Jewish Civilizationism in Israel

 My article "Jewish Civilizationism in Israel: A Unique Phenomenon" as published in Religions journal in February 2023.

Abstract:

Populism and civilizationism have transformed the politics of many countries. Many scholars consider them the biggest challenges to democracy since the rise of fascism and communism in the first half of the last century. The close affinity between populism, civilizationism, and rightwing politics has also been analyzed and recognized in many countries from Turkey to India to the US. However, there are three areas that distinguish the appearance of civilizationism in Israel. First, in contrast to many other countries, civilizationism in Israel is not a new phenomenon. It has been an essential part of Israeli nationalism or Zionism since the early 20th century. Second, unlike many countries, Jewish civilizationism in Israel is an article of faith for all major Israeli political parties. It is not a slogan raised only by the rightwing, conservative part of the political spectrum. Finally, one observes an affinity between civilizationism and populism. Civilizational rhetoric is the mainstay of populist leaders, such as Trump, Erdogan, etc. In Israel, populism and civilizationism have no special relationship as civilizationism is mainstream politics. All politicians, populists and non-populists, have to pay homage to Jewish civilizationism; otherwise, they will not succeed. This paper analyzes the Israeli founding fathers’ statements, the Declaration of Independence, Israeli state symbols, the revival of the Hebrew language, the Law of Return, the first debate in the Knesset, and the more recent Nation-State Law to demonstrate how Jewish civilizationism is old, mainstream, and not exclusively populist.

Article

Recent years have seen a rise in civilizational rhetoric in several democratic societies across different continents. In April 2022, Turkish President Erdogan inaugurated the Islamic Civilizations Museum in Istanbul to showcase the versatility and superiority of Islamic civilization (Daily Sabah 2022). In November 2022, Jordan Bardella won the presidential election of the rightwing National Rally party, replacing Marine Le Pen, promising to defend French civilization (Associated Press 2022). In December 2022, Modi said, “India was the most refined idea of human civilisation, the most natural voice of humanity” (The Statesman 2022). While the focus of nationalism is territorial, the civilizational rhetoric prioritizes defending or saving a civilization based on religion, not a state. The state is considered a single manifestation of civilization that spans many territories and millennia. Both rightwing and leftwing populist leaders have used this rhetoric to win voters and elections by denouncing liberalism and established mainstream parties. For instance, in Europe, numerous rightwing populist European parties and leaders have fought and won elections based on the argument that Christian civilization or Judeo-Christian civilization and traditions are under threat from Islam, Muslims, and other refugees that do not belong to the White Christian civilization (Yilmaz and Morieson 2021; Ozzano and Bolzonar 2020; Brubaker 2016; Kaya and Tecmen 2019; Marchetti et al. 2022).

Yilmaz and Morieson (2022) have identified civilizationism as another thick ideology that populism, a thin ideology, attaches to itself to give itself a solid defensible argument. They define civilizationism in the following way:

Civilizationism is an idea which posits that the world and its peoples can be divided into several ‘civilizations’, most of them defined by religion. Adhered to populism, civilizationism defines self and other not primarily in national terms, but civilizational terms...

This article focuses on Jewish civilizationism in the state of Israel. Three aspects distinguish Israel from most other countries where civilizational rhetoric and politics have been successful. First, in most of the other countries, such as in the United States, Turkey, India, and Poland, civilizationism, linked with religion, was until a few decades ago a fringe phenomenon (Saleem 2023). Scholars link it primarily to the 21st century. This might be the case for other countries but, as this chapter will show, Israeli civilizationism is mainstream and as old as the Israeli state, if not older. Israeli nationalism or Zionism is based on Jewish civilizationism. From the First Zionist Congress in 1897 to the Nation-State Law passed in 2018, Jewish civilizationism has monopolized Israeli nationalism and defeated attempts by many Israeli scholars and leaders to make Israel a state honoring the histories and lives of all its citizens equally.

Second, in numerous countries, civilizationism is closely associated with rightwing nationalism and populism. It is the rightwing parties and movements that have raised the flag of civilizationism, and they are its key torch bearers. Whether it is the Republican Party in the US, the Justice and Development Party in Turkey, or the Bharatiya Janata Party in India, the rightwing conservatives spread religio-civilizational rhetoric and are the most impressed by it. This is not the case in Israel. It was the socialist, broadly secular leftwingers that raised the flag of Jewish civilizationism and created the state of Israel. Even after the creation of Israel, the broadly leftwing parties ruled Israel for thirty years and kept Jewish civilizationism alive.

Finally, when one studies other country cases, one observes an affinity between civilizationism and populism. Civilizational rhetoric is primarily the mainstay of populist leaders. Civilizationism has played a key role in making such leaders win elections and dominate the political arena. Erdogan and Modi, two populist leaders, have used civilizationism to completely change the politics of their countries. Now, even the opposition parties in Turkey and India have to resort to civilizational rhetoric to prove their authenticity. Populist leaders instrumentalize religion and religious identity to create a sense of fear that the national culture and identity are civilizational, and that it is under attack by people from foreign civilizations living not only outside the state but also inside the state. In Israel, this exclusive affinity between populism and civilizationism breaks down. As Jewish civilizationism is not limited to the left wing or right wing, similarly, it is not limited to populist or mainstream politics. Jewish civilizationism is Israeli nationalism as propagated by the state, and rejecting it means rejecting the basis of the state. Therefore, no political party, populist or non-populist, can succeed in Israel without bowing to this altar.

The rest of the article can be read here.

Israel: Marginalization and minoritization continues

As discussed in this blog before, religious nationalist states usually suffer from two predicaments. First, as citizenship is based on religion, religious minorities in the country are de facto second-class citizens i.e. they have fewer rights than those belonging to the state/state-preferred/majority religion. Second, since religion is one of the main sources of laws and regulations, the sectarian differences within the state-preferred religion become political issues and powerful groups within the state-preferred religion try to impose their interpretations on others through the state, giving rise to sectarianism (See Religious Nationalism and Sectarianism). Sectarianism is generally slow at the start as groups outside (i.e. religious minorities) are being tackled but once outside groups are "tamed," the heretics or those who do not subscribe to the mainstream/state-preferred interpretation are targeted. Thus, sectarianism becomes a big issue and minorities are formed within the majority i.e. within the adherents of the state-preferred religion. Over the last seventy years, Pakistanis have seen this process of state marginalization and minoritization happening. Before the separation of Bangladesh, it was primarily the Christians and the Hindus who faced or felt state discrimination but later on, after 1971, in addition to the non-Muslims, groups that called themselves Muslims felt they were being victimized because of their religious beliefs. The Shias, for instance, held their first political demonstration in July 1980 when they marched to Islamabad and laid siege to the federal government offices to protest against the Zakat Ordinance promulgated by the government of General Zia-ul-Haq.

One can see the same processes of marginalization and minoritization currently at play in Israel. Being a religious nationalist state since its formation, Israel is not new to this process. Soon after independence, thousands of Muslim minority members were murdered and forced to flee their homes. No process was adopted to see whether those being killed or made refugees had actually fought against Israeli forces. Then, Law of Return was passed in July 1950 to make Israeli citizenship available to all the Jews in the world while Muslims that had lived in Israel for generations were denied return to their ancestral homes. However, the process of marginalization and minoritization soon progressed from non-Jewish minorities to Jewish minorities. Jews from Arab or Muslim lands, called Mizrahi Jews, faced "scorn and detestation" primarily because they were non-European but also because their religious practices were either considered primitive or not genuinely Jewish. They were considered too influenced by crude and barbaric cultures of the Orient.  Israel's founding father and Prime Minister for first fifteen years, David Ben Gurion (1948-54 and 1955-63)'s quotes below demonstrates the attitude of ruling Ashkenazi (European) Jews towards Mizrahi Jews:

We do not want Israelis to become Arabs. We are bound by duty to fight against the spirit of the Levant that corrupts individuals and society. 

and 

Even the immigrant from North Africa, who looks like a savage, who has never read a book in his life, not even a religious one, and doesn’t even know how to say his prayers, either wittingly or unwittingly has behind him a spiritual heritage of thousands of years…

and

The ancient spirit left the Jews of the East and their role in the Jewish nation receded or disappeared entirely. In the past few hundred of years the Jews of Europe have led the nation, in both quantity and quality. (See The roots of anti-Mizrahi racism in Israel, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s Segregationist Founder and Post-Zionism and the Sephardi Question for further information about discrimination against Mizrahi Jews in Israel)

Coming back to the present, the Israeli government is furthering the process of marginalization and minoritization of two communities. First, Arab (Muslim) Bedouins are being stripped of their Israeli citizenship. Those who have been citizens for decades are being told to apply for citizenship again:

When Bedouin citizens come to Interior Ministry offices in Be’er Sheva to take care of routine matters such as changing their address, obtaining a birth certificate or registering names, the Population Authority examines their status, as well as that of their parents and grandparents, going back to the early days of the state. In many cases, the clerk tells them that their Israeli citizenship had been granted in error. On the spot, he changes their status from citizen to resident and issues them a new document. People who lose their citizenship are given no explanation and no opportunity to appeal. Instead, the clerk suggests that they submit a request and start the process of obtaining citizenship from scratch, as if they were newcomers to Israel. (See Why Stripping Non-Jews Of Their Israeli Citizenship Threatens Zionism)

Indigenous Arab Bedouins have been discriminated since the establishment of Israel. Their homes and grazing lands were allocated to Jewish settlements and they were forced to settle or to relocate to areas chosen for them by the Israeli authorities. Many of their villages were not recognized as official municipal areas and so were not provided civic amenities and were razed whenever there was need for more Jewish settlements (See European Parliament condemns Israel's policy toward Bedouin population and New Jewish settlements planned 'on top of' Bedouin villages). Cultural appropriation and disappropriation at the hands of Israelis have also been the fate of Bedouins as is the case with the general Palestinian population (See a recent example at Palestinian Bedouin Dress at New York Fashion Week Reveals Stakes of Israeli Cultural Appropriation).

Source: Land grab: Israeli govt backs bill to forcibly relocate up to 40,000 Bedouin villagers

However, the denial of citizenship is a completely new level of discrimination and member of Israeli Parliament Knesset Juma’a Azbarga argues that something sinister (i.e. changing demography) is behind this new policy:

I believe this is part of a process happening beneath the surface...They want to slowly reach a critical mass of citizenship-less people in order to make it easier when they come to transfer us. The name of the game is demography; the Bedouin make up 34 percent of the population in the Negev. In the eyes of the state, that’s a threat.

The state established a network for Bedouin settlement. We are not settlers — we are the natives here. So they put pressure to force the Bedouin to move to areas without infrastructure or sources of income — a forced urbanization and ghettoization of an agrarian society. We have enough land in the Negev for everyone. The Bedouin claim less than six percent of the land as their own, but they want to concentrate us in 1.5 percent of the territory. For the state it is ideology, for us it is a war for survival. (See Is Israel turning its Bedouin citizens into a stateless people?)

Secondly, the Israeli government made a decision in June 2017 which clearly demonstrated (again) that Reform and Conservative Judaism are not considered authentic Jews in Israel. The government suspended the 2016 agreement which would have provided the Reform and Conservative Jews a separate place (a pluralistic prayer pavilion) to pray at the Western Wall (Kotel). Despite the opposition of the ultra-Orthodox rabbis, who currently administer the whole sacred space around the Kotel, the Israeli government decided to treat all branches of Judaism somewhat equally. The agreement was reached after a great effort by both the Israeli government and the Reform and Conservative movements and the Israeli government was proud to take credit for it (for a detailed look at the controversy and the 2016 agreement see Western Wall prayer controversy in Israel). However, due to the pressure of ultra-Orthodox parties, the Israeli government suspended the agreement indefinitely. Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the head of the North American Reform Movement, on hearing the news called it "a very, very dark day" and said, "To hear the government of Israel make a statement today that the rights of non-Orthodox Jews don’t matter is deeply distressing" (See US liberal Jews decry ‘slap in the face’ from Netanyahu on Western Wall prayer).

Members of "Women of the Wall" praying with a Torah scroll near the Western Wall (July 2017)

Source: Reform Conservative movements incensed by Netanyahu attack

In September 2017, Prime Minister Netanyahu added fuel to the fire by declaring that the Reform and Conservative movements were using the Western Wall agreement as a stealthy way to get recognition from the Israeli state. This was vehemently denied by leaders of both Reform and Conservative movements and they accused the Prime Minister of lying and betraying their trust:

Netanyahu reportedly told members of the press in New York Monday night that the Reform and Conservative movements wanted to get recognition “via the backdoor, secretly, under the pretext of a technical clause of joint administration of the Western Wall,” according to Army Radio reporter Ilil Shahar...

Rabbi Gilad Kariv, director of the Reform movement in Israel, said that the prime minister’s comments demonstrated that he had decided to join “the wave of haredi incitement against millions of Reform and Conservative Jews.”

Kariv also noted that Netanyahu had been involved in every detail of the deal, had celebrated the approval of the deal and demanded credit for it as well.

“The Reform movement does not clandestinely demand recognition bur rather openly and publicly,” said Kariv. 

“The prime minister has shown a lack of leadership regarding the Western Wall, and political weakness, and in order to hide this he is choosing to attack the Reform movement,” adding that Netanyahu should find ways of rebuilding trust with Diaspora Jewry “and not to deepen the damage he and his government have done.”

Director of the Masorti [Conservative] movement in Israel Yizhar Hess said Netanyahu was “distorting reality” and pointed out that “it was this government of Israel, the prime minister and his people who proposed to us this model of agreement, including explicit emphasis on the prima facie advantages of the of the agreement regarding the issue of recognition in light of the fact that we would have official representatives on the administrative council for the site.”

“To present this now as our manipulation is a new record in fake news,” Hess added.

Netanyahu said at a briefing in New York with reporters Monday that were the issue merely one of finding an egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall, then the issue would have been solved. (See Reform Conservative movements incensed by Netanyahu attack)

The discussion shows that, like in other religious nationalist states, the process of marginalization and minoritization is continuing in Israel.