The beauty and blindness of Israel’s popular uprising
JVL Introduction
Peter Beinart sees great hope in the current demonstrations in Israel, despite being fully aware of and openly critical of their limitations.
As he puts it:
“If this is what Israeli Jews can do on their own and were able now it seems like just to push back Netanyahu’s egregious, illiberal fascist attempts, imagine what these people could do alongside Palestinians. Imagine what Palestinians and Israeli Jews could do together in a struggle for genuine liberal democracy everywhere, from Gaza to the West Bank to East Jerusalem to Israel proper.
“It would be the most inspiring thing the world has seen perhaps since the end of apartheid, since the overthrow of the Soviet Empire in 1989.”
Thanks to Peter Beinart for permission to repost
This article was originally published by the Beinart Notebook on Mon 27 Mar 2023. Read the original here.
The Beauty and Blindness of Israel’s Popular Uprising
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On Sunday night, as I record this, things are moving very, very fast. I have really no idea where they’re gonna be by Friday, if Benjamin Netanyahu will even remain Prime Minister. It seems at this point that we’re heading towards a breaking point with his government and the massive, massive protests that emerged against him. But I really can’t think of anyone better than Mairav and Orly to try to talk about it. And I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain my own like profoundly conflicted feelings about this moment. I’ve sometimes felt, especially in the last couple of days, like my head was going to explode from cognitive dissonance watching these protests in Israel.
And it reminded me a little bit of a trip I took to Israel a few years ago. You know, my grandfather, who lived his entire life in South Africa was really never happier than when he was in Tel Aviv, kind of sitting in a cafe, talking politics. And my father also was never happier than he was in Israel. And both of them, I just saw a side of them that came out. And this is something that I think is not that uncommon for a diaspora Jews. There is something about being in a Jewish society when you’re used to being in a mostly non-Jewish society that has a profound impact. Maybe it’s a little bit like, you know, the experience for Black Americans when they go to countries in Africa. And I had to have that experience, too, my entire life. And once a few years ago, I was in Tel Aviv, and was just walking through looking at the street signs that kind of tell the story of Jewish history and listening to and watching Jews from every corner of the world kind of interacting in their kind of crazy ways. And I wrote something kind of rhapsodic about just how powerful it was to be there. And in the midst of it, and a Palestinian friend wrote me a note, and just basically said, ‘listen, you know, I appreciate that this was meaningful for you. But remember, I can’t be there, and all of this is built on what was destroyed for me and my family.’
And it really reminded me of a kind of blindness of mine and also of just this profound ambivalence that I still feel between feeling like a deep connection and sometimes even awe at Israeli society. And yet also realizing that there’s always this other side, which is so often lost and has been so lost in these protests, in this kind of moment of exultation, and even self-congratulation about how extraordinary it is to see all these Israelis fighting for democracy, fighting to prevent Israel from becoming Hungary. And I know that for Palestinians—and I put in the link for just one of many essays, but this one written by my friends Jamal Dakwar and George Bisharat about how surreal it is to hear people say that this country is at risk of losing its democracy, of becoming Hungary, when most of the Palestinians under Israeli control, those in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, have never had democratic rights. For them, it’s far, far worse than Hungary. That for none of the Palestinians under Israeli control, even Israel’s Palestinian citizens, Israel is like a genuine liberal democracy with anything like equal citizenship. And so, in certain kind of bizarre way I think it’s almost worst, more painful to see the lengths that Israeli Jews are willing to go to fight for democracy for themselves given that most of them, and most diaspora Jews, are so profoundly oblivious or dismissive or even hostile to the idea that Palestinians should also have democracy themselves.
So, I feel this profound cognitive dissonance and ambivalence. There’s something so extraordinary to me about the chutzpah that Israeli Jews have shown in these protests. I think it goes far beyond what a lot of Americans would do, just the in-your-face nature of the attacks on Netanyahu. The fact that now all of the unions are going out on strike, and the businesses have agreed to pay the workers to go on strike in this moment. I mean, it’s unimaginable in the United States to see something like this happening. All the universities shutting down. I am deeply inspired. It’s deeply beautiful to me, and yet there’s also kind of a horror to it because if those were Palestinians in the streets of Tel Aviv and Ashkelon and everywhere else and Jerusalem fighting for democracy, fighting against fascism as these Israeli protesters are, they wouldn’t be staying out all night on the streets blocking traffic and setting little fires. They’d be in jail, or they’d be maimed, or they would be dead, right, because this is the reality that Palestinians—and this would be true if they were Palestinian citizens as well. This is the profound difference in the way that the state deals with Israeli Jews who are fighting to maintain democracy for themselves, and Palestinians who are seeking to achieve democracy for themselves.
And so, I guess what I hope, what I dream could come out of this moment, which shows the extraordinary talents of Israeli Jews, the extraordinary passion, the organizational capacity, just the extraordinary quality of that society. And I just imagine what that protest, which filled the streets of Israel of Tel Aviv, filled the streets of 150 Israeli cities at last count on Sunday night, imagine if it were not just a protest of Israeli Jews. If it was a protest of Israeli Jews and Palestinians filled with as many Palestinian flags as there were Israeli flags with a vision of not democracy for Jews, not preventing this from being Hungary for Jews, but democracy for all, ending oppression for all. Not overthrowing Netanyahu so you can bring in Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid—people who use the phrase ‘a state for all its citizens’ as an epithet. Benny Gantz, the good guy, the guy who made all of the Palestinian human rights organizations illegal? No. But a protest that demands a vision of a country that will be equal for everybody and allow freedom and democracy for everybody.
Nothing has given me more hope in what Israeli Jews could be capable of if they saw Palestinians as true and equal partners in a struggle for democracy. If this is what Israeli Jews can do on their own and were able now it seems like just to push back Netanyahu’s egregious, illiberal fascist attempts, imagine what these people could do alongside Palestinians. Imagine what Palestinians and Israeli Jews could do together in a struggle for genuine liberal democracy everywhere, from Gaza to the West Bank to East Jerusalem to Israel proper. It would be the most inspiring thing the world has seen perhaps since the end of apartheid, since the overthrow of the Soviet Empire in 1989. As inspiring as anything we’ve ever seen in Ukraine. But it requires those amazing people on the streets in Israel and in the diaspora—because so many Israeli and diaspora Jews are protesting things now—to broaden their vision, to remember that Palestinians are every bit as talented, every bit as remarkable as they are, as we are, and to realize that what they can achieve on their own is nothing compared to what their society can achieve if it’s a truly shared and fully equal society with historical justice for Palestinians as well. I don’t know if we’re anywhere near that moment or not, but I feel like in a way this has given me a clearer glimpse of the profound beauty of what that moment would look like and that’s what I think about in these strange and kind of convulsive days ahead…
Nothing has given me more hope in what Israeli Jews could be capable of if they saw Palestinians as true and equal partners in a struggle for democracy. If this is what Israeli Jews can do on their own and were able now it seems like just to push back Netanyahu’s egregious, illiberal fascist attempts, imagine what these people could do alongside Palestinians. Imagine what Palestinians and Israeli Jews could do together in a struggle for genuine liberal democracy everywhere, from Gaza to the West Bank to East Jerusalem to Israel proper. It would be the most inspiring thing the world has seen perhaps since the end of apartheid, since the overthrow of the Soviet Empire in 1989. As inspiring as anything we’ve ever seen in Ukraine. But it requires those amazing people on the streets in Israel and in the diaspora—because so many Israeli and diaspora Jews are protesting things now—to broaden their vision, to remember that Palestinians are every bit as talented, every bit as remarkable as they are, as we are, and to realize that what they can achieve on their own is nothing compared to what their society can achieve if it’s a truly shared and fully equal society with historical justice for Palestinians as well. I don’t know if we’re anywhere near that moment or not, but I feel like in a way this has given me a clearer glimpse of the profound beauty of what that moment would look like and that’s what I think about in these strange and kind of convulsive days ahead…
Given the speed at which things are changing, I have no idea where Israeli politics will be by this Friday. Regardless, we’ll be joined by two of the smartest people I know to discuss the current protests and whether they could contain the seeds of a movement against not just the judicial overhaul but against occupation and apartheid. Our first guest will be Orly Noy, the chair of the board of B’Tselem, an editor at Local Call, and a translator of Farsi poetry into Hebrew. Our second guest will be Mairav Zonszein, a journalist who current serves as senior Israel-Palestine analyst for the International Crisis Group.
I don’t agree with Beinart on the desirability of Palestinians joining the protests by Israelis against their power-grabbing, extremist government. Any Palestinian involvement would muddle the issues (the fight to protect Israeli civil liberties against a government that wants untrammelled power) and advantage Netanyahu.
Beinart has also discounted the amount of time most people need to adjust their thinking and prejudices. Currently, Israelis are outraged by the Netanyahu government’s willingness to sell their freedoms in the hope of staying in power. It’s likely to take at least a few months of “hot crisis” before many Israelis would begin to view their government as inherently flawed. How probable is it that Netanyahu would fail to calm months of “hot crisis”, given that persistent unrest on this scale risks bringing down his government even faster than him losing the support of his extreme and religious right collaborators?
You’ve forgotten what happened when similar street demos occurred in Egypt whem M— was overthrown and an estimated 400 were shot dead on the streets so that Sisi could beome President?
Let’s see if those Jews in Israel protesting against the extreme right wingers in the government threatening political control over the judiciary come to the aid of Palestinians being attacked even more viciously and uncontrolled by those same extreme rightwingers. Will they show themselves to be true and reliable partners of the Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Territories? I fear the vast majority of them don’t see it, and won’t do it.
Beinart’s article reminds me of the words of John Lennon’s Imagine.
Many of the protesters chatter about protecting Israeli democracy. This is to deny that Israel is not a democracy but an apartheid declared state of the Jewish people ( but as historian Shlomo Sands observes the Jews are not a people)
It is an amazing demonstration of dissent, but only in defence of their own well-being. So far. There is no sign as far as can be seen from a distance that those on the street are thinking about any form of defence of the Palestinians or their basic situation of desperate nothingness.
Benjamin Netanyahu was voted into power, along with many others of ‘his gang’ of thugs, by the people of Israel. Strange how history will repeat itself.
Look at the positive aspect, at least it is a start. Without protest now, the position can only worsen. Protest and struggle is the school for people to learn and develop. To see the logic in combining with other progressive groups for a better future for all.
Re the comment ‘The Jews are not a people.’ Yes, they are because they share a common identity, just as, say, the English or the Americans do. They do not have to have a common ancestry, they do not have to share a world-view on common, they do not have to actually have a country in common, as many nations have diasporas of their own, including the English and the Americans. Each and every Jew know themselves to be Jews along with every other Jew: that makes them a people by any definition. The difficulty which Zionism tries to solve is that before Israel, Jews were in effect the only nation without a nation, a people with a mythical rather than a physical state to identify with. The central dispute is all round the question, do Jews need a physical state to identify with? The Zionists say yes, while non-Zionists say not necessarily. That all sounds very reasonable, until it’s realised that a powerful section of the Zionist school of thought believes that the Jews must have a state and that there is no cost too high to get one, so long as it is not Jews who pay the cost, but the unfortunate people who happen to be in the way of their achieving it. But now we see there is a cost to Jews, as they now become pawns in the game they think they have been playing; now they are being played. That is what this is all about right now. No-one can expect the Israeli Jews to give their immediate support to the Palestinians; they have only just realised that they are being threatened with a subservience they never thought possible. It will take time and work to persuade Israelis that they and the Palestinians are now being faced with a common cause. Whether it happens or not, time will tell; but the opportunity Israeli Jews have been presented with to realise their commonalty with the Palestinians has never been greater. They can still be Jews in a state shared with non-Jews: we diaspora Jews know that already.
It is a real conundrum that Israelis are prepared to make such effort to protest about justice affecting themselves yet that justice they are defending hands out summary injustice to Palestinians. This isn’t the first time Israeli demonstrators have protested parochial issues but have remained resolutely blind to the injustices Palestinians suffer daily.