Zionism on the Brink: The Gaza War Beyond Netanyahu
by Ramzy
Baroud
Posted on August 13, 2024
The idea that the war on Gaza
is essentially waged and sustained by and for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu has, for long, dominated political
analyses on the subject.
The notion is often kept alive
by public opinion inside Israel.
Most polls produced since the
start of the Israeli genocide on Gaza suggest that an overwhelming majority of
Israelis believe that
Netanyahu’s decisions are motivated by personal, political and familial
interests.
This conclusion, however, is
too convenient and not entirely accurate. It wrongly assumes that the Israeli
people oppose Netanyahu’s war in Gaza though, in reality, they have been quite
approving of all tactics used by the Israeli army, so far.
For example, over 300 days
into the war, 69 percent of all Israelis support Netanyahu’s
desperate tactics of assassinations, including the killing of Hamas’ top
political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in Tehran on July 31.
While Netanyahu’s decision to
target a political leader reflects his own failure and desperation, how is one
to explain the Israeli people’s enthusiasm for the expansion of the circle of
violence?
The answer does not lie in the
event of October 7, namely the Palestinian assault on the Gaza Envelope region
and the unprecedented defeat of the Israeli army. Indeed, it is time to start
thinking beyond the confines of the revenge theory, which has dominated our
understanding and analysis of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
For years prior to the current
war, Israel has been moving slowly
to the right and far-right, whose political extremism has surpassed that of any
generation of Zionist leadership that has ruled over Israel since the ethnic
cleansing of Palestinians in 1948.
According to an Israeli
Democracy Institute poll,
published in January 2023, 73 percent of Israeli Jews, between the ages of 18
to 24, identify as ‘right wing’.
Considering that the likes of
current Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich and Orit Strook,
are also classified as ‘right-wing’, one can conclude that the majority of
Israeli youth practically identify as right-wing extremists.
These youth are the core of
the Israeli army and the settler movement. They are the ones carrying out the
genocide in Gaza, the daily pogroms in the West Bank and serving as the foot
soldiers for the widespread racism campaigns targeting the Palestinian Arab
communities inside Israel.
There is a good number of
analysts who tried to explain how
Israel became a decidedly rightwing society and how youth, in particular,
emerged as the gatekeepers of Israel’s version of suicidal nationalism.
The explanation, however,
should be straightforward. Israel’s far-right extremism is only a natural
evolution of the Zionist ideology which, in its most ‘liberal’ forms, was
always predicated on ethnic hatred, a sense of racial supremacy and predictable
violence.
Though ideological Zionism in
all its manifestations has essentially followed the same trajectory of
settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing, a conflict existed between the
various strands of Israeli society.
The so-called liberals –
represented by the upper echelons of the military, business circles and some
centrist and leftist political groups – worked to maintain the balance between
a colonial, apartheid
regime in occupied Palestine, and a selective liberal order that
applies only to Jews inside Israel.
The far-right had other ideas.
For many years, the Israeli right camp, led by Netanyahu himself, has perceived
his ideological enemies inside Israel as traitors, for even daring to engage in
a ‘peace process’ with the Palestinians – even if that process was a facade, to
begin with.
The right wanted to ensure
that the territorial contiguity between the so-called ‘Israel proper’ and the
illegal Jewish settlements was not only a physical one but an ideological one
as well.
This is how the settlers moved
slowly, over the years, from the margins of Israeli politics to the center.
Between April 2019 and
November 2022, Israel underwent five
different general elections. Though the focus of most remained fixated on
Netanyahu’s role in dividing Israeli
society, the elections, in reality, were a historic fight among Israel’s
ideological groups to determine the future of the country and the direction of
Zionism.
In the last elections, the
far-right extremists won, forming the
most stable Israeli government in years. While the right was ready to
permanently reconfigure Israel, its political, educational, military and, most
important, judicial institutions,
October 7 took place.
Initially, the Hamas assault
and its aftermath posed a challenge to all segments of Israeli society: the
humiliated army, the degraded intelligence, the humbled politicians, the
confounded media and the angry masses.
But the greatest challenge was
faced by the far-right, which was about to shape the future of Israel for
generations. Thus, the Gaza war is not just important to Netanyahu, but to the
very future of Israel’s far-right camp, whose entire political and ideological
program has been shattered, most likely beyond salvation.
This should help explain the
obvious contradictions in Israeli society, for example, the mistrust in
Netanyahu’s motives, yet the trust in the war itself; the widespread criticism of
his overall failure, yet the approval of
his actions, and so on.
This seeming confusion cannot
be explained simply based on Netanyahu’s ability to manipulate Israelis. Even
if the Israeli right has lost all faith in Netanyahu, without him as a unifying
figure, all is lost, not only the chances of the far-right camp to redeem
itself, but also the very future of Zionism.
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