The only answer to the violent contentment of Israeli society is BDS

Last week Dahlia Scheindlin analyzed polling data in Israel for left Zionist group Americans for Peace Now and concluded that the left within the Green Line is alive- albeit of questionable wellness-, and worryingly, rather than making common cause with their Palestinian cousins and voting for the progressive, pro-equality Joint List, some of those aforementioned “leftwing” Jewish voters will instead vote far-right, in order to oust Netanyahu. As for the “worrying” fact that young Jews exhibit hardline, rightwing attitudes, in Scheindlin’s estimation, that’s actually a long pattern in Israel going back to the ’50s and “has to do with the idea that the romantic spirit of the nation is militarist and nationalist.” 

As a result, the saccharine and disingenuous optimism of liberal and left Zionist groups like Americans for Peace Now that obsess over a two-state solution are forced to face the music written by their own hired composer- in this case, Dahlia Scheindlin. Indeed, while the politically eclectic and self described non-Zionist pundit Scheindlin acknowledges the “stability” of left wing voters (many of whom are Palestinian and therefore, discriminated against in broader society, including Jewish Left wing parties like Meretz, and whose Joint List is disincluded from governing coalitions), she reveals that the crux of the matter of actually existing Zionism is the worst sort of inertia: that of an endless litany of ethnic cleansing, war crimes and- yes- apartheid committed ad nauseum, ad infinitum by the Zionist state.

Irrespective of whatever are Scheindlin’s intentions- and the complexities of her own personal politics- the thrust of her commentary to a predominantly left Zionist audience is shocking in that it pushes her listeners to the precise conclusion that Zionists of all stripes seek to ultimately avoid: the understanding that the irrational and violent contentment among Israeli society points to the absolute imperative of the BDS picket line. 

Scheindlin does repeatedly credit the “resilience” of a paltry 12% of Jewish voters who identify with the left- and the bantustanization of Historic Palestine known as the “Two State Solution.” Yet she reveals that out of the desire to rid themselves of Netanyahu, some of them will end up voting for rightwing parties (Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beteinu and Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope) or for centrist parties whose politicians possess rightwing politics on the maintenance of the status quo of Apartheid- and annexation of much of the West Bank, both de jure and de facto. Furthermore, Netanyahu himself has won elections allowing him to maintain leadership of the state for 12 years straight, often with centrist and even “left” partners. 

This is precisely why it is so important to focus on Israelis’ violent contentment. The voters know and approve of what their government has done, from the piles of 1,700 Palestinian civilians killed by the Israeli government in besieged Gaza in 2014, to the over 7,000,000 Palestinian refugees who have been denied the right to return to their homes because of their ethnicity for the past 70 years, to the undeniable reality dutifuly reported over the years by everyone from Jimmy Carter to Yesh Din, of a supremacist apartheid regime (which occupies every inch of land from the Jordan to the Mediterranean)

Considering that the likeliest threat to Netanyahu’s leadership now arises from politicians to his right, groups like J-Street and Americans for Peace Now that see hope within Israel’s left zionist camp over the Palestinian led, non-violent BDS movement amounts to holding the “white moderates” as the catalyst for change in the Jim Crow South– those same white moderates excoriated by the great Martin Luther King Jr. because they said they approved his cause but didn’t like the tension and unrest of marches and sit-ins- over the Montgomery Bus Boycotters. Scheindlin’s commentary and knowledge of historical background helps illuminate the implications behind the lengths liberal Zionists will go to prove that the apartheid project possesses some sort of fundamental decency: after all, it’s just the “romantic spirit of the nation… militarist and nationalist.”

Still, seeing that Scheindlin acknowledges a stability inherent in the occupation of Palestine, her analysis leads to a very simple conclusion. Since Israeli society is deeply invested in maintaining apartheid, with precious little in the way of domestic political dissent, and with the United States dedicated to arming it perpetually come hell or high waters, the overwhelmingly Palestinian-supported and -led BDS movement is the only way to achieve any justice in Historic Palestine.

While Scheindlin’s sobering analysis attempts to find glimmers of hope amidst the grim reality of colonialism and apartheid, the starkness of the findings of such a search in and of itself exposes a truly bitter pill: when given a choice between equality and perpetual Nakba, even left Zionists will choose the latter.

Writer’s postscript: I revised this article after publication to remove some cynicism. My original article failed to consider that Scheindlin was trying to teach her audience an important, albeit quite bitter lesson and she needed to be somewhat mild in her language for them to be willing to heed it.