Opinion | Racism Is Part of the DNA of This Place

Israel's parliament, the Knesset, in June.Credit: Ohad Zwigenberg

The wailing and mudslinging and accusations began as soon as the results of the first exit polls were reported. Merav Michaeli is to blame, all those who voted ideologically rather than “strategically” are to blame, and of course – those ingrates, the Arabs, are to blame. Because of them, Benjamin Netanyahu, a man who has done and will continue to do everything possible to get his criminal trial canceled, is returning to power, with the Kahanist Itamar Ben-Gvir and the messianic racist Bezalel Smotrich by his side.

Make no mistake: The 14 Knesset seats claimed by messianic Kahanism is dreadful news, even if it was foreseeable. Less understandable is the feigned surprise and search for scapegoats on the losing side.

We should not be surprised by the rise of an ultra-extremist right like the “New Zionism.” Not only because an ideological vacuum – whether you call it “Anyone but Bibi” or a “centrist party” – is no alternative to a solid ideology, which is exactly what the ultra-extremist right has to offer; not only because the camp that calls itself “center-left” in Israel is by and large a privileged bourgeois group that ignores the weaker parts of society; and not only because a violent thug like Itamar Ben-Gvir, who should never have been issued a gun, became a darling of the media studios.

What happened in this election, and essentially in the other elections of the past decades in which Israel shifted rightward, is that the racism that’s built into Zionism came back to bite its adherents in the ass. You simply can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Remains of 20 structures destroyed by Israeli authorities in the Bedouin village of Al-Araqib in the Negev, in 2014.Credit: Ilan Assayag

You can’t call yourself “left” but grant or deny rights based on ethnicity; you can’t bemoan rightists’ backward views on LGBT and women’s issues but justify built-in inequality toward Palestinians both in the territories and within the state’s borders; you can’t talk about peace but continually back the mighty and holy army without any doubt whenever there’s another pointless operation or official whitewashing of a shooting incident; you can’t talk about peace and ignore Al-Araqib, and Dahamsh, and the 36 unrecognized villages (or, for that matter, the Mizrahi, working class Ha’argazim and Hatikva neighborhoods in Tel Aviv facing eviction, and the despicable deal in which Ron Huldai and Yitzhak Tshuva erased what until recently was Givat Amal).

You can’t, because there is no such thing as human rights with an asterisk. Or, you can, but then you can’t call it “left.” When the camp that called itself left started to understand this, many switched to calling it “center,” only to discover that the problem is not just with the branding. It just doesn’t work. Period.

The racism that is so blithely attributed to the right is part of the DNA of this place. The one who raised the electoral threshold deliberately to prevent a fifth of the citizenry from having representation was not Ben-Gvir; it was Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman. The one who called Palestinians a piece of “shrapnel in the buttocks” was not Smotrich; it was Alternate Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. The one who boasted of sending Gaza back to the Stone Age was not far-right Israeli rapper The Shadow, but Defense Minister Benny Gantz; the one who justified the most recent war of choice by saying that Israelis were under siege (so much for irony) was not Orit Strock; it was Transportation Minister Merav Michaeli. And the one who nearly a decade ago coined the ultra-racist term “the Zoabis” was not Yair Netanyahu or his father, but that good Zionist who’s “one of us” – Yair Lapid.

Former Meretz MK Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi and former Meretz leader Nitzan Horowitz, in 2021.Credit: Ohad Zwigenberg

Do you remember how furious they were in Meretz at the rebellious Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi, who dared to vote against the extension of the emergency regulations that effectively permit an apartheid policy – separate legal systems for different ethnic populations – in Judea and Samaria, rather than being ashamed of themselves for voting in favor? Therein lies the story.

Ever since the state’s founding, and certainly since 1967, Zionism has been buffeted by its own internal contradiction. The camp that collapsed in this election continued to trumpet the notion that there is such a thing as “Jewish and democratic.” But if a regime distributes rights – from building permits to citizenship (hello, Law of Return) on the basis of an arbitrary criterion of race, what you have here is racism that is built into the law and poured into the foundations. Call it center or whatever else you want but calling it democratic is simply a lie.

Many in Israel still believe in this lie. They talk about equality and peace and democracy, but the truth is that, in effect, they think that Jews deserve more. Therefore they vote again and again for candidates who rule out the Arab representatives as full partners – they are perfectly fine with that. And they are not in the least perturbed when the court blocks the possibility of full civic equality from even being raised. Once every few years or so, something like the nation-state law happens, and then they cluck their tongues a little, but otherwise they are completely at ease living in a country in which Jewish supremacy is the law. Only now that the Kahanists have suddenly become the third-largest party in the Knesset are they horrified and in shock.

There is no cause for shock. This did not happen suddenly. The people have spoken: In choosing between a right that refuses to be part of a government with “the Zoabis” or unbridled Jewish supremacy, the people prefer the real thing. No masks.

Blaming the insolent Arabs who didn’t do their part to save the country that sees them as a demographic threat is simply embarrassing. If you want to present an alternative to messianic Kahanism, the first thing you need to do is take off the mask and look in the mirror: It’s the Zionism, stupid. As long as we go on justifying legal racism, no matter what the excuse, we are supporting Jewish supremacy just as much as Ben-Gvir. The attempt to deny this is what led us to where we are today. The time has come to take responsibility for this.