Anti-Zionist violence helps Netanyahu’s government |
Last Friday, fireworks were thrown into an Israeli restaurant in Munich, breaking the windows. No one was injured. The police said they are investigating the incident as antisemitic, most likely because the vandalism was characteristic of attacks on Jewish and Israeli institutions by pro-Palestinian protesters, particularly since October 7, 2023.
Later that day, in the evening, four IDF soldiers lit a BBQ on a military base in Israel. A passing soldier reported them to the base’s rabbi, and they were sentenced to three weeks in a military prison for “harming religion and Judaism,” since Jewish law prohibits lighting fires on the sabbath, which extends from Friday to Saturday night. The sentence was reduced to one week after an appeal, as well as due to uproar from Israelis who rejected the subjection of secular citizens to draconian religious law.
In February, two restaurants in Herzliya open on Saturdays had their windows broken in an incident of suspected religious harassment from Jewish activists who oppose businesses opening on the sabbath. Herzliya’s mayor spoke of regular intimidation from individuals who want the city to kowtow to the vision of Israel as a conservative and illiberal society, and are willing to use violence to enforce it.
The window-breakers in Munich and Herzliya share the same hatred of a liberal and secular Israel. European anti-Zionists do not distinguish between Yitzhak Rabin and Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel: for them, any Zionism is racism, and any version of Israel should be wiped off the map. This interpretation aligns with the policies and rhetoric of Netanyahu’s coalition, which seeks to erase every version of Israel before it, rewriting history (even very recent history) to fit its malicious agenda.
This coalition would like Israelis to believe that its deeply racist, religiously fanatical, and very corrupt governance is the only viable one for Israel, and that the destruction wrought by its ruinous policies is the fault of internal and external enemies. Netanyahu’s administration, the most right-wing in Israeli history, is leagues apart from that of Israel’s founders and of previous governments. But this history – of more competent, rational Israeli leadership – is lost amid the roar of constant war, regular anti-democratic attacks by the government, and violent anti-Israel protest abroad.
An international audience that declares Israel a lost cause, a Greek tragedy bound to fall to messianism, corruption and ruin – because of the original sin of the Nakba, or the 1967 occupation – is working in the service of the Netanyahu government, which is successfully pushing Israel to messianism, corruption and ruin. Even qualified opposition to “actually existing Zionism” – as written in a resolution passed by a regional branch of the leftist German Die Linke party in March – is a slap in the face to pro-democracy and anti-government Israelis who see themselves, and not the destructive Netanyahu regime, as the true Zionists.
Before this coalition, before Netanyahu’s nearly-uninterrupted reign as Prime Minister, there were other leaders and other versions of Israel. The country is not a mistake on the map or an experiment to be undone. Israel’s path was twisted by poor governance, opportunistic zealotry, and almost two decades of Netanyahu-led indoctrination claiming that – even as Israel’s wars become longer, more frequent, and more deadly – the only path to true safety is the distant horizon of “total victory,” ever receding as one approaches it. This indoctrination is reinforced by billions of shekels sidelined from national programs and services to fund hardline religious groups and insular ultra-Orthodox communities, and active incitement against democratic guardrails and religious pluralism.
Anti-Zionist violence abroad is decidedly unhelpful both to Israelis who want to live and prosper in a functioning democracy that respects civil rights and religious pluralism, and to Palestinians, who also want to live and prosper and have their human and civil rights respected. It does a disservice to past Israeli leaders who tried to make Israel more attentive to those rights, and pushes diaspora Israeli and Jewish communities into the arms of the Netanyahu administration, which has long claimed that it is the victim of incurable antisemitism and irrational hatred. Such violence – which makes Israelis and Jews abroad feel deeply unsafe – vindicates this administration’s diplomatic isolation and embrace of open cruelty, which it frames as righteous vengeance.
Window-breaking in Europe reinforces window-breaking in Israel. It reinforces house-burning and settler attacks in the West Bank and contributes to a never-ending cycle of violence that ultimately helps Netanyahu and his coalition justify an endless state of war and lawlessness.
Improving Israeli governance, stemming settler violence and stopping reckless warmongering will be difficult. Anti-democratic and fanatic Israeli officials and leaders should continue to be internationally sanctioned. However, international movements truly looking to improve the lot of Palestinians should actively support Israeli pro-democracy movements and create ties to draw Israel into the fold of international legal norms. They should denounce violence against Israeli or Jewish institutions abroad as illegitimate and counterproductive to the goal of mitigating Israeli violence toward Palestinians. This is the only way to help Israel change course.