The Occupation Is Destroying Israel From Within, and Liberals Can't Ignore It Anymore - Israel News - Haaretz.com
The 1857 ruling by the United States Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford was one of the most outrageous in American judicial history. The suit had its beginnings a decade earlier when Scott, a Black slave from Missouri, took his owner to court – and, after the owner's death, the executor of his estate – requesting to be set free. The suit went through several judicial levels and ultimately reached the Supreme Court. There, Chief Justice Roger Taney, himself a slave owner, asserted in the decision that Black people – whether enslaved or free – were not and never could be citizens of the United States, and hence were not entitled to bring suit in federal court. In addition, the court ruled that Congress lacked the authority to ban slavery in new federal territories.
The decision stunned the Northern states, all of which had already outlawed slavery. Northerners were not necessarily opposed to slavery as such on moral grounds – that sentiment existed only in part. Many in the North, however, effectively supported the perpetuation of slavery in the South, but objected to its expansion into more states for a variety of reasons: political, economic and social. The effect of the Dred Scott decision was to shatter the illusion that slavery was only a Southern "problem." It is not by chance, then, that many historians view the ruling as a significant milestone on the road that led, four years later, to a blood-drenched civil war.
The past two years may well end up being the "Dred Scott moment" of the liberal public in Israel. For years, many Israelis succeeded in repressing the occupation, viewing it as a peripheral issue. Now, however, the political forces that grew up under the aegis of Israeli rule in the West Bank have turned their thrust inward, revealing the fact that the occupation is not only a "problem" of settlers and Palestinians, but an issue that is eroding the foundations of Israeli democracy and society.
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It's not by chance that the representatives of the extreme wing of Religious Zionism in the government and in the Knesset – Smotrich, Strock, Ben-Gvir, Rothman – are also at the forefront of the judicial coup, of opposition to a hostage deal, of support for the dismissal of our national "gatekeepers" and of the demand to keep the war going.
Understanding these positions necessitates an examination of the historical and social contexts in which this stream of Zionism emerged. For decades the settlement project in the territories provided many with a feeling of mission and national destiny, transforming the settlements not only into political capital but also into a key tool for creating the religious and communal identities of that camp.
The situation across the Green Line – where democracy is perceived as a mere recommendation, where the state's institutions serve a national-religious vision and military force offers an immediate solution to every dispute – enabled patterns of control to become normalized. Now the same patterns are being imported into the state's institutions and assimilated into the judicial system, our democracy and civil society.
Political forces do not spring up in a vacuum. They take shape within historical, social and cultural frameworks that accord them legitimacy. The extremist views of the Southern slave owners were a direct result of the economic, social and cultural reality that was brought about by the institution of slavery. By enslaving millions of Blacks, the plantation owners in the South became a rich and powerful elite. Structural anomalies in the political system vested them with political strength that far exceeded their proportion in the population.
Cars belonging to Palestinian workers that was set on fire in the Barkan industrial zone.Credit: John Wessels/AFP
Concurrently, an ideological and cultural perception developed in the South that depicted slavery as morally legitimate, even as part of the natural order of things. The combination of vast economic wealth, unprecedented political power and a hard and self-righteous ideology, left the Southern elite feeling intoxicated with power.
The extremist wing of the religious Zionist movement also did not arise fully formed – it is a direct product of long years of occupation. This is a group that developed far from the eyes of the general public and outside the coverage range of the mainstream media.
The everyday life of this population takes place in a region that is disconnected from the Israeli collective experience and that has little ongoing contact with most of the country's citizens. In this world, democratic values such as equality and human rights are pushed to the margins, in favor of military force. As such, the Israel Defense Forces have transformed from being a state-oriented institution that is responsible for the security of all the country's citizens, into a tool for realizing the settlers' vision.
Educational institutions provide fertile ground for cultivation of concepts of Jewish supremacy and a sense of messianic mission, which together raise the idea of a Greater Israel above democratic values and pragmatic security considerations. Topping it all is generous funding by the state. The result is an ideological movement that exports the concepts that took shape in the territories to the decision-making processes of the state's institutions, a movement that is armed with deep faith in the rightness of its path and with a sense of historic mission.
Historically, religious Zionism was a moderate factor in Israeli society, taking part in the state's institutions and producing key figures who fostered a partnership between the religious and secular publics. With time, however, the geographical, ideological and cultural disconnect caused by the settlement project produced a generation of politicians who entered the Knesset and the government from a world that is almost completely severed from the general Israeli ethos, and who today spearhead a policy that threatens Israel's existence as a Jewish and democratic state.
The American North finally snapped out of the illusion that slavery could be confined to the Southern states. After Dred Scott, the abolitionist movement, which was initially seen as a marginal group, became a factor that influenced public opinion in the years leading up to the Civil War. In post-October 7 Israel, it's doubtful that there is any longer a possibility to arrive at the political resolve that would be needed to put an end to the occupation. The bulk of public sentiment ranges between indifference to the intensification of the war, on the one hand, and readiness to consider the idea of annexing parts of the Gaza Strip, on the other.
As far as much of the Israeli public is concerned, it would appear that the liberal camp has almost no right to be heard on the issue. Still, the conclusion to be drawn from the past two years must be clear: You can't have your cake and eat it too. It's not possible to fight for individual rights, democratic freedoms and the rule of law, and at the same time to ignore the system that produced and is cultivating and empowering extremist political forces that are subverting those very principles.
Continuing to repress the effects of the occupation, and categorizing it as a matter separate from the struggle for democracy, constitute an obstacle to the correction of the situation. It's not a matter of "left" vs. "right," but of national responsibility for a properly run country. It's not possible to go on ignoring the direct connection that exists between the occupation and the political radicalization, the collapse of the structures of the rule of law, the downgrading of Israel's international status and, ultimately, the disintegration of Israeli society itself.
At the very least, we must cease to be afraid of talking about settler violence and about the consequences for Israel's future of the expansion of the settlements. Ignoring these developments is no less dangerous than the developments themselves, because it allows them to occur without significant opposition.
Or Asher is a doctoral student at Tel Aviv University's School of Political Science, Government and International Affairs, and a Fox International Fellow at Yale University's MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies.