Liberal Zionists are trying to distance themselves from the reality that Israeli voters overwhelmingly want genocide

The recent Israeli elections brought the terrifying views of Israeli youth into full view. Videos of young Israelis calling for the mass slaughter of Palestinians or expressing their desire for the new Israeli government to go even further to the right than it already has have been making waves online, and while it’s no surprise that these soundbites go viral on social media, it is important to understand just how pervasive these views are. It is not just one or two fanatics who were taken out of context online. It is a whole new generation of Israeli youth who, in the wake of October 7 and the genocide in Gaza, are fully embracing fascism.

This is not typical internationally, where younger generations are often less nationalist-conservative than older ones. A poll from this year, conducted by Israeli Channel 12, shows that among 18- to 21-year-olds who hadn’t voted in the 2022 elections, the share identifying as right-wing rose to 75%, up from 68% in the older population. This segment, consisting of about half a million potential new voters, formed in their teens by genocide, is simply more genocidal than ever, and this obviously played a part in the elections this week.

With votes in Israel now fully counted, it is clear that the Israeli public still voted overwhelmingly right. Netanyahu’s Likud leads with 27 seats (the big opposition party Yashar, headed by ret. general Gadi Eisenkot, mastermind of the murderous ‘Dahiya Doctrine’, comes in second with 21). Although Netanyahu’s current government bloc hasn’t got a majority (it has 53 and one needs a 61 majority), the opposition bloc still contains right-wing parties like Yashar, as well as Avigdor Lieberman’s further-right Yisrael Beitenu (7), Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid’s Together (12), and even The Democrats led by ret. general Yair Golan (8) don’t want to talk about two states anymore. The left that is not Zionist is represented by the Palestinian-representative Joint List, with a surprising 11 seats (the conservative Palestinian Ra’am got 8) – but the Jewish Zionist bloc by and large refuses to touch them. So the ‘opposition bloc’ without the Palestinian parties has 48 seats, and while the Democrats have started considering cooperation, it is contentious. Zionist racism is the overall frame of this picture.

Perhaps one of the best ways to understand the views of this new generation of Israeli voters, and how Israeli “liberal” Zionists are trying to distance themselves from the current reality — in a futile attempt to restore a fictional version of the liberal Israeli “democracy” they cherish — is with a popular video series that veteran TV host and comedian Lior Schleien made this year.

The series followed Schleien, a proud “liberal Zionist,” as he toured schools across the country, engaging in debates with Israeli youth on topics related to the “conflict” with the Palestinians, Middle East geopolitics, and other national and religious issues.

Brace yourselves: the views of the Israeli youth, and Schleien’s misguided attempts to sway them to more “liberal” views, reveal a grim picture of the state of the Israeli political landscape, and how the genocidal apartheid state is only getting more genocidal.

Confronting extremism…to a point

In his tours of schools around the country, Schleien confronts explicitly genocidal youths and films his encounters. In one video, which has since been removed by request of the student’s parents, one student tells him, “Every Arab in the world should die, whether he is good or not good… I have no problem killing fifty Arabs and dying – Arabs, terrorists, I don’t care which.”

Schleien asks whether there is a difference between a terrorist and an Arab – the student answers “no, every Arab should be in the grave, that’s it”.

That’s clearly way too far for Schleien – he asks whether such a thing is “possible,” that is, to kill every Arab.

So Schleien seeks dialogue with this ‘extremist’ youth, because as he told Haaretz in an interview, “Israel is still a democracy, and there’s only one way to change things in a democracy, and that’s by persuading people to see things your way.”

In another encounter, Schleien argues with a right-wing settler-student that she and her peers are “not human shields,” in response to her claim that Israeli settlements are strategic. Instead, he argues for ethnic “separation.” So he proposes pragmatic solutions, based on the Zionist apartheid logic, that speak to the fears of these upcoming voters:

“If Israel annexes the West Bank and grants all the Palestinians citizenship and the right to vote, they would soon have a majority in the Knesset, and you all would lose this Jewish state that is so important to you. And if you prefer to deny them citizenship and the right to vote, then prepare yourselves for Israel to be boycotted by most of the world.”

In another video with the “Hilltop Youth“, Schleien tries to persuade them not to “bother Palestinians, or beat them up, or rob them”, since that will “not convince 3 million people to get up and leave their home, even if their life sucks” (in the West Bank). “It won’t happen,” he emphasizes, “I’m not telling you it’s not moral, or not legal – it’s not gonna happen.” Schleien is countered by a teenager who says that “here in Judea and Samaria” (biblical names for the West Bank, which Schleien also uses), “we have deterrence. Every Arab here experiences deterrence by a Jew; when he sees a Jew, he fears that Jew more than in Tel Aviv or any other place, and I think that in general, deterrence is our victory.”

Schleien’s argument about “ain’t gonna happen” doesn’t seem to harmonize with the witnessed experience of ethnic cleansing, and also genocide. These youths see what their state is doing. “Bothering Palestinians” is an understatement, and it’s not just the “Hilltop Youth” doing it; it’s the state.

The liberal Zionist fight against the right and the left

The increasingly extremist views of Israeli youth are no doubt disturbing. However, as an Israeli myself, who has been documenting this racist and genocidal society and its views for a long time, what stood out to me more than the views of the youth was the attempts of Schleien to push back against them in pursuit of his vision for an Israel that does not, and has never existed.

In the context of the elections, Israel’s supposedly liberal Zionist opposition to Netanyahu is struggling to make itself relevant. Although no Zionist party advocates the elusive ‘two-state solution,’ there are those who still struggle to portray it as liberal – perhaps mostly for the sake of their own self-view.

Schleien is one of the main representatives of this effort. He seeks to fight Netanyahu, while simultaneously fighting the growing isolation of Israel through boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS).

Schleien’s series is not just about confronting the right-wing views of Israeli youth. Simultaneously, he also charges American liberals, and particularly Jews, with being too extreme on Israel – chiding them for supposedly doing the same thing Netanyahu is doing to the liberal Zionists, just from the left (by, for example, boycotting Israeli academia).

Schleien thus seeks to position himself in the middle of all that – precisely as a proud ‘liberal Zionist’.

“Because of the catastrophic mistakes of this government we elected – and I’m obviously using the royal ‘we’ here – we are in danger of losing this beloved country of ours,” he says, cited by Haaretz. “We elected a government that is dismantling this country and will continue to do so if it remains in power. So, before our haters ‘free Palestine from the river to the sea,’ we Israelis need to free Israel from this government that is pushing us to the brink.”

Schleien’s portrayal of this as a fight between the Zionist left and the Zionist right is betrayed by a reality wherein both are fighting a similar fight against Palestinians. As the former head of the Kibbutz Movement, Nir Meir, said in his interview to Haaretz in 2024, the right-wing settlers are “correct”, in that this “is the way to seize and hold land, and their claim that, any place we Israelis leave, the Arabs will come in our place, is correct”. Meir also noted that the settlers “learned from us how to settle and seize land”. And Meir is correct about this being a cardinal Zionist view. The supposedly leftist kibbutzniks, who have had a major inciting role in the genocide of Gaza, are arguing with the right-wing settlers about location and speed, not principle.

So Schleien has taken up a balancing act.

Zionist gaslighting

Lior Schleien is thus seeking to advocate for the ‘good Zionism.’ His is open to dialogue with the extremists, much in the nature of the late author Amos Oz, who was also a major propagandist for Zionism. While calling the settlers ‘zealots,’ Oz also mocked Palestinians for their ‘illness’ in seeking their right to return, opining that one needed a “big stick” to deal with them.

Schleien professes to be apolitical, as it were. “I’m not a campaigner, and I don’t tell them which party to support,” he tells Haaretz. “All I tell them is that they need to formulate their political positions based on facts rather than fallacies, that they need to think critically, and I present a non-apologetic liberal democratic worldview.”

But that worldview is limited by Zionism, in which apartheid is central. So he seeks to make an ultra-nationalist ideology relevant in liberal thinking, portraying himself as the moderate in debating the extremists – both for the personal image, but also for the international one. Yet it is doubtful whether Schleien will be able to convince the world that Israel can heal itself from within, and that external pressures must be fended off for that to happen. Many have just stopped consuming that ‘liberal-Zionist’ gaslighting.

It is not yet clear how the recent elections will end up in terms of government. The unwillingness to involve Palestinians in governance may result in another forever-elections cycle like the one experienced in 2019-2022, with five elections taking place within less than four years. But any result will be a manifestation of Israel’s increasingly explicit right-wing turn, and the youth indicate that this tide is only growing.

Some, like Schleien, seek hope through internal Zionist discussions. But those of us who know better know that Zionism’s settler-colonialist vein is ultra-nationalist, so it’s natural for it to go that way. If one wants a more serious solution to this problem, then this will require outside pressure. Any other talk is just naiveté or hypocrisy. Schleien seeks to stem precisely that pressure, which is why his effort amounts to window-dressing at best.