The Death of Israel We Knew and Loved

brookings.edu

It shouldn’t surprise us that the Israel we knew and loved—courageous, pioneered, moral, sane, enlightened, democratic, secular, creative; a light if not for all the nations than certainly to the Jewish people the world over—is no longer so. We’ve all participated, one way or the other, in its slow demise. In its transformation from a small country striving for peace and security, yearning to live and prosper in dignity, to a religiously nationalistic, militaristically obsessed occupier and abuser of other people’s lands and lives. From a socialist, enlightened survivor state of the pogroms and the Holocaust to a religiously fanatic, Apartheid-like state.

That the Two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is dead, declared so here in this blog some ten years ago, is no longer in doubt. You can kiss it goodbye and welcome the coming annexation, de facto or semi-de facto, thanks to the new government forming as we speak in Israel, led by Netanyahu, Ben Gvir and Smotrich (learn these new names, my friends, you’ll hear them plenty soon), who had actively participated in the lighting of the flames that brought about the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin; and with his death, any chance for the Two-state solution—including also the sane, democratic, secular Israel—to survive.

The new Israeli government coming our way is not an aberration. It has been long in the making, fermenting and progressing along with the occupation. Which, aside from the wrongs it has inflicted on the Palestinian people, has corrupted the soul of Israel, the Jewish nation—a willing, active participant in the process, don’t think otherwise—with it. The crisis coming upon us is not just an Israeli crisis; i.e. the triumph of religion over secularism, the triumph of the Talmud and Torah studies over science and art education, the triumph of Jewishness over democratic values; it is also the crisis and chasm between the Israeli state and the Jewish diaspora.

The last government, a unique and brave attempt to prevent all that from happening, and defend the state’s democratic values and the rule of law, had collapsed after only a year and a half in power. Then they lost the elections, and Netanyahu—in a Jerusalem court almost daily on charges of bribery and breach of trust—had won. He and his rightwing extremist political bloc of cohorts (some of them convicted and charged criminals) will facilitate the demise of the rule of law, the courts’ system and the high court, all in order to free him from jail even if the verdict will mandate so. And once the rule of law has collapsed, democracy and civility will follow through. Hence the beginning of the demise of Israel taking shape now in front of our very eyes.

In case you suspect I’m overreacting, here are some snippets from newspapers and news outlets, both in Israel and in America, of the last few days:  

“Four European envoys to the UN pulled out of a visit to the Western Wall led by Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan after receiving a directive from Brussels not to participate given that the EU doesn’t recognize Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem.” Times Of Israel

“Finance Minister-designate Bezalel Smotrich is dragging Israel’s ultra-Orthodox politicians along with him as he outlines his plans for religious coercion in secular areas of life.” Haaretz

“Likud MK Tally Gotliv said Sunday that she was working with members of the expected incoming government to oust Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, claiming Israel’s top prosecutor was “not suitable” for the job.” TOI

“Smotrich did not receive the Defense Ministry but he did get a win. He and his radical bloc members, who have championed once fringe ideas like the annexation of the West Bank, the expulsion of ‘disloyal Arabs,’ and the establishment of new protocols enabling Israeli soldiers to shoot at Palestinian stone throwers, will have unprecedented control over the West Bank at a time of spiraling tensions.” Washington Post.

“Israel is doomed to become a binational state in which most Arabs do not have the right to vote and most Jews are Haredim unable and unwilling to function in modern society. Secular people will flee, violence will explode, and pariah status will only end when the Palestinians take over.” Opinion in TOI

There are plenty more but you get the point. Even if I see things in too darker tones, seeing it this way demonstrates the watershed moment we find ourselves in. Israel is changing, dramatically so, on a course of self-destruction.

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Once More, by Popular Demand, Israel’s Grand Illusion

dailysabah.com

The Film ‘The Grand Illusion’ by Jean Renoir, which I’ve been returning to occasionally throughout the years (and wrote about here before), is a 1937 B&W masterpiece that suggests, among other things, that “war is futile, and that mankind’s common experiences should prevail above political division, and its extension: war.” (Wikipedia.) “Renoir’s critique of contemporary politics and ideology celebrates the universal humanity that transcends national and racial boundaries and radical nationalism.”

I wrote about it a year ago, almost, during the latest Israeli-Palestinian flare-up with Hamas in Gaza. And what strikes me the most now—following the latest terrorist attacks, stabbing and shooting by ‘lone-wolf’ Palestinians, which caused the death of fourteen civilians on the Israeli side (and I believe some 28 dead on the Palestinian side, as Israel always about double the number of casualties it inflicts on the Palestinians)—as it did then, is not only the futility of war (it was the fifth such round-of-hostility since Hamas took over power in Gaza in 2007), but the complete collapse of Israel’s belief that the Palestinian issue and conflict has been put to rest.

The notion that—especially during the twelve years of Netanyahu’s rule, but also during this first year of the current government—the Palestinian political struggle for independence and a state of their own is practically all but over. It has been put to rest. Israel has succeeded, the motion goes, in squashing their national aspirations down. They will agree, the Palestinian people—as long as their economy is in good shape, Israel so believes—and get used to living as second, or third-class citizens under Israeli occupation for good. Problem and conflict, solved. Let’s continue with being the start-up nation. Light to the goyim.

Not so, obviously, as not only the latest Palestinian terrorist attacks in Israel so tragically prove, but Israel’s police brutality in Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Israeli army in the West Bank during Ramadan as well. This notion, this ‘grand illusion’ that (as Gershom Gorenberg wrote in the Washington Post, April 8), “… ignoring settler attacks on Palestinians, or treating the deaths of Palestinians at soldiers’ hands in the West Bank as noise from distant galaxies, bring us any closer to peace.” Indeed, until it reaches closer, until it blows violently in your face inside Israel ‘proper,’ you drink your ‘upside-down’ coffee peacefully in a Dizengoff café and treat what’s happening in the occupied territories as “noise from distant galaxies.”

It won’t do. It’s not going to work. Deal with it. The ‘it’ being the Palestinians’ right to exist in peace and dignity. To have a state of their own. To be treated as human beings with equal rights under the sun. Not to be evicted at will from their homes in Jerusalem—where it all had started last time, and will end this time—and to end the occupation once and for all. To borrow and paraphrase Bill Clinton’s campaign slogan, it’s “The occupation, stupid.”

Israel’s refusal since the end of the Six-Day War of 1967 to realize that, to accept the consequences, and mostly its failure to stop the expansion of the settlement endeavor is very costly and now—flying in the face of reality once more—almost behind repair. The two-state solution is dead. It was declared so by yours truly here, and elsewhere, before. At best, it’s on its deathbed. Even with Biden in charge in Washington; even with a new Prime Minister in Israel (hard to believe that it’s almost a year to this unusual government); even if Israelis would realize their mistake (the minority do, the majority don’t), I don’t see how it can be reversed. I hope it can, but the facts on the ground, and the political challenges against it, are too immense. It is now a one-state solution. And how it would survive and thrive is anybody’s guess.

Case in point: Arab Israelis. For the first time in Israel’s history an Israeli-Arab Muslim party and its leader, Ra’am and Abbas (respectively), are part of the coalition and its ruling government. And despite all predictions to the contrary, it stayed in it and practically held it together these last ten months. But now, as a result of the eruption of violence in the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem during the Muslims Holy month of Ramadan, their participation is on shaky ground. Wisely, so far, Abbas declared that they would just freeze their participation in the government until the storm is over. ‘Freeze,’ that is, not participate and not withdraw. Let’s see how things progress. As it is, this government has only 60 MKs supporting it out of 120 members in the Knesset. How it will survive for long is anybody’s guess.

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