Smoke and Mirrors: Rising Israeli ‘Fascism’ or Forgetting the Labour Zionist Past

Abstract

The Israeli right—an alliance of neoliberal parties and settler organizations—has become the undisputed and seemingly undisplaceable political leadership of the state over recent decades. This transformation has been associated, both in Israel and internationally, with successive Likud-led governments in general, and their allies within the settler movement. A recurrent theme within analyses of this rise is the claim, made by journalists, academics and activists alike, that fascism is rearing its head in Israel, both in government and on the streets. This article argues that an analysis of Israel’s Labour Zionist history and confronting the claims made by its contemporary supporters, in the face of the Zionist right’s dominance, in fact highlights long-term political continuities and undermines claims of rising fascism. By building on critical literature on the politics of memory, this paper further discusses how a romanticized vision of the past, is central to current attempts by Labour Zionism to re-organize itself while whitewashing its own history. Finally, this article shows that a focus on history, and an analysis of the construction of collective memory, uncovers the ways in which the contemporary Zionist right has emerged from the foundations built by Labour Zionism itself.

Key Words:

• Collective Memory
• Fascism
• Israel
• Labour Zionism
• Palestine

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Sara Salem and Roberto Roccu for making this special issue possible and working so tirelessly to get it done. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewer for the extremely helpful and insightful comments.

Notes

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2 Tom Segev (2000) The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (New York: Henry Holt).

3 W. Benjamin (1940) On the Concept of History.

4 Edward Said (2000) Invention, Memory, and Place, Critical Inquiry, 26(2), p. 179.

5 Pierre Nora (1989) Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire, Representations, 26, pp. 8–9.

6 Chris Weedon & Glenn Jordan (2012) Collective Memory: Theory and Politics, Social Semiotics, 22(2), p. 143.

7 Stephen Legg (2007) Reviewing Geographies of Memory/Forgetting, Environment and Planning, 39, p. 457.

8 Benedict Anderson (2006) Imagined Communities (London: Verso), p. 201.

9 Said, Invention, Memory, and Place.

10 Ibid, p. 184.

11 Walid Khalidi (1984) Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians 1876–1948 (Washington: Institute for Palestine Studies).

12 Rashid Khalidi (1997) Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press).

13 Ibrahim Abu Lughod (1987) The Transformation of Palestine (Evanston: Northwestern University Press).

14 Elia Zureik (1979) The Palestinians in Israel (Abingdon: Routledge & Kegan Paul Books).

15 It is a bitter irony that the debate about this amnesia in academia is dominated by a focus on the Israeli ‘New Historians’, which leaves out—forgets—the contribution of Palestinian activists and scholars to this memory work (for a critical assessment of this tendency see, for example, Nur Masalha (2011) New History, Post-Zionism and Neo-Colonialism: A Critique of the Israeli ‘New Historians,’Holy Land Studies, 10(1), pp. 1–53.

16 Anaheed Al-Hardan (2016) Palestinians in Syria: Nakba Memories of Shattered Communities (New York: Columbia University Press), p. 5.

17 Uri Ram (2009) Ways of Forgetting: Israel and the Obliterated Memory of the Palestinian Nakba, Journal of Historical Sociology, 22(3), p. 368.

18 Ibid. p. 390.

19 Stuart Hall (2018) Familiar Stranger (London: Penguin), p. 22.

20 Michel Warschawski (2014) Gaza Will Rise from its Ashes: Will Israel Recover Sanity?, Alternative Information Centre, August 20. Available at: http://www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/blogs/michael-warschawski/8398-gaza-will-rise-from-its-ashes-will-israel-recover-sanity, accessed May 4, 2018.

21 Zeev Sternhell (2014) Interview with Gidi Weitz: Z. Sternhell, Signs of Fascism in Israel Reached New Peak During Gaza Op, Says Renowned Scholar, Haaretz, August 13. Available at: http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/.premium-1.610368, accessed May 6, 2018.

22 Z. Sternhell (2018) In Israel, Growing Fascism and Racism, Akin to Early Nazism, Haaretz, January 19. Available at: https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-in-israel-growing-fascism-and-a-racism-akin-to-early-nazism-1.5746488, accessed June 21, 2018.

23 Yeshayahu Leibowitz ([1987] 2014) There are Judeo-Nazis. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM2fXTkjU2E, accessed December 22, 2018.

24 Yehuda Elkana (1988) The Need to Forget, Ha’aretz, March 2. Available at: http://web.ceu.hu/yehuda_the_need_to_forget.pdf, accessed December 23, 2018.

25 Leon Trotsky (2008) Fascism:What it Is and How to Fight It (Toronto: Pathfinders Press).

26 Robert O. Paxton (2005) The Anatomy of Fascism (London: Penguin).

27 For more detailed account, see for example, Nadim N. Rouhana & Areej Sabbagh-Khoury (2015) Settler-Colonial Citizenship: Conceptualizing the Relationship between Israel and its Palestinian Citizens, Settler Colonial Studies, 5(3), pp. 205–225.

28 Al-Hardan, Palestinians in Syria.

29 Tikva Honig-Parnass (2011) The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine (Chicago: Haymarket), p. 183.

30 Deborah Bernstein (2000) Constructing Boundaries: Jewish and Arab Workers in Mandatory Palestine (Albany: SUNY).

31 Zachary Lockman (1996) Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906–1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press).

32 Gershon Shafir (1996 [1989]) Land, Labour and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press).

33 Lockman, Comrades and Enemies; and Shafir Land, Labour and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

34 Musa Budeiri (2010) The Palestine Communist Party: 1919–1948 (Chicago: Haymarket).

35 Joel Beinin (1990) Was the Red Flag Flying There? Marxist Politics and the Arab-Israeli Conflict in Egypt and Israel 1948–1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 73–76.

36 Quoted in ibid, p. 74.

37 Joshua Blass (2015) Imperialism and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: Revisions in Matzpen’s Historical Perspective, Israel Studies, 20(1), p. 136.

38 See, for example, Ella Shohat (1988) Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of its Jewish Victims, Social Text, 19/20, pp. 1–35.

39 Shindler, The Rise of the Israeli Right.

40 Pedhazur, The Triumph of Israel’s Radical Right.

41 Shafir, Land, Labour and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

42 Zeev Sternhell (1998) The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism, Socialism, and the Making of the Jewish State (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

43 See for example, Michael Shalev (1992) Labour and the Political Economy in Israel (New York: Oxford University Press); and Beinin, Was the Red Flag.

44 Jonathan Nitzan & Shimshon Bichler (2002) The Global Political Economy of Israel (London: Pluto Press).

45 Honig-Parnass, False Prophets.

46 Adam Hanieh (2003) From State-led Growth to Globalization: the Evolution of Israeli Capitalism, Journal of Palestine Studies, 32(4), pp. 5–21.

47 Nitzan & Bichler (2002) The Global Political Economy of Israel.

48 Shelly Yachimovich (2013) Word from the Chairperson, Labour Platform, January 16. Available at: http://www.shelly.org.il/node/7934, accessed March 3, 2016.

49 Ibid.

50 Jonathan List (2014) Labor, Livni Agree to Join Forces Ahead of Elections, Haaretz, December 10. Available at: https://www.haaretz.com/labor-livni-agree-to-join-forces-1.5343966, accessed August 22, 2018; and Toi Staff (2017) Opposition Leader Warns of Fascist Trend in Israeli Politics, Times of Israel, June 24. Available at: https://www.timesofisrael.com/opposition-leader-warns-of-fascist-trends-in-israeli-politics/, accessed August 22, 2018.

51 Herzog, Yitzhak (2017) Transcript, Israeli Mk Issac Herzog, Aipac, March 27. Available at: http://www.policyconference.org/article/transcripts/2017/herzog.asp, accessed August 18, 2018.

52 Quoted in Gil Hoffman (2018) Lapid, Livni: Decision by Likud Body a ‘Gift’ to BDS, Jerusalem Post, January 2. Available at: https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Lapid-Livni-Decision-by-Likud-body-a-gift-to-BDS-522606, accessed July 16, 2018.

53 Alon Confino (1997) Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method, American Historical Review, 102(5), pp. 1386–1403.