This Independence Day, Israel Has Split Into Two Incompatible Jewish States - Israel News - Haaretz.com
There is an elephant in the Israeli room – and no, it's not occupation, though that is its main cause.
The elephant in the room is Israel gradually but inexorably being divided into the State of Israel – a high-tech, secular, outward-looking, imperfect but liberal state – and the Kingdom of Judea, a Jewish-supremacist, ultranationalist theocracy with messianic, antidemocratic tendencies that encourage isolation.
This is what happened between (roughly) 796 B.C.E. and the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E., and again from 140 B.C.E. to 63 B.C.E. when the Hasmoneans ruled until the Roman conquest. The divisions were most acute during the First Jewish Revolt of 66 C.E., leading to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70, resulting in exile and statelessness until 1948.
It is no longer "Tel Aviv versus Jerusalem" but increasingly "Tel Aviv versus Masada." The modern day versus the extremist, messianic Sicarii cult in Masada in 73. In recent years, Israel has been ruled by a modern-day version of those Jewish Zealots.
Israelis protesting against the government, outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Caesarea residence in March.Credit: Rami Shllush
Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, designed as a political tool to redress a 2,000-year anomaly of statelessness, has in Judea and inside the current government morphed and mutated through the settler movement and extreme right-wing zealots into a Masada-like political culture, based on the concept of the redemption of the ancient kingdom in the ancestral land.
For years, there was a division between Israel and the occupied territories. Now, those occupied territories have taken over the government in Jerusalem under the tutelage and active encouragement of Judea's self-ordained king: Benjamin Netanyahu.
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Never in the proud 76 years of Israel's sovereign existence has there been a sadder, more somber, depressing and acrimonious Independence Day than this year. On a day that usually highlights and extols Israel's major achievements, the country will instead be solemnly introspective, despondent, angry and devastated by the catastrophe of October 7, 2023.
But above and beyond pondering October 7, there is a growing realization that "unity," "one destiny" and "we have no choice and no other country" have become meaningless and hollow clichés. Instead, more and more Israelis on both sides of the divide see their country as essentially split into two distinct entities: Judea and Israel.
Unreconcilable value systems
In 1814, the Russian writer and fabulist Ivan Andreyevich Krylov wrote a one-page essay, "The Inquisitive Man." In it, he describes a man who tells his friend that he just spent hours in the Museum of Natural History and recounts in awe all the species he has just seen up close. Surely, the friend says, you saw and were amazed by the elephant and its mountain-like size? Actually, admits the man, I didn't notice the elephant.
And so, Krylov's fable became a common proverb describing people ignoring, avoiding or dismissing an issue that is uncomfortable to talk about – something controversial, potentially contentious and inflammatory once discussed.
Typically, the phrase "The elephant in the room" is used to refer to the issue of occupation, or the lack of resolution of the political fate of the occupied territories (the West Bank and, indirectly, the Gaza Strip) that Israel has been occupying, or administering, since 1967. Nineteen years passed between Israel's proclamation of independence on May 14, 1948 and 1967. Fifty-seven years have elapsed since, and only a shrinking number of Israelis actually remember or conceive of the pre-1967 reality.
Israel is not only occupying territory but approximately 5 million Palestinians. In effect, for 57 years Israel has been living in a recurring loop of the seventh day of the Six-Day War. That reality, which in the 1970s was termed "protracted temporariness," has become a permanent feature of Israel's political and geopolitical ecosystem.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir at a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony last week. The extremist is one of the government's Jewish zealots.Credit: Oren Ben Hakoon
But occupation is not the real elephant in the room, despite Israelis' tendency to conveniently avoid talking about it or seriously trying to resolve the anomaly. Instead, that reality affected, even polluted and decayed, Israel – to the point that Israel is de-facto splitting into two incompatible states.
Sure, the legal system, the military, the bureaucracy and the general cultural characteristics and patriotic attributes remain ostensibly intact. But in essence, there is a civil war raging in Israel. It has not reached Gettysburg levels, but the deep and wide schism is becoming glaringly evident.
The two political value systems are just not reconcilable. "We are fighting the Arabs (or Iran) for our existence" remains the only common thread, and it is weakening. That is a negative definition of national identity: a common enemy and threat, but very little of what unites us in terms of the type of society and country we want to be.
There have been many civil wars in history that temporarily or permanently changed the trajectory of those societies and countries.
The English Civil Wars (1642-1651) temporarily deposed of the monarchy. The American Civil War (1861-1865) ended the Confederacy and, eventually, slavery. China's Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) was the bloodiest civil war in history with an estimated 30 million deaths. The Chinese Civil War (1927-1949) led to a communist takeover of the world's most populous nation. The Russian Civil War (1917-1922) consolidated the Bolshevik Revolution. The Korean Civil War (1950-1953) ended with that country's permanent division into two hostile nations. The Syrian Civil War started in 2011. Sudan has had numerous civil wars since 1956 – and there have been many smaller, internal wars elsewhere.
The simple definition of a civil war is a war fought between two (or more) politically organized groups within the same society or state structure. They naturally vary in context and causes: ideological, the nature of politics, contrasting cultural value systems or economic.
The divide is real
It may seem crazy, impractical and unfeasible to talk of a dissolution into two states or some federative structure, and it probably is. The fact that it is not doable doesn't change the fact that the divide is real, widening and becoming unbridgeable. The political, cultural and economic gaps and rifts are growing, accompanied by toxic vitriol that masquerades as political discourse. Even the most fundamental common narrative, the Declaration of Independence, is now being questioned with some of its basic tenets and guiding principles a source of political contention.
Israel and Judea do not share a common perception or idea of a Jewish state. The Judeans, whom Netanyahu succeeded in meshing into a voting bloc consisting of the right-wing, the far right, the religious ultra-Orthodox and his cult followers, are not a majority, But they are in power. Their current go-to claim is that "Tel Aviv is a bubble," an echo chamber detached from the "real Israel." If they are the "real Israel," then it is no longer the Israel of the Zionist enterprise.
A protest against the Netanyahu government in Tel Aviv on Saturday. Yes, the city is a bubble, but it accounts for most of Israel's GDP and innovation.Credit: Moti Milrod
As for the bubble claim, they're right – but New York is a bubble, Paris and London are bubbles. Yet Tel Aviv, New York, Paris and London represent most of their respective countries' GDP and innovation.
The confluence of the catastrophe of October 7 and Israel's 76th anniversary may blunt the political debate for a while, but they cannot hide the reality: There are two states here, with contrasting visions for the future and essence of the nation.
Israel and Israelis have a lot to be proud of. Israel's physical existence and democracy should never be taken for granted. But the gap between Israel's isles of excellence in science, innovation, high-tech, medicine and the arts stands in stark contrast to political ineptness, abject leadership and a lack of a vision.
It can be fixed without mutually excluding its two components, but on the current trajectory it is in the unraveling phase.