Israel is Exactly Like it's Neighbors
Not an Exception, Maybe Even Worse
Religious fanaticism and ethnonationalism are principal features of many countries in the Middle East, with countries often built around a dominant ethnic group and religion with the marginalization of ethnic and religious minorities. In this sense, Israel is a very typical Middle Eastern country. Since its inception in 1948, Israel has insisted that it is a democracy, indeed the only democracy in the Middle East, but the very foundations of the state of Israel, it’s composition, express ideology and justification for existence say otherwise.
The idea of a “Jewish state” like the idea of an “Arab state” is at its core undemocratic, exclusionary, supremacist and essentially the same thing. I understand the desire for Jews who had been persecuted in Europe to seek a safe space where Jews can feel secure, especially after the horrors of the holocaust, but at the same time, you cannot have a Jewish state on a land inhabited by both Jews and non-Jews and still be a democratic state. I’ll explain why.
Before 1948, Palestine was essentially one country being inhabited by indigenous Jews, Arabs and Christians who lived in relative harmony and had done so for generations. With the influx of European Jews fleeing persecution, that dynamic began to change. These Jewish immigrants had a goal; to create a Jewish state controlled by Jews for Jewish people, the only problem was, the land earmarked for this project, was already inhabited by diverse peoples, of which Jews were a minority. For Israel to become a Jewish state in Palestine, non-Jews would have to be expelled and that’s exactly what happened in 1948 at the birth of the modern state of Israel, where close to one million Palestinian Arabs were expelled from their homes to make room for the nascent Jewish state.
By that act, Israel achieved its Jewish supremacist aims. This is a very familiar pattern in the middle east, Saudi Arabia is a Sunni Arab supremacist state, Iran is a Shia supremacist state and the same can be said for almost every middle eastern country there is. This is not to say that there are no ethnic or religious minorities in these countries, there are, but these minorities are often marginalized. The Coptic Christians in Egypt for example are marginalized, the Kurds in Turkey are marginalized and so on and so forth. With Israel, it might seem that that is not the case; many people point to Israel’s 20% Arab population as evidence that Israel is a democracy. First of, having a minority with certain rights doesn’t make you a democracy, almost all the Arab supremacist states have minorities as well, and they have rights to a certain extent. It’s how these minorities are treated in relation to the dominant ethnic and religious group that matters. While Arab citizens of Israel have certain political rights and can vote, they don’t exactly have the same rights as Jews, there are a number of ways in which they are being marginalized.
Arab citizens of Israel face systemic discrimination in political representation, marriage rights, education, housing, and freedom of movement. While they have formal citizenship, structural policies and laws perpetuate inequality. International human rights organizations, including HRW and Amnesty International, have documented these disparities, calling for reforms to ensure equal rights for all citizens. For example, although Arab parties have gained seats in the Knesset (Israeli parliament), but they are often excluded from coalition governments. No Arab party has ever been part of a governing coalition.
Discriminatory Laws such as the Nation-State Law (2018) declare Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, downgrading the status of Arabic as an official language and marginalizing non-Jewish citizens. Arab citizens face legal barriers in marriage, particularly if marrying Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza: Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (2003) Prevents Palestinians from the occupied territories who marry Israeli Arabs from gaining residency or citizenship. Thousands of families are forced to live apart or move elsewhere due to these restrictions. The Israel Land Authority (ILA) controls 93% of land in Israel, most of which is leased only to Jewish citizens or Jewish organizations. Arab towns are often denied expansion permits, leading to overcrowding, while Jewish towns receive preferential treatment
Apart from this, there is a second layer of discrimination that makes Israel somewhat worse than its Arab neighbors and that is, operating an apartheid system. Many people would like to deny it, but the whole of Palestine today including Israel proper, the occupied West Bank and Gaza are under Israeli control. There is no independent Palestinian state, and we could say that has happened for a number of reasons, but for whatever reason the situation exists, the fact remains that these territories are under Israeli control. Israel controls a territory in which millions of people under its sovereignty have no legal rights as citizens, just like in apartheid South Africa. This situation can be remedied in two ways: grant citizenship to all within the territory or allow the creation of an independent Palestinian state, until that happens, Israel remains an ethnonationalist state just like its Arab neighbors while also operating an apartheid regime. The only difference is, Israel deludes itself into thinking it’s a democracy, its neighbors aren’t plagued by such delusions.
A famous defense of Israel’s ethnonationalism goes like this, “if Arab states exist and are allowed to exist, why shouldn’t there be a Jewish state” and my response to that is always, how many of these Arab states are beacons of democracy, human rights and liberalism? You don’t see a problem with the model these Arab states are implementing? Why would you want to replicate that type of dystopia? Of all the things Israel could be, a liberal democracy, it chose to be an ethnonationalist state just like its neighbors and that’s just sad.
One of the Israelis interviewed by BBC journalist Louis Theroux in his recent documentary “The Settlers” exposes perfectly how Israel is exactly like its neighbors. The Israeli settler in response to a question said, “to understand the Arab way of thinking, they understand there’s a war, they win the war if they get territory, they lose the war if they lose territory” to which Theroux responds “you could flip that and say that’s what you’re doing” and the Israeli responds, “that’s what I aspire to do, that’s what I aspire to do” Yep, Israel aspires to be like its neighbors, scratch that, Israel is exactly like its Arab neighbors.
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About the Host
Charles Ekokotu (Pharm. D.) is a bibliophile, prose fiction writer, poet, and playwright. His first novel, Hotel Shendam—a crime fiction novel featuring a debate on race and colonialism—is available on Amazon. If you love interesting crime fiction thrillers, you would love this.
He also has a collection of poems called Fairy Tales, now available on Amazon. Fairy Tales is a collection of poems based on the author's experiences and captures key events in the author's life and his expression of his feelings through poetry. It runs across themes like loss, grief, excitement, nature, romance, and joy
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Some of what you write here just isn't correct.
1) Though it is a minor point, there has been an Arab party, in fact an Islamist one, in an ruling coalition, from 2021-22. The more serious issue is that the reason Arab parties can't be included in ruling coalitions is that (with the exception of Ra'am and that only in the last 5 years) they don't want to compromise on their opposition to Israel being Jewish state. Meretz have repeatedly tried to form an block with Hadash for electoral purposes and Hadash won't agree because Meretz is too Zionist. This would make some kind of sense if these parties advocated a 1 State solution, but in fact that they advocate a 2 State solution: one a multiracial democracy and the other an ethnically pure Arab state.
2) At the beginning of the movement, there were about 12 million Jews in Europe, and about 500,000 residents of Palestine. If 1/6 of European Jews had moved to Palestine, then a Jewish majority state could easily have been established with zero expulsions. It didn't work that way because of restrictions to immigration and an unwillingness of many Jews to go when they were lifted, plus, more crucially, natural population growth of the Arab population thanks to malaria control and the Haber Bosch process. Nevertheless, that was the plan, and it is incorrect to impute what happened later to the Zionist movement from its inception.
3) Palestine was not one county either prior to 1948, or prior to Zionism. It was a very backwards parts of the Ottoman empire, divided between four separate administrative districts, and a massive shithole basically. It was ravaged by the Druze revolt in the 1870s, following decades long war between the Egyptian monarchy and the Ottomans for control. During WW1, about a quarter of the population died of starvation or disease.
As for interpretation, it's obviously true that Israel is not a democratic state in the borders it administers, but democracy can be looked at along different dimensions. In Athens, only about 10% of people could vote, but that doesn't mean there is no analytical value in thinking of it as democracy. I would say that Israel is plagued not so much by the illusion that it is democratic, but by the fact that in some ways it is genuinely is democratic. What that means in practice is that (a) its policy is beholden to the dumbest most ignorant part of the population whom Likud turn out each election and (b) the attempts of the elite to govern the country have to filtered through the distortions of left-liberalism, which leads to disasters like the Oslo process (which had a strong rationale, but could not be implemented properly because that rationale could not be articulated).
Charles I’m astonished at your willingness to make profound conclusions about a region you clearly know little about. At a minimum you should acknowledge there are competing narratives about the establishment and settling of different parts of the Middle East.
First, there has never been an historical Palestine. Indeed, Palestine is a modern post WWII invention. Prior to the Arab invasion, the Levant was dominated by Roman Empire. Jews settled and ruled the area prior to the Roman invasion. But because certain segments of the Jewish population refused to accept Roman rule they were partially expelled and as a punishment the Romans renamed the area Palestine as an insult to the Jews since Palestine was the name of their ancient rivals for control of the area.
While the Arabs displaced the Romans as rulers of the Levant, they were in turn conquered and displaced by the Ottomans. The Ottomans ruled the area for hundreds of years until they were defeated by the allies at the end of WWI. During this period, the Levant was never considered an independent nation of Palestine—it was a part of the Ottoman empire. While many national and cultural groups were ruled by the Ottomans, the only legitimate political entity was the empire. During this time Jews made up a considerable proportion of the populations subjugated by the Ottoman Empire.
At the end of WWI a promise was made by the allies that the subject cultural and national groups would be able to form their own independent nations out of the remnants of the now defeated Ottoman Empire. The allies promised not just the Arabs but also the Jews that they could form independent states.
Second, other than the USA, Australia maybe New Zealand which states are not ethno-states? Are France, Italy, Greece or Germany, Japan, China, e.g., not based on an ethnic identity. While these countries have started to incorporate immigrants from other cultures to be part of the nation, to be a citizen but the identity of citizenship was and still is based on not just land or soil but also blood. To my knowledge, we do not say France, Italy or Japan cannot be considered democratic unless they reject their ethnic roots. Why do so many apply a different standard to Israel. Within Israel citizenship is given to multiple cultural and ethnic groups—including Arabs. Israel has as much right to consider itself a Jewish state and democratic as France or Japan.