The Fictional State

The Idea Of Israel: A History Of Power And Knowledge, by Ilan Pappé (published 2014) is a very dense and demanding book but rewarding. It is not so much a history of Israel as a history of Israeli culture and therefore also of Zionism, an ideological system which motivated and enabled both religious and secular Jews, since the 1880s, to set about colonising a large part of Palestine and displacing its Palestinian population in order to establish and defend an exclusively Jewish state. Throughout the period of expansion, which continues today, the Jewish settlers have entertained a highly selective and frankly dishonest account of their activities which only a limited number of historians or writers (and later film makers) were prepared to question. The book describes the work of this minority. It shows that, after some early examples of independent minded academics, this reached its peak in the 1980s and 1990s with a movement known as the Post-Zionists, who challenged many of the myths on which Zionism relied and interposed more accurate and complex accounts of their history. They exposed the racism of the early settlers. They demonstrated that the 1948 "War of Independence" (from what?) was not at all an existential war of survival against a massed assault from surrounding Arab states; indeed the Zionists were always the dominant military force in that war and their neighbours were neither united against them nor unwilling to reach an agreement. They exposed efforts by the Zionists to form an alliance of sorts with Nazi Germany against the British. They exposed the way Zionists manipulated the World's reaction to the Holocaust to its own advantage and continue to do so to this day. They showed how many Jews were obliged to come to Israel against their wishes and challenged the racist treatment of Jewish Arabs, driven to Israel from Iraq and North Africa. They exposed the violent process of ethnic cleansing by which nearly a million Palestinians were forcibly and violently ejected from their homes and land to become refugees, and the mistreatment of Palestinians who remained in Israel under military rule from 1948 to 1967. Yet ultimately they were never strong enough to overcome the Zionist narrative and, since 2000 and the Second Intifada, Israel has succumbed to arguably an even more nationalistic and militarist version - which he calls Neo-Zionism - and the people of Israel display an ever reducing interest in critical discussion of their mythology. The book reviews near its end the imposition of a totally ideological educational system that will secure a new generation of even more committed and even less self critical Zionists. It closes with an examination of "Brand Israel," an effort to respond to what is seen as an international campaign by Israel's enemies to "deligitimize" Israel. The only basis for optimism is the evident vast chasm between the ideology and the reality which is surely not sustainable any longer than it may suit the Americans to support the illusion. A pariah state with an apartheid regime is not going to have a future indefinitely and change has to come. Constantly appealing to the fear of annihilation is not a realistic or honest basis for planning a national strategy. At some point, Israelis must deal with the truth.