Our Wednesday News Analysis | Judea vs ‘Fantasy Israel: Ilan Pappe on the Collapse of Israeli Pillars and Opportunities for Palestine

Israel's so-called Flag March. (Photo: Nettadi, via Wikimedia Commons)

The future liberated and de-Zionised Palestine may look now as a fantasy, but unlike Fantasy Israel, it has the best chance to galvanize locally, regionally and globally every person with a modicum of decency.

Israel’s legitimacy, in fact, its very viability, rests on two main pillars.

First, the material pillar, which includes its military strength, high-tech capabilities, and a solid economic system.

The above factors enable the state to build a strong network of alliances with countries that would like to benefit from what Israel has to offer: arms, securitization, spyware, high-tech knowledge, and modernized systems of agricultural production.

In return, Israel does not just ask for money but also for support against its eroded international image.

Second, the moral pillar. This aspect was particularly important in the early days of the Zionist project and statehood.

Israel sold to the world a twofold narrative: One, that Israel’s creation was the only panacea for antisemitism, and two, that Israel was built in a place that religiously and culturally belonged to the Jewish people...

Read more: Judea vs ‘Fantasy Israel: Ilan Pappe on the Collapse of Israeli Pillars and Opportunities for Palestine

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ISRAELIS’ DEFIANCE OF NETANYAHU HOLDS A LESSON FOR ANYONE WHO CARES ABOUT DEMOCRACY

Source: The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/28/israelis-benjamin-netanyahu-democracy-protests-donald-trump

By Jonathan Freedland
Published July 28, 2023

Mass protests by ordinary people against the man who was Trumpian before Trump are part of a worldwide struggle

‘They have not allowed the right to denounce them as unpatriotic: they swiftly co-opted the national flag and made it a symbol of dissent.’ A mass protest in Jerusalem against Netanyahu’s judiciary bill on 23 July 2023. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Beware the strongman leader who fears jail. Donald Trump is running for president in part because he sees a return to the White House as a literal get-out-of-jail-free card: reinstalled in the Oval Office, he would be able to pardon himself for the mounting pile of serious federal crimes for which he is indicted. His legal strategy is his political strategy.

But the exemplar of the phenomenon is the man who was Trumpian before Trump: the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. It is Netanyahu – and the war he is currently waging against his own country – whom all those who care about the wider future of democracy should be watching. For Israel has become the test case in the global fight against ultranationalist populism.

On Monday, Netanyahu’s coalition passed a new law curbing the powers of Israel’s judiciary. No longer will the supreme court be able to block the government from taking action the judges deem “extremely unreasonable”. That matters, because in Israel the courts are pretty well the only restraint on government power: there is no second chamber, no established constitution. And Monday’s vote was merely the first in a series of moves designed to gut the power of the judiciary: opponents, who have been out on the streets in huge numbers since January, call it a “judicial coup”...

Read more: Israelis’ defiance of Netanyahu holds a lesson for anyone who cares about democracy

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THE WOUNDED JEWISH PSYCHE AND THE DIVIDED ISRAELI SOUL

Source: Jews for Justice for Palestinians
https://jfjfp.com/the-wounded-jewish-psyche-and-the-divided-israeli-soul/

Yossi Klein Halevi writes in Times of Israel
Published July 28, 2023

Understanding Israel’s moment of truth – from the war on Start-up Nation, to the moral crisis in Orthodox Jewry, to the author’s personal failure of empathy for political opponents

Demonstrators wave large Israeli flags during a protest against the Netanyahu government's overhaul of the judicial system, outside the Knesset in Jerusalem, on Monday, July 24, 2023, as parliament passed the 'reasonableness' law. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

It is 3 a.m. in Jerusalem. These days, that is not an unusual time for me to be awake. Like many Israelis, I have become a political insomniac. The disruption of sleep is a small reflection of the dread so many of us feel for the long-term viability of the Jewish state.

Here, then, in no particular order, are some late-night thoughts on this Israeli moment.

The war on the Start-Up Nation

For me, the most compelling of all the slogans of the democratic movement was imprinted on a giant banner one recent Saturday night at the weekly protest on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv: “Save Our Start-Up Nation.”

Even more than a struggle for democracy, this is a struggle to save the Israeli success story.

The greatest danger to the Start-up Nation is an emigration of despair. In fact, that exit has quietly begun. And if the government continues to fundamentally transform Israel in its image – an alliance of ultra-nationalists, religious fundamentalists and the merely corrupt – we will experience our first ideologically motivated mass flight, among those who connect this country to the global economy and the democratic world.

In one sense, what is happening to Israel is hardly unusual. Populist wars against elites are being waged all over the world. And yet Israel is unique: While other societies can endure a populist wave of resentment and even violent hatred, Israel’s long-term survival in the Middle East depends on maintaining its modernist elite (while expanding the entry points into the elite to ensure greater diversity). The alternative is gradual – or perhaps rapid – descent into a dysfunctional society led by corrupt counter-elites, precisely the scenario modeled by this government...

Read more: The wounded Jewish psyche and the divided Israeli soul