Why the Israeli judicial protest movement is bound to fail
JVL Introduction
Jonathan Kuttab offers a Palestinian voice on the Israeli protest movement.
The bottom line is simple: the façade of a liberal nation, both Jewish and democratic has been called into question for a long time by the settler movement but it is only with the current government that those who wish to challenge the historical settlement and push for an openly and unabashedly racist Jewish supremacism are in a position to do so.
The options are stark: either an apartheid regime that denies equality to its own citizens, as well as to the subject population under its control; or a new paradigm where a Jewish identity can take its place within a multicultural, multi-ethnic society in which Jews can flourish but not dominate as supremacists.
Equality or apartheid is the choice the protest movement has not yet faced up to.
This article was originally published by Mondoweiss on Thu 3 Aug 2023. Read the original here.
Why the Israeli judicial protest movement is bound to fail
The time has come for Israeli Jews and their supporters to answer whether they believe in human equality or will continue to insist on Jewish supremacy.
Loading article text…
This article could have been better edited! I read ‘Secular liberal Zionist parties, compromising the class of those who founded the state…’ when ‘comprising’ was obviously what was meant not ‘compromising’. That aside Jonathan Kuttub is right.
This is a war amongst the settlers, the herrenvolk. The untermenschen are not part of it. Like Kuttub I cannot see how the liberal Zionist opposition can prevail given not only the growing demographic weight of the settler-religious nationalist bloc but also the inherent tendency of any ethno-nationalist state to continually redefine who is part of the ruling tribe or settler nation so as to exclude the ‘impure’.
Hence the proposal e.g. to amend the 1970 Law of Return to delete the grandfather clause and if the Supreme Court is neutered it will affect the position of Reform Jews.
Zionist Israel has embarked on a path and given the choice between a truly democratic state or an increasingly religious dictatorship, even for Jews, then I’m afraid that the majority of Israeli Jews will choose the latter
I really don’t think it’s fair to criticise a one-objective movement of not having two objectives.
Although the criticism of the Israelis State is fair we should not forget the 2022 election in terms of votes cast was in effect a draw – so there is hope and we have to ask the Israeli arabs yet again why they do not vote?
Interesting comments. However, the article doe snot address the actual situation; Israel is a colonial settler regime. The history of, say, Algeria or Ireland demonstrate that such states have to be destroyed or removed to enable real change. South Africa provides another example; the state still serves the interests of the neo-colonial capital rather than the indigenous working class.
@Adrian “we have to ask the Israeli arabs yet again why they do not vote?”. Palestinian citizens of Israel do vote, more than 50% in the last 2022 elections. For a detailed analysis, except, unfortunately, by age, see https://en.idi.org.il/articles/46271 Why the turnout has fallen off relative to the Jewish citizens is beyond this comment as it is complex, but factors include lower socio-economic and educational status, practical issues (the Bedouin turnout in the Negev/Naqab is the lowest), disillusionment over many years, and barriers to representation – over 20% of the Arab vote went to the radical Balad party, which failed to win a seat.
@Keith you don’t define ‘destroyed or removed’. A revolutionary transformation is needed everywhere to benefit the working class and perhaps save civilisation and the environment. But neocolonialism still dominates the global south and any attempt to break from it, or challenge ideologically, is ruthlessly suppressed (eg Iraq, Iran, the countries of the ‘Arab spring’, or current threats to Niger via the neocolonial proxy Ecowas). The vast majority of the population under Israeli control is not revolutionary today, they are more concerned with human rights and physical safety, free expression of religious and national identity, legal, social and material equality, education, land and property security. To achieve these legitimate objectives, the settler-colonial state must be transformed, for sure. Whether that struggle will achieve a total break with neo-colonialism is a broader question which depends on the wider region, which is currently well controlled by allies of the US empire.
The immediate question is how the settler colonial regime will end.
To take your two examples: Like Algeria, with perhaps a million dead and the settlers finally expelled? (The left-leaning and popular government of Ben Bella was later overthrown to install neo-colonialism). Or like Ireland, where the descendants of settlers and settled get along pretty well in the south and increasingly so in the ‘north’, which will eventually join the south.
Or like Australia/United States with the expulsion or murder of most of the indigenous people – increasingly the preferred solution of the Israeli far-right fascists now, they are longing for an opportunity to progress this genocidal aim.
We can’t be indifferent to which outcome we would prefer, even if all of them may lead to a state (or possibly states) within the imperialist world order.