Israel, Where Has Your Zionism Gone?
It is difficult to be considered a true patriot in modern Israel. Zionism, a belief in building a Jewish nation-state in the Land of Israel, was used as a basis for the state’s establishment. While that may have been the purpose of the word in the past, many conversations with young Israelis have led me to understand that today, the word “Zionism” has become the domain of the right wing and its narrow security-oriented platform.
An understanding of Zionism thoroughly different from the one promoted by the current government still prevails in the principles of an Upper Galilee Mechina (Hebrew: “preparation”), a highly selective year-long program where young Israelis are prepared for officer positions in their future obligatory military service, and for social leadership and civic engagement roles later in life. Thanks to the hospitality of a friend, a participant in the program, I visited Israel this January and attended the Mechina’s activities, where I investigated the ways in which Israeli history and politics are taught to an exclusive group of potentially influential Israeli citizens. After four days, I left with memories: of the participants discussing how to make their personal lives more similar to those of the pioneers who started building the modern Jewish civilization in Israel in the early twentieth century, of daily classes filled with debate about the Israeli domestic social, economic, and legal system, and of their accounts of community service projects they regularly perform in local schools.
Life in the Mechina embodies the principles of Labor Zionism, the dominant version of Zionism in Israel’s earliest years. This philosophy called for the establishment of a Jewish nation state based on the ideals of democracy and social justice. These values are held by many Mechina participants who feel alienated by the modern political discourse, which they say has thoroughly abandoned Zionism’s vision of social welfare. Indeed, Israel, despite its relative wealth, ranks behind most of its OECD peers on various social welfare rankings, which are important indicators of social justice within a country. And as I also noticed, the country’s lack of a true Zionist vision is not only harmful to its average citizens, but also to its relations with neighbors in the region.
“Very few founders remain”
Being in the Mechina, half a kilometer from the Lebanese border, felt alarmingly normal. Special security measures were in place because of recent tensions in the area with Hezbollah, the Lebanese Islamist militant group, but the participants were simply waiting for nighttime excursions to local restaurants to be allowed again. Occasionally, they talked about emigration. In Israel, uncertainty about the future is part of everyday life for many young citizens, but this often has more to do with the high costs of living and the inaccessible prices of houses and apartments in big cities, than with the constant threat of terrorism. In addition to the high cost of living, they also fear deepening social stratification, the highest poverty rate among OECD countries, and a prediction by one of the participants that they, talented young people in a selective program, “will all be lower-middle class.” Only after considering all these factors can we comprehend the extent to which even outstanding young Israelis have few optimistic perspectives for a future in their country.
The world within the Mechina and the world outside it represents the self-contradicting attitude of the Israeli government. In the Mechina, young people receive an education deeply rooted in the glorification of Labor- Zionist pioneers and principles. But as soon as they finish the program, and later, their military service, they will join the millions of young people in Israeli cities who have been abandoned by the housing market, politicians, and social welfare; these are renouncements that should not happen in a state so deeply rooted in social welfare Zionist principles.
The Mechina program is based in the kibbutz Ma’ayan Baruch, one of many farming communities built by Jewish settlers when Palestine was still a British mandate. Kibbutzim (plural of ‘kibbutz’) embody the ideas of thinkers such as A. D. Gordon, who argued in his essays that through “national work” and shared cultivation of land, Jews, as a nation in the Land of Israel, may realize “the ideal of justice in economic and in social life.” And, in fact, while few young Israelis choose to live in a kibbutz, many would read these words as an unfulfilled promise of a better Israel.
There was almost a strange feeling of worship when on one afternoon, the participants were discussing extracts from Gordon’s personal journals. The theme of the reading and discussion was “disappointment,” and we were discussing Gordon’s criticism of the pioneers, who, disappointed with the Zionist enterprise, were returning to Europe from the Ottoman and British Palestine. But one participant’s comment, about the disappointment of their older sibling, who for many months struggled to find a reasonably priced apartment near her new workplace, shifted the discussion to the theme of a modern disappointment, one with the government’s policies. And when during a conversation about the kibbutz a friend told me that “very few founders of Ma’ayan Baruch remain,” I knew he was really saying that few young people can replace the older generation of Zionists because few still believe that Zionism’s promise may be real or achievable.
Disappointment and Normalization
The disappointment of modern Israelis, rooted in the country’s current political and economic system, is linked to a much greater sense of powerlessness than the one felt by the pioneers. In fact, this sense of powerlessness helps uphold the dominant modern discourse of Zionism, which leaves the social welfare component of the ideology well aside. Studies cited by the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz only a few years ago suggest that the modern experience of Zionism in Israel is composed only of a shared uncertainty about the country’s security and a dedicated support for the military. Sivan Klingbail and Shanee Shiloh of Ha’aretz write that “when the security threat mounts, the Israeli public views leaving as treason, and few emigrate at such times.” It should be noted that these words were written not long after a series of large national protests in 2011 that were motivated especially by the rising costs of housing (shown on the picture – Tel Aviv). It was the last time that Israelis massively stood up for a belief that security concerns can be reconciled with standing up against the government and demanding better social welfare.
It looks as if since 2011, consecutive governments of Benjamin Netanyahu, who has held power since 2009, have succeeded in making the public very apprehensive of protests and demonstrations. When during a class in the Mechina a lecturer showed pictures of protesters and argued for reviving the public’s demands for social justice, participants responded with skepticism. Despite their awareness of the country’s social issues, many saw the people in the pictures not as their champions, but as negative examples of a national disunity, which they perceive as dangerous from a security perspective.
These sentiments are epitomized by the public’s perception of the opposition Israeli Labor Party leader, Yitzhak Herzog. On one hand, his left-wing allies consistently accuse him of failing to lead the disappointed Israelis to the streets in protest. On the other hand, before last year’s general election, the common opinion among Israeli publicists was that to succeed, Herzog would need to convince Israelis that security and welfare were not mutually exclusive. Klingbail and Shiloh write: “The right and the left in present-day Israel are in dispute over one issue: where on our scale of identity we place Jewish identity. The more of a humanist and liberal you are, the lower you situate your Jewish identity.” These words show how Israeli politicians have redefined “Jewishness” as a synonym for the nationalism of right-wing Zionism. It reflects the extent to which the right wing has monopolized Zionism by employing the notion of security to portray itself as the only legitimate political force in a Jewish state. The left would prefer to not make security its primary platform. However, because of the right’s fear mongering, it has been forced to adapt to the right’s security-centered language or risk losing large numbers of popular support.
The way in which security defines Israeli political discourse goes along with the normalization of the economic and military status quo in the life of the average Israeli, a normalization that is dangerous for the country’s development and for peace in the region as well. In fact, for young citizens of the country, spending life in the army is becoming one of few viable prospects; past officers maintain esteemed social statuses, and soldiers of many rankings receive housing, wage, and other benefits (including a lower retirement age) that guarantee stability for young people who fear they may never find it. Thus, while the conflict between the government’s security-centered discourse and the Labor-Zionist education is ideological, a solution for many young Israelis is to be pragmatic and support the status quo. Israel does not have a good idea of how to organize itself internally and use its resources: though it has a GDP per capita three times that of Poland, it lags far behind in terms of education, and the fact that it has one of the lowest levels of civic engagement among OECD countries shows the society’s relative idleness in the face of rising social tensions. Both bottom-up and top-down, Israeli society is being transformed to only deepen these problems. Israel’s military situation and uncertain relationship with the Palestinian Authority and other neighbors become, ironically, the very essence of its sustenance.
Earlier this year, a writer at the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth enthusiastically endorsed a statement by Herzog, the Labor Party leader, that peace with the Palestinians is not viable in the immediate future. Such declarations may seem disappointing to those hoping for a quick settlement; however, they are also a rare instance of honesty in a country whose government’s deceptive practice has long been to feign two-state solutions that ultimately (and to no one’s surprise) fail, and are used to bolster its security-centered platform. And as a result of the disproportionate focus on security, few areas have suffered as much as social welfare. Today, Israel’s young citizens in the Mechina, and in the whole nation, feel that their country lacks a vision for its future. Sure, many may share the values of the pioneers and early Zionists, but few have an idea of how to make them relevant to today’s situation. Likewise, many of them lack clear visions for their personal futures. And this lack of vision only makes more distant the prospect of Israel building internal prosperity, security, and sustainable relationships with its neighbors.