The ideas of Israel

Hello and welcome to the world in 30 minutes. I'll cast on the events, policies and ideas that will shape the world for the European Council on Foreign Relations. My name is Mark Leonard and I'm Director of ECFR. And today's episode is about the ideas of Israel. In September of last year, Benjamin Netanyahu told Israelis that their country was in a sort of isolation, would need to become a super spatter with an economy of autocratic characteristics and an arms industry able to produce what it needs. This vision of Israel is a long way from the vision of Israel's founders of a secular liberal democracy which was closely tied to the West. In her new web special for ECFR, the ideas of Israel, my colleague Beth Oppenheim argues that a liberal and ethno nationalist forces are remaking Israel in their image and that this shift runs deeper than the election on the 27th of October and is likely to outlast even the seemingly unstoppable and immortal Benjamin Netanyahu. Here to discuss these different competing ideas of Israel which are increasingly shaping not just Israeli domestic politics but also the role that Israel is playing in a Middle East that's going through quite big convulsions. We have an all-star cast. First up is Beth, who is a policy fellow in ECFR's Middle East and North Africa program. She's based in London, but it's just come back from Israel. Down the line from Israel, we have Ariel David, who is doing his PhD at the Hebrew University and he researches religious Zionism and Mizrahi identity and politics. We also have Neri Zilber, who is a journalist and analyst who covers Israel for the financial times, hosts the Israel policy pod and is also an advisor to the Israel policy forum. Warm welcome to all of you. Beth, why don't we start with the kind of question that you set yourself in this web special that you've created. What are the kind of big ideas of Israel which are defining the national identity but also the politics in Israel at the moment? Thanks Mark and thanks for the introduction. I'm super excited to be here for the first time on the ECFR podcast and also with such wonderful colleagues as well. So thanks for the welcome. I guess I'll just start by taking a step back and thinking through. I mean, Israel was founded as a state under a lot of content and ever since the state was founded. And in fact, even before the state was founded, there have been competing ideological forces battling over the state's identity. And in the early decades of the state, its political elites were kind of broadly accepting of the broader of its labor Zionist founders. So a secular Jewish state with kind of liberal democratic aspirations closely aligned with the West. And that is something that we're seeing increasingly contested over the past decades and indeed today we're seeing a very different Israel that's emerging. And you know, this liberal democratic idol was obviously always somewhat flawed, of course, given the military rule over Palestinians in the beginning and the later occupation and settlement of the West Bank in Gaza. And the inequitable treatment of Israel, but nonetheless, this was kind of the self identity that Israel had. But I think we'll be really interesting to speak with the others today about this that over the past years, in liberal ideas that were once really kind of the fringes of Israel's political and religious life has become much more mainstream. And what we've seen manifesting in its utmost form post 2022 with this Betanyahu white and far right government is a hard line religious, nationalist leadership that's pushing for, you know, an increasing role for Jewish law in the state, and also an ultra nationalist vision of a greater Israel that stretches beyond the bounds of the kind of green line as well. And these ideas have gone and become increasingly mainstream, and I'm sure we'll kind of dig into how that's happened. But really this kind of liberal democratic vision is becoming more and more underserved and in place of those ideas, which have kind of weakened over the decades since the founding of the state. We have this increasingly ethno nationalist, liberal vision of how the country should be one that is being advanced by some of these far right nationalist religious nationalist figures, but also increasingly mainstreamed into the kind of mainstream white, and we even see some of these ideas being picked up at the center and even when it comes to issues like the Palestinians, this kind of provision of a more ultra nationalist and hawkish posture. Even among the center left as well. So I'll kind of start there I suppose just by laying out some of those quite seismic shifts that I think we're seeing and that we kind of dig into in the project and try to map out in these different ideological camps. So you talk about these four main camps, the liberal Zionists, the nationalists, the ultra orthodox and the religious nationalists, and some of the big divisions that are taking place on quite fundamental things like the nature of Israeli statehood, what is democracy, what is security, and I want to go into some of those things in the discussion. And then obviously there is as well as these sort of big more structural changes in the imaginaire of Israel, there is a lecture taking place in a few weeks and Netanyahu has become a dividing line of his own with lots of people who are desperate for him to be kept out of power and other people who want to keep him in power. So it would be kind of interesting to to both unpack some of these big ideas, which are going on, but also to see how they play into Israeli politics. On the one hand, we have these these big ideological camps, which Beth was talking about, but the same time we have an election taking place on the 27th of October. Yeah, where there is another question, which is whether people are in favor of against Netanyahu, so how does the kind of day to day politics intersect with this sort of battle of ideas about where about where these different ideas are. Ariel, maybe you can kind of talk a little bit about the intersection of these two things before we go into detail on what it means and different areas. So first I'll say, and I think it's an important context that a lot of these developments that you've been describing can be placed in a very long term arc. We can see these ideas emerging, even in the early 50s and 60s, kind of an opposition to the idea of a Jewish and democratic state. And we see the growth of substantial forces already in the 80s, in the 90s, we can see it in kahanism, in religious fanaticism growing in Israel, we can see it in the very far right opposition to the Austro agreements. And then in the last two decades, you kind of see these forces taking over the mainstream right wing. In the very gradual process, but that has intensified in the last two years, actually, that process is a subject of a book of recently published called the Trojan method, which deals exactly with, let's say, religious far right take over of the mainstream right wing. And when these religious forces kind of take over the mainstream right wing, we see the, all the idea of the camps, let's say the four camps in the sky, you have like liberals, you have nationalists, and then you have the two religious camps, we see kind of, we see sort of the mixing of the camps. The liberal Zionists and part of the national is camp have gathered together in what you, in what people call today the liberal block. And the other part of the national is camp together with the orthodox together with the majority of religious Zionists have kind of used into this faith block, or sometimes they call it the Netanyahu block. So Netanyahu has become kind of a signifier, but it's not like the division of the anti Netanyahu and the pro Netanyahu block is very, very far from let's say a personal measure of the, of the person itself, it's more like two ideological camps, the rediscovering or mapping out their ideological identity from the beginning in the last few years, and Netanyahu is kind of like a signifier that's flying over all of there. So, the elections, It's kind of served as this process that speeds long-term identity processes, because when the right-wing religious parties kind of gained more and more power within the mainstream right-wing bloc, you've seen these secular nationalist parties that you could say, I don't know, Victor Lieberman, the Australian Botanical Party, for example, and the political process has injected these secular nationalists outside of the previous right-wing can, and so you see a very interesting, you rightly called it, an intersection between the electoral politics and the identity politics taking part all over the, in the many political and social spheres, and then you kind of see this very, very large, ethno-nationalist religious surge, and in the other side, you have this camp that, which is a new camp, you can say, this liberal camp, which is also has a surge of its own, you can say that liberal democratic ideas in the pure sense have never had so much influence or grip over the imagination and activism and involvement of so many Israelis prior to the last election. I've even spoke to a research body in Israel that said something along the lines of 10 years ago, we had this kind of research mapping out the various political streams in Israel and what interests the various camps, and one conclusion we came to was that Israelis would never be moved by this kind of petition to the liberal democratic ideals, that the liberal democratic idea in Israel is very, very weak, and to the contrary, you've seen this kind of rising country and gripping, liberal democratic activists and taking beginning in the post after the election of the government, and it's what they call judicial reforms. So we've kind of seen describing it as death as described as this kind of a process in which the ethno-nationalism gradually takes over. I think what you can see here is a kind of a new polarization. You see two new camps, completely new in Israeli politics. The term "saysblock" has only been used in the path to describe the author of parties. And instead of like a process which we can describe as a linear progression of ethno-nationalist ideas, we can see this kind of two new identity polls emerging in Israeli society. And I think because the liberal democratic poll is younger in a sense, it's newer, it only arose in a response to the ethno-nationalist religious poll, then we can see it emerging but like very, very slowly, and the implications are for the elections as well. Like 10 years ago you could never see Naftali Bennett and a Vigdor Liberman sitting together with Dari Golan with all like the labor and marriage parties together calling themselves a political block. This has been impossible to imagine 10 years ago. But now it's like, it's a very normal reality. You can see these nationalist taking sides with the Zionist left and it seems to everyone completely normal because the polls that are defined in Israeli politics have changed very much, which is not very different from what we see in the West, I should add. Well, I'd like to go into more detail on what that polarization means, particularly on these two big topics of kind of democracy and security. But before we do that, we can maybe look at what led to this consolidation of the faith block that you're describing. This is obviously something that you've thought about a lot, Ariel, and you've been looking particularly at the Mizrahi and the role that that identity plays on the right. And I'm just wondering how much of what's happened is a product of demography. Because when I remember when I first went to Israel in the 1980s, it was a very different country to the country it is today. It was still very much dominated by Ashkenazi Jews who came from this much more secular, socialist sort of much more cosmopolitan roots. And obviously, the population of Israel has gone through massive changes over that period of time. And the politics needs to have changed to the extent that that old politics has gone from being dominant to being very much a fringe concern, a tiny bit of even after the secular nationalist block, which is emerging. Well, it's a very good question whether these changes are primarily demographic led or ideologically led, let's say, or agency led. And I think we can differentiate between two layers here. One is definitely you can see wide sociological processes in which new groups, I don't want to say the word enfranchised, but perhaps are mobilizing and have this kind of upward mobility and entered Israel's middle class, upper middle class and its political and social leadership. And definitely what you've described, like the Mizrahi Jews in Israel are, I'll say, the primary group and join that. Like you can see the growth of a very strong Mizrahi middle class in the last four decades. Since the 80s, basically, this has changed like what I don't want to say Israeli society looks like, but even like Israeli mainstream culture or how Israeli elites look like. This is definitely a change that's taking place. And I'll say that even besides the more like classic demographical aspects, it's more like which groups have enjoyed upward mobility and have entered the cultural mainstream. So that's a big part of the process. But I think when we look at the anti-liberal processes and the ethno nationalist surge, this is a process that's primarily ideologically led and agency led. And I think the best example that I give is these processes are primarily manifesting in the mainstream right wing. This is like the main side. And a lot of the leaders of these processes come from religious Zionist sections of Israeli society. And basically, if you look at the democracy, the proportion of religious Zionists in Israeli society has not changed in the last 20 years. Yes, the religious Zionist sections often have more children, but then a lot of their children become secular. Like a lot more people become secular than the other roots in Israeli religious democracy. And so the religious Zionist group has kind of maintained its size in proportion to the overall Jewish population in the last 20 years. But well, despite the fact that its size remained the same, its political influence has drawn tremendously. I think the single most powerful source inside the Israeli right wing and as a result in shaping a lot of the country's trajectory. So I think sometimes when you look at it from the perspective of Israel was once an Ashkenazi led, secular led country, you see a lot of processes that kind of change that old Israel. But I think you can very much differentiate between processes which I can call even some kind of democratization or equalizing processes and processes which take the country into uncelebrial direction, which are kind of very different, they are led by very politically minded actors. Well, the home is rocky upward mobility, which has broad Jewish traditionalism very much into the mainstream was not led by similar actors. There is an intersection though, there is an intersection where this kind of, I will say, the Israel-Nidian Jew which is kind of a secular traditionalist or a very very very light traditionalist, this same ideologically minded religious group, groups, very much see him as their target. Like they've given up on the old secular Ashkenazi elite, and they now say to themselves in a lot of contexts, okay, we are disregarding the entire 30% or 40% of secular Jews. If we can convince the traditionalist center that our version of extremist religion represents what Judaism means, then we're going to win. And I think this is the basis when measuring these processes. Often we can look from the outside and measure the Israeli society versus a liberal democratic index. But Israelis first see themselves first and foremost as Jews. And so the version of democratic ideal that exists or do not exist depends primarily on how they understand their Jewish identity. And it has been a key stone project of the religious right wing since the 80s, since Sahana basically to tell people, listen, Jewish identity is diametrically opposed to democracy. The Jewish democratic mix or formula is nonsense. Democracy or liberal democracy is a threat to Jewish identity. And once this understanding sets in, or if it sets in, then the rest of the democratic liberal debate doesn't really matter. In its essence it's a fight about Jewish identity. So Beth, a lot of your report is kind of looking at some of these kind of big ideas like democracy and state and just statehood, but also that relates to these questions about security. What do you think the kind of main practical consequences of these ideological divisions that we've been talking about are? Thank you. I mean, Ariel's talked quite a bit already about some of the implications for polarization and also, I mean, he alluded to obviously some of the judicial overhaul and the backlash that happened there in terms of liberal Israel and the kind of crystallization of this liberal block in response to the judicial overhaul. And one thing I would maybe just add there on what Ariel said is, I guess one of the kind of limitations of this liberal agenda is, of course, the Palestinian issue. So if you look, if you were at the protest in Israel for the judicial overhaul, that was a very, very small marginal block for that anti-occupation block who would talk about the relationship between the kind of democratic deterioration in Israel and the occupation, but that's not something that's kind of widespread and up for discussion. I wouldn't say within the kind of liberal block, in fact, is very much kind of marginalised as seen as a separate issue. So there are definite constraints and limitations to this kind of liberal agenda, I would say. In terms of other consequences of this wise in these sort of ethno-nationalist forces, obviously this when it comes to sort of foreign policy or security policy, we're seeing it kind of already having very substantial effects. So when it comes to the Palestinian issue, we're obviously a long way away from the kind of Oslo years or late designist conception of land for peace, negotiation, and without going into all of the kind of history of it, which you can also see in the project as a sort of timeline section, which looks at these pivotal moments. But obviously, you know, the failure of Oslo to kind of settle the conflict in any final way, and also the second into further and other events along the way led to a kind of delegitimisation of the land for peace formula of diplomacy. And so the weakening of these quote-unquote liberal forces or the kind of labor Zionists, ideological world view, and the strengthening of these ethno-nationalist ideas, which Arya has said have been kind of promoted also by specifically the hard dial. So the kind of hard line wing of the national religious or the religious Zionist movement has led to the kind of mainstreaming of ideas that were basically once at the fringe, and now have become quite mainstream. So things like the expulsion of Palestinians called "transfer" or, you know, sometimes branded as quote-unquote "voluntary migration," says something that we've seen going mainstream. And of course, this is intersected with October the 7th. We can't not mention October the 7th when we're thinking about Israeli politics or Israeli public opinion. It didn't create these ethno-nationalist currents or sentiments, but of course, it gave a huge boost to those sentiments in the kind of traumatic wake of October the 7th. So these things are translating into policies on the ground under this government. So from the West Bank to Gaza, from Israel's conducting Gaza during the war, and the kind of resort to force or, you know, overwhelming force. And more widely, when it comes to the regional picture, again, this is something that we've seen Netanyahu pushing post-opts over the 7th in his attempt to, I guess, claw back his credibility after being, you know, the incumbent Prime Minister during the worst security disaster since the founding of the state. He has kind of pushed this hyper-aggressive new security doctrine, which goes back to Javitinsky in his eye and will see this early days, you know, before the founding of the state. And this is a kind of revisionist idea that was pushed by Javitinsky of the only way to secure Israel would be to use overwhelming military force that would then lead to an acceptance by the Arab world of Israel's existence. So this is a kind of long-standing tenet of liquid and before that herald, you know, foreign policy. But Netanyahu took this to a new extreme post-opts over the 7th, and we're seeing that translated now into Israeli policy on the ground. So what Israel calls buffer zones, but clearing, clearing territory close to Israel's borders. So obviously in Gaza, but also Lebanon and Syria using overwhelming force and very worryingly also this complete rejection of diplomacy or almost complete rejection of diplomacy and diplomatic openings, which is, as I said, both a kind of domestic positioning of Netanyahu post-opts over the 7th, but also I guess a reflection of the electoral reality or kind of a coalition reality he was in because of how polarizing he's become. He's in coalition with the far right, and that has been a constraint on his ability to explore any diplomatic avenues during this government. So there is a kind of convergence of personal political interests here, but also far deeper ideological currents. So I think we're seeing already the ways in which this rising of ethanol nationalist forces in the weakening of the more liberal ones is already translating into a more belligerent regional policy. And just one more thing to add here is that that vision is not really being convincingly contested by the opposition. And that's something that is something I'm watching ahead of the election and that I kind of analyzed for this project is that there's very little compelling or robust alternatives being spelled out by opposition parties, other than either criticizing Netanyahu for not going far enough, or sometimes criticizing him for not exploring diplomatic avenues as well as using military force, but there's no real alternative being offered right now within the Israeli political landscape. So now why don't you expand a bit on that and tell us what like, A, why does Eisencock, for example, and the kind of parties in this new block that you were describing? Why aren't they contesting these sort of ethno nationalist ideas of greater Israel? Why is that not part of their agenda of democracy? Why don't they talk about those types of issues? Because they think it helps them politically. They believe that the public is not ready to engage on issues like two-state solution, even re-engagement on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and so it's an issue really of being led by what they believe to be public opinion, and in some cases there is a lot of truth behind that, especially in the aftermath of October 7th. But really being afraid of Netanyahu's attacks on them as weak leftists, people who should not be tasked with protecting Israel, and so they're trying to appealed to the consensual issues in Israeli society as they perceive it, like conscripting the ultra-ethodox into the military, which even cuts across, say, left-wing liberal democratic Israel and even elements of the right wing, the nationalist right, and even voters for Netanyahu and even prosettler parties. That's an issue that cuts across the political ideological divide. You have the issue of establishing even the basic state commissative inquiry into the October 7 attack, so those types of issues are what they're trying to win the upcoming election on and not say get involved in bigger and more future oriented discussions and debates over what Israel should actually be. Now, the issue of liberal democracy in Israel, as Ariel and Beth mentioned, really came to the fore in early 2023 at the beginning of this current Netanyahu government's term, and it really cut across all ideological divides, and that wasn't a given when the Netanyahu government launched their program, essentially a power grab to undermine the power of the judiciary and other checks and balances on executive power here. You had people from all across the Israeli political and ideological spectrum come out against. Now, I was on the streets as Beth was observing those protests, and I was surprised because you could have in a different context in a different climate have seen many Israelis say on the right wing, or even, you know, prosettler religious Israelis come out in support, but that wasn't what we saw on the streets and that wasn't what the polls were showing. So really, the upcoming election will be a referendum obviously on baby Netanyahu, but Netanyahu as both the political champion of the elements that were mentioned earlier, the far right, the prosettler movement, the ultra-orthodox society, and political parties. He is really their champion, he is their bully, and it's a real question what happens after he's gone. You mentioned at the top mark that he's immortal, no man is immortal, not even baby Netanyahu, and especially politically it's a question of whether his time is up in just a few weeks. Okay, we're running out of time here, but maybe I can be much more kind of prosaic, and just by asking you all for a very, very short one or two word prediction about what's going to happen in the next election. Who will be the next prime minister of Israel, or is it likely that there will be a change of government? Do you want to go first? I just have to say, personally, I'm not dealing with predictions. We're on the front lines, we have to win. I think the future of the Zionist project is at stake. I don't know if it's very a researcher like me, and so I have an optimistic position in grain inside of me that we will win, and we will turn the tide on whatever is plaguing our country right now. And when you say, "We, who's that?" The general liberal, democratic, Jewish liberal camp that's emerging, and I agree with Mary that's definitely not a politician-led effort, like this is what we've seen through the last years. It's much more a civilian protest-led effort than anything else. The political elites are definitely not shaping any of the discourses. And Mary, what's your prediction? Mary, what's your best prediction about what will happen in the election? Look, I don't think Netanyahu can win outright. His best effort is going to play for a draw, and if he gets a draw, and at least not allowing the opposition to have a clear path to form a government for a clear path towards a majority, he's hoping that he can still cling on to power, but I don't think Netanyahu can win, but it's still an open question whether the opposition can win. So my worry is that we get an inconclusive result, and then Netanyahu by default will be in a position of being in a caretaker government, and then we'll be going back to elections again. So I have to see, but for now the blocs are kind of in deadlock, and it's hard to see how either bloc can reach a majority, and certainly not in the case of your position without bringing on board the Palestinian citizen parties, which for now they're not going to do. So uncertain, that's for sure. Okay, that's all we got time for in this discussion, but there is one thing left to do on this podcast, and that's our bookshelf segment. Beth, what's on your bookshelf at the moment? I am reading Arindati Roy's memoir, Mother Mary comes to me, which I'm really enjoying, about her 10-pasturist relationship with her late mother and growing up in India. So yeah, that will be my recommendation, not subject relevant, that it's good to have a break sometimes. What about you, Ariel? Also not subjects relevant, but I'm reading through the entire Michelle Walbeck bibliography right now, and I'm just finishing, I'm in the last book, and I dearly recommend it for how it shows humanity in Tangled in its own sense. I'm not sure it's not subject relevant, but that's another podcast worth of material, and what about you, Nehwi? I have two books on my nightstand, as we speak. The first one is the 629, and now that it may have a failure, it's a Hebrew language book by Amos Harrell. He's a terrific military correspondent for The Harret's Daily here. It's all about the lead-up and failures of, well, October 7. So in lieu of a state commission of inquiry, Amos went and researched and wrote this book, really an important read, and then the second book on my nightstand is "Steven Sveig's The World of Yesterday." Related unrelated to everything that's happening here in Israel, and really in the Western world, the demise of what had been pre-war Europe, almost in a flash. But I'm not done yet, so I don't know how it ends, but that's a book on my nightstand. I won't spoil it for you. Thank you very much to all of you. We'll put links up to all the publications that you mentioned, as well as that wonderful web special on the ideas of Israel, on our website at ecfr.eu, and in this episode's show notes. If you've enjoyed listening to the podcast, please do subscribe to future episodes on whatever platform you use to download this one, and while you're there, it will be wonderful if you could give us a positive review and a five-star rating. But for now, from Beth, Ariel, Mary, and myself, Mark Leonard, it's goodbye. The research of this podcast is on Encinder and the editor. If this episode is Maria, Faro Sarats.