Netanyahu’s hostages – 11/24/2023 – Demetrio Magnoli

Israel was born out of the horror of the Holocaust, as a defensive fortification for the Jews. From this origin derive paradoxical relations between the Jews of the diaspora and the State of Israel. As Bernardo Sorj explains: “The State of Israel delegated itself the representation of the Jewish people, and a large part of the Jewish institutions of the diaspora were transformed into instruments of defense of the State of Israel before public opinion. Consequences: the support and justification of all any government policy and the loss of political autonomy.”

Sorj highlights a crucial difference. In the diaspora, as a minority (and often a persecuted minority), Jews have developed a particular sensitivity to human rights. In Israel, Jews are the majority – and, since 1967, citizens of an occupying state. Hence, Diaspora Jews found themselves in the paradoxical position of accepting, sometimes with indignation or extreme reluctance, the violation, by “their” State, of Palestinian national law. They became political hostages of the Israeli governments, which they did not elect.

The story of Israel/Palestine should not be told in the caricature register. The Nakba (Palestinian catastrophe) of 1948 was triggered by the Arab countries’ rejection of the UN partition plan, not by a Zionist project of territorial expansion. The 1967 War, which ended with the occupation of Palestinian territories, was seeded by Nasser’s Egypt’s refusal to admit the existence of Israel.

But the prolonged occupation poisoned the Jewish State, giving electoral majorities to the currents engaged in expansionism and biblical messianism: the fanatics of Greater Israel. Palestinians are the direct victims of this historic tragedy. Diaspora Jews are its indirect victims.

Netanyahu has assembled the most extremist government in Israel’s history: a coalition that includes even religious fanatics and Jewish supremacists. He sabotaged the resumption of peace negotiations. He encourages Israeli settlers in the West Bank to humiliate Palestinians on a daily basis. He attempted to subordinate the Supreme Court to the parliamentary majority in order to destroy a central pillar of Israeli democracy. He established privileged partnerships with Trump and Bolsonaro. A segment of the Jewish diaspora followed his adventure, associating with the far right.

Under Netanyahu, the international image of Israel (and, together, that of the Jews) suffered profound damage. The soil in which the ancient tree of anti-Semitism grows, with its branches to the right and to the left, has been fertilized. In the USA and Europe, threatening Stars of David appear painted on the facades of Jewish homes and police protect synagogues. The cry “Free Palestine, from the sea to the river”, a slogan indicating the aim of destroying the State of Israel, made its way into the nominally pacifist protests against military action in Gaza. Anti-Semitism pulses beneath the rhetorical veneer of anti-Zionism.

The Jewish diaspora does not live in ghettos: it is involved in the political flows of national societies. In recent times, progressive currents in the diaspora have aligned themselves with the “new left”. Since the October 7th attacks, they have discovered, with naive dismay, that the seeds of anti-Semitism flourish in identitarian and “decolonial” circles. In these ideological zones, Israel is described as a “racist colonial state” – and Hamas’ cult of “resistance” is, at best, only disguised by protocol sentences disapproving terror. Leftist Jews have never been so alone.

The Israelis have serious reasons to get rid of Netanyahu: with him, there will be no peace – and, without peace, there will be no security. Diaspora Jews have an existential motive: the government that holds them hostage offers perfect pretexts for the greatest historic wave of anti-Semitism since the Holocaust.

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