A profound division exists between Zionist advocates of Israel on the one hand, and both secular and religious Jews, on the other, who reject Zionism and thus the very idea of a separate state for the Jews. Most Jews must be somewhere in between. For years, they have cringed at Israel’s actions without, however, questioning the ethnocratic nature of the Israeli state. For them, “Israel’s right to exist” is sacred because they fear that the only alternative is a physical destruction of Israeli Jews. Even though most of them live in liberal democracies, it is hard for them to fathom that Israel may change its nature, like South Africa did a few decades ago, and become a liberal state with equal rights for everyone on the entire territory under Israeli control between the Mediterranean and the river Jordan.
Israel’s assault on Gaza has made many Jews worldwide, particularly the young, to recoil from any association with the state of Israel. But at least just as many refused to remain “Jews of silence” and came to denounce Israel’s vengeful response to Hamas’ attack on its territory on October 7, 2023.
Especially in the United States, Jews have prominently cried out against the violence in Gaza. Hundreds of protesters closed down New York’s Central Station asking for an immediate ceasefire. A week earlier, Jews wrapped in prayer shawls staged a sit-in at the U.S. Congress in Washington. After demanding an end to the violence, they opened prayer books and began reciting the ancient words that have steadied Jews for generations. Just a few days ago, Jews unfurled banners reading “Palestinians should be free” at the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York.
Anti-Zionist Ultra-Orthodox Jews have burned Israeli flags at their protests around the world. They believe that the Zionist state is not simply an ‘appropriation’ of their Jewish symbols and identity, but the root cause of a bloody conflict in which innocent Jews and Palestinians suffer.
Indeed, Israel is a Zionist state. Calling it Jewish only creates a confusion because it is hard to define it. Israel embodies European ethnic nationalism shaped in late 19th century, rather than Judaism that has developed for millennia. From the start, Zionists despised Jews and Judaism as they aimed at breeding a new species: the intrepid Hebrew warrior farmer. They have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Israel has built a mobilized society and a formidable high-tech war machine. As Israeli society has moved steadily to the right, it has consolidated the support of right-wing extremists and racists, including antisemites, around the world, such as white supremacists in the United States.
Israel is the most recent settler colony. Rhodesia and Algeria are now a distant memory. South Africa has freed itself from the official apartheid. While settlers in the Americas and Oceania perpetrated genocide against the aboriginals in the 19th century, Israel initiated massive ethnic cleansing rather late, only in 1947. Some, like the Israeli historian Benny Morris, who documented it, regretted that the Zionists did not complete the job like the white Americans, Argentines or Australians, who wiped out most of the local populations. Indeed, Israel now has under its control approximately equal numbers of Palestinians and Jews, but most Palestinians don’t have political rights.
Many Jews, both in Israel and elsewhere, have been trying to come to terms with the contradictions between the Judaism they profess to adhere to and the Zionist ideology that has taken hold of them. A new variety of Judaism has taken root in Israel: National Judaism, dati-leumi in Hebrew. For some Jews, this new faith assuages these contradictions.
Among its most fervent followers one finds the assassin of prime minister Itzhak Rabin who had attempted to find an accommodation with the Palestinians, and prominent members of today’s Israeli government. National Judaism is also the ideology of many vigilante settlers who, since the onset of the war on Gaza, have intensified the harassment, dispossession, and murder of Palestinians on the West Bank. The vigilantes armed with rifles are proud to complement what the Israeli army is doing with tanks, bombs, and rockets in Gaza.