This Tuesday Israelis will go to the polls to elect a new government. While the primary focus in the US is the horse race between Livni, Netanyahu and Barak to be the next Prime Minister, the real story of the elections that has emerged is the success of Avigdor Lieberman and his party Yisrael Beitenu (Israel is Our Home).
Lieberman has run on an avowedly racist platform of forcing Palestinian Israeli citizens of Israel to take a loyalty oath to the state. Lieberman and his party (which includes former Israeli Ambassador to the US Danny Ayalon) have long advocated for removing Palestinian citizens of Israel (over 20% of the state) from the country into the West Bank. This call for ethnic cleaning has found a new and growing constituency in the wake of the war in Gaza. At this point Yisrael Beitenu is polling ahead of the Labor Party and is expected to be the third largest party in the new government.
This site often discusses Zionism. While there is a long history of
Zionism as a political movement that has exhibited relative diversity
of opinion during that time, its clear the Avigdor Lieberman is the
current face of Zionism. He is not a new invention; the roots of his
thought have been in existence from the beginning of the movement. At
times this stream of thought wrestled with opposing Zionist viewpoints
that valued notions of democracy and equality. That moment has long
passed.
What is most alarming about Lieberman's rise is how is popularity reflects a growing consensus in Israel towards explicitly racist politics. The title of this post was taken from a Gideon Levy article, "Kahane Won", from today's Ha'aretz. Levy writes:
Rabbi Meir Kahane can rest in peace: His doctrine has won. Twenty years after his Knesset list was disqualified and 18 years after he was murdered, Kahanism has become legitimate in public discourse. If there is something that typifies Israel's current murky, hollow election campaign, which ends the day after tomorrow, it is the transformation of racism and nationalism into accepted values. . .
Now the instigator of the new Israeli racism will apparently become the leader of a large party once again in the government. Benjamin Netanyahu has already pledged that Lieberman will be an "important minister" in his government. If someone like Lieberman were to join a government in Europe, Israel would sever ties with it. If anyone had predicted in Kahane's day that a pledge to turn his successor into an important minister would one day be considered an electoral asset here, they would have been told they were having a nightmare.
But the nightmare is here and now. Kahane is alive and kicking – is he ever – in the person of his thuggish successor. This is not just a matter of disqualifying Yisrael Beiteinu; it is not even a matter of this party's growing strength to terrifying proportions, becoming the fulcrum that will decide who becomes prime minister. This is a matter of legitimization. All society bears responsibility for it.
And how is this being seen throughout Israeli society? Another illuminating article, "Lieberman's anti-Arab ideology wins over Israel's teens" by Yotam Feldman from this weekend's Ha'aretz makes that clear. The article begins,
The Yisrael Beiteinu youths gather for a final consultation as dozens of elderly party supporters slowly make their way into the white tent where the movement's conference is being held, behind the Plaza Hotel in Upper Nazareth.
The youths, ages 16-18, many of them good friends from school, had stood for a long time before the event began at the intersection near the hotel, waving Israeli flags and shouting "Death to the Arabs" and "No loyalty, no citizenship" at passing cars.
In the tent, they deliberate over what to shout when Lieberman enters: Calling out "The next prime minister" may sound a bit presumptuous with regard to the leader of what's likely to be the third-largest party in the next Knesset. But during a week when Yisrael Beiteinu won the highest level of support in mock high-school polls – the sky's the limit.
Read the entire article. [cited in an earlier post on Mondo today] One especially disturbing part is an interview with 18-year-old Edan Ivanov:
"This country has needed a dictatorship for a long time already. But I'm not talking about an extreme dictatorship. We need someone who can put things in order. Lieberman is the only one who speaks the truth." Adds Edan Ivanov, an 18 year old who describes himself as being "up on current events":
"We've had enough here with the 'leftist democracy' – and I put that term in quotes, don't get me wrong. People have put the dictator label on Lieberman because of the things he says. But the truth is that in Israel there can't be a full democracy when there are Arabs here who oppose it.
"All Lieberman's really saying is that anyone who isn't prepared to sign an oath of loyalty to the state, because of his personal views, cannot receive equal rights; he can't vote for the executive authority. People here are gradually coming to understand what needs to be done concerning a person who is not loyal."
Do these ideas fit with what you're learning in civics lessons?
Ivanov: "In my opinion, school doesn't tell it like it is. In school, you want to get a matriculation certificate, you need the grades, but you don't learn the truth there. The truth you learn from the neighborhood, from the street. I don't mean the street in a negative sense – I mean that you learn the truth from what's happening here."
What's happening here?
"We have a problem: Upper Nazareth is surrounded by minorities. There are lots of incidents with them. Women are scared to walk in the streets, and people are afraid they'll be stabbed. No one knows what to do about it at this point. There are people who live here and during a war they act as a fifth column. It will only be possible to make peace with them after we make war."
The article goes on to trace how this general lack of belief in democratic values is reflected in Israeli schools and Israeli society in general. Education Minister Yuli Tamir explains,
"Lieberman's growing strength indicates that there is deep confusion about everything related to democratic values, and this obligates the system to conduct a profound reckoning regarding its ability to instill these values. Civics studies are very technical, the children are not internalizing the profound values because, in the Israeli context, these values are perceived as leftist. If you go on the ministry's Web sites that deal with citizenship, you'll find all of these principles, but the teachers are afraid to talk about it, because there's a labeling that occurs when one makes statements about equality or civil rights."
The schools seem to be speaking in two voices. Is there a gap between democratic education and patriotic education?
Tamir: "Israeli society is speaking in two voices: We see ourselves as a democratic society, yet we often neglect things that are very basic to democracy. These things are not at the top of the Israeli agenda. If the students see the Knesset disqualifying Arab parties, a move that I've adamantly opposed, how can we expect them to absorb democratic values?"
It might be easy to try to dismiss these beliefs as the passions of impressionable youth. But how do you explain even the Education Minister of Israel admitting that equality is considered beyond the pale inside Israel? Is this not an explicit expression of the contradiction inherent in the Jewish and democratic state? Should it not be a surprise that that Jewish ethno-nationalist character of the state is winning out?
Lieberman is raising the same issues and "solutions" that Kahane did 20 years ago, and again the leaders of mainstream Zionism do not have a meaningful alternative to offer. Watch this fascinating debate between Kahane and Ehud Olmert from the mid-1980s on Nightline. Back then Nightline treated Kahane as a fringe character. His ideas are entering power today.
Israeli voters will go the polls on Tuesday to endorse a vision for their future. By all accounts it appears that future will be one ethnic nationalism and endless confrontation. The Feldman article ends with a quote from Prof. Ilan Gur-Ze'ev:
The Israeli reality can no longer hide what it has kept hidden up to now – that today no sentient mother can honestly say to her child: 'Next year things will be better here.' The young people are replacing hope for a better future with a myth of a heroic end. For a heroic end, Lieberman fits the bill.
Is this the best Zionism has to offer Israelis and to Jews? The opportunity to go out in a blaze of glory? Finding alternatives to Zionism has often been viewed as a project for its victims – for Palestinians and Mizrahi Jews – and their supporters. But these articles, and this election, show that this should also be a urgent call for anyone who cares about Israelis, or cares about peace. There needs to be another way. This is a cause for everyone. (Adam Horowitz)
