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| Demonstrations protesting efforts to sideline Israel's Supreme Court |
As I argued in Part 1 of this post, Iran and Israel are both confronting a fracturing of their respective national identities. In Iran, there is a strong desire among the majority of the population, especially the under 40 demographic which represents 80% of Iranians, for democracy and personal freedoms, including freedom of expression, freedom for women not to be forced to wear the hijab, and for the right to develop civil society organizations not under the control of the state.
In Israel, the sociopolitical cleavage is quite different. Here we find a democracy marching towards majoritarian rule. Having won parliamentary elections this past November by a ew percentage points, the most far right government in Israel's history is quickly pushing through the Knesset (parliament) laws that will in effect end the ability of the country's Supreme Court to declare laws unconstitutional and give politicians greater control over the appointment of judges.
The efforts to radically restructure Israel's democracy has not gone down well among secular Israelis who fear the damage the far right government will do to the country. It includes many ultra religious ministers and supporters who, in effect, want to make Israel a theocratic state.
From 1948 when the State of Israel was founded, it was dominated by the MAPAI or Labor Party which, in partnership with the much smaller MAPAM Party, represented the dominant political movement under the Yishuv (the pre-state Zionist community in Palestine). At its founding, a cleavage already existed between secular, left leaning Zionists and the religious community in Israel and, the right wing revisionist parties, which would later coalesce to become the Likud Party.
To address this cleavage, the Labor Party controlled foreign policy, including the post of Prime Minster, and of ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense. However, the National Religious Party was given control of the Ministry of Education. This balancing between secular and religious Israelis was sustained until the Likud Party, under the leadership of Menachem Begin, won a stunning victory in 1977.
While the Labor Party was able to win some subsequent elections, the rise of the right wing has continued since 1977. Today, a majority of Israelis identify with the right, whether nationalist or religious, while the Labor Party has all but disappeared.
Increasingly, it is almost impossible for a secular center-left coalition to come to power in Israel. The extreme nationalist and religious right control 72 of the Knesset's 120 seats. Thus, any Israeli government must be established through building some type of coalition with right wing parties.
How did the right in Israel replace the left of center Labor Party coalition? Already before the Likud's victory in 1977, the Labor Party had been ripe with corruption in state run entities such as the Histradut, the large public sector union. As in other democracies around the world, Labor governments had moved towards more neoliberal policies which undermined the power of the working class. It also did little to incorporate Jews from Arab countries, the so-called Mizrachim ("Easterners").
During the 1980s, Israel witnessed increased immigration of Russian Jews. Having experienced discrimination as Jews and repression for political activities, these immigrants hardly viewed the USSR as a "progressive," Marxist state. Their experiences in Russia made them more inclined to join right wing parties. This political tendency set them apart from the Russian and East European Jews who had immigrated to Palestine during the Yishuv and joined the Labor and MAPAM parties.
The growth of the settler movement in the West Bank after Israel seized it from Jordan in the June 1967 Six Day War created a new constituency which had no interests in seeing a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. As the settlements grew, they increasingly encroached on Palestinian land, which was often seized without compensation and legal redress. At the same time, the Israeli government has refused to issue permits to Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to build new homes. indicating to many Palestinians that their hoped for independent state wasn't in the cards.
Settlements have also gained strength through support from Evangelical Christians in the United States. Evangelicals believe that the Messiah will reappear in the area currently constituting the Israeli state when Judgment Day occurs. As a result of shrewd lobbying by the settler movement in the US, the Republican Party, whose social base includes large numbers of Evangelical Christians, has strongly supported the settlement movements retaining their land in the West Bank.
Settle movement lobbying has been focused on the American Israel Politcal Action Committee (AIPAC) as well. Also, significant funding for the settlers has come from US donors. David Friedman, who served as US ambassador to Israel during the Trump administration, is just one of many wealthy Jewish Americans who have contributed to the settler movement.
The right received a political boost from the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005. In elections held after the withdrawal, the more moderate Fatah Party was soundly defeated by the Islamist Hamas movement which seized power and has been ruling it ever since. On a number of occasions, Hamas has fired rockets into Israel, especially after upsurges of violence in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
In 2000, Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon which it had occupied since the 1982 invasion designed to destroy Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) bases in the south, During its occupation of the south, Israeli forces had been in constant conflict with Hizballah, a powerful Shi'a militia backed by Iran. In July 2006, Hizballah killed 8 Israeli soldiers during a cross-border raid into northern Israel. Two other soldiers were kidnapped and later killed. These events led to the 2006 Israeli war. The Israeli response led to extensive bombing of southern Lebanon and the extensive destruction of infrastructure.
The Israeli bombing resulted in a fusillade of rockets launched by Hizballah forces from the southern Lebanese mountains. In the ensuing war, thousands of Israelis were forced to leave the north of the country to be out of range of Hizballah rockets. The war shook both Lebanon and Israel and raised concerns among civilians on both sides of the conflict about the future of their security in the regions in which they resided.
In May 2021, a simmering crisis in the Shaykh Jarrah section of East Jerusalem came to a head. Palestinians were worried about an imminent Supreme Court decision which would evict them from their homes. Demonstration began leading Israeli police to enter the compound of al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem where violence broke out between the police and demonstrators.
Hamas demanded that the police leave the mosque, one of the holiest sits in Islam.. When they didn't, Hamas began a rocket campaign with some rockets reaching far into Israel, some near Jerusalem. Israel began a bombing campaign of the Gaza strip and fighting broke out in Lod and several other Israeli cities between Jewish and Palestinian Israelis.
Synagogues and mosques were attacked and businesses burned. Many Israelis, both Jewish an Arab, were severely wounded. The inter-ethnic conflict left deep scars` in Israeli society. For those on the right, the violence provided support for their narrative that Israel's Arab citizens could not be trusted
When studying the rise of the Israeli right wing nationalists, an issue which has not received enough attention is demographic change. Orthodox Jews in Israel have a much higher birth rate than secular Israelis. Among what is often referred to a "traditional religions," the ultra-orthodox have on average 6.8 children per family, while the orthodox have 3.7 per family. However, among secular Israelis, the birthrate is only 2.9 children per family. Thus the religious community, much of which supports right-wing nationalism, is becoming an ever larger percentage of the population.
At the same time, education for orthodox students is implicitly politicized. Because the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people, it cannot accommodate the Palestinians. Further, the orthodox definition of who is Jewish excludes conservative and reform Jews, thus, threatening to create a deep split in world-wide Jewry.
With the installation of the most far-right government in Israel's history, the trends discussed above have finally come to dominate Israeli politics. The former government of Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett, which included right wing centrist and left wing parties, as well as an Arab Islamist party seemed like Israel might have found a formula to bridge the secular-religious divide. However, the Naftali-Lapid government ran afoul of disagreements with the right wing coalition parties and collapsed.
With the far right now ascendant, we can see some of the future outcomes of Israel's politics. Israel investment finds are already leaving Israel. Without a national legal system which enjoys autonomy from political interference, investors are loathe to invest in a financial environment which is overshadowed by uncertainty arising from political conflict and potential instability, e.g., a standoff between the Supreme Court and the Netanyahu government over constitutional authority.
Israel is suffering from an identity crisis. A growing chasm exists between two visions of the future. One sees a secular liberal democratic Israel which will try to build a society for all its citizens and hopefully find a solution to the Israel-Palestinian dispute. The other sees an illiberal democracy where a majoritarian rule is the order of the day. and a nationalist politicized form of Judaism determines public policy.
We already see huge demonstrations on an almost daily basis by Israelis who are fiercely opposed to the changes in the legal system which the Netanyahu regime is attempting to oppose on Israel's judicial system. While it may be an exaggeration, some Israels speak of a possible civil war as members of the military are threatening not to obey orders if the Supreme Court's authority is drastically curtailed.
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| Poster opposing Netanyahu's changes to the judicial system |
As the sporadic protests persist and women's refusal to wear the hijab, the legitimacy of the so-called Islamic Republic" sinks to its lowest level since the 1978-79 Iranian Revolution.
The regime has completely lost the younger generation, including many young clerics, who oppose the regime's brutal suppression of protests.
In Israel, what Thomas Friedman calls "messianic religious zealots" seek to impose their own form of a phony, politicized religion. They seek to establish a far-right nationalist and quasi-theocratic state which is alien to democratic political culture. These zealots, including several sitting cabinet ministers, promote violence as a means to implement the sociopolitical change they seek.
The recent political protests in Iran and Israel represent stunning developments. The outcome of these developments will have serious consequences for the MENA regime for years to come
The recent political protests in Iran and Israel represent stunning developments. The outcome of these developments will have serious consequences for the MENA regime for years to come
