Since the beginning of 2023, Israel has been in crisis. The press has often highlighted the fact that Binyamin Netanyahu’s current government is the most right-wing in the country’s history. Above all, it is the most religious. Kippot have never been so numerous in the Knesset; women never so few in government.
The return of Bibism
Bibism — that ideological bric-a-brac made of exacerbated nationalism, encroaching religiosity, and liberticidal obsessions — is only the foam on the wave that has long been breaking over a society that has never found its equilibrium and seems no closer to reaching it.
The 1 November 2022 elections, or the end of illusions
Since the swearing-in of the 6th Netanyahu government on 29 December 2022, many initiatives have gone in the direction of what the Jewish State risks becoming: a country dominated by colonialism, obscurantism, obsessed with a manifestation of Jewish identity confined to a religious practice synonymous with orthodoxy.
Barely a year ago, the situation was entirely different, at least in appearance. For eighteen months, a “government of change,” led first by Naftali Bennett and then by Yair Lapid, achieved the feat of bringing together an impossible coalition: three right-wing parties, two left-wing parties, two centrist parties, and an Arab party — Islamo-conservative at that. Despite this heterogeneous character and its slim majority (one vote in the Knesset!), this government worked seriously and undertook difficult reforms, notably on matters of relations between the State and religion (reform of kashrut, draft conversion reform, reduction of the privileges granted to the ultra-Orthodox…). Above all, this government of change set about repairing the damage caused by its predecessors: restoring confidence in relations with the United States and the diaspora, taking account of the needs of the Arab community. This government ran the country with professionalism: the Finance Minister (Avigdor Liberman), when he had to leave his post, left in the State’s coffers 10 billion shekels in surplus. Alas! The incessant harassment of the Likud was to provoke the defection of right-wing deputies and the closing of this enchanted parenthesis. But the circumstantial data should not mask the deep reasons for the fall of the Bennett-Lapid government: tendencies long at work in Israeli society.
Awaiting the Messiah
Since 1967 and the victory of the Six-Day War, a very militant and very right-wing group issuing from religious Zionism has intended to assume a “sacred mission”: the settlement of the conquered territories by the Jews “returning to the land of their ancestors”. Strong in its ideological coherence — “The people of Israel, the land of Israel, the Torah of Israel” — this current has imposed itself. First on the ground: in 2023, in the West Bank alone, 132 “legal” settlements and around a hundred “illegal outposts” gather half a million Jews in this region of “Greater Israel”. The civil and (in part) military administration of these territories has been entrusted to the most extremist ministers: the messianist Bezalel Smotrich and the supremacist Itamar Ben Gvir, who have taken measures facilitating the legalization of “wildcat” settlements and the construction of new housing throughout “Judea-Samaria”. The objective is transparent: to reinforce de facto annexation, with the objective of a million Jews in these territories so as to lead to a de jure annexation of the West Bank. Already, this colonialism that does not speak its name largely dictates the political agenda, budgetary choices, the military situation, and is provoking an unprecedented degradation of relations with the United States. Last but not least, a wave of attacks translates on the ground a renewed tension, the marginalization of the Palestinian Authority and the rise in power of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In other words, the grand project of messianist Zionism is weakening the country and contributing to its marginalization on the international scene. But this movement has demographics on its side: with four children on average (six in the West Bank) per woman belonging to this current, the parties of Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir have an assured electoral future.
Another population is strongly expanding: the ultra-Orthodox, with nearly seven children per woman, already represent 12% of the population. The Central Bureau of Statistics (the Israeli INSEE) is working on the hypothesis of a community representing 20% of the total population in 2040 and 32% in 2065 (that is, 40% of the Jewish population). Their political weight is thereby increased: in the 1st Knesset elected in 1949, there were 5 ultra-Orthodox deputies. There are 18 today (out of 120). These parties have swung to the right because the largest settlements in the West Bank are ultra-Orthodox cities (Modi’in Illit and Beitar Illit), and because of a fierce opposition to any calling-into-question of their gains (stoppage of public transport on Shabbat, exemption from military service for yeshiva students…).
This messianic Jewish State is (still) a minority, but it has found faithful allies in the Second Israel, which has changed the physiognomy of the country.
Frustration and revenge
The expression “Second Israel” appeared in the sixties after the massive immigration of Jews from the East (Mizrahim, Orientals), those Sephardim having left, willingly or by force, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Morocco or Libya, and who were soon to represent (with their descendants) half of the Israeli population. Their Zionism was more religious and messianic than that — national and political — of the first Israel. The Ashkenazim from Europe had built a country that wanted itself socialist: the kibbutzim, the Histadrut (trade union federation), the cooperatives and quantities of institutions and enterprises of the “worker economy” were led by Labor and its allies. David Ben-Gurion and his people did not escape the clannish and sectarian drifts of any party that dominates the political scene for a long time. The shock between the two Israels was inevitable. The differences of socio-economic levels, of cultures, were aggravated by discriminatory practices toward the newcomers. History books, the press, literature and cinema overflow with accounts of the traumas suffered by these Sephardim — the “Moroccans” above all — who often felt themselves foreign in the country of their dreams, that “Promised Land” where the founding fathers of Zionism wanted to realize the “ingathering of the exiles” (kibbutz ha-galuyot). Sarcasms and discriminations in employment and housing were experienced by hundreds of thousands of families as so many marks of contempt for their origins and their fidelity to religion. Yet, over the years, the disparities between the two Israels faded. Thus, the salary gaps that reached 30% in 1987 were no more than 10% by 2019. Wider differences (though not quantified) still exist in milieus such as the university, the press, or the management of large companies. In fact, only a minority remained on the edge of the road. Many Sephardim have succeeded brilliantly, and not only in football or song. Among women, one might cite the brilliant former ministers Meirav Cohen and Karine Elharrar, or the late Ronit Elkabetz, actress and director, who made the stars of Israeli cinema shine in the heavens of the seventh art. But the Sephardic narrative remains centered on the discriminations suffered. Without being resentful, those concerned are not amnesiac, and they massively support the right, which they judge more understanding than a left that did not know how to welcome their families as it should have. Revenge still takes place at the ballot box. More than fifty years after the upheaval (mahapakh, 1977) that saw the right come to power, it is in the localities of the Second Israel that Binyamin Netanyahu has electoral reserves. On 1 November 2022, a greater mobilization of the electorate in the development towns (Beit She’an, Dimona, Sderot…) secured for the allies of the leader of the right — first and foremost Itamar Ben Gvir — the seats that allow the current coalition to dispose of 64 votes in the Knesset.
The messianic religious, the ultra-Orthodox and the poor Sephardim finally have little in common, except in the negative: they detest the left, the press, the elites in general. One of their bêtes noires is the judicial system, and especially the Supreme Court, which would be in the hands of the Ashkenazi bourgeoisie — secular and left-wing. This detestation is shared by the most right-wing members of the coalition.
Regime change
Pierre Mendès-France had said it well: “Democracy is first of all a state of mind.” So is its contrary.
The judicial reform
Less than a week after the swearing-in of Binyamin Netanyahu’s 6th government on 30 December 2022, the Minister of Justice, Yariv Levin, presented his grand project, a vast reform of the judicial system resting on three pillars: the introduction of an “override clause” allowing the Knesset to disregard the constitutional review of laws exercised by the Supreme Court; a reform of the commission for the nomination and promotion of magistrates, where the executive power would have an automatic majority; the suppression of the “principle of reasonableness,” thereby preventing the judge from censuring an inappropriate legislative or administrative provision. For in the world of Binyamin Netanyahu and Yariv Levin, the only legitimate decisions are those of the governmental majority designated by universal suffrage. In other words, the reform of the judicial system would lead to concentrating all powers in the sole hands of the executive. This institutional revolution would be the first of a whole series of initiatives going in the direction of a restriction of liberties: liberty of conscience (monopoly of the Chief Rabbinate on all aspects of Jewish life); liberty of minorities (legalization of discriminatory practices against Arab or LGBT persons…); liberty of the press (suppression of Channel 12, of the news services of the public radio and television)…
The American administration, the European governments, most Jewish communities of the diaspora alerted the Israeli government to the grave consequences of its program: a marked decline in foreign investment, in tourism, in the shekel. The risks far exceed the economic sphere. The strong degradation of the country’s image reaches even its status in the international community. At the Court in The Hague, those filing complaints against the abuses of Israelis in the Palestinian territories could no longer be opposed with the argument that the independence of the Jewish State’s justice system suffices to guarantee the sanctioning of all abuses. More broadly, Western support for “the only democracy in the Middle East” could decline, Israel henceforth striving to figure among the good students of the populist International.
A multiform protest
The most striking expression of the period is the now-traditional demonstration which, every Saturday evening, brings together hundreds of thousands of Israelis on Boulevard Kaplan in Tel Aviv and in dozens of other localities. The judicial reform project, perceived by its opponents as a regime change, mobilizes young and less young, doctors, jurists, teachers, artists… The crisis reaches the army with a reservist revolt refusing to serve “a dictatorial regime”. The military hierarchy is also openly criticized by members of the coalition — an unprecedented situation. Deprived of part of its offensive capacity and of the unanimous support that made its strength, the IDF could experience, for the first time, a military defeat. All the more so as the tensions on the northern border give cause to fear a confrontation with Hezbollah. The protest may well not be limited to the reservists. At the end of August, high-school students wrote to the authorities to signify that they were refusing conscription, on account of their opposition to the judicial reform, but also to the occupation (of the territories).
For, henceforth, the demonstrations express many oppositions other than that to the judicial reform. Incidents on public transport provoked by ultra-Orthodox men hostile to the presence of women on “their” buses — especially when those women are not sufficiently clothed — have brought home the risks of a separation between the sexes in public space. This tendency, which is not new, contributes to a strong mobilization of the female public in the demonstrations. In the manner of Shikma Bressler, veritable star of the movement, many women are engaging and creating specific organizations, such as the one of mothers of soldiers that denounces the non-conscription of young ultra-Orthodox men. One remembers that in the nineties, the movement of the “Four Mothers” (Arba Imahot) played a decisive role in mobilizing public opinion in favor of the Israeli army’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon. Will it be the same today? In any event, it must be noted that, week by week, the protest is extending to new themes: support for the Ethiopian community, of which a family was the victim of a judicial discrimination; criticism of Minister Ben Gvir’s inaction against the crime gangrening the Arab localities… One will have understood: the protest does not weaken, for it is that of an entire population that intends to defend a certain conception of liberty and justice with one grand watchword: Democratia! In more prosaic terms, these Israelis refuse to see their way of life dictated by the true victor of the 1 November 2022 elections: obscurantism. This movement has already obtained successes: annulment of the dismissal of a Minister of Defense (Yoav Gallant), reduction of the scope of the judicial reform to two bills… But nothing says it will succeed in repairing the tear in Israeli society, which reaches such a level that in the press and in conversations, one increasingly evokes the idea of a federalization of the country. The latter would be divided into two cantons: Israel for the “secular,” and Judea for the “religious”. The conceivers of this brilliant idea even envisage, in their great kindness, the possibility of creating a third canton for the two million Israeli Arabs, to whom could be joined the some three million Palestinians of the West Bank and Jerusalem. This vision of the country’s future has one virtue, that of coherence, but one flaw: it is unrealistic. In the new kingdom of Judea, an economy handicapped by the low level of qualification and employment would deprive the canton of the resources necessary for its functioning, and the Federation of contributions to common charges. An Arab agreement on their grouping in a third canton of a federation dominated by Jews would imply a renunciation of their dream: the creation of a Palestinian State.
In the years to come, the majority of the fifteen million Jews counted in the world will live in Israel. This quantitative success of Zionism cannot make us forget the failure of the project in its qualitative dimension: two Israels speak to each other less and less and increasingly cannot stand each other. As in old couples, each partner, exasperated, ends up even finding in the other defects he does not have. Which is never a good sign.