The New National Zionism

Israeli Justice Minister Shaked’s worldview recalls the racist xenophobia of the southern U.S. states during the 1930s and onward

Daniel Blatman Sep 01, 2017 2:56 AM

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked is increasingly establishing herself as the leader of the new Zionism. This is not just the result of the constitutional revolution she’s leading by attempting to change the makeup of the Supreme Court or the series of bills that she’s been promoting, including the nation-state bill. These are just practical expressions of a coherent and consolidated worldview, focused on effecting a far-reaching transformation of the ideological basis on which the State of Israel was founded.

Shaked’s Zionism is not just another Jewish variation of the European liberal nationalist idea of the second half of the 20th century from the school of Theodor Herzl, Chaim Weizmann, Ze’ev Jabotinsky and others. Shaked’s new Zionism is a revolutionary synthesis of the colonialist settlement ethos of the labor movement and ethnocentric-racist Jewish components that together lead to a major revision of the fundamental definitions of the Jewish state. Shaked is essentially seeking to replace the Zionist idea – which despite the disputes that existed between its varied components focused on Jewish sovereignty as an existential need of a persecuted people – with a basic perception that defines the State of Israel as a uni-ethnic state that will fulfill the anti-liberal Jewish vision of colonialism. Her remarks this week at the Israel Bar Association conference in Tel Aviv were another stage in sharpening this ideology.

Shaked had already published the principles of her worldview recently in an article in the journal Hashiloach, and this is also the central concept of the nation-state bill she’s advancing.

“The Jewish state is therefore the state of the Jewish people. It is the natural right of the Jewish people to live like every other nation,” she writes. “A Jewish state is a state whose history is combined and interwoven with the history of the Jewish people, whose language is Hebrew and whose main holidays reflect its national revival. A Jewish state is a state for which the settlement of Jews in its fields, cities and towns is a primary concern. A Jewish state is a state that nurtures Jewish culture, Jewish education and the love of the Jewish people. A Jewish state is the realization of generations of aspirations for Jewish redemption. A Jewish state is a state whose values are drawn from its religious tradition, with the Bible the most basic of its books and the prophets of Israel its moral foundation. A Jewish state is a state in which Jewish law plays an important role. A Jewish state is a state for which the values of the Torah of Israel, the values of Jewish tradition and the values of Jewish law are among its basic values.”


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