JACOB OLIDORT: Here’s What The Left Gets Wrong About Benjamin Netanyahu’s Vision For Israel

JACOB OLIDORT: Here’s What The Left Gets Wrong About Benjamin Netanyahu’s Vision For Israel

Jacob Olidort on June 16, 2023

Israel has been the target of a new wave of attacks in recent months, much of it certainly relating to the Left’s disappointment in the return of Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-leaning coalition.

Netanyahu’s first major policy efforts to reform Israel’s judiciary — changes that would make it more similar to the Supreme Court of the United States such as separation of the judiciary and legislative branches — instantly became a lightning rod for his American critics, who rushed to label it an example of Netanyahu’s “authoritarianism.”

It is one thing for the Biden administration to throw foreign governments that do not share its politics. It is a different matter when leftist grievances enter America’s intellectual mainstream.

An example is the recent issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, which features an article with the unambiguous title, “Israel’s One-State Reality: It’s Time to Give Up on the Two-State Solution.” Two of its authors are friends from whom I have learned a great deal over the years in addressing our shared academic focus of political Islam.

The piece advocates for doing away with the expressions “two-state solution” and “peace process.” But not because these policies have failed (an argument I have used). Rather, as the authors write, because those policy paradigms begin “from a one-state reality” – viz. Israel – “that is morally reprehensible and strategically costly.”

In other words, any approach to peace that gives Israel a seat in negotiations appears, in their view, to be illegitimate.

Two sentences appear to be the key assumption on which the piece is based: “Israel no longer even pretends to maintain liberal aspirations. The United States does not have ‘shared values’ and should not have ‘unbreakable bonds’ with a state that discriminates against or abuses millions of its residents based on their ethnicity and religion.”

This assumption is not only diplomatically dangerous for the United States, but also reflects a basic misunderstanding of the uniquely dynamic and inclusive nature of Israel’s democracy.

The fact is that not only is Israel a liberal democracy that shares values and history with the United States, but its very Jewish nature informs its democratic experience. And it is one that not only its Jews need, but so too do its Christian and Muslim communities.

What to make of Israel’s Jewishness? There is perhaps no more sensitive issue to Israelis today, and Jews around the world, than the state’s Jewish identity.

While the word “Jewish” appears no less than 32 times in the Foreign Affairs piece, the word “Orthodox” appears just once, and “Haredi” — the Hebrew word describing Israel’s ultra-orthodox community that forms a key part of the Netanyahu coalition — does not receive any mention.

While a seemingly parochial question, the Jewishness of Israel (and the fact of its discursive nature) is directly relevant when considering how Israel’s government approaches its non-Jewish citizens. Recent Jewish history does not have a precedent for governance, much less governance of non-Jewish populations. This allows for a vibrant and evolving debate within Israel regarding governance.

Its Jewishness is not only for Jews, but rather makes it uniquely welcoming to Muslims and Christians – another point the Foreign Affairs authors omit. There is a conversation taking place regarding Palestinian and Arab life in Israel as part of Israeli society – how Arabs participate in Israeli politics, military service and everyday life.

Not only did Israel’s Arab population have a 50% turnout in the last election, but at one point early in the vote count, the Israeli Arab Balad party nearly crossed the required threshold of seats and threatened Bibi’s path to victory by giving him only 60 seats – just one shy of forming a coalition. Meanwhile, the Islamist politician, Mansour Abbas, of the Israeli Arab Ra’am party joined the Lapid-Bennet coalition and, in the previous election, expressed openness to joining a Bibi coalition.

A 2020 poll found that just 7% of Arabs living in Israel identify as “Palestinian,” while 51% identify as “Israeli-Arab.” A more recent poll, conducted at the height of a wave of Palestinian terrorist attacks last spring, 26 percent of Israeli Arab respondents said they would back Israel if it was under attack and 37% of respondents expressing interest in serving in a new national guard.

Regarding the same question about a war between Israel and Arab countries, 23% of respondents said they would side with the Arab countries while over 50% would stay neutral.

These perspectives are a far cry from a Zionist sentiment sweeping Israeli Arabs, but that is precisely the point — Israel is a place where this wide spectrum of views has a home and a forum to be contested and, in some cases, coalesced into new identities and perspectives like an Israeli Arab one.

Much as Israel’s Jewishness is not up for debate, so shouldn’t the fact of its statehood. By contrast, Palestinian statehood must still be earned – first and foremost when Palestinian leadership is identified, accountable, and acts responsibly.

The authors of the Foreign Affairs piece do not mention the aging leader of the Palestinian Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas. If we are talking about Palestinian statehood, what comes after Abbas? What would its governance structure look like? How can we be certain that it can provide Palestinians, Israeli Arabs, and Jews with equal opportunities and rights better than Israel can?

The questions remain open, and so long as so the discussion of Palestinian statehood will remain aspirational. And that discussion need not be linked to an appreciation of Israel’s national and geopolitical realities which — unlike Palestinian statehood — are immediate, real, and urgent.

Rather than the “radical responses” called for by the authors of the Foreign Affairs piece, today’s challenges in America and Israel require resilience and support between two nations grappling with liberal democracy.

Jacob Olidort currently serves as Director of the Center for American Security at the America First Policy Institute, and as Director of the Center’s Middle East Peace Project.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.