The State of Israeli Culture & Politics
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The State of Israeli Culture & Politics
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/13/israel-gaza-historian-omer-bartov
We bring you excerpts from a major article in the UK Guardian by respected Israeli American Holocaust scholar, Omer Bartov, He describes what he finds very alarming in Israeli culture and politics on his recent return there.The whole article is very long, and we have excerpted only his conclusions. But we recommend reading the whole essay for its fine-grained and subtle report of emotional and cultural feelings among Israelis.
— AW, ed.
As I headed back to the United States at the end of June, I contemplated my experiences over those two messy and troubling weeks. I was conscious of my deep connection to the country I had left. This is not just about my relationship with my Israeli family and friends, but also with the particular tenor of Israeli culture and society, which is characterised by its lack of distance or deference. This can be heartwarming and revealing; one can, almost instantaneously, find oneself in intense, even intimate conversations with others on the street, in a cafe, at a bar.
Yet this same aspect of Israeli life can also be endlessly frustrating, since there is so little respect for social niceties. There is almost a cult of sincerity, an obligation to speak your mind, no matter who you’re talking to or how much offence it may cause. This shared expectation creates both a sense of solidarity, and of lines that cannot be crossed. When you are with us, we are all family. If you turn against us or are on the other side of the national divide, you are shut out and can expect us to come after you.
This may also have been the reason why this time, for the first time, I had been apprehensive about going to Israel, and why part of me was glad to leave. The country had changed in ways visible and subtle, ways that might have raised a barrier between me, as an observer from the outside, and those who have remained an organic part of it.
But another part of my apprehension had to do with the fact that my view of what was happening in Gaza had shifted. On 10 November 2023, I wrote in the New York Times: “As a historian of genocide, I believe that there is no proof that genocide is now taking place in Gaza, although it is very likely that war crimes, and even crimes against humanity, are happening. […] We know from history that it is crucial to warn of the potential for genocide before it occurs, rather than belatedly condemn it after it has taken place. I think we still have that time.”
I no longer believe that. By the time I travelled to Israel, I had become convinced that at least since the attack by the IDF on Rafah on 6 May 2024, it was no longer possible to deny that Israel was engaged in systematic war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal actions. It was not just that this attack against the last concentration of Gazans – most of them displaced already several times by the IDF, which now once again pushed them to a so-called safe zone – demonstrated a total disregard of any humanitarian standards. It also clearly indicated that the ultimate goal of this entire undertaking from the very beginning had been to make the entire Gaza Strip uninhabitable, and to debilitate its population to such a degree that it would either die out or seek all possible options to flee the territory. In other words, the rhetoric spouted by Israeli leaders since 7 October was now being translated into reality – namely, as the 1948 UN Genocide Convention puts it, that Israel was acting “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part”, the Palestinian population in Gaza, “as such, by killing, causing serious harm, or inflicting conditions of life meant to bring about the group’s destruction”.
These were issues that I could only discuss with a very small handful of activists, scholars, experts in international law and, not surprisingly, Palestinian citizens of Israel. Beyond this limited circle, such statements on the illegality of Israeli actions in Gaza are anathema in Israel. Even the vast majority of protesters against the government, those calling for a ceasefire and the release of the hostages, will not countenance them.
Since I returned from my visit, I have been trying to place my experiences there into a larger context. The reality on the ground is so devastating, and the future appears so bleak, that I have allowed myself to indulge in some counter-factual history and to entertain some hopeful speculations about a different future. I ask myself, what would have happened had the newly created state of Israel fulfilled its commitment to enact a constitution based on its Declaration of Independence? That same declaration which stated that Israel “will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations”.
What effect would such a constitution have had on the nature of the state? How would it have tempered the transformation of Zionism from an ideology that sought to liberate the Jews from the degradation of exile and discrimination and to put them on equal standing with the other nations of the world, to a state ideology of ethnonationalism, oppression of others, expansionism and apartheid? During the few hopeful years of the Oslo peace process, people in Israel began speaking of making it into a “state of all its citizens”, Jews and Palestinians alike. The assassination of prime minister Rabin in 1995 put an end to that dream. Will it ever be possible for Israel to discard the violent, exclusionary, militant and increasingly racist aspects of its vision as it is embraced there now by so many of its Jewish citizens? Will it ever be able to reimagine itself as its founders had so eloquently envisioned it – as a nation based on freedom, justice and peace?
It is difficult to indulge in such fantasies at the moment. But perhaps precisely because of the nadir in which Israelis, and much more so Palestinians, now find themselves, and the trajectory of regional destruction their leaders have set them on, I pray that alternative voices will finally be raised. For, in the words of the poet Eldan, “there is a time when darkness roars but there is dawn and radiance”.