The only variety of Zionism still on offer is the ethno-nationalist creed of Benjamin Netanyahu and the many politicians in Israel who sit to his right in the Knesset. And with annexation, we are about to begin the final phase of the Palestinian people’s long and tortured dispossession.
What motivates the criticism of Israel by Jews in the diaspora? Bruce Robbins talks with Bonnie Honig, one of the most insightful and original political theorists of her generation, who argues by targeting the Jewish diaspora in order to manufacture uncritical solidarity, Israel created, paradoxically, a sense of obligation to criticize Israel.
Isaac Herzog’s belief that intermarriage is a “plague” reflects Zionism’s inability to imagine a Judaism apart from Orthodoxy. Palestinians have already paid the price for Zionism. Israeli women are likely to be next. If Israelis want a way out of this labyrinth, they would have to dismantle the Zionist state.