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The spirit of left Zionism, which was strong enough to build a country, has receded to the margins of Israeli politics. Can it be revived?
With a counter-argument by Joshua Leifer [...'Outside of Israel, liberal Zionists’ support for the two-state solution became support for an illiberal and violent status quo. And this status quo is not stasis, but rather the steady increase of settlers and settlements, and periodic bombardment and devastation whenever Israel decides to “mow the lawn.” Claiming to speak from the left, liberal Zionists presented a choice: Hamas or Israel. “We should choose Israel,” Michael Walzer wrote in the New Republic, “because Israel is a democracy where it is possible to imagine the political defeat of the rightwing nationalists who are now in charge . . .” However, as long as Israel maintains its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, depriving millions of people of the right to vote in the country whose army controls their lives, Israel is not a democracy. And while it is possible to imagine the defeat of the right-wing nationalists, that does not mean such a defeat is likely to happen soon, or that the left should support their government in the meantime. One of the ironies of the situation is that by failing to insist on ending the occupation as a prerequisite to any eventual solution, liberal Zionists have probably made their coveted two-state solution unattainable while at the same time strengthening the right-wing and religious nationalists. [...] The left must move beyond the aging liberal Zionists and the false binary they present, and embrace a post-Zionist politics. This means exchanging the tired language of self-determination for the language of civil rights, and recognizing that nonviolent resistance to the occupation must continue, even without negotiations or a final status agreement on the horizon. It is impossible to predict what any resolution might look like, but no resolution will be possible without an end to the occupation of the West Bank and siege of Gaza. P - There are already activists and organizations in Israel putting this post-Zionist politics into practice. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/toward-post-zionist-left .
Susie Linfield ▪ Fall 2015
Kibutz ceremony, 1951 (Wikimedia Commons)
The very posing of this question is profoundly dispiriting. It shows how bad (that is, not left-wing) the political situation of contemporary Israel is; how radically the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has deteriorated; and how historically ignorant and blindly anti-Israeli today’s American left is.
The short answer is: yes, of course. Zionism has been Leninist, social-democratic, liberal, secular, pacifist, anti-imperialist, proletarian, even, until this became impossible, binational. It has also been militaristic, authoritarian, bourgeois, racist, religious, messianic, imperialist, and neofascist. Edward Said got it exactly wrong when he described Zionism, and Israelis, as “ruthlessly single-minded.” In fact, Zionism was one of the most ideologically disputatious movements in modern history; even today, this is still true. The Israeli Knesset can be described in many ways, but single-minded it is not.
What is Zionism, which has become such a maligned term? It is support for the political self-determination of, and a sovereign state for, the Jewish people. What is left-wing Zionism? Domestically, being left-wing in Israel is pretty much the same as being left-wing anywhere else: it means supporting workers’ rights, ethnic and gender equality, a fair distribution of wealth, the rule of law, and democratic political participation for all. But in Israel, the old adage that all politics are domestic is decidedly untrue. In foreign affairs, left-wing Zionism is the support for a viable, independent Palestinian state alongside an Israeli one. The difference between left-wing and right-wing Zionists is that leftists view Israel’s occupation of the West Bank as the tragic, self-inflicted negation of Zionism, while rightists regard it as Zionism’s jubilant culmination. The great irony is that left-wing anti-Zionists share the right’s view, though without the jubilation.
In its early decades Israel combined socialist, or social-democratic, politics with democratic freedoms. It was a poor and deeply egalitarian country; it was the praxis of left-wing Zionism. As Fred Halliday wrote, until 1967 “Israel enjoyed enormous authority, not so much as a close ally of the west, which at that time it was not . . . but as the site of an experiment in socialist economics and living.” But Israel has changed. Like so many countries, including the United States, Israel’s economic structure has gravitated over the last several decades toward neoliberalism and grossly increased inequality, though many accomplishments of the social-democratic era remain. Politically, there has been a horrific rise in racism and Jewish terrorism against Palestinians, a steep decline in secularism and recognition of the secular state’s authority, and enactment of ominous laws restricting dissent.Developments on the foreign front have been nothing short of disastrous: they include the ravenous theft of Palestinian land for the construction of more and more settlements, the grotesque terrorism of the Second Intifada, the demise of Oslo, the roadblocks, the rise of Hamas and the blockade of Gaza, the political failures of the Palestinian Authority, and the fragmentation and disarray of the Palestinian movement. Perhaps worst of all, for many Israelis the occupation has been “normalized.”
In this dismal context, the real question is: can left-wing Zionism, on both the domestic and foreign fronts, be revived?
Frankly, it is hard, at this juncture, to see how. As we Americans know, it is tremendously difficult to restore a social safety net once it has been weakened; even more difficult is reversing capital’s almost inexorable drive toward economic polarization. On the international front, the situation in the surrounding region is terrifying: in only the last five years, we have witnessed the disintegration of Syria and parts of Iraq, the rise of al-Nusra Front and ISIS, a virtual war in the Sinai between Islamists and Egypt’s repressive military government, the auto-destruction of Libya, the creation of millions of new refugees (most of whom, like refugees all over the world, will not have any “right” of return), the strengthening of Hezbollah, two wars between Israel and Hamas, and the increasingly imperial role of Iran. Not surprisingly, the radical disintegration of the region encourages Israelis to seek stability, not change.
This does not mean that an end to the occupation is any less necessary. I agree with Israeli liberals, humanists, and leftists who argue that, unless the occupation ends, Israel is committing suicide by destroying its phenomenal achievements, betraying its democratic values, and dooming future generations to perpetual war. The barrier to ending the occupation is the lack of political will, not the number of settlers. At the same time, Israelis who fear that a Palestinian state on the West Bank will become a Hamastan (or worse) are far from alarmist, much less necessarily right-wing. This is Israel’s thorny dilemma, which it has been completely unable to solve.
As for Gaza, no one—not the Israelis, the Palestinian Authority, the Egyptians, the other Arab states, and certainly not the “international community”—wants responsibility for it, Turkish flotillas notwithstanding. Groups even more irredentist and religiously crazed than Hamas, such as Islamic Jihad and even ISIS, are reportedly gaining traction in Gaza. Please do not identify these groups as “to the left” of Hamas: there is nothing remotely leftist about them.
---- [Insert: Analysis How Iran Really Sees the Israel-Hamas War
"Israel-Hamas war live: Gaza becoming a ‘graveyard for children’, UN chief says; 10,000 Palestinians killed, says Gaza health ministry "How Netanyahu's Hamas policy came back to haunt him — and Israel"
Tehran’s relationship to the conflict is not nearly as straightforward as its rhetoric suggests.
By Sina Toossi, a senior nonresident fellow at the Center for International Policy. [...] The Iranian government has long tried to co-opt the Palestinian struggle as a means of legitimizing its own ideology and policies, both domestically and regionally. However, this strategy has faced increasing challenges in recent years, as many Iranians have grown disillusioned with their government’s interventions abroad and its repression at home.
The nationwide protest movement that erupted after the death .. https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/11/01/iran-protests-gen-z-mahsa-amini-social-media/ .. of Mahsa Amini in custody last year was a clear sign of the widespread discontent and frustration of many Iranians with their political and economic situation. Many Iranians continue to voice their opposition to their government’s support for Hamas and Hezbollah, chanting, “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon—we sacrifice our lives for Iran.”
But the picture is not so simple among many pro-democracy activists, both inside and outside Iran. Many have quickly denounced the United States and Europe for their double standards. For instance, veteran human rights activist Emadeddin Baghi sharply censured .. https://www.alef.ir/news/4020801084.html .. the United States, saying that “their priority is politics and the instrumental use of democracy and human rights … they label any regime in opposition to them as terrorists and anti-democratic.”
Several letters from prominent Iranian civil society figures, activists, political prisoners, and human rights activists have also appeared. One, from a group of dissident religious intellectuals, criticized .. https://www.zeitoons.com/112445 .. both the “Iranian government” and “Western governments,” stressing the importance of human rights and rejecting double standards. The signatories stated, “The ever-open and bleeding wound of the Palestinian occupation has hindered the spread of modern and conciliatory Islamic discourse.”
Another letter, which included activist Taghi Rahmani, the husband of imprisoned Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi, condemned .. https://www.akhbar-rooz.com/220893/1402/08/01/ .. calls for war against Iran, warning it would destroy the country and weaken the legitimate struggle of the Iranian people for democracy and peace. A third letter from well-known Iranian writers, poets, and journalists condemned the Islamic Republic, Hamas, and Israel, advocating .. https://www.radiozamaneh.com/786296 .. for a third approach grounded in “humanitarianism, equality, justice, and peace.”
Iran’s media outlets and publications have also expressed diverse views, though most are vehemently anti-Israel. For example, conservative analyst Hossein Rajaei, writing for Alef, argued that the issue of Israel has become the “Achilles’ heel of Western civilization, exposing the falsehood of their liberal claims.” He criticized Western governments for turning a blind eye toward Israel’s actions and supporting dictatorships in the Middle East, “knowing that no democracy in this region will tolerate Israel.”
In the midst of this mess, what should be the goal of the U.S. left? Two strategies have been adopted, neither of which has the slimmest chance of ending the occupation or strengthening an Israeli left. The first is the overpublicized Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement (BDS), which seeks to turn Israel into an international pariah. BDS is righteously anti-imperialist in its rhetoric, but I challenge anyone to show how it has improved the life of even one Palestinian. (The boycott is opposed by the Palestinian Authority.) Leftists should stop nostalgically reliving the glory days of the South African struggle and deal, dare I say, with the facts on the ground of the actual Israeli-Palestinian, and Israeli-Arab, conflict. (Hamas and Hezbollah are not the African National Congress.) The boycott is, paradoxically, a gift to Netanyahu: it feeds directly into his demagogic narrative that “the whole world is against us.” BDS will not threaten, shame, pressure, or pauperize Israelis into giving up the settlements; on the contrary, it will, if anything, move more of them further to the right. But why worry about such details?
The other proposal is for the creation of one state that would encompass present-day Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. This entity would presumably be binational and democratic and even, in some versions, socialist. The one-state solution was, in fact, the position of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) for many years. But the envisioned state would not be binational: it would be Arab. (The PLO, unlike some present-day one-staters, was quite honest about this, as is Hamas.) It would not be democratic, since it could only be maintained at the point of a gun. It would certainly not be either secular or socialist.
Most of all, the attempt to create such a state would result in savage violence; the civil wars in Lebanon and Bosnia would pale in comparison. History teaches us that, after this, reconciliation between the two peoples would be even less, rather than more, possible. (See under: Yugoslavia.) The notion that a unified, functioning, even trivially democratic state could be built on such a basis—crushing together two peoples who, for good reason, have amassed a capacious store of mutual distrust and even hatred—is profoundly ahistoric and anti-materialist. It is bewildering that leftists subscribe to it. I once asked a Jewish-Israeli academic, a strong proponent of a one-state future, what kind of legal and political institutions, educational system, and foreign policy such a state would have. “Well, it’s not exactly practical, but it’s a good idea,” he rather sheepishly replied.
The task for American leftists is to support democratic, anti-occupation, two-state groups in any ways we can, including publications, conferences, visits, and, where appropriate, donations (even if we can’t match Sheldon Adelson). There are numerous such organizations, from the well-established New Israel Fund to smaller ones like Ta’ayush (in Arabic, “Living Together”) and Women Wage Peace, all of whose members include Arabs and Jews. What we, and the Israeli Left, need is more engagement, exchange, information, creativity, and honest debate, not the frosty, pristine isolation of boycotts. As the Israeli scholar and longtime anti-occupation activist David Shulman recently wrote, “We have work to do. Holding on to hope is part of that work. . . . In the end, the alliance between moderates and activists on both sides may turn out to be as strong, or stronger, than the unspoken blood alliance of Netanyahu with Hamas, Hezbollah, and ISIS. We will have many opportunities to test this proposition.” But to do this—to find ways of forging real bonds of solidarity, rather than indulge in BDS’s vilification or the one-staters’ fantasies—you have to believe that Israel is something worth fighting for rather than a candidate for elimination.
The one good thing about the contemporary Middle East’s chaos is its wild unpredictability. Surprising things will keep happening for a long time to come; as a leftist Israeli friend said to me recently, “You never know!” My friend, a former Communist and longtime supporter of Meretz, is heartbroken about the political situation in Israel. Yet he said this with a robust laugh. The spirit of left Zionism, which was strong enough to build a country, is still there; so is a center that has little sympathy for the settlers. You never know.
Susie Linfield is the author of The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence (University of Chicago Press, 2010), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her reconsideration of Hannah Arendt’s relationship to Zionism will appear in the winter issue of Salmagundi.
This article is part of Dissent’s special issue of “Arguments on the Left.” To read its counterpart, by Joshua Leifer, click here.
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