{"id":27278,"date":"2018-03-21T11:42:06","date_gmt":"2018-03-21T10:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libmod.de\/?p=27278"},"modified":"2020-03-28T02:47:00","modified_gmt":"2020-03-28T01:47:00","slug":"populist-nativism-of-the-east-west-and-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libmod.de\/en\/populist-nativism-of-the-east-west-and-israel\/","title":{"rendered":"Populist nativism of the East, West and Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The anti-liberal revolt ist not limited to the US and Europe. Tendencies towards an \u2018illiberal democracy\u2019 and ethnic nation\u00adalism can be observed in Israel as well. The Israeli author Dahlia Scheindlin refers to devel\u00adop\u00adments in Poland and Hungary: The defin\u00adition of nation\u00adality by jus sanguinis<\/em>, targeted attacks on the separation of powers and intol\u00aderance towards dissi\u00addents. The ongoing external threat to Israel amplifies tendencies towards a mental national fortress. Yet, the article ends with positive prospects: the stamina of Isreal\u2019s democracy should not be underrated.<\/h2>\n

\u201cConser\u00adv\u00ada\u00adtives in the Western part of Europe dream of a continent where majorities will be the ones shaping society; in the East they dream of a society without minorities and govern\u00adments without opposi\u00adtions,\u201d wrote Ivan Krastev, head of a Bulgarian liberal think tank in a recent essay<\/a> in the New York Times. In the essay, Krastev compares the social movements of 1968 to the surge in right-wing nationalism\/\u200bnativism of 2018 and tries to distin\u00adguish between Western from Eastern populism.<\/p>\n

Israel too has been ruled by a right-wing govern\u00adments that increas\u00adingly traffics in nation\u00adalism or nativism, harangues minorities, dissenting views and migrants.<\/p>\n

What exactly do Israel\u2019s right-wingers \u201cdream\u201d about, relative to the populism spreading through Europe? Is Israeli nativist\/\u200bpopulism more like the Western or Eastern European version?<\/p>\n

The overriding trait of Israel\u2019s populist right is Jewish nation\u00adalism. It is \u201cnativist\u201d in the sense that they perceive Jews as the true and only natives of the land \u2013 this of course is the historic meaning of Zionism throughout its history and policies to ensure a Jewish majority are not new. But, while the Israel\u2019s founding Decla\u00adration of Indepen\u00addence included provi\u00adsions to \u201censure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhab\u00adi\u00adtants irrespective of religion, race or sex\u201c, the new nation\u00adalists seek new ways to actively engineer the Jewishness of Israel through legis\u00adlation and policy.<\/p>\n

One of the first instances began over a decade ago. In 2005, the emerging politician Avigdor Lieberman began floating the idea of redrawing<\/a> Israel\u2019s borders to excise large numbers of Arab citizens, who are a 20% minority in Israel. He called it a population swap or border adjust\u00adments (Israel would annex Pales\u00adtinian areas with Jewish settle\u00adments); but the plan actually entailed ethnic-based forced de-patriation.<\/p>\n

Lieberman\u2019s political star rose, largely due to his open hostility to Arab citizens. His appeal grew beyond his base of former Soviet immigrants and began to peel off votes from Netanyahu\u2019s Likud in the 2009 elections. When the latter formed the government beginning in 2009, it proceeded to advance even more Jewish-exclu\u00adsivist policies \u2013 perhaps in a nation\u00adalist-outbidding cycle. The government under Netanyahu promoted the Jewish nation-state bill to define Israel consti\u00adtu\u00adtionally as Jewish, a \u201cloyalty oath\u201d bill for minorities who were to swear allegiance to a Jewish and democ\u00adratic state, and intro\u00adduced the condition for negoti\u00ada\u00adtions with the Pales\u00adtinians that the latter must recognize Israel as a Jewish state.<\/p>\n

The nativist sentiment and policy engineering recalls Krastev\u2019s version of Orban\u2019s Hungarian, Eastern, nation\u00adalism. \u201c\u2019We do not want to be a diverse country. We want to be how we became 1,100 years ago here in the Carpathian Basin,\u2019\u201d he quotes Orban saying. If Hungary is only for the Magyars, similarly, Israel is only for the Jews. The resonance of this theme is certainly heightened in the context of a protracted ethno-nation\u00adalist conflict with the Pales\u00adtinians, which makes the notions of \u2018us and them\u2019 a matter of daily life.<\/p>\n

Such nativism takes two insidious forms: first, the cultic elevation of the majority identity, and second, venomous attacks on anyone in an outgroup.<\/p>\n

Since roughly 2012, Israeli right-wing officials have led jingo\u00adistic campaigns that are essen\u00adtially incitement against asylum seekers from war-ravaged regions of Eritrea and Sudan. At first, the general anti-immigrant rabble rousing resembled the frustra\u00adtions found in Western Europe as well, in Austria, Germany, Nether\u00adlands \u2013 Western Europe. But it quickly moved to policy directed towards full removal of migrants from Israeli life. Over the next two years Israel built a wall\/\u200bfence to ban those who had crossed the Sinai desert on foot. The number of entries dwindled to near-zero<\/a>. Although Israel is a signatory<\/a> to the Geneva Convention on Refugees and Stateless Persons, policies were imple\u00admented to pressure and encourage them to leave \u2013 the estimated number of African migrants declined from about 65,000 to roughly 40,000<\/a> over the last five<\/a> years.<\/p>\n

Israeli agencies made it hard for them to even submit appli\u00adca\u00adtions for asylum, and the vast majority were never even reviewed. The percentage who were actually granted asylum status is well below one percent \u2013 extremely low relative to the 87% rate for Eritreans recog\u00adnized as refugees, or 63% for Sudanese in the rest of the world. <\/a> Finally, early in 2018, the government has set about to deport them en masse<\/em> to \u201cthird countries\u201d on pain of being imprisoned in Israel\u2019s migrant jails. The government and its consid\u00aderable support base once again rather reflects the Eastern European nativist dream of a society without outsiders.<\/p>\n

Krastev\u2019s essay leaves out a signif\u00adicant distinction between more moderate conser\u00adv\u00ada\u00adtives and far right-wing populism. The former seek to win election and govern. Eastern populists seek to change the rules of the game. In Hungary and Poland populists have their own state insti\u00adtu\u00adtions in their crosshairs. It\u2019s as if they recognize that their anger and fear-driven political aims can only be reached and maintained by force; therefore, they must undermine the indepen\u00addence of the courts, control the media, suffocate civil society, and suppress opposition. The distinction between Western and Eastern here may be artificial \u2013 it could very well be that if the far-right populists actually gained power in the West they would act in similar ways.<\/p>\n

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On this point too, there is little question which version Israel resembles more. Since 2009, Israel has passed laws against political expression (such<\/a> as two separate laws against either Israelis or foreigners who support a boycott<\/a> in protest against Israeli occupation of Pales\u00adtinians) and laws attacking the funding sources of civil society (the NGO law). Right-wing leadership in Israel has become synonymous with weakening and discred\u00aditing the court system for some years; the current Justice Minister openly seeks greater political control over the appointment of judges, hopes to undermine the right of judicial review<\/a> and generally end judicial activism. The national broadcast authority has been shut down and recon\u00adsti\u00adtuted in a less stable version; the Prime Minister himself has boasted<\/a> openly of seeking to close a private television station that is considered a shade more critical of the government.<\/p>\n

Under\u00admining domestic democ\u00adratic insti\u00adtu\u00adtions is the bridge between nation\u00adalist vener\u00adation or attacking outsiders, to attacking insiders \u2013 the liberal or merely critical figures even if they hail from the majority \u201cin-group.\u201d For nearly a decade, human rights organi\u00adza\u00adtions in Israel have come under crippling assault in public discourse. More recently, Israel\u2019s Culture Minister has denounced a prize-winning film made by a Jewish Israeli director, due to the putative critique of the army; the Education Minister banned a book from high school reading lists by a Jewish Israeli novelist, for writing about a Jewish-Arab relationship. The attempt to inhibit people\u2019s opinions and burden the channels for expressing them turns anti-outsider nativism to canni\u00adbalism. Univer\u00adsalists become self-haters; dissenters become traitors.<\/p>\n

In contrast to liberal democ\u00adratic systems that strive to protect the rights of minorities, Netanyahu and closest supporters in government have moved to redefine democracy as an unchecked \u201ctyranny of the majority\u201d. They constantly refer to elections as the only true measure of legit\u00adimacy. They seem to presume that if the masses are unrestrained by pesky insti\u00adtu\u00adtions upholding liberal rights and minority protec\u00adtions, those masses will dependably support their politics of exclusive majority supremacy.<\/p>\n

But what if that assumption turns out to be wrong? If the insti\u00adtu\u00adtions of democracy are under\u00admined, \u201cthe people\u201d might just also step up and prove the populists wrong. On a good day, when tens of thousands of Israelis protest a bill to muzzle the findings of police inves\u00adti\u00adga\u00adtions against the Prime Minister, or to cry out against the depor\u00adtation of migrants \u2013 the people might still be a source of hope.<\/p>\n

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