Even If It Avoids Civil War, Israel’s Final Crisis Looks Cataclysmic!

In July 2021, commenting on Albert Einstein’s prophetic warnings of Israel’s disastrous future as early as 1948, we concluded our text with the following observation and, at the same time, prediction:

“Unfortunately, it seems clear that Einstein was right again. With the British now a remote memory, it is indeed true that the descendants of the “terrorist organizations” of 1948 are leading Israel, which is ruled by them, with mathematical precision towards the “final destruction”. A country that may today seem more powerful and arrogant than ever but is in fact living through the worst existential crisis of its history, as it is rotting and disintegrating from the inside. The countdown has already begun and the hour of truth is approaching…(1)

Perhaps faster than we had anticipated, everything points to the fact that, in this spring of 2024, the hour of the Jewish State’s great truth is not only approaching, but has already arrived, is here and is unfolding before our very eyes! And the forecasts are not at all optimistic. In Israel itself, the first voices are beginning to be heard expressing doubts about the viability of the State of Israel. Like, for example, those of the authors of the eloquently-titled text “At This Rate, Israel Won’t Make It to Its 100th Birthday », which has been reproduced and discussed in recent days like no other inside and outside Israel. One reason for this shock is that its two authors, Eugene Kandel and Ron Tzu, are both prominent members of the Israeli government establishment, the former having headed Netanyahu’s National Economic Council for years! The second and more important reason is that the documentr believes that, unless there is a radical change of course by a radically different political staff, the existential crisis Israelis are beginning to experience will lead to the end of Israel, which will necessarily also mean the end of the “Zionist dream”…

It is no coincidence that, at the very moment when there is so much talk of a “two-state solution” and the Palestinian state is beginning to be recognized even by member countries of the European Union, voices are being raised in Israel itself to speak of a… “three-state solution”! Indeed, alongside the Palestinian state of tomorrow, they consider that there already exists – de facto – not one, but two Jewish states! This is exactly what former diplomat Alon Pinkas said in a very recent article in Haaretz:

The confluence of the catastrophe of October 7 and Israel’s 76th anniversary may blunt the political debate for a while, but it cannot hide the reality: There are now two states here – Israel and Judea – with contrasting visions of what the nation should be. There’s an ‘elephant in the israeli room’ and no, it’s not the occupation, although the occupation is the main cause. This “elephant in the room” is the fact that Israel is gradually but inescapably divided between the State of Israel – high-tech, secular, outward-looking, imperfect but liberal – and the Kingdom of Judea, an undemocratic, isolationist, ultranationalist Jewish supremacist theocracy.

Of course, Pinkas, who belongs to the former, to this modern and “outward-looking” Israel, tends to idealize it and avoids drawing his conclusions all the way to the end. But others do, like veteran anti-Zionist Israeli leftist Michel Warschawski, who responds as follows to the question of whether he sees the possibility of civil war in Israel:

“I’ve often been asked about the risks of civil war: I’ve always said it wasn’t possible. Today, I’m much less sure. And it’s not linked to Gaza. There are not simply two sociological Israelis. We are faced with two irreconcilable social projects. With the weakest government we’ve ever had at the head of the country, and Netanyahu unable to control his ministers, some of whom are raving lunatics.”

We think Warshawski is right both when he no longer rules out the possibility of civil war in Israel and when he asserts that this has nothing to do with Gaza and the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians. It’s true that the spectre of genocide and war hangs over Israel and its society. But it is also a fact that the vast, if not overwhelming, majority of Israeli citizens, politicians and their parties remain indifferent to the incredible suffering their own state is inflicting on the Palestinians, even as they demonstrate against Netanyahu and sometimes clash violently with his police. With the exception of a few small groups of citizens who perpetuate the old Jewish humanist and internationalist traditions, declaring their solidarity and support for the Palestinian people, Israeli society neither wants to hear nor see the horrific tragedy unfolding a few kilometers from its towns and kibbutz, demonstrating the most monstrous insensitivity in the face of the ongoing genocide committed by its own army and its own state! And this is why he rallies – de facto – even to the hated Netanyahu, when, for example, the International Criminal Court dares to issue an arrest warrant against him, just as he rallies to the Israeli state when certain European countries dare to recognize the Palestinian state…

Shlomo Sand, in his latest magnificent book “Deux peuples, pour un Etat?”, attributes this monstrous insensitivity and equally monstrous “patriotism”, among other things, to the “brainwashing” to which the citizens of Israel are systematically and methodically subjected throughout their lives, in order to firmly believe that it is… God’s will that all the occupied territories, from Hebron, Jericho and Bethlehem to Jerusalem, should be Israeli! It is this close relationship between nationalist messianism and religious messianism – which not only existed from the outset in the Zionist project, but constitutes the central ideological pillar of the Israeli state, especially since the initial reference to a certain mythical “kibbutz socialism” has been “thrown into the dustbin of history”-, which led us to observe three months ago that “the current exterminatory fervor of Israeli society would not be possible if it were not the product and outcome of the internal logic of the founding project of the Hebrew state, the Zionist project! “.(2)

It is for all these reasons that we are today witnessing developments that would have been totally unimaginable at the birth of Israel. Like, for example, the Israeli government’s alliance with notorious far-right anti-Semites, or even with the neo-fascist leaders of this emerging Brown International, such as Italy’s Meloni, France’s Le Pen, Argentina’s Milei, Hungary’s Orban, Portugal’s Ventura and several others from Europe and North and South America, who met a few days ago in Madrid under the aegis of the Vox of Franco nostalgics. It was at this Madrid gathering of this fascist ragbag, which turned into a demonstration in support of Netanyahu, that Israeli Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli sent a message of thanks and encouragement confirming what we’ve known for a long time: that Netanyahu and the Israeli far right have become the symbol and flag of racists, far-right and neo-fascists the world over, most of whom, incidentally, continue to be . …anti-Semites!

The Zionist project and, at the same time, the Jewish State of Israel, are thus coming full circle, in an atmosphere not only of generalized crisis, but also of generalized moral decadence. And it’s no coincidence that its fundamental founding element, racism against the Palestinians, is now coursing through its veins like poison, to the point where ministers Gvir and Smotrich and their settler friends and others are talking of the need to expel (violently) from the land of their mythical Greater Israel (Eretz Israel) not only Palestinians, but even Jewish Israeli citizens who don’t share their barbaric and inhuman opinions and choices!

We conclude, then, as we began: it is now clear that the price Zionist Israel pays for displaying its arrogance and omnipotence, as measured by the hecatomb of Palestinian civilian deaths in Gaza, is its own moral decay and social and political decomposition. With or without civil war, Israel’s final crisis promises to be cataclysmic.

Notes

1. See our article “When Einstein called those who govern Israel today ‘fascists'”: https://www.cadtm.org/When-Einstein-called-fascists-those-who-rule-Israel-for-the-last-44-years

2. See our article “Trying to understand the genocidal drift of Israeli society”: https://oaklandsocialist.com/2024/02/22/trying-to-understand-the-genocidal-drift-of-israeli-society/