Israel’s election and self-definition invite questions

Dr Richard Skues responds to an article by Jonathan Freedland in which he says the opposition can’t win unless they join forces with Arab parties

Jonathan Freedland is surely right that the Israeli political parties opposed to Benjamin Netanyahu should make common cause with their Palestinian fellow citizens (This is the hard lesson from Israel’s election: to stop nationalist populists, you can’t play by gentlemen’s rules, 30 October).

He is also right to be pessimistic, recognising that “Israel’s Jewish-led parties have long shunned the mainly Arab parties because the latter identify as anti- or non-Zionist, meaning they reject Israel’s self-definition as a Jewish state”.

Yet Freedland also points to the very reason why this is unlikely to change: “it demands a reshaping of Israeli society, breaking a pattern of systemic discrimination and inequality within the country that has existed since the founding of the state”.

Freedland’s clarity on these matters surely invites a further question: might Israel’s self-definition as a Jewish state – in other words, Zionism – lie at the very heart of the discrimination and inequality that have persisted since the state’s founding? Might it not also be fundamental to the perilous situation in which Israel now finds itself, and to the increasingly bleak prospects for its future? This, indeed, is a position held by many Jews who reject Zionism.

Netanyahu’s domination of Israeli politics in recent years is no accident, any more than is the failure of Israeli society more broadly to rein in his excesses. Both have deep historical, cultural and ideological roots, and they go hand-in-hand with the discrimination and inequality that Freedland describes. These are issues that must be confronted seriously by anyone who wishes to see an end to the continuing bloodshed and avert the prospect of Israel’s pariah status and gradual implosion. Dr Richard Skues London