Thanks to the Far Right, Israel’s Government Is Declaring That Zionism Is Racism
Monday, May 1, 2023 at 10:04PM Enshrining in law that Zionist values will guide government action would amount to a public announcement of an apartheid policy. While it may be 'just' a trolling attempt, it could be the final straw for the Druze community and a blow to Israel’s international standing
by Meirav Arlosoroff 1 May 2023 Haaretz
Brig. Gen. (res.) Amal Asad, a heroic figure in Israel’s Druze community, is furious. He was already fuming about the so-called Kaminitz Law on illegal construction, and the Nation-State Law. But the last straw was Otzma Yehudit’s plan to pass a bill enshrining “Zionism as a guiding value” in government policy.
“All that’s missing now is for them to make us wear a patch, and all the rest has already happened,” Asad says in anger. “This is an apartheid state that discriminates between races and is expelling us from our home. The ties built here over 70 years are now being destroyed by vulgar, petty people who understand nothing. The Druze community here is on the verge of exploding. It’s only a matter of time until it happens.”
Asad thinks the Druze community will react severely to the proposed bill, which he considers a violation of the covenant between the community and the Jewish one. If this legislation is adopted as proposed, it would be a public assertion that Israel is a racist state that officially discriminates between Jews and non-Jews
“This is a bill that prioritizes Jews over non-Jewish Israelis, even if they have been living in this land for many years before the Jews,” says Asad. “It’s infuriating, and it’s anti-democratic.”
In contrast, Prof. Amal Jamal, of Tel Aviv University’s School of Political Science, does not expect Druze to take to the streets or burn any bridges. “This is a vulnerable group that will be wary of a head-on clash,” he says.
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Jamal predicts Druze will opt for a quiet rebellion. The rate of avoidance of military service, which is already on the rise, will increase, he says. Druze men will choose to focus on business or academic training instead of a military career, and voting patterns will shift.
“Druze used to mainly vote Likud,” Jamal says. “Today, there is clearly disappointment with the right. We will see a change in voting patterns, and a shift toward the National Unity Party and Yesh Atid.”
More than declarative
It’s uncertain whether the two Otzma Yehudit ministers – Itamar Ben-Gvir and Yitzhak Wasserlauf – gave any thought to the possible response from Israeli Druze to their legislative proposal, or if they care about it at all. Like many things that have been happening in this far-right coalition, which does what it wants and only then stops to think about the implications, the proposed Zionism bill is causing no small amount of head-scratching.
No one in a position of responsibility can quite explain what this proposal really means, or how it is meant to be implemented. Coming from two such capricious ministers, it’s quite possible that this is essentially a declarative rather than a practical action.
The bill is brief, and mainly speaks about “instructing government ministries and all arms of the government that Zionist values, as manifested in the Basic Law on Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, shall be the guiding and decisive values in shaping policy of the public administration.”
In other words, this is an attempt to take the Nation-State Law, which was only a declarative law, and turn it into a practical law that guides government actions.
The bill lists the areas in which Zionist considerations will henceforth be “guiding and decisive”: government institutions; land policy; planning policy; and government corporations. The main emphasis appears to be on planning and construction, driven by Otzma Yehudit, and the entire far-right government’s desire to promote Jewish while preventing Arab and Bedouin settlement.
For example , the Zionist bill could help the right-wing government fulfill its ambition to establish numerous Jewish communities in the north to “Judaize the Galilee,” or to surround the Bedouin communities in the south with dozens of Jewish communities to prevent the Bedouin communities from expanding in the area.
In this, the Otzma Yehudit bill is not much different from similar attempts by previous governments to promote Jewish settlement. Former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked often boasted that she planned to pave the Negev with Jewish communities
The Zionism bill could, ostensibly, serve as a tool to overcome the planning bodies’ traditional professional opposition to the construction of small rural Jewish communities. The argument would be that the fact that it makes no economic sense is irrelevant; approve it because it’s Zionist. But building these communities will still be a challenging task, and very expensive.
Other possible uses of the proposed legislation come to mind. It could be used to declare that a community is meant for Jews only (or perhaps for Jews and military veterans, in order to assuage the Druze) and thereby prevent non-Jews from acquiring land in the new community that will be built.
It could also be used a basis for prioritizing the paving of a road to a small Zionist community over a road to a larger neighboring Arab one; providing benefits in the form of subsidized land or the sale of lots to locals exclusively in Jewish localities and not Arab ones; or declaring that tax benefits will only be given to Jewish towns.
Another possibility is that the move is primarily intended to pave the way for certain internal political goals. “Zionist” could be a purposely vague classification here. Such vague terms can be bent to suit politicians’ desires – for example, to approve requests from one town that’s headed by the friend of a certain politician, and turn down another one.
Trolling for PR
The problem is that all of these things are the expression of a blatantly racist and discriminatory policy. A cabinet decision alone is not enough to make the idea a reality.
That requires legislation that must be passed by the Knesset. If that happens, Israel’s legislature would be passing a bill that explicitly declares Israel to be a state that gives preferential treatment to Jews over non-Jews.
If this legislation passes, it will be equivalent to an official announcement that Israel is a racist state that practices a policy of apartheid toward its citizens. Nearly 50 years after Chaim Herzog stood before the UN General Assembly and tore up the “Zionism is racism” resolution, the Israeli legislature is about to pass its own version of this resolution.
One can only imagine the damage that such a move would cause, both in terms of the major protests it would spark inside Israel and in terms of Israel’s international standing.
In any case, the Supreme Court would not let such racist legislation stand. So, in order to keep it on the books, the Supreme Court must be cleared out of the way by means of the coup that is currently “on hold.”
But Asad is not reassured at all. “The Supreme Court didn’t protect us from the Kaminitz Law, which stole our homes,” he says. “And it also upheld the Nation-State Law, on the grounds that it was solely declarative – and now we see that this was a terrible mistake. The Supreme Court did not protect the Druze, and even so, we are out there protesting every day in order to safeguard the Supreme Court.”
Given all of these hurdles, it’s widely assumed that the cabinet decision will remain nothing more than an empty declaration with no practical application. At the moment, the decision to back a “Zionist values” bill seems to be mostly a slogan posted on Twitter by Otzma Yehudit. It will be hard to translate into concrete policy.
Although it’s probably “just” a bit of trolling designed for PR purposes alone, it’s already exacting a heavy price, causing a rift with Israeli Druze society and widening the rift with the Israeli Arab community.
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