In the looming civil war, the Israeli right has the upper hand


While the government can rely on national-religious identity to mobilize supporters, the opposition’s counternarrative suffers a serious weakness.

Netanyahu supporters hold a counter-protest to the mass demonstrations against the far-right government and its judicial overhaul, Tel Aviv, March 18, 2023.

The brewing “civil war” we are currently witnessing in Israel is not a flashing spectacle, but rather a long-running process. Contrary to how the far right has tried to bombastically portray the mass opposition to its judicial overhaul, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi and Shin Bet Director Ronan Bar did not ride on tanks to the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem to announce to the nation that they are taking over the government for a transitional period until democracy is restored. Thousands of reservists in the Israel Air Force and other elite army units, who have vowed not to show up for duty, did not land helicopters near the Knesset in the early hours of the morning after neutralizing the Knesset guard. On the contrary, as today’s Knesset vote showed, the judicial overhaul is continuing apace.

This civil strife is still only in its infant stages. The rival camps are still forming. The revolutionaries on the right rely on their Knesset majority only when it comes to votes on legislation; in an actual civil war, they will need a broad and mobilized public. Their backbone is religious populations of all kinds, from the Hardalim to the Haredim to the mainstream national-religious.

This religious public is deeply communitarian. It is organized around synagogues, settlements, distinct neighborhoods, youth movements, and an education system controlled by religiously and nationalistically hardline ideologues. The government’s hardcore supporters consume sectorial, non-pluralistic media that heavily features nationalist-religious preaching. Those in the community who feel uncomfortable with such an ideology, and try to consider what is beyond, are subjected to intense social pressure, and in practice often remain in the community’s ranks despite their reservations.

However, the religious community is too small to win a civil war by itself. It must recruit members from the traditional base that supports Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party, often middle and working-class Mizrahim (Jews with origins in Arab and/or Muslim countries). This public — marginalized by the more affluent and established Ashkenazim, and excluded from the closed communities of the Haredim and national religious — largely lives in Israel’s socioeconomic and political periphery, far from the levers of power.

Benjamin Netanyahu seen behind bulletproof glass during an election event in south Tel Aviv, September 7, 2022. (Oren Ziv)

Benjamin Netanyahu seen behind bulletproof glass during an election event in south Tel Aviv, September 7, 2022. (Oren Ziv)

Netanyahu and Likud gain the support of these periphery voters through a campaign of grievances, creating an imagined community constantly facing persecution and oppression (even though the Likud has been the main force in power for several decades). This campaign plays out to a great deal on social media and is presented as a class struggle of a new elite against an old elite, the disadvantaged against the privileged, who refuse to give way.

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