Analyzing Israeli fascism

By Dominique Vidal, Journalist and historian, author of Israel: birth of a State (Iremmo Library)

What is most astonishing about the war against Gaza is… the astonishment of many observers – journalists, but also researchers – at Israel’s genocidal escalation. This apparent surprise, when it is sincere, arises in particular from an underestimate of the qualitative change represented by the coalition put in place in the last days of 2022.

The prolongation of the conflict obviously follows the same reasons as the formation of the government: for Benyamin Netanyahu, it is inseparably a question of both preserving his position as Prime Minister and blocking the legal proceedings initiated against him.

But this personal objective cannot hide the political backdrop common to the Likud leader and his allies, old and new. Described by former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who is in no way a leftist, as a “government with fascist values”, the coalition invested at the end of December 2022 by the Knesset is formed around a radicalized Likud (32 deputies), allied with two ultra-Orthodox parties (18 deputies). And it also includes, for the first time, two supremacist, racist and homophobic parties (14 deputies). Benyamin Netanyahu offered the leaders of the latter essential ministries: to Itamar Ben Gvir National Security, to Bezalel Smotrich Finance but also supervision of the West Bank

Heirs of Kahane and Gush Emunim

One of these two irresponsible people who do not even hide their racism, Itamar Ben Gvir, appears as the heir of the fascist rabbi Meïr Kahane. Founder of the Jewish Defense League, sentenced to five years in prison for “terrorism” in the United States, Kahane made aliyah in 1971, increasing anti-Arab violence in the service of his objective: a Greater Israel emptied of all its Palestinians.

In 1984, he was elected to the Knesset, creating such a shock that no other MK attended his speeches. His colleagues even decided to ban incitement to racism in the Penal Code and the Basic Law governing the Knesset. So much so that Kahane was excluded from the 1988 election. On November 5, 1990, he was murdered in New York.

However, the two movements that claimed it – Kach and Kahane Hai – continued their violent actions. On February 25, 1994, 29 Muslims praying in the Abraham Mosque in Hebron were massacred by a Kahanist settler, the American Baruch Goldstein – whose portrait would hang for a long time in Ben Gvir's living room. A month later, both movements were banned as “terrorist organizations”. They nonetheless inspired Yigal Amir, the assassin of Itzhak Rabin, on November 4, 1995. Shortly before, Ben Gvir appeared on television brandishing the license plate of the Prime Minister's car, and announced: "We have had his car, and we will have him too. »

In short, the reference to fascism is not excessive when it comes to Ben Gvir. Convicted numerous times by the Israeli justice system, he displayed such extremism that even the army did not let him carry out his military service as it considered him “dangerous”. In spring 2021, referring to his role in the violence in Jerusalem and in so-called mixed cities, Jerusalem police chief Kobi Shabtaï declared to Netanyahu: “The person who is responsible for this Intifada is Itamar Ben Gvir”. Until the last weeks, before the elections of November 1, 2022, he advocated the annexation of all of Palestine and the “transfer” of all its Arab inhabitants. He even spoke out in favor of the deportation of “disloyal” Israelis who “work against the state” – among whom he cites the Arab MP Ayman Odeh, but also the Jewish MP Ofer Cassif…

In the last weeks of the last electoral campaign, Ben Gvir certainly tried to smooth out his image, but by only deceiving the naive. Even General Dan Haloutz, former IDF chief of staff, believes that “he has not changed and will not change” and that his ideas could lead to a “civil war”. As for the President of the State of Israel, Isaac Herzog, he assures: “This individual worries the whole world. » “Moderation”? While brandishing his revolver in the face of Sheikh Jarrah, he advised his supporters shouting “Death to Arabs” to settle for “Death to terrorists”. One of his running mates, Almog Cohen, had also spilled the beans: it was a question of creating a “Trojan horse” to allow the Kahanist party Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Force) to enter the Knesset without being disqualified by the Supreme Court… His record for seventeen months? A permanent escalation in the war against Gaza, a series of provocative visits to the Esplanade des mosques, in the company of numerous settlers and, since October 7, the distribution of 100,000 weapons ports in a country where reservists and almost all the settlers are already armed…

As for Besalel Smotrich, heir to the Gush Emunim settler movement, he demands a ban on Arab parties, “the greatest danger today for [our] security”. If his main program is the annexation of the West Bank, his perspective is essentially messianist: according to him, the State of Israel must be extended to the entire land promised by God to Abraham and "run in accordance with the Torah and to Jewish Law” – excluding Reform Judaism, which he considers a “false religion.” His uninhibited racism goes as far as the separation between Jewish and Arab women in maternity wards: “It is natural,” he explained, “that my wife does not want to be lying next to someone who has given birth to a baby who might want to murder her baby in twenty years.” This anti-Arab hysteria is coupled with obsessive homophobia: after the assassination in July 2015 of a participant in the Jerusalem Gay Pride, he did not hesitate to describe it as an “abomination” and a “parade beastly”…

This is why I underlined, from the first steps of the new government, the serious dangers it represented:

1) For the Palestinians, because he intends to accelerate colonization with a view to the annexation of the West Bank, or even Gaza, two territories from which ultra-nationalist ministers dream of expelling the Palestinians. Some have even spoken out in favor of the immediate dismantling of the Palestinian Authority. As for Jerusalem, Ben Gvir's provocations on the Esplanade testify to his desire to deny the status quo of 1967. If, before October 7, a symbol of this aggressiveness was needed, the ban on the Palestinian flag would provide it.

2) For the Israelis, because the coalition wants to put an end to the last safeguard of Israeli democracy – the Supreme Court – by “legally” giving the last word to the Knesset. This is what hundreds of thousands of Jewish citizens denounced in the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem throughout the year as a “coup.” The supremacists are planning other attacks on freedoms: they are advocating in particular the banning of Arab parties and even the withdrawal of citizenship from “disloyal” Israelis – and they cite two communist deputies, the Arab Ayman Odeh and the Jew Ofer Cassif. The latter was even almost expelled from the Knesset for having supported the decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague demanding that Israel oppose any genocidal decision.

3) For both, because supremacists and haredim intend to strengthen the theocratic character of the regime. They thus turn their backs on the aspiration of the majority of Israelis for a form of secularism: strengthening of the Orthodox monopoly against Reforms and Conservatives, strict application of the Shabbat, refusal of civil marriage and divorce, rejection of the imposition of a common curriculum for public and religious schools, maintenance of exemption from military service for yeshivot students, etc. The supremacists even intend to make the law of return more restrictive, even if it means reducing aliya…

4) Finally, for the region and the world, because, in addition to the risk of a Third Intifada, there is the threat of a military operation against Iran, to prevent it from manufacturing its bomb. Netanyahu harasses Iran, “forgetting” that, if the mullahs were able to enrich their uranium, it is because Donald Trump, under his pressure, tore up the Iranian nuclear agreement…

  The Netanyahus, like father like son

History will undoubtedly never forgive Benjamin Netanyahu for having reopened the doors of the Knesset to the Kahanists in 2021. Nothing, however, of an unnatural alliance: the leader of Likud himself grew up in the revisionist Zionist inner circle. How can we forget that, in the 1930s, David Ben-Gurion called Jabotinsky, father of the movement... “Vladimir Hitler”? In fact, it was Mussolini above all who supported Betar: he had made available to it a radio transmitter in Bari covering the entire Middle East as well as premises in Civitavecchia for its executive school. Le Duce explained in 1935 to David Prato, future chief rabbi of Rome: “For Zionism to succeed, you need a Jewish state, with a Jewish flag and a Jewish language. The person who really understands this is your fascist, Jabotinsky. » Benzion Netanyahu, Benyamin's father, was not only a revisionist activist, but a birion (thug), a nickname chosen by members of the far-right faction of the movement. As for Yaïr, Benyamin's son, a provocation is enough to place him politically: he accepted that his photograph appear on a poster of the Alternative für Deutschland (AFD) praising "a free, democratic and Christian Europe" - his alliance with the neofascists therefore matter more to him than his Jewishness!

How far will this fascistization of Israel go? Ben Gvir and Smotrich are not isolated, or even marginal, extremists. Barring a major crisis leading to a new form of national union, Netanyahu will not have a majority without them. Both the Jewish and Arab left are at rock bottom, incapable of offering an alternative to a popular electorate hysterized by racist rhetoric. There is a great risk that the opposition will vote with its feet: hundreds of thousands of Jewish Israeli citizens now live elsewhere than in Israel, and many others have obtained the passport of a European state. For them as for the late Zeev Sternhell, “in Israel there is a racism close to Nazism in its beginnings. »

Once again, the logic of “white hat and white hat” makes Israeli political developments unintelligible. That all Zionist parties, both “left” and “right”, have the same colonial project in common is obvious. That in particular in 1947-1949, Mapam and Palmakh played a capital role in the conquest of Arab towns and villages and the expulsion of their inhabitants is an established historical fact. And since then, no Israeli government, except that of Rabin, from 1993 to his assassination, has begun to break with this cycle. But all this does not justify attributing the same dangerousness to a Ben Gvir or a Smotrich and to the leaders of the Zionist “left”. This is what the leaders and activists of the Arab-Jewish radical left have understood, calling for nearly a decade for the formation of a front against the far right and criticizing abstentionists.