More on Israel, settler colonialism, and Israeli democracy

I recently posted about my reactions to a 2024 polemical book by Adam Kirsch, On Settler Colonialism.

Laleh Khalili has a longer discussion on the book and its deficiencies in the Sommer 2024 issue of Jewish Currents. (1) Her discussion makes my own grumpy assessment of it sound downright generous!

The reader will get a better overview of the field of settler-colonial studies from her article than one is likely to get from Kirsch’s whole book. As Khalili reported it:

Kirsch’s book can be understood as an aggrieved reaction against an undeniable, ongoing shift concerning what ideas get taken seriously, both in the halls of academe and in the public square. Even his methodological carelessness conveys a sense of entitlement to continue setting the terms of debate. By demonizing any scholarly concept that might have normative implications—and thus function as a call to action—as illegitimate “ideology,” Kirsch effectively advocates for a sterile form of knowledge production, in which thinking and writing are hermetically sealed off from affecting the real world.

And she notes, “The best corrective to Kirsch’s attempt to dismiss the concept of settler colonialism as a shallow fad is a substantive discussion of the actual historical process—especially the colonization of Palestine, as understood from the vantage of its victims.”

She also emphasizes:

Israel has followed the same blueprint as its predecessors. Indeed, Jewish settlement in Palestine, which began in the latter half of the 19th century, was initially modeled on European settlers’ search for El Dorado in Southern Africa, Hawaii, and the North American Pacific Coast.

Looking at the history of Israel’s past as a Zionist project and as a nation since 1948 does not somehow put into question “Israel’s right to exist,” the phrase repeated endlessly by Israel’s partisans whenever Israel is involved in some military action outside its borders. There are countries that do not formally recognize Israel diplomatically. And there are certainly advocates for the Palestinians who do question Israel’s “right to exist.”

There are also other angles on that issue, like the central one Jamie Levin discussed in 2012 in a piece in the conservative Jerusalem Post:

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s ceaseless policy of annexing Palestinian land to expand the settlements not only saps valuable state resources, which are desperately needed to provide good jobs and housing in Israel proper, but also needlessly endangers the lives of Israeli soldiers who are charged with protecting the increasingly unprotectable. With every further encroachment into Palestinian land, the route of the separation barrier becomes more irrational, following neither internationally recognized boundaries nor those dictated by nature or security. While separation was its goal, today the barrier neither keeps Palestinians out nor Israelis in.

But Netanyahu’s determination to absorb ever-greater quantities of biblical land comes with an even greater cost. Israel cannot continue to exist as both a Jewish and democratic state as long as it occupies millions of West Bank Palestinians, who are rapidly approaching numerical parity with the Jewish population. To enfranchise them would mean the end of the Jewish state. To continue to deny them full participatory rights, the end of Israel’s democratic character. [my emphasis in bold] (2)

And, in fact, Netanyahu and his supporters have been pushing hard since 2023 even before October 7 to establish a much more authoritarian system, which has been hotly contested by Israeli citizens and voters and still are. Those efforts have focused heavily on drastically reducing the independence of Israeli courts, the Supreme Court in particular.

In other words, Netanyahu himself in practice rejects Israel’s right to exist as a democratic state. And as Jamie Levin also noted, as have many others, the apartheid conditions imposed on Palestinians in the occupied territories are already a serious limitation on Israel’s status as a liberal democratic state.

Robbie Michaelson recently described some of these problems, in the also conservative Times of Israel:

The first and perhaps most blatant indication of this authoritarian trajectory is the coalition’s attempt to introduce sweeping new legislation that would fundamentally alter the balance of power in Israel’s security establishment. The proposed legislation would give the coalition the right to fire the attorney general, the head of the IDF, the head of the Mossad and the head of the Internal Security during the first 100 days of their assuming their positions. This unprecedented power grab would effectively place Israel’s most critical security institutions under direct political control, removing the traditional independence these agencies have maintained to protect the state’s interests above partisan politics. …

Political tensions are surging in Israel after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has moved to fire top security and legal officials. The fact that tens of thousands of Israelis have joined anti-government protests in recent days and that a former Supreme Court chief justice has warned of civil war demonstrates the gravity of the current crisis. [my emphasis] (3)

Michaelson warns, “The cumulative effect of these actions represents a systematic assault on Israel’s democratic institutions.”

As Dahlia Scheindlin wrote in a 2024 book:

Netanyahu presided over, cultivated, and unleashed some of the most undemocratic forces in Israel’s history, reaching new and dangerous heights as this book is being completed. These include political attacks on the judiciary, alongside both policies and rhetorical pressure targeting civil society, minorities, media, cultural figures, and left-wing critics of the government or Israeli policy. (4)

The situation today is much worse, as Scheindlin herself has continued to highlight. But this does not mean that the concept of Israel as a Jewish state isn’t in itself a major problem for democracy. As Scheindlin also wrote in 2024:

For most Jews, the greatest threat from Arab citizens—which many even see as a betrayal—is the demand for “a state of all its citizens.” Many Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel view this as natural—the foundation of any democracy; for most Jews (in Israel and abroad), the phrase “a state of all its citizens” is reflexively understood as the destruction of Israel. (p. 163)

That’s why “Israel’s right to exist” is not normally meant by Zionist partisans as a secular and democratic state. Because many of Israel’s citizens understand that as Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state as Zionists understand it.

Notes:

(1) Khalili, Laleh (2025): History Lesson. Jewish Currents Sommer 2025. <https://jewishcurrents.org/history-lesson> (Accessed: 2025-11-08).

(2) Levin, Jamie (2012): The Masada complex. Jerusalem Post 01/26/2012. <https://www.jpost.com/magazine/opinion/the-masada-complex> (Accessed: 2025-11-08).

(3) Michaelson, Robbie (2025): Israel is turning into a dictatorship. Times of Israel 07/14/2025. <https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/israel-is-turning-into-a-dictatorship/> (Accessed: 2025-11-08).

(4) Scheindlin, Dahlia (2024): The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel: Promise Unfulfilled, 160. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter.