Recently, a new bill was hurriedly passed in the Israeli knesset. The Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People is the latest concoction of Israel’s right-wing Zionist Jewish parties that have dominated Israeli politics for years. With the Israeli ‘Left’ rendered irrelevant, or having itself moved to the Right, the right-wing elements of Israel now reign supreme.
However, since Israel has defined itself by its Jewish identity since its very inception, why is there a need then for a new ‘basic law’?
In fact, how can one, explain the torrent of new bills and newly-passed laws that essentially reiterate Jewish supremacy and dominance and restrict the rights, movement and free speech of Arabs and anti-occupation Jews?
Producing laws through nominally democratic institutions to ensure Jewish majority and the suppression of Arabs and political dissent in general, is nothing new in Israel. However, the constant emphasis on the Jewishness of Israel and the masking of the Palestinian identity are hardly practical tools to guarantee one’s racial and ethnic supremacy.
Such power is already secured through military occupation and a carefully-moulded political system that treats Israeli Jews as first-class citizens and Arabs as an inferior minority.
Indeed, there is another dimension to this story.
In Israel’s increasingly right-wing politics, new laws serve the same purpose as the country’s so-called ‘Separation Wall’ — to cage Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank, to confiscate more Palestinian land and to create new de facto borders that go beyond what the international community recognise as Israel’s official boundaries.
But the Wall serves another purpose entirely. It underscores Israel’s sense of fear and secures an illusory feeling of safety.
Likewise, new laws that reiterate existing notions that are already in practice, help feed into that sense of insecurity and provide that same illusion of safety.
Yet, the reality is that this feeling is only provisional. In fact, it is specifically designed to maintain a state of fear among Israel’s Jewish majority, carrying the burden of the eternal victim on the one hand, while upholding a political system that is inequitable, discriminatory and selectively violent on the other.
Yes, Israelis are very afraid. But unlike occupied and oppressed Palestinians, the Israeli fear is self-induced — an outcome of an inherent sense of collective insecurity that is constantly fed by the government, political parties and official institutions.
In fact, Israel’s Jewish identity was predicated on the fear of the ‘Other’ from the very beginning. Despite Israel’s massive military budget, nuclear arms and territorial expansion at the expense of Palestinians and other Arab neighbours, the sense of insecurity it engenders continues growing at the same rapid speed as its own aggressions.
When Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for example, drew a red line in a graphic of a bomb during a speech at a United Nations General Assembly session in September 2012, he was in essence, inviting a new parameter of fear to his own society.
Netanyahu’s gambit was met largely with disinterest and social media ridicule. However, he helped refocus attention on an old Zionist archetype, the ‘logic’, psychological tools and priorities that seem to operate completely independently of logic, human rights and international law.
Yoav Litvin, a United States-based Israeli doctor of Psychology and Behavioural Neurosciences wrote emphatically on the subject. His article, titled ‘Independence on Nakba Day — Accountability and Healing as an Israeli Aggressor’, critiques the Zionist narrative, explaining how such deeply entrenched ideas of eternal victimisation have led to Israel’s current state of permanent aggression and a highly militarised society. “We see that perspective represented by a long line of pro-aggression, exclusivist, expansionist and militaristic Israeli governments that instil and potentiate fear in order to control public opinion and facilitate their political and economic goals,” he wrote.
“In so doing, the Jewish victim narrative, a form of collective Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, sustains the level of aggression and oppression that is a part of daily life in the reality of occupation.”
Writing in the Israeli daily, Haaretz, Daniel Bar-Tal conveys a similar sentiment. However, for Bar-Tal, the Zionist narrative is itself designed, in part, to accommodate existing beliefs pertaining to a collective Jewish experience.
He writes: “Societal beliefs vis-a-vis security in Israel are based on past experience and on information disseminated via various channels and institutions, whether with regard to the conflict with the Palestinians or to relations with other actors in the region.”
But equally important, “every member of society is also exposed to the collective memory of the Jewish people, by means of social, educational and cultural institutions”.
The Zionist narrative has purposely moulded ‘past experiences’ into new political objectives and an expansionist ideology to harness the perpetual support of the Jewish people — in Israel and elsewhere, convincing them that their very survival is dependent on the subjugation of ‘unruly’ Palestinians. Consequently, for Israel, Palestinian resistance to colonialism and occupation has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Hence, many Israeli Jews and their supporters claim that advocating coexistence in a one-state solution is equivalent to the “destruction of Israel”. It is because they cannot imagine any other formulation of a state that is not predicated on the supremacy of one ethnic group, the Jews, over any other. The Zionist narrative has zero margin for inclusiveness. However, it has ample room for redefending Israel’s borders in any way that suits its territorial objectives.
Partly, this is why Israel never had a constitution, but a set of Basic Laws, because such a document requires a clear definition of the country’s borders. An expansionist state since birth, Israel has postponed the question of borders to a later date.
The Basic Laws have also defined Israel as a Jewish state.
For 70 years, various Israeli governments have used such definitions to discriminate against Palestinian Arabs, denying them access to most of the country’s land, forcing them to live in certain communities, or to abstain from any political organisation that may be deemed dangerous for the Jewish identity of Israel. Those who refused to comply were treated as traitors. In fact, Palestinian citizens have always been treated as third-class citizens.
However, the clustering of Israel’s Right in recent years, the rise of the ultranationalist parties, and the further religionisation of the country’s identity have pushed the scale of discrimination against the Palestinian community in Israel to an all-time high.
Last July, a majority in the Knesset voted in favour of a bill that, in principle, could expel members of Knesset whose views are judged as contrary to those of the majority.
Israel’s odd definition of democracy and relentless attempts to reconcile democracy and racial discrimination, however, are rarely challenged by its American and European allies. To maintain their regressive narrative, Israeli Jews must subsist in endless fears of imaginary threats, even as Palestinians continue to bear the brunt of racism more than ever before.
Dr Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story.
