The first to take to the streets against the rising tide of anti-democratic legislation was the LGBT community on July 22, 2018. They protested the government’s surrogacy law that discriminates against gay men, raising the banner of equality and drawing support from both the private sector and liberal circles. This was undoubtedly an opening shot that ignited new protests, this time against the nation-state law, which prioritizes Israel’s Jewish sector. On August 4, the Druze, waving their five-colored flags, filled Rabin Square. They received a warm embrace from the security establishment, led by former Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin, who delivered a scathing speech against the law. This Saturday, the Israeli Arab Monitoring Committee will try to fill the square to protest what they see as an emerging apartheid regime. However, there is a split within the opposition camps: the LGBT, Druze, and Palestinians will always march separately.

While sectoral flags are being raised, one flag is absent – the flag of democracy. Fifty-five Knesset members (MKs) voted against the nation-state law – 14 were from the largely Arab Joint List. The remaining 41 failed to organize a rally that would unite all forces opposing the national law, in order to demonstrate their power against the right wing, fractious government that is tearing Israeli society apart.

MKs and activists from the Left attend various demonstrations: they support the LGBT community on Saturday night, return a week later to show solidarity with the Druze, and some will also appear on August 11 as a sign of solidarity with the Arab sector. They hide behind the downtrodden but refuse to stand in the forefront of the struggle against a racist law that tramples the principle of equality.

Why? What prevents the heads of the opposition, the Labor Party, aka Zionist Camp, and Yesh Atid from calling for mass protests against the nation-state law that they opposed in parliament? Both parties are in lockstep with key sections of Israeli society that are fed up with the behavior of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his ministers. This group attempts to secure its electoral future by inciting against the Supreme Court, the New Israel Fund, Ashkenazi elites, the press, writers, and artists, and especially against the Arabs. Why are the opposition MKs hiding behind the LGBT and Druze instead of storming the barricades themselves? After all, the nation-state law was not intended to harm the Arab or Druze population. The real target is the Supreme Court and the liberal character of Israeli society as expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

Signed and proclaimed in 1948, the Declaration of Independence reflected a broad consensus that included Communists and Revisionists, the National Religious and Herut. It promised “full and equal citizenship” for all of Israel’s citizens, “irrespective of religion, race or gender.” This statement did not prevent the enactment of discriminatory laws against the Arab population that favored the Jewish majority: the Law of Return, the Absentees’ Law, zoning and building laws, and tax and budgetary policies that have discriminated against the Arab population for 70 years.

What led to the enactment of the nation-state law are the rulings of the Supreme Court of Israel, such as decisions that prevented the expulsion of asylum seekers from Africa, that allowed Arabs to purchase land in Jewish towns, that evacuated illegal outposts in occupied territory, and other decisions that impeded the Right’s attempt to change the face of Israeli society. In the wings is the “Basic Law on Legislation,” which will define the limits of judicial review for years to come. In other words, the Arabs are the excuse, but the goal is to change the liberal lifestyle and the fruits of democracy enjoyed by the Jewish majority. It was not necessary to pass a nation-state law. Discrimination thrives without it.

The government openly admits that the Left is the target; the Left is the internal enemy and it must be defeated. “If we look at the hysteria that has gripped the Left in the face of this law, I think it is excellent,” Minister Yariv Levin said in an interview with Haaretz on August 6. What is of great importance to Levin is the hysteria of the Left and not the panic gripping the Arabs. The factor that threatens the peace and security of the coalition is undoubtedly the Zionist leftist opposition, not the Arab-dominated Joint List.

The purpose of the nation-state law is to ensure that the right-wing government continues to rule for as long as possible. When Standard & Poor’s upgrades Israel’s credit rating, and Trump continues, with Putin’s help, to drive the US and the world crazy, the nation-state law is just a sideshow, a global footnote that helps Netanyahu mobilize his base and neutralize the opposition.

How can the Zionist Left dare oppose a law that says that the State of Israel belongs only to the Jewish people? How can Avi Gabbay, head of the Labor Party (a.k.a. the Zionist Camp) support the protesters in the square when he himself has declared that the Left “has forgotten what it means to be Jews,” adding, “We are Jews, living in a Jewish state. I think one of the Labor Party’s problems is that it has distanced itself from that”? After all, it is clear that Netanyahu has the upper hand in the ‘who is more Jewish’ competition. The nation-state law aims to pull the rug out from under Labor’s Gabbay, and it gives Netanyahu the competitive edge over Yesh Atid’s strongman, Yair Lapid, who is trying to out-bibi Bibi.

Nevertheless, the Left is content to see the LGBT and the Druze rallying at Rabin Square, since they aren’t necessarily leftists. Both groups represent a broader spread: MKs Itzik Shmuli (Labor) and Amir Ohana (Likud) are gay, while Ayoub Kara is a Druze Likud minister, and Salah Saad is of Labor. If they were leftists, Netanyahu would have no trouble dismissing them. But because they represent a wider circle in public opinion and enjoy public support, he is in danger of having to pay a political price.

Despite the above, Tzipi Livni (recently appointed as leader of the opposition) is still trying to spearhead the struggle, and promises, if elected, to override the nation-state law with the Declaration of Independence. However,the Declaration of Independence does not have the power to build a truly democratic and egalitarian society. Moreover, it even prepared the ground upon which the nation-state law is built. Discrimination against the Arab population and the division between Jews and Arabs are the fertile soil from which the Israeli Right arose. Since 1948, and despite the Declaration of Independence, Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza and established an occupation that has lasted 50 out of its 70 years of existence.The marriage between the revisionist and messianic Right, together with the Ashkenazi and Mizrahi ultraorthodox, forms a stable coalition that can lead a counter-constitutional revolution and set up a benighted nationalist-religious regime.

In order to block the right-wing revolution, the Left must adopt a comprehensive program that will be a clear and unambiguous answer to the Right. Confronting the Jewish State, we must advocate for a truly democratic state, a state of all its citizens. Confronting the Occupation and the separate laws for settlers and Palestinians, we must present a far-reaching solution based on a single democratic state with equality and majority rule. Ironically, the Declaration of Independence states that Israel will “ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or gender. It will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education,and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions, and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations…and will take steps to bring about the economic union of the whole of Eretz-Israel.”

Economic unity already exists. It is based on the single Customs Envelope for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, one currency, and almost complete economic integration, but without equality or political rights. The Left has lost its vision; it has no political path and no socioeconomic alternative, and therefore it remains weak and doomed. The vision of a single state, a shared economy,and one constitution can defeat the Israeli Right and ensure peace and democracy. This is conditioned, of course, on Israelis and Palestinians finding a way of joining forces for the creation of a new reality.

*Translated from the Hebrew by Robert Goldman

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”The Left has forgotten what it is to be Jewish,” says Avi Gabbay, and with some justification. After the Right established a monopoly on Judaism and cloaked it with support for all sorts of evil, such as the occupation and racism, the Left’s estrangement from Judaism deepened, and along with it, the chance of taking power.

The term “Jew” is undoubtedly very broad, and it includes anyone whose mother is Jewish, but this is not what the current leader of the Labor Party meant. Gabbay took care to define those deserving of partnership: he barred the Arab “Joint List”, saying he would not sit with them in a future coalition; he denied the legitimacy of fellow Arab party member MK Zuhair Bahlul because he did not take part in an event marking the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration; he then gave a wink to the settlers, saying that a future peace agreement will not require the dismantling of settlements. And his latest gem is his support for the government’s position in deporting African asylum-seekers back to Africa.

As if all this was not enough, when attacking Netanyahu recently, he showed what an authentic Jew he is by quoting his grandmother who used to say in Moroccan “Hashoumeh!”, or “Shame on you!” For Gabbay, it seems, the epitome of being Jewish is being Moroccan.

But what Gabbay does with full backing of the Labor Party is no different from what President Trump is doing these days. While Gabbay endorses the expulsion of tens of thousands of African asylum seekers, Trump plots against 60,000 Haitian asylum seekers who came to the United States following an earthquake that devastated their country in 2010. In other words, Gabbay’s version of “being Moroccan” is a global trend, and restoring an ethnic group’s former glory is perfectly suited to anyone who fights for ethno-nationalism around the world.

Led by Trump himself, ethno-nationalism is going to “make America great again.” Trump’s “base” is the white worker who lost his social status. This was because of economic and social changes that the US underwent due to globalization, and the great financial crisis of 2008 that brought neoliberalism to its knees. Gabbay is wooing the Likud Mizrahi “base” in an attempt to syphon off votes.

In Germany and Britain, a nationalist wave has been on the uptick because of mass emigration that threatens to change the ethnic composition of their societies; Neo-Fascist parties pop up like mushrooms after the rain. The young 31-year-old Austrian prime minister rode a wave of anti-immigrant anxiety into office; the UK Independence Party (UKIP) forced Brexit—and then disappeared; the far-right populist party Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) won enough seats to create a political crisis that is keeping Angela Merkel from forming a coalition.

In short, “isolationism” (whether in Israel, Germany, or America) and ramping up hatred of foreigners (Arabs, blacks and Latinos) are not Gabbay inventions, but a global trend to which the Labor Party is being dragged as it reaches for the brass ring of winning the next election.

Xenophobia is not an exclusively Jewish phenomenon. It is found in Christianity and, in recent years, it has also gained strength in Islam. Just as the white American worker despises his black counterpart, the French worker hates the Moroccan immigrant, the British detests the newly arrived Pole, and so the Mizrahi worker in Israel scorns the Arabs and demands the expulsion of African asylum-seekers.

But hatred is not simply directed against the stranger, it is directed even more against anyone perceived as being a lover of foreigners, whether they are Syrian refugees, Latino immigrants, or Arabs. America is divided between blue and red states (Democratic and Republican), and so is Spain, Germany, and—why not—Israel. Steve Bannon (Trump’s right-wing strategic shadow adviser) harbors a hatred of liberal America that far outweighs his hatred of blacks, women, and immigrants. You just have to look at Fox News and read Trump’s tweets to understand how deeply anti-American Americans are.

As for Israel, Rabin’s murder was perhaps the most horrific proof of the abysmal hatred between the camps. It is enough to look at events this week in order to see how high the flames have reached: we have the “Breaking the Silence” affair, in which the organization is accused of lying and betraying IDF soldiers; and we have the wild reaction against President Rivlin for his refusal to pardon the Hebron killer, Sgt. Elor Azaria, a reaction that culminated in a doctored image of Rivlin wearing an Arab headdress, like the image made of Rabin shortly before his assassination.

The split between Sephardim and Ashkenazim in Israel mirrors the divide between the Right and the Liberals in America. It reflects the prevailing class war to determine the future of society. Will America be conservative, religious, misogynistic, and tyrannical? Will Israel become more religious and right-wing; will it maintain a regime that combines military occupation with apartheid? Or will America and Israel integrate into the gigantic historical and technological process leading to global cooperation based on democratic values as the only way to sustain human society?

The division between the Left and the Right overlaps with class imbalance. This has deepened with changes that arose out of the Third Industrial Revolution, the Internet Revolution and renewable energy. What Avi Gabbay proposes is to return to the past instead of posing an alternative vision for the future.

The Moroccan vote for the Likud and Shas (the Mizrahi orthodox party) does not stem from their Jewishness but from their social status. They dwell in poor neighborhoods, the so-called periphery, both economically and culturally, and their power is mainly in their numbers. Despite the fact that they are currently part of the electoral majority, the quickly changing realities are shaking their self-confidence.

In contrast, the Left today is relatively small, but it is at the forefront of Israeli culture and the economy, especially the high-tech industry and the Internet. Although economically and socially based, the Left is politically weak, and this paradox leads to the greatly heightened tension between the camps. What further weakens the Israeli Left is its habit of distancing itself from Arab citizens and their electoral power, a distancing that plays into the hands of the Right.

The Arab revolution, the disintegration and disappearance of Arab states, the shock that Saudi Arabia is experiencing, the rise of Trump and Brexit – all these are secondary tremors following the great earthquake caused by the collapse of the global financial system in the summer of 2008. Today it is known that large parts of society will lose their livelihoods and be made redundant in the coming years: taxi drivers, truck drivers, and many other manual and office workers will be replaced by autonomous cars, robots and artificial intelligence.

The conservatism of the Israeli Right is found in its adherence to the outdated market economy, which has created an unprecedented class polarization and deep poverty. The Right refuses to look reality in the eye and to realize that the time has now come to make profound changes in the system. Political conservatism prevents Israel from resolving the conflict with the Palestinians, and it is also seen in the inability to tackle serious structural problems: the congested roads, the aging and polluting energy grid, the housing crisis, and the collapse of health and education services.

What goes on in the US and Europe shows that problems not addressed do not disappear, but only intensify until they threaten the very existence of democratic regimes. Israel is no exception, and economic and social problems are worsened owing to the conflict with the Arab world and the burden of a 50-year colonial occupation.

Avi Gabbay’s efforts to come to power at all costs are mistaken: his ridiculous attempt to dress the Labor Party in Moroccan robes will not convince Likud supporters. What Israeli society needs, and urgently, is to make the necessary adjustments to the twenty-first century. Countries fighting against globalization, against connecting the world, and against the building of a common future with the ‘Other,’ endanger the democratic foundations established after two bloody world wars.

So it is with Israeli society. Its refusal to deal with a changing reality and the Palestinian problem (a problem it created), its seclusion from the world in order to adhere to old policies, its populism, and the practice of courting voters at any price, all contribute to the perpetuation of the conflict, to the deepening of the social crisis and to the internal rift.

On the other hand, those who advocate solidarity among all peoples, democracy, and human rights see a shared economy, and equality between Jews and Arabs. We see these not just as a way of life, but as the only way to sustain a future human society.

*Translated from the Hebrew by Robert Goldman

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