Israel’s ‘rational’ left is more dangerous than Ben-Gvir and Smotrich
Left-wing demonstrators hold a banner that reads ‘Refusing their war’, depicting Benjamin Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, during a protest demanding to end the war in Gaza in Sderot in 2025
Ofer Cassif writes in Haaretz on 15 April 2026:
There are two kinds of enthusiasts for genocide and ethnic cleansing in today’s Israeli public discourse.
One are the “haters” – people from the messianic school of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, people who use nationalist and racist rhetoric grounded in hatred, a sense of Jewish supremacy and revenge. The second are the “rationalists” – people like Giora Eiland, Einat Wilf and researchers at the elite think tanks, who, in a calm and polite tone, speak of matters like “national security,” “strategy” and “realism.” They do not engage in racist hatred or ethnic supremacy, but employ the language of pragmatism, in which deportation, starvation and even murder are not a goal, but rather a “work plan” to be judged by its results, whatever the means.
While the liberal public has no trouble labeling the first group as the main danger to Israel, closer examination reveals the latter to be the real (and therefore the most dangerous) driving force of fascist decline. To understand this, we must return to the concept coined by historian Jeffrey Herf in his 1984 book “Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich.”
In his classic account, Herf recalls the intellectuals of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich who not only did not reject modernism but also embraced its technology, science and bureaucracy, all the while integrating it with nationalist and anti-humanistic ideology. They were not “primitives” dreaming of a return to the Middle Ages. They were engineers, jurists and philosophers who sought to use the tools of the modern state to achieve reactionary goals. They extolled technology and made efficiency a supreme value, while casting aside universal ethics.
This is exactly the role that the “rational” left is playing in Israel today. When a reservist general like Eiland proposes imposing a complete blockade on northern Gaza, he is not doing so out of Biblical-style notions of revenge. He coldly presents it as a “working plan” for the army based on war doctrine and risk management. Likewise, when Wilf whispers chillingly that “the Palestinian identity must die,” she is not addressing an enthusiastic audience in the streets. Writing eloquent books and lecturing at international conferences, she explains why the dismantling of Palestinian national infrastructure is a necessary step for “future peace.”
Neither of them is shouting “death to terrorists,” they are talking in terms of “logic” and “necessity.”
The greatest danger posed by reactionary Israeli modernism is the exchange of morals with efficiency and justice with expediency. This intellectual structure does not ask, “Is it just?” or “Is this humane?” but “Does it work?” This is instrumental rationalism run wild, using logic and science to achieve goals that violate the values of the Enlightenment and democracy.
For the mainstream Israeli public, the “haters” are an easy group to condemn. They represent a public perceived as ignorant and crazy. By contrast, the “rationalists” look and sound like the “beautiful Israeli.” They come from the army general staff, academia and diplomacy. Their solutions amount to ethnic cleansing and mass starvation, but because of who is proposing them, they come with a “kashrut” certificate and a moral imprimatur. They enable an enlightened person to support barbarous acts without his feeling that he has become barbarous. They turn the transfer into “population displacement for humanitarian needs” and starvation into a “legitimate lever of pressure.”
Thus, while Ben-Gvir supplies the “noise” and draws the international fire, the “rationalists” are the ones building the political and legal infrastructure to enable these practices to be actualized. They act as the bridge by which Kahanist ideas become acceptable and genocidal thought patterns take over the institutions of the state and society. If the messianic right is the flame, then the reactionary modernists are the oxygen and fuel.
The reactionary modernist is a danger because he does not work against the system – he corrupts it from within. He uses the language of rights (e.g., “the right of the state to defend itself”) to deny rights to others. He uses statistics to prove that there is no choice but to commit acts that would have been considered unthinkable only a few years ago.
As Herf explained, the combination of technological advancement and the rejection of universalism is a recipe for disaster. In this sense, the air-conditioned television studio and colorful graphs of the “experts” are more dangerous than the shouting and screaming at the passionate right-wing rallies.
History teaches that crimes against humanity are not committed by the inflamed masses but mainly by bureaucrats, generals and intellectuals who plan and execute the “correct” means to undertake them. The “haters” supply the raw material of will, but it is the “rationalists” who supply the tools and a philosophical justification that the public can live with.
When we listen to television commentary, we must be wary of the authoritative tone and voice of expertise and reason. Blatant hatred is a wall you crash into, but cold rationality is a slippery slope. The former warns us of its presence bluntly, while the latter invites us to walk with it into the abyss, calmly and eloquently explaining to us why this is the only logical path left.
Reactionary modernism is the writing on the wall, written in a clean, precise, academic font. If we fail to recognize barbarism even when it wears a suit or uniform, we will find ourselves in a reality where morality has been finally sacrificed and thwarted on the altar of strategic “pragmatism,” even when deportation or mass murder are on the agenda.
This article is reproduced in its entirety