist. Zionist settler-colonialism had, from its very foundations, ethnic cleansing built into it. How else to create a Jewish state, in a land where the majority of inhabitants were non-Jewish, other than to expel the indigenous population?
It was not Otzma Yehudit or Religious Zionism which drew up plans to ‘Judaise’ Galilee, Jerusalem and the Negev, but the Israeli Labor Party. Both ‘left’ and ‘right’ Zionism were agreed about the fundamentals of Zionism. Where they differed was on tactics. In general the Labor Zionists understood the need to say one thing to their sponsors in the west, whilst doing another thing in Israel itself.
There was an almighty row when Smotrich called for the separation of Jewish and Arabs in maternity wards and all the hypocrites condemned him.5 It later turned out that a majority of Israeli hospitals do exactly what Smotrich was condemned for demanding! A spokesperson for the Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba told the reporter that, while it could not guarantee the segregation of Jews and Arabs, “We try not to mix” - even when patients do not request it.6
Labor guilt
We should welcome the almost complete annihilation of the ‘left’ Zionist Israeli Labor Party and Meretz, whose only role has been to sanitise Israel’s ethnic cleansing. The ILP’s number of representatives has gone down from seven to four, while Meretz has been eliminated completely.
Both Meretz and the ILP dutifully voted for the Citizenship Law that prevented the spouses of Israeli Palestinians from the West Bank obtaining Israeli residence and citizenship. Meretz, the ‘doveish’ Zionist party, voted for the Emergency Regulations that extends civil law to only Jewish settlers, whilst at the same time putting Palestinians under military law. It even demanded that an Arab member of Meretz, Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi, who voted against the law, resign from the Knesset.7
For the first 30 years of Israel’s existence there were continuous ‘left’ Zionist coalition governments. In 1949 Mapai (‘Workers Party’, which merged with the ILP in 1968) and Mapam, the forerunner of Meretz, obtained 65 out of a total of 120 seats in the Knesset. As late as 1992 under Yitzhak Rabin they gained 56 seats.
Why then do I welcome their demise? Because it was the ‘left’ Zionists who kept alive the idea of a two-state solution. The rightwing Zionists were open about their desire to colonise the whole of mandate Palestine. Indeed, before 1948, Herut, the forerunner of Likud, claimed both the west and east banks of the Jordan. A song, ‘The two banks of the Jordan’, based on a poem by the founder of ‘revisionist Zionism’, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, had as its stanza: “Two banks has the Jordan - this is ours, and that is as well.”8
Nothing has enabled the colonisation and settlement of the West Bank more than the illusion that the Labor Zionists fostered that a Palestinian state might be established on the West Bank. This despite the fact that at no time did either party call for an end to the occupation or even the dismantlement of the settlements. Whatever their other ‘virtues’, the rightwing Zionists are at least honest about their intentions. They openly declare that there is no place for any Palestinian state.
Zionists in the west will mourn the virtual disappearance of the Labor Zionists, but they would do well to save their tears. No longer can they pretend that a negotiated solution is possible. No longer will an Israeli government be able to disguise its ethnic cleansing behind a smokescreen of excuses for an eventual Palestinian state.
The primary purpose of Labor Zionism today is to kosher rightwing Israeli governments abroad. It has been in steep decline since 1992, but no-one who wishes to see an end to Israeli apartheid should mourn its death. As I wrote nearly 40 years ago, “Begin and Sharon have done nothing that Labor Zionism didn’t do before them”.9 This was no mere rhetorical flourish.
It was not Herut (now part of Likud) that organised the Nakba - the expulsion of over three-quarters of a million Palestinian refugees from their homeland - nor were the rightwing Zionist militias responsible for the majority of the massacres that ‘encouraged’ the Palestinian refugees to flee. It was the Labor Zionist-dominated Haganah and Palmach.
In November 1948, Eliezer Peri, editor of Mapam’s Al Hamishmar, received a letter describing a massacre at al-Dawayima the previous month (October 29). Benny Morris estimated that there were hundreds dead.10 Agriculture minister Aharon Zisling referred to another letter he had received, declaring: “I couldn’t sleep all night ... Jews too have committed Nazi acts.”11 He noted: “The children they killed by breaking their heads with sticks. There was not a house without dead.”12
Mapam’s political committee was briefed by Yisrael Galili, the former leader of the Haganah terror group, about the killing of civilians during Operations Yoav and Hiram. Aharon Cohen, head of Mapam’s Arab department, led a call for an independent inquiry.13 Their only problem was that the commanders of these operations were senior Mapam members, Yitzhak Sadeh and Moshe Carmel.
Likud’s crimes against the Palestinians were more than matched by their ‘socialist’ counterparts. In 1956 it was the Labor Zionists who presided over the massacre at Kafr Qasim, when 53 villagers coming back from the fields were mown down with machine guns. A curfew had been imposed on the first day of the Suez war, but the workers had not been informed before setting out for work. The criminals who carried out the massacre were pardoned within a year and the brigade commander was fined a symbolic 10 prutot (less than one cent!).
With the release of the transcripts of the trial, it has become clear that this was no rogue operation. The intention had been to ‘encourage’ another exodus. Soldiers surrounded the village on three sides. The fourth, leading to Jordan, was left open in accordance with Operation Hafarperet - the plan to transfer the Arabs in the ‘Little Triangle’ area to Jordan in the event of war.14 Israel’s Palestinians had, since 1948, been treated as a hostile fifth column and until 1966 they lived under martial law.
New stage
People in the west are surprised at the election of Ben-Gvir, whose hero is rabbi Meir Kahane. Kahane first gained a seat in 1984, standing for Kach, a Jewish neo-Nazi party, which was banned from fighting the 1988 elections to the Knesset.
There will be those who will decry the neo-Nazi description. However, Kach called for prison sentences for “every Arab who has sexual relations with a Jewish woman”. This is derived straight from the Nazi Nuremberg Laws.
The problem was that Kahane said aloud what others preferred to hide. He held up a mirror to the hypocrisy of both Labor and Likud. Kahane was the ‘honest Zionist’ who dared say what others would only whisper. In August 1986 the Knesset passed, in response to his election, an Anti-Racism Law, which Kahane voted for! The reason being that, while the law made “incitement to racism” illegal, it exempted discrimination based on the grounds of religion or which was intended to preserve Israel’s “unique character”!15
Kahane punctured the hypocrisy of the Labor Zionists, who pretended that Israel could be both a Jewish state and a democratic state. This oxymoron pretends that it is possible to grant Jewish citizens privileges, such as sole access to 93% of Israeli land, whilst at the same time maintaining a ‘democratic society’. Kahane was clear: Israel could be either a Jewish state or a democratic state, not both.
In 1985 the Knesset passed amendment 7A to the ‘Basic law: the Knesset’, preventing parties that incite racism from standing for election. It also banned parties that denied the existence of the state of Israel as either a Jewish or a democratic state.16 The real reason for this had little to do with Kahane’s racism, but with the fact that Kach was forecast to gain up to 12 seats in the 1988 election,17 which would have been a public-relations disaster.
There is little doubt that we are entering a new stage with the election of a bloc of 14 Kahanists - overt racists and homophobes. Repression on the West Bank is intensifying, as the 700,000 settlers gain a critical mass. This year has seen a massive increase in settler attacks and the occupation forces have not only refused to prevent such attacks, but have actually participated in them.
The goal is to transform the Palestinians into landless labourers (a long colonial tradition), and then to enact their ‘transfer’. This is where support for Religious Zionism comes in: it is a vote for ethnic cleansing - not only of the Palestinians of the occupied territories, but all Israel’s Palestinian citizens. Religious Zionism is committed to expel Israel’s Palestinian citizens, which they disguise as the expulsion of ‘disloyal’ Arabs.
The number of seats gained by the ultra-orthodox parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, also increased - from 16 to 18. As Israel becomes more overtly racist and nationalist, it is also becoming more religious - the Tanakh justifies expulsion and racism. Traditionally seen as politically moderate, Religious Zionism has now become more overtly messianic, with its demand for the demolition of the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque, and their replacement by a Third Temple. The presence of Religious Zionism in the governing coalition with a clutch of senior cabinet posts heralds a new era in Israeli politics.
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www.jewishnews.co.uk/board-and-jlc-gravely-concerned-by-far-right-gains-in-israeli-election.↩︎
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www.jewishnews.co.uk/israel-remains-important-partner-regardless-of-election-result-downing-street-says.↩︎
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See www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/10/benjamin-netanyahu-says-israel-is-not-a-state-of-all-its-citizens.↩︎
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www.timesofisrael.com/new-deputy-defense-minister-called-palestinians-animals.↩︎
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www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2016-04-05/ty-article/.premium/israeli-lawmaker-my-wife-wouldnt-want-to-give-birth-next-to-an-arab-woman/0000017f-f782-d47e-a37f-ffbe2cc90000.↩︎
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www.972mag.com/israeli-maternity-wards-segregate-jewish-arab-mothers.↩︎
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Tribune July 20 1984.↩︎
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‘Survival of the fittest’ Ha’aretz January 8 2004: www.haaretz.com/2004-01-08/ty-article/survival-of-the-fittest/0000017f-e874-dc7e-adff-f8fdc87a0000. See also ‘Welcome To al-Dawayima, District of Hebron’: www.palestineremembered.com/Hebron/al-Dawayima.↩︎
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B Morris The birth of the Palestine refugee problem revisited Cambridge 2004, p488.↩︎
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Ibid p470.↩︎
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B Morris, ‘Falsifying the record: a fresh look at Zionist documentation of 1948’ Journal of Palestine Studies Vol 24:3, spring 1995, pp44-62.↩︎
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haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-07-29/ty-article/.highlight/kafr-qasem-massacre-trial-transcripts-the-commander-said-fatalities-were-desirable/00000182-49f2-d2c3-a5a3-5df201a50000.↩︎
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See www.servat.unibe.ch/is02000_.html.#S007a↩︎
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www.upi.com/Archives/1985/10/31/Kahane-can-push-law-to-ban-Arab-Israeli-sex-court-says/2890499582800.↩︎