The Roots of Netanyahu’s Victory Lie in Israel’s Past

By Rachelle Marshall

Only his ardent supporters would call the election of Binyamin Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition a blessing, but their victory may be just what was needed to tear away the veil of myth that for so long has enabled the state of Israel to claim a special moral status among nations. The myth was enhanced when the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin converted from hawk to peacenik, so there was widespread shock outside of Israel when Shimon Peres, his partner in peace and one of the country’s original founders, was rejected by voters in favor of a newcomer to government who had relentlessly attacked his predecessors’ peacemaking efforts.

The election results seemed even more puzzling because under Rabin and Peres Israel had enjoyed a booming economy, with a dramatic drop in inflation and rise in gross national product, and achieved what former Foreign Minister Abba Eban referred to as “the widest breach ever made in the wall of Arab and Muslim hostility.” Even more important, the former Labor leaders had persuaded Yasser Arafat and the PLO to accept a peace settlement that legitimized Israel’s presence in most of the West Bank and part of Gaza, shifted the burden of policing those areas to the Palestinians, and left them with governing authority over only 4 percent of the territory and no control over the land or water. Yet despite the previous government’s accomplishments, a majority of Jewish voters—56 percent—preferred Netanyahu. Only overwhelming Arab support for Peres made it a close election.

Although many blamed the bus bombings by Islamic militants last winter for Peres’ downfall, it may in fact have been inevitable, given the nature of Israeli society today and the past 40 years of Israeli history that has shaped it. Post-election surveys show that working-class towns and neighborhoods with heavy concentrations of Sephardic, or non-European, Jews voted in large numbers for Netanyahu because, according to one analyst, they identified Peres with “people, ideas, and a way of life that they see as their enemy.” Although Peres had scrupulously protected the interests of Orthodox Jews, and his wife is a deeply pious woman, the Sephardim voted for the thrice-married Netanyahu because, as people who take the Old Testament literally, they were fearful of Peres’ vision of an Israel no longer insulated and surrounded by enemies. “The New Middle East and Song of Peace are symbols very foreign to traditional and religious Israelis on the right,” said Tel Aviv University professor Shlomo Dashan. “The secular notion of peace and harmony was completely rejected by the religious.” A news analyst for the Northern California Jewish Bulletin concluded that even if there had been no terrorist attacks, Peres would have been rejected by the “hundreds of thousands of Israelis whose world-view is fiercely anti-leftist, anti-Western, and anti-Arab.” Until the recent peace talks began, most Israeli policy-makers have tried to reinforce this world-view instead of making an effort to change it.

As elated Jewish settlers danced in the streets chanting “Bibi is King of Israel now!” moderate Jews in the U.S. expressed disappointment at the defeat of an Israeli leader they believed had created the framework for a just peace. But their main concern was not the end of the peace process but the danger posed to Reform and Conservative Judaism in Israel. Most worrisome was Netanyahu’s apparent eagerness to cooperate with Orthodox religious leaders whose parties won 23 seats in the Knesset. Netanyahu named two of their members to head the ministries of interior and education, and promised to restore Orthodox control over conversion, marriage and divorce, burial, and other personal activities.

American Jewish leaders saw a threat to their religious freedom.

American Jewish leaders who were unperturbed when Netanyahu pledged to expand the settlements, retain the Golan Heights, and preserve Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem, erupted over what they saw as a threat to their religious freedom. Typical was a comment by Rabbi Gerald Skolnik of the Conservative Forest Hills Jewish Center in Long Island, NY, who said, “There are a lot of people who would like to see the peace process slowed down. I don’t think most American Jews will fight him on that. But I care about the religious pluralism issue. It affects me tremendously.” Similarly, an editorial in the Northern California Jewish Bulletin warned of “religious hegemony,” and leaders of several Jewish fund-raising organizations immediately issued a call for the legal protection of non-Orthodox Judaism in Israel.

These and other Western responses to Netanyahu’s election and subsequent policy statements seem based on the assumption that Israel had undergone a sharp turn to the right that reversed a trend toward greater religious and political liberalism. But Israel’s history suggests that the perceived softening that began during Rabin’s final years was an anomaly rather than a sign of permanent change.

An Inherent Contradition

The state of Israel was from the beginning based on an inherent contradiction. On the one hand it was established as a Jewish state, the homeland of Jews everywhere. At the same time, the founders proclaimed it to be a democracy in which every inhabitant would enjoy equal political and religious rights. Because these principles are essentially incompatible, Israelis have been unable to adopt a written constitutionthere are no guaranteed civil rights and there is no such thing as a citizen of Israel. Most inhabitants are identified as either Jews or Arabs, and no one doubts which group enjoys the greater benefits, opportunities, and privileges.

The groundwork for a government dominated by members of the religious right and by anti-Arab hawks such as Rafael Eitan and Ariel Sharon was laid in 1948 by David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first and still most revered prime minister. Ben-Gurion was a non-religious socialist, but his first priorities were to retain all the land Israel had captured before 1948 and to continue enlarging Israeli territory. To achieve these goals, he had to insure domestic peace and unity, even at the cost of giving a blank check to the religious minority. One of his first acts after Israel became a state was to sign a written agreement with Orthodox religious leaders pledging that the government would defer to them on all matters of religious law.

Since then, thanks to Ben-Gurion’s bargain, religious schools have flourished with generous financing by the state, turning out generation after generation of Israelis convinced that God gave Jews the deed to Palestine, that all others who lay claim to it are enemies, and that Jerusalem was founded by King David. Meanwhile, an electoral system that required prime ministers to secure the support of small parties in order to put together a majority, gave inordinate power to religious parties and their leaders. These parties also gained influence by appealing to the tens of thousands of non-European Jews who were lured to the country by the government during and after the 1950s. The well-heeled religious organizations were frequently able to offer social services that the government was unable to provide.

The second major tactic used by Ben-Gurion and his successors to promote unity was a relentless barrage of propaganda aimed at convincing Israelis and their supporters abroad that Israel was in constant danger of attack from surrounding Arab nations. Israeli leaders deliberately created and reinforced a siege mentality by rejecting peace overtures from Arab leaders and responding to low-level provocations with disproportionate force. The late Moshe Dayan described this policy in blunt terms when he argued in 1955 why Israel should reject a proposed security pact with the U.S. According to a diary entry by former Prime Minister Moshe Sharett in May of that year Dayan said, “Such a pact will only constitute an obstacle for us. We face no danger at all of an Arab advantage of force for the next 8-10 years…The security pact will only handcuff us and deny us the freedom of action we need in the coming years. Reprisal actions which we couldn’t carry out if we were tied to a security pact…make it possible for us to maintain a high level of tension among our population and the army. Without these actions we would have ceased to be a combative people and without the discipline of a combative people we are lost.”

Many of the reprisal actions Dayan referred to were carried out during the 1950s by a group of army volunteers known as Unit 101, which exacted revenge on scores of innocent Arabs whenever a Palestinian was suspected of killing or injuring an Israeli. One of their most brutal attacks took place on the night of Oct. 14, 1953, in the Jordanian village of Qibya. According to a U.N. report, the attackers forced many of the villagers into their houses and then blew them up, killing a total of 66 men, women, and children and leaving the village in ruins. The commander of Unit 101 was Ariel Sharon, who was rewarded with rapid promotions. As defense minister, he launched the disastrous 1982 invasion of Lebanon and three months later turned a blind eye as members of an Israeli-backed Lebanese militia stormed the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in west Beirut and killed more than a thousand Palestinians, many of them old people and children.

His disgrace following that episode was short-lived. Sharon, who called the Oslo peace agreements “terrible” and “dangerous,” is today minister of infrastructure, one of the most powerful positions in the government and one that Netanyahu created especially for him. He now has control over oil refineries and pipelines, utilities, railroads, ports, the distribution of water, and roads and public lands. Sharon’s sweeping authority will give him a free hand in the West Bank and Gaza, where he is expected to press for building new settlements and expanding existing ones.

The Likud government will still have to contend with the Palestinians, however. Having suffered through land confiscations, ruinous border closings, curfews, massive unemployment, and broken promises under the Labor government, they were hardly overcome by grief at the election results. But Netanyahu’s subsequent statements did prompt anger and a reassessment of their situation. Hamas spokesman Ibrahim Ghosheh predicted that the new administration would open “an era of phony peace and pipe dreams of coexistence,” but in fact the openly hard-line government is far more likely to bring about an end to false hopes and one-sided bargains in which Palestinians make concession after concession but receive nothing in return.

Palestinians and other Arab leaders now emphasize their determination to hold Israel to its commitments under the Oslo accords, and the need for unity and cooperation in doing so. “The ramifications of the Israeli elections do not rest only on the charges Israel decides to make in its policies,” former peace negotiator Ghasan Khatib has pointed out, “but also on how the Palestinians, Arabs, and world community deal with Israel.” The relevance of such an appeal was reflected in the solidarity shown by 21 Arab leaders whose meeting in Cairo on June 22-23 concluded with a warning that if Israel backtracks on its commitments to the land-for-peace formula, the Arab states will “reconsider the steps that have been taken toward Israel in the framework of the peace process.”

Unity among Palestinians is even more crucial, but a growing number of them believe it can only be achieved if there is major reform of their own leadership. Prominent Palestinians have called publicly on the Palestinian Authority to end arbitrary arrests, torture, midnight military trials, and corruption. The Palestinian human rights group Al Haq and the Mandela Institute have called for the release of an estimated 1,300 political prisoners held by the Palestinian Authority.

Netanyahu, however, is demanding even more repression. Like Peres, he insists that Arafat must do more to combat terrorism, even though last winter’s suicide bombers were from Israeli-held territory. But Netanyahu has gone further by declaring that he will not ease the border closings until the Palestinians “fully abrogate” the Palestinian Covenant, which they amended last April, and “dismantle” Hamas. Since only a separate faction of Hamas engages in violence and the organization is anything but unified, Netanyahu is asking Arafat to silence a group that in an open society might evolve into a legitimate opposition party rather than remain a potential source of terrorism.

What Netanyahu is offering the Palestinians is not “peace for peace,” as he claims but a choice between a police state run by Palestinian surrogates for Israel or continued destitution behind Israeli check points and barbed wire. For the past two years, Israel has held the two million people of Gaza and the West Bank under siege, an unprecedented situation during peacetime, especially since a former security officer, Likud member Gideon Ezra, has asserted that the border closings are useless for security and only intended to reassure Israelis. Netanyahu’s price for lifting the siege is that Palestinians surrender their right to democratic self-government.

But despite the devastating economic and social costs of not being able to work or sell their goods, Palestinians are speaking out against trading Israeli oppression for Palestinian oppression. Human rights activist Dr. Eyad Sarraj, who was imprisoned and beaten for criticizing Arafat, has called on him to “empower his people to build and develop their government democratically under the law and under the banner of justice.” Ghassan Abu-Sitta and Abdullah Mutawi echoed Sarraj’s call for a democratic state in an op-ed column in The New York Times. The Palestinian press regularly emphasizes the importance of the rule of law.

In their effort to secure their basic human and political rights, Palestinians should find allies among liberals and peace activists everywhere, especially in the Jewish community. For four years many on the left tolerated the excesses of the Labor government for fear of weakening it and bringing back Likud, but now Israeli peace groups such as Gush Shalom and Women in Black are asking American Jews to pressure Israel to lift the border closings and fulfill its commitments under Oslo I and II. Just as right-wing American Jews had no qualms about publicly criticizing the Labor government for signing the Oslo agreements, Jewish liberals should have the courage to denounce a Likud government that violates them.

Their efforts should be aimed at Washington as well. Most members of Congress reacted like adoring rock fans to Netanyahu’s July 10 speech in which he distorted the Palestinian position on Jerusalem and blamed Arab terrorism for obstructing the peace process. When those who cheered the new prime minister run for re-election in November, they should learn that a substantial number of their constituents, including Jews, don’t share their enthusiasm for an Israeli government that for nearly 50 years has cried danger while committing acts of aggression against its neighbors. More and more Americans are becoming aware that our “special friendship” with Israel means U.S. alliance with a government that abrogates solemn agreements, lies as a matter of policy, violates international law, and elevates to high office a man responsible for the murder of untold numbers of civilians. It’s time Washington learned this too.