Can the movement against judicial overhaul become a movement against Jewish supremacy?
Protesters on Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square accusing Israel of practicing apartheid in 2020
Peter Beinart transcribes his video in The Beinart Notebook on 25 July 2023:
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It seems to me that while we don’t know what the Supreme Court will now do vis-à-vis striking down this bill, and we don’t know whether the other efforts of the judicial overhaul will pass, that despite the extraordinary organization, and passion, and determination of this movement against this Israeli government inside Israel, that I’m pessimistic about its prospects unless it evolves into something different than what it is now. The reason I’m pessimistic is demography.
I was really struck by a quote that I heard from Moshe Koppel a while back. Moshe Koppel is the head of Kohelet. So, Kohelet is the pressure group that’s been pushing for this judicial overhaul for a long time. And Koppel said, ‘listen, even if we don’t get everything we want this time, I’m not worried because demography is on our side, and we’ll make these changes sooner or later. Because Israel, in the Jewish population, the ultra-orthodox population is growing and the religious nationalist population is growing. And we will gradually have greater and greater demographic weight.’ You notice that when supporters of judicial overhaul talk, this is what they mean by democracy. They mean democracy among Jews. And they say that the demographic shift among Jews should have its democratic weight. They say, ‘how can you say that this is anti-democratic? It’s the democratic trajectory of Jews.’
And I think this movement against the Netanyahu government, this judicial overhaul, again, although it is really remarkable and inspiring in a lot of ways, has largely accepted those terms of the game, essentially the terms of ethno-nationalism. It has been a kind of intra-Jewish struggle, in which you have a sea of Israeli flags but really no allowance for Palestinian flags, and in which Palestinians have really not been invited into this movement. And so, you have people like Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz, the opposition leaders, who are essentially arguing for a liberal ethno-nationalism. For Yair Lapid, the term ‘state for all its citizens’ is an epithet, right? They want a liberal ethno-nationalism. They want to manage Israel’s control over all these Palestinians who lack basic rights—try not to inflame the situation, but certainly not give them basic rights—they want to keep Israel a kind of secular, modern, pluralistic society for Jews, and they’re fighting against these people who not only want to entrench Israel’s control over Palestinians—undemocratic control, and potentially expel them—but essentially want Israel to become a more religiously coercive, less liberal society, even for Jews. This is the struggle that’s been taking place between a kind of liberal ethno-nationalism and a much more kind of aggressive authoritarian ethno-nationalism.