My favourite course at King's College London was by far the one in nationalism. Under the critical guidance of Dr Pablo de Orellana, we dissected narratives, refuted theories and examined practice in contemporary politics. It was pure intellectual stimulation. This is the final piece I wrote for the module, submitted in March 2018, discussing the processes by which Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian narratives of ethno-nationalism co-create each other. My views have probably shifted since but I am certain that there is still a lot of food for thought within.
On 24 March 2016, human rights group B’Tselem reported the death of two Palestinians who were shot after stabbing a soldier in Hebron. One of the attackers, ‘Abd al-Fatah a-Sharif did not die immediately; he lied injured, unarmed and ignored on the road for minutes until a member of the Israeli Defence Forces approached him – took aim and shot a-Sharif in the head from point-blank range. Sadly, stabbings and tit-for-tat retaliation became everyday occurrences as tension between Palestinians and Jews hit new highs over the preceding months. Yet, the case was predestined for remarkability; the way it happened and the reactions it sparked signalled a new chapter in the politics of Israel: the absolute takeover of the ethno-nationalist discourse of the need for violence.
The slaughter of the vanquished has been forbidden since the earliest instances of written law. Even the Old Testament, revered and followed by the Jews, stipulates that one must not kill those “taken captive with thy sword and with thy bow”, instead one shall “set bread and water before them, that they may eat and drink” (Tanakh, 2009: 2 Kings 6:22). Therefore, the expectation was that the misbehaving element would get his rightful punishment - until politics intervened. Initially, the notion of punishment gained support from Defence Minsiter Moshe Ya’alon, a seasoned right-wing military politician who immediately declared the soldier a “transgressor” to be brought to justice (Haaretz, 2016) but he was swiftly overpowered by ethno-nationalists in and around the government. Education Minister Naftali Bennett and former Foreign Minister Avigdor Liebermann came out in support of the soldier and his decision (Guardian, 2016) emphasising the importance of Jewish interest above all. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu first only implictly, but later overtly joined their side by calling for a pardon for the assailant (BBC, 2017a).
In the end, pardon requests were rejected by President Rivlin (BBC, 2017b) and the defendant had to settle for 14 months in prison (Haaretz, 2017a) but justice could hardly claim victory. The narratives constructed in the top echelons of Israeli politics defending a criminal as a hero induced a normative shift, which publicly legitimised the ultimate violence against Palestinians: murder. Two months after the execution 57 percent of Israelis opposed the detention of the soldier (+972, 2016) despite the blatant immorality of his deed. However, such an outcome shall not be analysed in isolation - fundamental change had seldom arisen from a single process. Instead, we should treat the shift as indicative of the existence of an environment nurturing hate, a destructive and dominant discourse of the need for violence as the only way for Israel to exist.
This essay seeks to reveal the said discourse and its origins, explore its connection with Israel’s ethno- nationalists, and uncover its mechanics of producing division and violence. It argues that in doing so, the discourse only leads to further violence, rendering its own declared objective of peace for Israel unattainable. The argument consists of three sections. First, the essay will explore the discourse from the perspective of its proponents and describe its claim for legitimacy. Second, the discourse will be approached from a critical angle and its validity will be challenged by revealing the ethno-nationalist choice underlying its support for violence, as well as by arguing that in its reproduction of violence it prevents peace. Third, the discourse and narratives of the terrorist organisation Hamas will be compared to demonstrate how ethno-nationalists and terrorists in the context of Israel become co-constitutive nightmares prolonging the suffering of innocent people. Introducing a Discourse: Violence is Needed for Israel to Exist
“The truth is that if Israel were to put down its arms there would be no more Israel. If the Arabs were to put down their arms there would be no more war” – Benjamin Netanyahu, 2006 ‘Thou shalt not murder’ (Tanakh, 2009: Exodus 20:13) states the Torah, unless you have a very good reason – one might as well add. The use of violence, since the conception of human civilisation, has been an omnipresent practice but it always required justification. A testimony to that was the emergence of the Just War Tradition in the Western world, establishing substantive criteria for the rightful waging of war, most prominently the right intention and stemming from it the just cause (Bellamy, 2006). According to Norman, the former must always concern the protection of common good or the act of ‘righting a wrong’ (1995) ‘to help create a better subsequent peace than there would otherwise have been’ (Guthrie and Quinlan, 2007). The latter therefore can take many shapes, some contested but at least one universally accepted: self-defence. Proponents of the need for violence too must legitimise their discourse against these criteria and so they do on the basis of (selective) historical evidence.
One such reading of history argues that Jews exist in a constant state of war, which can be described as ‘a history of holocausts’ (Netanyahu, B. Z., 1998). Even when they opt for assimilation they inevitably get persecuted and killed because of their alleged impurity, racial difference and evilness (Netanyahu, B. Z., 1995). As Herzl put it, ‘[Jews’] appearance there [where they were hitherto absent] gives rise to persecution’ (1896). It was on these grounds that the creation of a Jewish state in the historically and religiously claimed land of Palestine was proposed (Herzl, 1896), where in majority the Jews would not be in peril anymore. However, once theory had been put to practice under the banner of Zionism the old issue returned: the Arabs of Palestine did not welcome Jewish immigration and eventually met it with violence (Ben-Gurion, 1973). Some harboured hopes that peace would be reached thanks to the economic and social benefits from new technology and advanced agriculture brought by the Jewish settlers to the region (Ben-Gurion, 1973). But others warned, as Ze’ev Jabotinsky, leader of the radical right-wing Revisionist Zionists, that ‘[a]s long as the Arabs feel that there is the least hope of getting rid of us, they will refuse to give up this hope in return for either kind words or for bread and butter’ (1923) – and indeed they did not, remind the proponents.
The State of Israel has been under attack from its Arab neighbours since its conception and even before. It suffered large scale aggression during the 1936-39 campaign of Arab violence for the first time, then subsequently in three wars started by the Arabs, and in numerous acts of terrorism committed by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (Netanyahu, B., 1993), Hezbollah, as well as Hamas ever since. From this angle it is considered apparent that a ‘voluntary agreement’ or unconditional appeasement would have been an effort in vain, even suicidal. Consequently, Israel had all the right to demonstrate ‘strong power in Palestine that is not amenable to any Arab pressure’ (Jabotinsky, 1923) to ensure its own survival, as well as to force Arabs into the acceptance of their presence thereby taking the first step towards peace. In essence, proponents of the discourse argue that Israel’s use of necessary violence has a just cause, which is self-defence. Force should be used against the Arabs who are immanently ‘anti-Zionist’ and ‘predisposed to violence and strife’ (Netanyahu, B., 1993: 238), which poses a perpetual and imminent threat both to the State of Israel and the Jewishness of the state. Violence against the state automatically invites an act of ‘righting a wrong’, while any harm to the Jewish character of the state calls for ‘the protection of common good’, since Jewish majority and its “democratic” rule in Israel is viewed as the only guarantee to end of the ‘history of holocausts’. Further to that, the right intention of creating a better peace is also treated as an important element of the discourse. It is suggested that without Israel’s demonstration of force Jews would be excluded from any possible peace arrangement, again due to the inherently anti-Zionist attitude of Arabs. Therefore, the view is advanced that ‘to achieve sustainable peace, Israel must maintain a credible deterrent long enough to effect a lasting change in Arab attitudes’ (Netanyahu, B., 1993: 293).
Since the Oslo Accords’ failure to reach peace (Roy, 2002) the discourse has regained momentum in Israeli politics and had its ‘target’ altered. As the threats posed in the security environment shifted from neighbouring Arab states to terrorist organisations and armed resistance (Gold, 2013), so did the focus from Arabs to Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and primarily within Israel. As a matter of securing the Jewishness of the State attempts have been made to limit the influence of Palestinians, generally seen as undermining the stability, security and the democracy of Israel. In 2014, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu introduced a bill to the Knesset, which for the first time defined Israel as the ‘nation-state of the Jewish people’, which although clearly meant a ‘conflict between democratic standards and Jewish national privileges’ (New Yorker, 2014), was looked upon as the necessary compromise to protect the self-determination of Jews and thus ensure their survival.
The coalition government split over the question and early elections were called in 2015 to resolve the deadlock. During the campaign the discourse gained its final shape with the conceptualisation of Israeli-Palestinians as a fifth-column threatening the peace of the Jews. Benjamin Netanyahu himself warned on elections day that “The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are heading to the polling stations in droves” also pointing out that “Left-wing NGOs” were “bringing them in buses.” (Guardian, 2015). Consequently, the eventual success of Netanyahu and his (far) right-wing partners, such as Avigdor Lieberman who suggested beheading Israeli-Arabs ‘betraying’ the idea of a Jewish national state (Forward, 2015), brought a permission of unlimited hawkishness in the protection of Jewish national interest and thus Israel’s very existence. In that spirit, the Israeli government has strengthened its settlement efforts in the West Bank, continued to assist settlers in violence against Palestinians (Middle East Monitor, 2018) and prepares a ‘creeping annexation’ of territories (Al Jazeera, 2018). The Knesset also passed its first vote on the Jewish Nation-state Bill (Haaretz, 2017b) and just recently adopted legislation to allow the Minister of Interior to strip residency of Palestinians in Jerusalem under suspicion of ‘breaching loyalty’ to Israel (Al Jazeera, 2018).
Violence became universal, total, and structurally inflicted, preventing Palestinians from fulfilling some of their basic needs (Galtung, 1969) as described by the 2011 Inequality Report of Adalah, only to have intensified since then. All of this is legitimised by the discourse that claims sustained violence to be the just and only way to protect a Jewish Israel and its democracy, as well as the only way to achieve peace with the Arabs and Palestinians.
But is it really?
Unmasking the Ethno-Nationalist Choice: War above Peace “The tendency towards conflict is in the essence of the Arab. He is an enemy by essence. His personality won’t allow him any compromise or agreement.... His existence is one of perpetuate war.” – Ben Zion Netanyahu, 2009
Besides the right intention and just cause, Just War Tradition advanced two further substantive criteria for the use of violence: proportionality and last resort (Bellamy, 2006). Upon closer inspection, even if we accept that the discourse provides sufficient evidence of the fulfilment of the first two principles, it is strikingly obvious that the last two are not respected. The absence of proportionality is most apparent in large-scale military operations, such as Operation Protective Edge in which Israel sustained 73 casualties, 6 civilian (Ynet, 2018), while 2,251 Palestinians were killed, 1,462 of them civilians, alongside the destruction of more than 18,000 housing units (UN, 2015). The fulfilment of the last resort criterion is by nature debatable, nevertheless, it is hard to deny that the exercise of ‘structural violence’ (Galtung, 1969) as a means of deterrence, presumably ‘to effect lasting change in Arab attitudes’ (Netanyahu, B., 1993: 293) is in strong contravention of the norm and points to motivations beyond self-defence.
The infliction of violence upon Palestinians – collectively – suggests the presence of a robust ethno-nationalistic undertone. Their classification as a threat to Israel by their very existence is built on the assumption of Palestinians’ ‘uniformity in human experience’ and the consequent denial of a ‘pluralism of identities’ among them (Jabri, 1996: 140), which excludes the possibility of any non- anti-Zionist Palestinians. Such an openly racist and generalising assumption however challenges legitimacy of the entire discourse. That is not to deny that Israel has the right to meet security challenges posed by some Palestinians.
It is to say that not all Palestinians pose a threat to Israel, and by falsely claiming so the extreme ethno- nationalist-dominated Israeli government (Feinstein and Ben-Eliezer, 2018) abuse the fear of people to set up a ‘discourse of exclusionist protection against a constructed...enemy...deserving of any violence perpetrated against it’ (Jabri, 1996: 133). They do so in pursuit of their objective of ‘purifying Israel’, ultimately seducing the Jewish people into the crime of ethnic cleansing – just as it happened in the case of the soldier who executed ‘Abd al-Fatah a-Sharif. And crucially, by cultivating an ethno-nationalistic discourse of violence they put their just cause, Israel’s protection in jeopardy. In fact, they are likely to lose their democracy, part of their Jewishness, as well as the hope for negotiated peace, unless all that have been lost already.
First of all, the increasingly systemic discrimination against Palestinians both within Israel and in the occupied territories severely damages the claims Israel has to a liberal and democratic character. Examined against the five criteria set by Robert A. Dahl for a polyarchy – or realistic democracy (1989: 221, 222) today’s Israel would certainly not qualify due its explicit and self-imposed inability to ensure the inclusivity of political processes. On the most basic level, this is supported by the fact that while 20 percent of Israel’s citizens are Palestinian, their fundamental right to equal treatment is not protected constitutionally (Adalah, 2011). A further “hint” is tendency: under the prime ministership of Benjamin Netanyahu the number of enacted laws discriminating against Palestinians could rise from 34 in 2008 to 70 in 2017 September (Adalah, 2016 and 2017). Such legislation includes a new “Anti-Terror” Law (2016), which allows the suppression and criminalisation of political action against Israeli policies under vague definitions of terrorism; an NGO “Foreign Funding” Law (2016), targeting non-governmental organisations, mostly human rights agencies criticising the government (OHCHR, 2016); as well as the Settlement Regularisation Law (2017), which legalises the expropriation of private Palestinian land in the West Bank further deepening the inequality gap between settlers who can only be tried in Israeli civilian courts and Palestinians, who fall under the jurisdiction of military courts working with a 99.74 percent conviction rate (Haaretz, 2011) and therefore lack the means to appeal against the confiscation of their private property. Yet, the ethno-nationalist and anti-democratic undercurrent of these laws is still best captured by the 2017 ‘Basic Law: The Knesset – Expansion of Grounds for Disqualifying Candidates from Knesset Elections’, which absurdly allows the disqualification of candidates and entire political parties should they dare to question the ‘Jewish and democratic’ character of the State of Israel (Adalah, 2017).
The introduction of discriminatory, even apartheidist measures shall prompt us to acknowledge that if it hitherto did not, now Israel undoubtedly deserves to be characterised as an ‘ethnocracy’ (Yiftachel, 1999) as opposed to a ‘democracy’. Interestingly, this development also harms the country’s Jewish heritage, which in fact is not plainly anti-Palestinian. Although Zionism always had radicals as the revisionists who advocated for the use of all means necessary (including violence) until all the land was Jewish they did not constitute a majority. Initially, Zionism based itself on strong moral foundations and fairness towards the people who inhibited the land of Palestine. Such intention is highlighted in the 1919 agreement between Prince Faisal and Chaim Weizmann, then President of the Zionist Organisation and later first President of Israel, which declared that ‘the Arab peasant and tenant farmers shall be protected in their rights’ and in addition to that ‘assisted in forwarding their economic development’ (Faisal and Weizmann, 1919). David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel too stated that ‘[b]y no means and under no circumstances are the rights of...[Palestinians]...are to be infringed upon’ (Ben-Gurion, 1973 [1918]: 7) and that ‘Palestinian Arabs would not be sacrificed so that Zionism might be realised’ (Ben-Gurion, 1973: 20), excluding the possibility of ousting or unequal treatment. This attitude of justice was strongly reflected in the adoption of Hebrew too as the cornerstone of Israeli culture, for the language was looked upon as an anchor to morality, which endowed its users with the ability to impartially approach questions of ethics and to refrain from the ‘use of violent means in resolving human conflicts’ (Chowers, 2017: 362). Evidently, the ethno-nationalist discourse of violence deviates from this understanding, and with it denies this important part of Israeli heritage and potentially sentences peace to death.
Indeed, the more ethnicity is stressed, the higher is the inclination for making war (Ben-Israel, 1992). Tragically, in a ’spiral process’ the discourse proposes the achievement of peace by actively opposing it, then in its struggle against it, it triggers war, which generates acceptance of its illiberal messages (Feinstein and Ben-Eliezer, 2018) leading to further radicalisation and the reproduction of violence. The parallel discourses that could challenge the narrative fall victim to the Orwellian policing of expression enforced by the ethno-nationalist government. Consequently, the pluralism of thought gets impaired and the idea rejected that one object can look different from various angles, rendering the construction of a ‘transformative, critical discourse on peace’ (Jabri, 1996: 140) impossible. This, combined with the ethnically constructed inequality of Jewish and Palestinian identities prevents a de- escalation of conflict in its perpetuation of the ‘sense of authority and entitlement rooted in disparity by which violence may be justified’ (Montes, 2012). Moreover, it even prompts ‘the other’ to mount its counter-violence.
Co-constitutive Nightmares: Hamas and Israeli Ethno-Nationalism
“Which came first: the chicken or the egg?”- Plutarch
According to Vivienne Jabri, social identities are always subject to both ‘selection and contestation’ (1996: 133) and are not immanent, rather drawn from the supply of interpretive possibilities available to the agents in each society (Fraser, 1992: 52). Therefore, it may be assumed that if the number of interpretive possibilities is decreased, identities will shift, and the distribution of agents will get more concentrated accordingly. If we marry that assumption with the previously introduced idea that in conflicts ethno-nationalists construct diabolical enemies with re-written histories, it can be presumed that by circumscribing and enforcing the conception of the ‘us’ or ‘ingroup’ and the view of the mythically evil ‘other’ or ‘outgroup’ (Tajfel, 1974) the interpretive possibilities available to the agents are reduced. In the case of Israeli ethno-nationalism this means none other than describing Palestinians and limiting their possibilities (by means discussed in the previous section) until they have no other choice but to become the terrorists they are depicted as. In that sense, terrorism and specifically Hamas is a product of ethno-nationalism – in fact, a mirror-effect of the most radical voices in Israeli politics. Determining which came first would be an effort in vain; it makes no practical difference to the fact they co-constitutively perpetuate and strengthen each other’s existence.
Both sides try hard to re-write the history in their favour by targeting messages to the ingroup about the supposed historical crimes of the outgroup, which in turn can strengthen the belonging of the ingroup and alienate it from the ‘others’. For example, this March former Hamas leader Mustafa al- Lidawi accused Jews who lived in Europe of preparing pastry with the blood of non-Jews for their Purim holiday celebrations (Jerusalem Post, 2018) and stated that their ‘mentality...have not changed. For they fashioned their joy from the blood of others...and base their happiness on the sorrow of others’. As ridiculous the suggestion may seem, together with the flood similar accusations it really creates the common perception among Palestinians that Jews thrive on violence, especially against them. As previously quoted, the very same assumption is made on the Israeli side: Palestinians are ‘predisposed to violence and strife’ (Netanyahu, B., 1993: 238)’ – and sometimes in equally outlandish terms, as in the case of the story of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who gave the idea of the Holocaust to Hitler, at least according to Prime Minister Netanyahu (CNN, 2015).
Messages are addressed to the outgroup too, often in expressions of hate. In a 2011 sermon, by 'Atallah Abu Al-Subh, former Hamas Minister of Culture told worshippers that ‘Allah will kill the Jews in the hell of the world to come, just like they killed the believers in the hell of this world’ (Al- Aqsa TV, 2011). Direct threatening with violence is also fairly common, as illustrated by the remarks of Dr. Mahmud Al-Zahar, former leader of Hamas: ‘Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated and degraded’ (Washington Times, 2006); or the recent declaration of a ‘day of rage’ and a call to arms by current Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (Reuters, 2017) in response to the United States’ decision to accept Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the Jews. Israeli ethno-nationalists too sent similar messages. Avigdor Lieberman, the incumbent Defence Minister of Israel in a 2002 Knesset debate suggested that he would ‘notify the Palestinian Authority that tomorrow at 10 in the morning we would bomb all their places of business in Ramallah’ (The Week, 2009). In 2013, Naftali Bennett, now Minister of Education and then Minister of Economy, proposed that terrorists should be immediately killed upon capture. When confronted with the illegality of such conduct he simply remarked: ‘I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life – and there’s no problem with that.’ (+972, 2013).
The impact of these expressions of brutality is so that the outgroup upon learning of them receives confirmation of the allegations delivered to it by its own side’s ingroup-oriented messages. Sadly, this results in an ever-sharper polarisation of these communities, since those who would opt out of the conflict find themselves in a no-man’s-land, which offers no identity except universal hate: from the outgroup the hate towards ‘the other’, from the ingroup the hate towards ‘the traitor’. When people are pushed to the point that physical violence is committed it just further strengthens division. That is how Hamas and Israeli ethno-nationalists become co-constitutive nightmares, that is how they sustain the discourse of the need for violence. Conclusion
This essay has described how ethno-nationalists nurture a discourse of the need for violence as the only way for Israel to exist as a ‘Jewish and democratic state’ in peace. Ironically, it has also revealed that the impact of the said discourse contributes immensely to unattainability of such objectives. The notion of promoting violence as just self-defence is promptly destroyed by the observed disproportionality in the use of force and structural violence against Palestinians, which highlights the true, apartheidist colours of the discourse. By its encouragement of unequal treatment and racially-driven social division it severely damages the democratic character of Israel, and even harms part of Jewish heritage, the tradition of justice rooted in the strong moral character of Hebrew, which envisioned friendship with the Arabs. Through these developments the discourse jeopardises the survival of Israel. By dividing the people into ‘us’ and ‘others’ and inciting conflict between them the discourse fuels a process of alienation that reproduces violence and pushes peace further away. In the end, the manifestations of this conduct and the reactions to it – terrorist organisations, radical settler colonies, hate groups – become the ‘facts’ that justify violence against each other – and all those in attendance find themselves within a vicious circle in which only the discourse thrives. It then may be asked: cui prodest? The answer is: solely the creators of the discourse, the ethno-nationalists whose power grows as surging violence drives votes into their ballots – and it will remain so until their cycle is broken, until voices of reason arise to match their hate.
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The sources of quotes: Benjamin Netanyahu, 2006: http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-1000122795 Ben Zion Netanyahu, 2009: http://www.promisedlandblog.com/?p=803 Plutarch: https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/p/plutarch/symposiacs/complete.html#section15