Israel’s Rutted Path—An Analysis (11 March 2023) by Lawrence Davidson
Part I—Ruts: Ideological and Otherwise
In the 1970s I spent several years in Edmonton, Alberta. This is one of Canada’s Western provinces and Edmonton, the provincial capital, is only 900 miles south of the Arctic Circle. The winters are long and cold, and it snows a lot. Once the average daytime temperature falls below freezing, usually by the end of October, the snowfalls pile up one after the other. At least during my time, municipal plowing was only performed for heavily trafficked roads. Side roads were quickly snowed over and reduced to ruts that intersected at certain crossroads. To drive onto one of these roads was a risky commitment. You had to go where the ruts took you and hope that that was, approximately, where you wanted to go.
Edmonton’s ruts were the physical consequence of the weather plus where the city government decided not to plow. However, there are other kinds of ruts that impact our lives. There are ideological ruts that result in tunnel vision that direct our behavior as surely as the seemingly endless piles of snow on the streets of Alberta’s capital.
We can apply this analogy to present day Israel where a deep ideological rut laid down over a century ago has divided into two routes to the same destination. The destination is the transformation of all of Palestine into a unitary Zionist Israeli state. The ideological path to this end can now be religious or secular in character. Originally, it was secular. Thus, most of the founding Zionists from Herzel through David Ben Gurion were not very religious Jews, although most of them understood the Bible as history and were fixated on biblical Canaan. This fixation was a product of a long-standing interpretation of the relationship between God and the ancient Hebrews as an historical reality. So, in this case, you had a cadre of not particularly religious European Jews willing to wholeheartedly assert that there really was a divine promise that gave the land of Canaan over to Jews—just like it said in the Bible. Under such circumstances the founders of Israel would find it difficult to completely separate religion from state affairs.
Seen within the 19th-20th century historical context of the Jews, this confusion is not surprising. Religion is a powerful form of authority and a binding agent for disparate peoples. The “wandering” Jews were such a population. As is often mentioned by today’s Zionists, Jews had for centuries prayed for a return to Jerusalem, thus binding them religiously to this far away place most had never seen. This act of yearly prayer mystically maintained a divine land grant and somehow negated the claims of others who, over the same centuries, had actually lived in the alleged “promised land.” One might also note that “next year in Jerusalem” evokes a city and not a country occupying all of present Palestine from the Mediterranean sea to the Jordan river. It all made no logical sense at all, but then it was based on faith and not fact.
Part II—Same Goal, Different Justifications
One can see the impact of the underlying religious sentiment even among the secular “pioneer” Zionists of the 20th century. David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, was not a religious Jew and he did not have a high regard for the observant orthodox sects who survived the Holocaust and made their way to Palestine. They were the opposite of the new Jewish men and women who were supposed to be fighters—“conquerors” of the new Israel. Nonetheless, he repeatedly compromised with them, particularly immediately after World War Two, when such orthodox groups seemed close to extinction. As a result, religious fundamentalist Jews ranging from Orthodox to “ultra” Orthodox, revived and stood as a potential political power center in modern Israel.
It took until the late 1970s and the rightwing government of Menachem Begin to see how this potential might be realized. Begin’s Likud (the word means “Consolidation”) party won enough votes in the national election of 1977 to form a ruling coalition. Begin invited into his government the ultra-Orthodox party Agudat Yisra’ek (translates as “Association for Israel”) and the National Religious Party (NRP). Agudat was given the government’s Finance portfolio and the NRP received the Education portfolio. Begin also began a program of settlement expansion into the West Bank (aka Judea and Samaria) that followed from his religious belief in a “promised land” given by God to a “chosen” people. This expansion process has never really stopped.
While the drive to conquer and colonize all of Palestine went unquestioned by most secular and religious leaders, their motives were different. The secular justification would be along the lines of pre-state Revisionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky’s view: the promises of international (European) leaders constituted the basis for a legitimate claim to a Jewish state in Palestine—one that needed defensible borders and sufficient territory to accommodate the in-gathering of world Jewry. This secular position allowed for a modicum of sensitivity to pressure from Western allies, particularly Israel’s patron, the United States. However, the religious leaders who are now in power show no sign of such sensitivity. It can be argued that the religious men and women in today’s coalition government of Benjamin Netanyahu care little or nothing for either the international community or international law.
The situation is complicated by the fact that even as Israel moves toward a religiously inspired authoritarian government (it has always been authoritarian for its Palestinian subjects), its secular opposition is not a united one. It should be noted that most of those filling the streets in protest against the domestic “reforms” of the Netanyahu government are secular Ashkenazis. That is, they are Israeli Jews of European origin. Sephardic Israelis (not to mention Israeli-Arabs), of Middle Eastern origin, are less well represented. The religiously driven government seems unimpressed with the protests and is apparently willing to forcibly suppress them.
Part III—Who is Talking to U.S. Jews?
The religious Zionists presently in power also seem indifferent to the usually more liberal Jews living outside of Israel. Thus, many of those who now seek to influence diaspora Jews to remain loyal to the Zionist myth are on the secular end of this spectrum. Particularly active in this effort is the politically rightwing Danny Ayalon, former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. In a 23 January 2023 English language interview with the Jewish Broadcasting Service, Ayalon stated “In my mind there shouldn’t be any daylight between Jews overseas and in Israel itself. I do not see a difference between Zionism and Judaism. Every Jew in the Haggadah calls for ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’ This is what Zionism is all about.” He goes on to express concern about those American Jews who “automatically” take the side of the Palestinians. He calls the latter “our mortal enemy.” Such Jews “actually call into question the very legitimacy of the Jewish state and of Zionism.” He sees this as a form of anti-Semitism. There are plenty of Americans who agree with him. However, most of them aren’t Jewish.
They are gentiles such as Mike Pompeo, the former U.S. secretary of state. Pompeo is a Christian fundamentalist (about 15% of American Christians are fundamentalist) who once declared “that God sent [former president] Trump to save Israel.” Pompeo also disregards international law when it comes to Israel. “[Israel] is not an occupying nation. As an evangelical Christian [ LD: please note that not all evangelicals would agree with Pompeo], I am convinced by my reading of the Bible that 3,000 years on, in spite of the denial of so many, [this land] is the rightful homeland of the Jewish people.” In other words, his faith in an unsubstantiated bible story that “the Lord is at work here,” is stronger than his dedication to the rule of law. It is a sure sign of the irresponsibility of an opportunist such as Donald Trump that he would make such a person his secretary of state.
Subsequently, Pompeo was involved in reversing U.S. policy that was based on international law. For instance, “overturning legal advice from 1978” that declared Israel’s settlements in the West Bank violated the Geneva Convention, and the move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.
Pompeo’s exit from the State Department in 2022 did not really change this lawless disposition. This is because the next President, Joe Biden, is enough of a secular Zionist himself (as against Pompeo’s religious Zionist enthusiasm) to keep the U.S. response to Israeli crimes passive. Thus, when it became clear that the present Netanyahu government would expand colonization in Palestinian territory, accompanied by ever more violent behavior on the part of both Israeli settlers, police and army, the U.S. government’s response was in the form of words and not actions. Indeed, Biden reiterated that he would never cut or condition U.S. aid to Israel. Netanyahu and his neofascist coalition has probably concluded that there will be no important consequences out of Washington whatever happens on the West Bank. This attitude was reinforced by a mid-February visit to Israel by Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the U.S. Senate. Treating Netanyahu like a close friend, he and the prime minister discussed everything but the latter’s ongoing attempt to “gut Israeli democracy.”
Part IV—Conclusion
Both Israeli and U.S. leaders are stuck in a long running ideological rut. How long is this rut? Consider that most of today’s Israeli government agrees wholeheartedly with Mike Pompeo’s assertion that “the Lord is at work here.” In the Old Testament books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus (circa 8th century BCE) God commands the Hebrews to massacre most of the Canaanites and take their land. The modern Israeli Zionists are still at it. For those caught in this sort of rut, whether expressed in secular or religious terms, there is nowhere else to go except down a road that leads to pogroms against Palestinians in towns like Huwara and military strikes against civilians in cities like Jenin and Gaza. Zionism has put out the “light unto the nations.”
