The biggest gradual change in recent months is the emergence of Gadi Eisenkot and his Yashar party as the biggest (22-23 Knesset seats) in the latest polls, slightly ahead of Bibi’s Likud (21-23) and overshadowing Naphtali Bennett and Yair Lapid’s B’Yachad party (13-15), with fresh and ongoing momentum. I would (perhaps will?) bet on Eisenkot as Israel’s next prime minster. Harder to state is what difference that will make policy-wise. Yashar is totally new, but Likud is down quite a bit from its current 36. B’Yachad has been deflating for months, though its leaders both purport to retain prime ministerial hopes.

Then there are the middle parties, those almost certain to surpass the 3.25% threshold but not provide a likely prime minister, which are the building blocks of any winning coalition. Yair Golan’s HaDemokratim, representing the reconstituted center-left, are at 9-11, where they’ve been for quite awhile, perhaps half a seat down from several months ago. This could be due to the entrance of Standing Together’s Makom l’Kulanu party, which in June entered the political space between HaDemokratim and Hadash (see below). That entrance barely moved the political needle, so the Israeli left must recognize Makom will almost certainly have to withdraw from the race, perhaps by aligning with another party. The Israeli left was badly burnt in 2022 through a lack of solidarity.

Avigdor Lieberman’s hard right, anti-Bibi, but secular Yisrael Beiteinu has stayed solidly at 9-11, up from its current 6. Lieberman is still unlikely to become PM, his dream for decades, but is a mainstay of any anti-Bibi coalition.

Shas (7-8), pro-Bibi for many years, has shown some downward momentum, probably because of the considerable ferment in the Hardal (Haredi nationalist) ranks over drafting Haredim. Unlike its Ashkenazi counterpart, United Torah Judaism, which is polling at 8 seats, Shas has also been the choice of non-Haredi Mizrachim (Sephardim), many of whom serve in the army and are angry about Haredi draft exemptions. That remains an explosive issue, and Shas is unlikely to retain all its current 11 seats, while UTJ may gain one from its current 7.

Also at 8-9 is Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party. It is up two from the current Knesset and will probably remain there, as everyone has long since decided if they love or hate Ben-Gvir; there are no other choices.

Two predominantly Arab parties are sure to make it into the Knesset, but are still undergoing some changes. Hadash (nominally the Israeli Communist Party) with Ta’al, will probably stay at its current 5, unless it succeeds in reactivating the Joint List, including Balad (see below) and, very unlikely, Ra’am. Ra’am, until very recently the Southern Branch of the Islamist movement in Israel, has made very clear it is eager to join a government coalition, as it did in 2021-22, and has pledged its allegiance to the state of Israel over and over. It is now adding a mainstream Jewish candidate to its Knesset list in a realistic spot to bolster its Zionist cred, and perhaps even attract Jewish voters.

Israeli Palestinians, only 53% of whom voted in 2022, have made clear they will reward Arab unity with greater turnout. Ra’am will likely get 5-6 seats, and thus, if the Jewish opposition parties get a total of 58-59 as expected, it could enable them to form a government. However, many have pledged to form a coalition only with “Zionist” (i.e. Jewish) parties. Whether they are willing to break or weasel out of these promises will determine whether a new government results from the vote on October 7.

But we’re not quite finished because there are two parties polling just around the threshold showing a recent upward trajectory. Now perhaps making it into the Knesset with 4 seats (down from 7( is Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party, a mainstay of the current government. Though he is invariably paired with Ben-Gvir, they do not get along – and RZ has also been roiled by the Haredi draft exemption imbroglio, Since there is a fixed total of 120 seats, RZ’s inclusion means fewer seats for other parties. Conversely, if a party just misses the threshold, as with Meretz in 2022, it means the loss of 4 seats for its side, and that can decide the election. Had Meretz received 3800 more votes in 2022, the current government probably couldn’t have been formed.

Just behind RZ is the “Zionist Home” party, often known as HaMiluimnikim (the Reservists), which could get 4 seats. Right wing and against Haredi draft exemptions, they are quite willing to join Bibi if he double-crosses the Haredim and opposes draft exemption. They would certainly refuse a coalition with Ra’am but would be eager to join a “Zionist coalition” without it. The next few weeks’ polls will show if they could really reach the threshold; probably not.

But what does this all mean for non-nerds? Would a new government take notice that Israel is perhaps the most hated country in the world and hasten to change current policies? How would it factor in the perception that though Bibi is unpopular with the Jewish Israeli public, many of his policies aren’t? In fact, much criticism from opposition leaders seems from the right in that they charge he is giving in to Trump’s demands for a cease fire in Lebanon too easily or even wimping out on Iran.

The uncomfortable fact is that no one really knows what a Prime Minister Eisenkot or Bennett or even Lieberman would do in Gaza or Lebanon or Syria, or what they would do to reverse Israel’s stunning decline in international approval, because they have all been careful not to tell us. Israel is still at war (on 7 fronts, according to some), and criticism of the country’s stance in wartime is always risky. Best to stick to traditional anti-Bibi tropes, which play well, and to speak in generalities about the larger issues. These men read the polls carefully. They generally cultivate ambiguity and don’t want to risk losing votes with a forthright policy statement. But most have long political pasts and are pegged as centrist, mainstream right or far right, which limits their appeal.

The ongoing success of Gadi Eisenkot may be because he has been able to project strength without being associated with any particular political orientation. He is a former IDF chief of staff and thus, although he is only in his first term as a member of Knesset, he is not without political experience on the highest levels. He is often seen as a hardliner, but has also been portrayed by noted political commentator Raviv Drucker as in effect center-left, though eschewing the label.

It is clear that the main desire of the majority of Israelis in the u[coming election is to depose Bibi Netanyahu, and the chances are good that that will be accomplished. However, there is certainly a more inchoate wish shared by most: to extricate the country from the morass in which it has been sinking ever since the current government came to power and announced its judicial “reform.” The likely new prime minister is wise not to reveal the path he will follow, if indeed he knows it himself. He may have to be all things to all people in order to get elected, but he will have to follow his own instincts and ignore considerable popular and conventional wisdom if he is truly determined to break Israel out of its current disastrous state.

1. Zionism was (or is) the idea that the Jewish people should have a national home, preferably in the Land of Israel (by the late 19^th century generally called Palestine). In 1948, Israel declared its statehood, fought a bloody war (Nakba/War of Independence) and was admitted to the UN the following year. Thus, Zionism’s chief task was accomplished; Zionism as an ideology should have been declared fulfilled and finished.

2. Notably, the 150,000 Palestinians remaining in Israel (approximately 700,000 had fled or been expelled) were declared citizens and thus entitled to vote, though most were under martial law till 1965. Palestinians have remained about 20% of the Israeli citizenry.

3. Zionism was repurposed with the goal of building up the new state and bringing new immigrants, chiefly Holocaust survivors and Jews from Muslim countries, and integrating them socially and economically. This was largely completed by the mid-1960s. By then the Zionist bureaucracy had grown and had become integral to the state’s administration.

4. With Israel’s victory in the Six-Day (June) War of 1967, there was a general belief that the conflict would soon be over, and Israel was allowed by the UN to retain control of all territory captured in the war. Crucially, it has still never officially decided what it would do with the West Bank and Gaza, while Sinai was returned to Egypt in exchange for peace. Incorporation of the land and citizenship for the populace were never seriously considered out of fears for the state’s Jewish, i.e. Zionist character. Instead Israel has ruled over them ever since, seriously compromising its democratic character. It planted the first settlements in the summer of 1967.

5. The ideological basis for the large-scale settlement of the West Bank and Gaza was provided by the ideology championed by Gush Emunim and based on the political theology of Rabbi Zvi Yehudah Kook, which has transformed religious Zionism into a messianic, supremacist creed, culminating in Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, with important contributions by Rabbi Meir Kahane. They are the leading ideologues of today’s Zionism.

6. While perhaps only 10% of Israeli Jews would vote for a party of this sort, that is how Zionism now appears to the world. It is time for Jews around the world to recognize that the leading edge of Zionism has been transformed into a violent supremacist cult, whose adherents are killing Palestinians in the West Bank and seizing their land.

7. Zionism today is both unneeded bureaucratically and unsalvageable ideologically. As American Jews who care about Israel, we must do all we can to provide the conditions so that Israel can become a “normal” country, that provides equal right and opportunities for all its citizens, and that allows the West Bank and Gaza to become the state of Palestine, which is the unfinished business left over from the wars of 1948 and 1967.

8. Post-Zionism is not anti-Zionism, nor is it non-Zionism. We support Israel as a normal state governed by all of its citizens; one with which we, as Jews, have a special connect ion.

9. For years I have supported the “A Land for All” movement, which advocates an E.U.— type confederation between a state of Palestine and the state of Israel. While that isn’t integral to post-Zionism, it makes the most sense, given that perhaps 800,000 Israeli Jews are living beyond Israel’s pre-1967 border.

10. Post-Zionism is now relevant because most American Jews have given up on the “Israelism” that infatuated many of us from 1967 until recent years. Very few of us contemplate making aliyah and moving to Israel. While we take extreme exception to the current president of the United States and his corrupt administration, our home is here, despite our theological and personal ties to Israel.

11. With the overwhelming majority of the Arab and Muslim world willing – indeed eager - to recognize and live in peace with Israel once it has separated from the West Bank and Gaza, Israel no longer needs American aid. Instead, the US should join the rest of the world in actively encouraging Israel to permit a Palestinian state to take form.

12. We are under no illusions that this will be a quick or simple process. Thus, part of our task is to discuss what we, as self-declared post-Zionists, can do to help this process, that is not being done by existing Jewish peace organizations, one of which I have the honor to preside over. I am not particularly drawn to the idea of a new organization, but am willing to listen.

So we are planning a Zoom discussion of post-Zionism and what we can and should do about it. If you’re interested in participating in this discussion, please send an email to Walter Ruby at walterruby@gmail.com. The discussion/meetup will be either on Wednesday, July 29, at 8PM EDT (East Coast time) or Sunday, August 2, at 4PM EDT. Please write which time you’d prefer; if both are good, write both; plus your name. We’ll let you know the preferred date and send a link to the Zoom meeting. Please RSVP your name and preferred date ASAP, but in any case by Monday, July 27.

Here are my current personal thoughts on post-Zionism:

A Reluctant Post-Zionist

It’s time for Zionism to realize its work is done – and has been so for a long time. In fact, perhaps Zionist ideology should have been de-ideologized back in 1948 when Zionism achieved – amazingly! – its primary goal, establishment of a “Jewish State” in the Land of Israel, aka Palestine, as I argued in a recent Ha’aretz opinion column.

After independence was declared, Israel‘s leaders decided that the venerated term “Zionism” would be attached to the urgent goals of building up the state and encouraging immigration, immense tasks that arguably needed ideological support. These tasks were largely completed by the mid-1960s. Zionism has been an ideology without a mission since then.

When I somewhat hesitantly admit I may be “post-Zionist,” I emphasize that I am not rejecting Zionism’s primary achievement, the establishment of a Jewish state. As Jews, we have historic, family, and religious connections to Israel that we cannot and will not easily break; not necessarily a political connection, but definitely we have concerns. And we are particularly concerned about the direction Israel has been following for decades, intensified since the mid-2010’s under current Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. Instead of moving towards a more inclusive state that equalizes the status of those Palestinians with Israeli citizenship (aka “Israeli Arabs”), continuing its progress towards regional integration begun by its peace treaties with Egypt (1979) and with Jordan (1995), and, most importantly, the need to deal with injustices created by the Nakba of 1948 and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza since 1967, Israel has turned Zionism into an ideology of ethnic superiority and conquest.

Zionism was an ideology that was controversial enough from its beginning, because it emerged towards the very end of the period of European colonialism, and achieved its goal of a Jewish state as colonial powers were already freeing their colonies. Israel’s establishment in 1948 was, paradoxically, celebrated as liberation from the British colonial mandate by Jews and the European and American left, and simultaneously denounced as a new entrenchment of colonial and European rule by Arabs. These debates and conflicts have continued to the present, and viciously intensified after October 7, 2023. Israelis emphasize the barbarity of the attacks on that date, while most of the world has focused more on the horrendous destruction of Gaza in response, including the killing of an estimated 75,000 Palestinians, of which perhaps 50,000 were women and children.

Against claims of “abandoning” Israel, my post-Zionism emphasizes that Israel is and has long been a fact; an ongoing nation-state that is today an economic and technological, as well as a military powerhouse. Any “destruction of Israel” is not in the cards, whatever its enemies may say. Rather, its strength and wealth should have long since been turned towards regional integration, which was available since the Oslo peace process of the 1990s and especially since the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, renewed and upgraded several times since then. Israel’s refusal to walk through that open door – which includes the creation of a Palestinian state – and the consequences flowing from that refusal, are the background explanations for its plummeting standing in the world.

Zionism itself, in Israel’s Declaration of Independence, promised, on behalf of the new state:

It will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

It did some of these, but even those steps have in recent years moved in a retrograde and exclusivist direction. Zionism’s current leading figures openly declare Jewish rights are superior to all others; a leading party in the government bears the name “Jewish Power.” These claims of superiority are used to justify continuing Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza and the denial of any democratic rights for their Palestinian inhabitants. As Jews, increasing numbers of us are ashamed and angered by what Zionism has become.

I accept the phrase “post-Zionist,” because Israel should have long outgrown the crutch of Zionist ideology. At the same time, the word “Zionist” is being thrown back and forth, often as a word of ultimate accusation, with each side feeling free to attach its own meaning to it. It is time to let go of the ideology, but to continue fighting to change Israel’s destructive path.

Note: We do not want to be confused with a well-known academic tendency in the 1990s and 2000’s, also called “Post-Zionist.” These academics, mainly historians and sociologists, used the release of new material about 1948, as well as new directions engendered by the Oslo Peace Process of the 1990’s, to develop new perspectives on Israel’s history and society, stressing that Israeli society must accept responsibility for the former and move towards equality in the latter. While our hopes for Israel are in alignment with many of those Post-Zionists, we have no connection with them.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all human beings are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. To secure these rights, Governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed and, in the case of the United States of America, from its Constitution, laws, and historic norms. However, when a formally constituted Government becomes repeatedly destructive of its Constitution, law, and norms, and its duly elected president so far exceeds his lawful and historic authority as to approach incipient tyranny, it is the Right and even the duty of the People to consider if and how their Safety and Happiness as well as their liberties and their way of life can be salvaged.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that a Government long established should not be funda­mentally opposed for light and transient causes, nor has it been so challenged except once, in a rebellion that was justly and properly suppressed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under some form of Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to consider how they may limit the harm flowing from such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of a clear majority of the American people; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to resist their current president.

The history of the incumbent President of the United States, most egregiously since January 20, 2025, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having as their direct object the establishment of a form of Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world as well as to our own country. Most of these facts enumerated below are clear transgressions of law or the constitution, while some are equally egregious violations of political norms, diplomatic practices, and international usage. All are virtually or actually unprecedented in the quarter-millennium history of the American republic and constitute an unparalleled danger to the maintenance of our democracy.

Our president has, from his first day in his current term in office:

Brazenly destroyed departments and agencies duly instituted by the Congress and fired thousands of career civil servants without cause;

Purported, by means of unprecedented use of executive orders, to overturn settled constitutional law, such as the doctrine of birthright citizenship, instituted by the 14^th Amendment and long since accepted by the Supreme Court and legal opinion;

Used his considerable influence and power to shatter the norm of equal representation and induced state legislatures, often through threats, to rupture the practice of genera­tions by redrawing electoral districts between censuses, thus preventing equal repre­sen­tation in the Congress, a right inestimable to citizens and formidable to tyrants only;

Ruthlessly employed bullying and intimidation within his own party to castrate both houses of Congress, reducing them to a level of impotence hitherto unknown in the history of this country and incompatible with democracy;

Trampled on congressional prerogatives and the right of free speech enshrined in the First Amendment, perhaps most egregiously by instructing his subservient Department of Defense to charge a serving U.S. senator who is also a highly decorated reserve officer, with breach of military discipline for warning service members against obeying unlawful orders, a duty itself long enshrined in military law;

Repeatedly ignored state governors who resisted the unprecedented federalization of their state’s National Guard troops under the most transparent pretexts, such as claims of non-existent insurrection. Such claims by the president have generally but belatedly been struck down by federal judges;

Obstructed the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners, forming special detachments of agents unaccountable to law, who have snatched law-abiding immigrants, many actually attending court-ordered naturalizations or other hearings, away from their families and communities, and sent some to brutal and sadistic prisons abroad in defiance of judicial orders;

Attempted to frustrate the Administration of Justice, by appointing unqualified officials to make spurious arguments before judicial tribunals in pursuit of his personal vendettas;

Appointed swarms of incompetent, unqualified, and corrupt officials to harass our people and eat out their substance, particularly and most dangerously in the FBI and other security agencies;

Bullied and humiliated longtime American allies around the world, thus rendering the United States less safe and our alliances insecure;

Begun an ill-judged war with Iran with no congressional authorization and attempted to end it with a set of understandings that leave the US and the entire world less secure and economically vulnerable, as well as making clear that the United States is now willing to go to war with little forethought or consideration of consequences;

Fired dozens, if not hundreds, of highly respected senior military officers, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on suspicion of being loyal to the constitution rather than himself personally. He and his officials have openly attempted to politicize the armed forces, in utter violation of military norms tracing directly back to George Washington;

Wantonly attacked our most prominent universities and research institutions and doing irreparable harm to American capability and accomplishments in science, under the absurd pretext of somehow combating antisemitism;

Affected to render his actions unreviewable by the judicial power, which has been the accepted and lawful practice since the time of Chief Justice John Marshall;

Falsely claimed that his narrow electoral victory in 2024 provides him with essentially unlimited power to do whatever he wishes;

Ignored the system of checks and balances set up by the founding fathers;

Clearly expressed through speech and action his belief that his election as president bestows on him the power to appoint and fire all officials in the executive branch, thus flouting the expressed will of congress in innumerable statutes, and thereby seeking to turn himself into a de facto dictator;

Shielded seditious, venal, corrupt, and criminal actions by himself and by others under his persuasion and direction through unprecedented use of the pardon power, which was provided to the president in the constitution for limited use in cases of miscarriage of justice, not for wholesale reward of cronies.

Usurped the unambiguous prerogatives of Congress, perhaps most explicitly in the case of determination of tariffs, a power given unequivocally to Congress in the constitution;

Renamed government institutions and facilities in his own name and those of his family members as with the Kennedy Center, a practice by elected officials heretofore unknown in this country and rightly held contemptible when done by foreign autocrats;

Declared numerous “emergencies” in defiance of facts, purporting to give himself powers reserved solely for exceptional and rare instances;

Sent a substantial US naval force on an unexplained mission to the Caribbean with neither the required advice nor the consent of the Congress;

Violated international law and US military practice by repeatedly using deadly military force in situations that should be handled by law enforcement officials;

Disrupted our trade with all parts of the world and created a catastrophic situation within the global economic system by capriciously introducing a bizarre system of tariffs, rewarding international friends and punishing those he deem his enemies;

Referred to many of his predecessors in vile and insulting terms, thus coarsening American political discourse far beyond anything previously seen, and rendering this country contemptible in the eyes of the rest of the world;

Made clear his willingness and eagerness to be bribed and flattered, resulting in an unprecedented wave of bribery and flattery directed towards him by officials both domestic and foreign, rendering our country an international laughingstock;

Allied this country with parties and nations unquestionably standing contrary to our historic values and refused to continue our support for democracies, most notably Ukraine’s defense against Russian invasion;

Displayed repeated contempt for longstanding and loyal allies of this country, most notably Canada and other NATO countries, tearing down decades-old alliances, and offending virtually all our historic friends;

Trampled on the core values of this nation such as democracy and human rights, stating explicitly these are not values he respects in determining the national interest;

Openly committed corruption on a scale dwarfing all other instances in our history and having already enriched himself, his family, and associates with billions of dollars through schemes declared legal by craven and subservient officials.

A president whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

We, therefore, as citizens of the United States of America, after almost 18 months of these intolerable usurpations, declare our firm intention to redouble our resistance by all legal and nonviolent means to every attempt by our current president to impose an authoritarian state on a free people. This includes continued recourse to the courts, frequent mass demonstrations throughout the country, continual attempts to reawaken the Congress to its constitutionally mandated oversight role, and, most particularly, the use of our right to vote and concurrent prevention of anticipated attempts at voter fraud, along with exposure of the innumerable false assertions by the incumbent president and his supporters. We pledge our determination, through all possible legal and nonviolent means, and particularly by winning free, fair, and unrigged elections, to reestablish a pluralistic and democratic polity, open to the world and welcoming lawful immigration and commerce.

Washington, D.C.

July 4, 2026

HAARETZ

Opinion

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2026-06-26/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/the-u-s-and-israel-both-backsliding-democracies-may-already-be-beyond-repair/0000019f-04ed-d4c5-a9ff-9def8b640000

Even if both the United States and Israel vote against their would-be autocrats this fall, the question remains: What comes next? In both countries, the opposition is in fragmented and adrift

Paul Scham

09:40 PM • June 26 2026 IDT

It’s no surprise that the country that most closely mirrors the United States in terms of the tensions surrounding preservation of its liberal democracy is Israel. Israel has been America’s “little brother” for decades, perhaps back as far as the Six-Day War in 1967, when President Lyndon Johnson’s “amber light” (an ambiguous signal understood as tacit consent) was considered sufficient assurance to allow Israel to launch the air strikes that commenced the war. The United States refused to acquiesce to the demand, in United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, that Israel immediately withdraw from the territories it conquered, thus leading to the occupation that is now 59 years old. And so on.

While American democracy basically functioned until Donald Trump’s second term, so did Israel’s until the 2010s, with the significant exception of its fundamental ethnocratic nature precluding the possibility of basic equality for all its citizens, while the occupation prevented any real self-government for the non-citizens it ruled. Israel’s Jewish citizens, though, enjoyed the benefits of a liberal democratic state, as did – to a lesser, albeit gradually improving extent – Israel’s Arab citizens, at least since the end of the military government imposed on them from 1949 to 1966. Both population groups’ democratic rights benefitted from Basic Laws sporadically enacted, especially in the 1990s and 2000s, and from the “judicial revolution” led by former Supreme Court President Aharon Barak at the same time, which strengthened the court’s constitutional powers at the expense of the Knesset’s.

Then, during the 2010s, Israel’s democratic progress began to reverse, imperceptibly at first. I remember, as I was writing an article on the Israeli right in 2017, trying to decide if Israel should be compared with the countries whose “democratic backsliding” was already apparent, such as Hungary and Poland, and deciding that would be unfair. Obviously I was wrong. Even though Trump had just begun his first term at the time, it didn’t occur to me to think of the United States in those terms either.

Later, in 2018, the so-called nation-state law made it clear that Israel was indeed backsliding. I argued then and still maintain that the law has had little real effect on citizens’ daily lives, but it was an ideological declaration – a shot across the bow of Arab citizens, warning them that the Jewish state they lived in would not be tolerating any public expression of Palestinian national identity. In fact, the status quo remained in force: Arabic was nominally demoted from an “official language,” equal to Hebrew, but it had never really had that status anyway.

But pressure on the judiciary, among the few guardrails in Israel’s governmental structure, increased. The right, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since 2009, aimed to politicize Israel’s nonpartisan judicial selection process, and there was considerable pushback against Barak’s judicial revolution by some centrists as well. Corruption, especially in the ultra-Orthodox-run ministries and the Prime Minister’s Office, was on the increase, and the Haredi parties were no longer up for grabs by whichever coalition would pay for their institutions, as they were now wedded to Bibi. But the prime minister remained firmly in the mainstream right, generally shrugging off the demands for extreme policies like annexation of the territories or for introducing drastic changes into the judicial selection process. However, his corruption charges turned into indictments and then his trial began in May 2020, making prison a real possibility. But as premier he still has significant latitude to delay the proceedings and remain in office – a power he has repeatedly exploited.

In 2019, Israel plunged into two years of repeated deadlocked elections, unexpectedly kicked off by a mainstay of the right, Avigdor Lieberman, who had been double-crossed by Bibi one too many times. Now elections were no longer about competing ideologies; they were simply about Bibi. With former partners and bona-fide rightists like Lieberman and Naftali Bennett now in permanent opposition to the prime minister, the terms left and right lost any meaning. In any event it is difficult for any democratic country to retain its democracy with one person in control for 12 years (15, counting Netanyahu’s stint in the ‘90’s).

Meanwhile, the United States had withstood Trump’s first term, but was shocked and dismayed by his attempted putsch on January 6, 2021. America’s democracy survived, partly thanks to the patriotism of Vice President Mike Pence – an avowed rightist, like Lieberman, but with a democratic core. Unfortunately, though many Republican senators condemned what happened on January 6, too few were willing to vote for conviction in Trump’s second impeachment trial, which would have barred him from a second term. Meanwhile, Joe Biden became president and Israel’s so-called government of change took office a few months later. Both countries’ governments seemed to be back on a democratic track.

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But not really. Israel’s new ruling coalition was obviously unstable: a majority of 61 (to 59), stretching from Meretz on the moderate left to Bennett and Lieberman on the right (perhaps even hard right), containing the nominally Islamist Ra’am Party headed by Mansour Abbas. It had pledged to do nothing about Israel’s greatest problem, its relations with the Palestinians, aka the occupation, but it could not totally ignore that reality and collapsed after just over a year.

While blame for Bibi’s victory in the subsequent elections of November 2022 is splattered all over, it seems clear to me that the refusal of Labor’s then-leader, Merav Michaeli, to run jointly with Meretz led to the latter party falling .09 percent short of the electoral threshold of 3.25 percent, and its 150,000 votes (worth three Knesset seats) being wasted. Also gone were the 138,000 votes for Balad, an Arab nationalist party that was once part of the (Arab) Joint List. The election resulted in the formation of a 64-seat coalition of parties of the right, the far messianic right and the Haredim, comprising Israel’s first stable government in almost four years.

Why did Bibi win? Because he had prioritized the exact opposite of what Michaeli had shrugged off: unification instead of division. He understood that the election might be tipped by the extreme messianic right, which had never succeeded in getting a party into the Knesset since the days of Meir Kahane. Netanyahu forced the Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the two most prominent leaders of the far right, to run together in one party, fearing that one or both might not reach the electoral threshold, even though the two men despise each other. ln fact, the joint party received 14 seats and immediately split into three parties that became the bane of Bibi’s existence – as well as the backbone of the new government.

That government entered office on December 31, 2022 and immediately initiated a “judicial overhaul,” openly intended to significantly limit the power of the judiciary; it expected the enabling legislation to pass within weeks. Instead, Israel erupted into an unprecedented frenzy of protest. Despite the ruling coalition’s clear majority, the uproar was so intense that the Knesset would not pass the necessary bills. Among other unprecedented acts, reserve pilots, the backbone of the air force, threatened not to report for training. Hundreds of thousands turned out to demonstrate on many Saturday nights, but, except for a small “leftist” contingent, the vast majority avoided any mention of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The goal was to demonstrate unity – i.e., Jewish Israeli unity. The conflict was considered divisive, and thus, not to be mentioned.

Corruption by the leaders’ families and friends is open and often unrestrained. Even the seeming failure of their joint war against Iran has had minimal effects on their support from their respective bases.

Meanwhile, the government was blatantly reversing Israel’s democratic progress, attempting to imitate former liberal democracies like Poland and Hungary, and perhaps Russia and Turkey as well. Israel had clearly joined the backsliders.

The United States only reached this point two years later, with Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025. However, MAGA exploded out of the gate with far greater momentum and initial success when the president signed 26 executive orders aligned with the Heritage Foundation‘s Project 2025 agenda that first day, and immediately started shuttering federal agencies. By the end of his first 100 days, he had signed 143 executive orders, assuming far more power than any of his predecessors and virtually bypassing Congress. Both Trump’s supporters and his opponents, naively assuming his second term would resemble his first, were caught by surprise; the latter only belatedly were able to push back, mainly through injunctions issued by federal district and circuit courts of appeals, though frequently sabotaged by the Supreme Court’s pro-Trump 6 to 3 super-majority. There was nothing resembling Israel’s popular pushback in the streets: The anti-Trump “No Kings” protests have never been able to match the breadth or intensity of the protests on Tel Aviv’s Kaplan Street.

Despite Americans’ belief in the sturdiness of their constitutional system, it turned out to be upheld by “norms” that Trump has crashed through with abandon. Norms in this context are the understandings that previous leaders followed regardless of their party affiliation, such as respect for judicial decisions, accepting congressional oversight and upholding the independence of the Justice Department. The vaunted three branches of government failed their most severe test, as the small Republican majorities in the Senate and the House of Representatives abandoned their constitutional responsibilities. Trump assumed the style of European dictators, with cabinet sessions devoted to adulating the leader and all power devolving on him. Blue states pushed back, with cities in some, like Minnesota and California, suffering months of occupations by ICE or federalized troops. Meanwhile, the world watched Trump destroy the “rules-backed international order,” which, rich with irony, had long been the target of leftists decrying American imperialism.

On one hand, Trump has been able to push American democracy to its limits and bend significant parts of it to his will. On the other, this is certainly not fascism – though for an estimated 11 million undocumented residents, and increasingly for naturalized citizens, it already feels indistinguishable from it. We are not (yet) living in a dictatorship. Free speech, including bitter attacks on the president, is still the norm, though the administration is actively encouraging the consolidation of the media under friendly ownership and suing major institutions for libel on spurious grounds. Of course, as I write this, we are not even 17 months into Trump’s 48-month term. The midterm elections on November 5 will be the best indicator as to whether the president can and will be checked, though there are frequent signs of his efforts to “federalize” the elections.

It is difficult to characterize post-October 7 Israel since it has been almost continually at war, while suffering a national trauma. Bibi has completed his transition to the far right, though personally lacking the element of religious messianism. He breaks some norms but stops short of limiting most democratic freedoms, at least for the country’s Jewish majority. Speech remains generally free; Haaretz and +972 continue to publish.

At the same time, however, he has allowed West Bank settlers to go wild when it comes to building settlements, seizing West Bank land and attacking Palestinians; moreover, with Ben-Gvir as national security minister, police and local army units are increasingly participating in those actions. Meanwhile, Finance Minister Smotrich has effectuated the de-facto annexation of the West Bank. Bibi is systematically replacing the heads of the security services and attempting to curtail the powers of the attorney general – one of the few remaining, independent gatekeepers in the Israeli governmental system. There are fears concerning the integrity of the coming elections, just like in the United States.

Even if both the United States and Israel vote against their respective would-be autocrats this fall, the question for both countries is: What then? The opposition in both countries are in disarray. Israel’s opposition, even if it somehow forms a government, is unlikely to be able to even start to deal with the gorilla in the room – namely, relations with the Palestinians and the occupation, plus the overwhelming loss of international respect. The United States has similarly lost the confidence of the world and is unlikely to get it back.

Trump and perhaps Netanyahu are “Great Men of History” in the sense that Thomas Carlyle originally popularized that phrase, in that they have changed their countries (and beyond) in ways that will reverberate for generations – perhaps centuries (although Trump is curiously lacking in the superior qualities usually pertaining to such a person). Despite everything, both retain the support of between 30 to 40 percent of their respective electorates and, as mentioned, neither country has managed to field a generally recognized opposition leader or policy that challenges them. Corruption by their respective families and friends is open and often unrestrained. Even the seeming failure of their joint war against Iran has had minimal effects on their support from their respective bases.

Restoring democracy is a delicate, difficult business. Poland was stymied shortly after its authoritarian Law and Justice Party was voted out, when a president from the same party was voted in who has largely deadlocked its reform. Hungary recently relieved itself of its strongman, Victor Orban, and is being taken under the wing of the European Union in its recovery efforts, largely through cash therapy. Longtime democracies such as the U.K., France, and Germany are still seriously threatened by popular populist parties. Interestingly, some of the autocrats who have hollowed out democracies in major countries such as India, Russia, and Turkey are now in their 70s and may, in the coming years, exit the stage simply by virtue of age.

The United States and Israel are very much isolated and distrusted – especially by their neighbors. And there is, of course, no certainty that the Israeli opposition will form a government in the coming election, nor that the Democrats will win the U.S. presidential election in 2028, let alone that either can undo and remake what Trump and Bibi have wrought.

Paul Scham recently retired as a professor of Israel Studies at the University of Maryland and is president of Partners for Progressive Israel, an American NGO. From 1996-2002 he was a research fellow at the Truman Institute for Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

All six of the new Knesset candidates who established APFAOU are affiliated with Omdim b’Yachad (“Standing Together”), a 10-year-old NGO composed of Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel, seemingly all in their 20s and 30s, that has been the most hopeful organization to appear on the Israeli left for many years. They have been creative, persistent, and ubiquitous; qualities that have been particularly needed as National Security Minister Ben-Gvir has increasingly used the police as a political weapon against leftist demonstrators within Israel. They and their leaders have become very popular on the American Jewish peace circuit, but that won’t help them reach the Knesset. Judging by the last election, they will need around 175,000 votes to pass the threshold.

They are explicitly offering a new brand of politics, never seen in Israel before. Previous “Arab-Jewish parties” were ideologically leftist, such as Hadash, nominally Israel’s Communist Party, which always reserves one of its 4 or 5 seats for a Jew. While Hadash and APFAOU agree on basic principles such as support for two-states and civic equality for all citizens, an emphasis on social justice is perhaps the impetus underlying its ideology. It also starts with a valuable built-in electioneering cadre based on its 7000 members – up from few hundred at the time of Oct. 7. They are particularly hoping to draw new voters from Palestinian women, 60% of whom, according to a survey, are not planning to vote.

Very much unlike Hadash, the party, if it indeed makes it into the Knesset, expects it would join the broad coalition envisioned by the current opposition, which would certainly be led by a rightwing politician such as Naftali Bennett, not a favorite of the Standing Together crowd. Presumably they would be accepted, even though most of the leaders of that future coalition are pledging to only allow in “Zionist” parties, a term unlikely to appear in APFAOU’s lself-description.

While I doubt that leaders of Hadash or HaDemokratim are happy about the new entrant, they are probably not overly worried. If APFAOU does take off, most of its support is likely to come from what Americans call Gen Z and millennials, not those who are already stalwarts of existing parties. Hadash is planning to rum once again as the Joint List, which will raise its likely vote, so loss of perhaps one seat to APFAOU would barely be noticed. The same is likely true of HaDemokratim on APFAOU’s other flank.

The greatest danger to its ideals would be to cause a situation like what happened in 2022, when Meretz missed the threshold by .09% and all its votes were lost, as were those of the Palestinian party Balad. That guaranteed the victory of the right, with the consequences we see every day. Presumably, were such a scenario at all likely in the days before the next election, APFAOU would do the honorable thing and withdraw from the election.

A real-Arab-Jewish party has long been the dream of Avrum Burg, a former Labor Party star, who moved to the left, and has become today’s equivalent of Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who issued dark, prophetic warnings in the decades after the Six-Day War. Burg today commended the new party in an article in the Hebrew Ha’aretz for being “committed to the three foundations of the left: secularization of the public sphere, absolute equality of all citizens and fairness in the distribution of public resources” as well as “an uncompromising commitment to peace.” Burg urged those who share his vision to eschew Hadash and HaDemokratim, and to join the new alternative party.

”

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2026-05-28/ty-article-opinion/.premium/zionisms-fatal-refusal-to-retire/0000019e-6e53-de7e-abfe-ee57b1a50000

Opinion

Zionism was one of the very few utopian movements of the 20th century to actually attain its goal. Fifty-one years after Theodor Herzl founded the Zionist movement in Basel, it achieved what it set out to do.

Unlike Communism, which attained power but never came close to creating a classless society – or even one acceptable to its people – and collapsed after 74 years; or Italian Fascism, which ended ignominiously after 21 years; or Pan-Arabism, which briefly electrified the Middle East before exhausting itself in nationalist and Islamist ideologies, Zionism could have (and perhaps should have) retired in its fifties. Had it done so, it might have been remembered by much of the world as it was seen in 1948: a righteous liberation movement.

Instead, after 68 years in power, Zionism finds itself still supported by its own people – at least the Jewish portion of them – but hated and even despised by much of the world. How and why did that happen? Was there an alternative path it could have followed? Was there something in its ideological DNA that condemned it to a reputation resembling, for many, that of the other ideologies of the 20th century?

Yes. There were other paths it could and should have followed.

By definition, very few utopian movements attain their goals, because utopias on earth do not exist. A Jewish state seemed like a fairy tale in 1897, but unimaginable circumstances, including two world wars and the Holocaust, made it attainable in 1948. But pushing beyond what is attainable on earth is a recipe for failure, as elements of today’s Zionist leadership, such as far-right Ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, have yet to learn.

In 1948, Zionism seemed better than it actually was. It had, after all, just committed a Nakba – but seemingly no one in the West had yet noticed, nor would they for another 20 years. Even worse, too few Zionists – Israelis by then – noticed or cared. Nor did they realize that failing to deal with the Nakba could eventually destroy Zionism’s aura and corrupt it to the core; that even if Zionism’s prime achievement, the Jewish state, remained standing, its moral authority would be shot.

There was some truth in the analogies liberals told themselves during the middle decades of the 20th century. The writer Isaac Deutscher famously likened the creation of Israel to a man jumping from a burning building and landing on a passerby below, grievously injuring him. But if that analogy holds, then Zionism bears a moral – and perhaps legal – responsibility to help Palestine recover from what Zionism had “accidentally” or “unwittingly” done.

But it was neither accidental nor unwitting. Zionists knew exactly what they were doing when they expelled Palestinians. Yet Zionism never truly acknowledged that Palestinians were the ones who paid the price for the Zionist state, and that – contrary to Zionist hopes and expectations – Palestinians neither disappeared nor forgot.

Still, Zionism largely retained its aura, and even seemed to burnish it further in 1967. But that burnishment contained a poison: the West Bank and Gaza.

Perhaps Arab states, and even Palestinians, would eventually have accepted the “Little Israel” of 1948-1967 had the Six-Day War not erupted. But the Greater Israel that emerged after 1967 insisted on swallowing that poison, when that poison, properly understood, could have been its salvation.

Little Israel had nothing it could offer Palestinians, except equality for its own Palestinian citizens, something that still does not fully exist, though the situation has somewhat improved. But Greater Israel could have – and still could, in theory – provided Palestinians with a state, something no one else could have given them. It could have listened to Yeshayahu Leibowitz and the other prophets of 1967, who warned that Israel would not be able to swallow its conquests; it would choke on them.

Nevertheless, it swallowed greedily – and has been gagging and retching ever since.

Zionism had not been “right” or moral in inflicting the Nakba on Palestinians in 1948 but neither they nor the Palestinians had any good choices. Once Zionists – most of whom barely knew Palestinians existed when they first arrived – came to Palestine in their tens of thousands, fleeing oppression in the Diaspora, and especially once they received British imprimatur through the Balfour Declaration, the stage was set for either massacre or expulsion of one group or the other. Neither people had anywhere else to go.

Palestinians could not imagine compromise; they could not conceive of recognizing another nation inside their land. Zionists (refugee Jews) literally had nowhere else to go. Most were already refugees. So both sides did the inevitable: they fought, and one side triumphed. The “silver platter” of 1948 was only a down payment.

Unfortunately, few Israelis recognized the conquests of 1967 for what they could have been: the key to solving the problems created in 1948.

Anwar Sadat recognized this when he became President of Egypt in 1970, and he used Sinai to make peace with Israel. But Menachem Begin prevented him from extending that peace to the Palestinians through the West Bank and Gaza. That should have been the long-overdue blood price of the Nakba. But few Israelis could imagine giving those territories up.

Fast forward to the 1990s. By then, the veneer had already begun wearing off of Israel in much of the West. But Israel still had an opportunity to pull out a new shiny object and dazzle the rest of the world once again. It could have given Palestinians most of the West Bank and Gaza, recognizing – contrary to its received dogma – that a Palestinian state was not an existential danger to Israel. On the contrary, it was, and remains, the only way Israel will ever be secure.

But of course it did not do that. Perhaps it could not.

Why? Because of what Zionism had become, especially after 1967.

By now, the story is familiar. Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook borrowed from his father’s mysticism, selected nuggets from Judaism and classical Zionism, and concocted a stew whose remnants still nourish Religious Zionism today, including the political party that now bears that name. Even those religious Zionist politicians who helped formulate this ideology in the 1970s, such as Zvulon Hammer, would likely be appalled by the Kahanist brew into which their precious gift to the nation has become.

Instead of recognizing its share of responsibility and atoning for 1948, the nation, with Ben-Gvir and Smotrich now at its ideological helm, transformed Zionism and Israel into something

Zionism triumphed in 1948 by creating the “State of the Jews” that Herzl had prophesied, despite knowing very little whereof he spoke. Had David Ben-Gurion realized at that moment that Israeli patriotism should thereafter have taken over, its goals might have become very different: less soaring rhetoric about being “a light unto the nations,” and more about becoming simply a nation dwelling among others.

It might have taken seriously Moshe Dayan’s famous eulogy at Nahal Oz in 1956 – which recognized that Palestinians, too, had reasons for grievance – and reached out to them where possible instead of merely firing at them.

That said, I doubt the Arab world would have graciously accepted anything Israel offered short of surrender during the 1960s and ‘70s. However, things were changing among Palestinians in the 1980s, but very few Israelis recognized it, despite the efforts of former Military Intelligence chief Yehoshafat Harkabi and others to warn that Palestinian nationalism was becoming more pragmatic.

Had Israelis at all levels become more aware of the roots of Palestinian grievance, perhaps the Oslo process might have worked.

By 2002, when the Arab League’s Arab Peace Initiative was first issued, the mood and need for compromise was in full swing among Arab leaders. Had Ariel Sharon recognized that the API represented a more potent weapon for defusing the Second Intifada than isolating Arafat or destroying Jenin, Israel might stand in a very different place today.

Incidentally, the API is still on offer. Saudi Arabia referred to it again the other day while barely stifling its laughter at Trump’s demand that it join the Abraham Accords as part of an Iran deal. Israel has never formally responded to the initiative, insisting – against all evidence – that it was a “take it or leave it” proposition.

Poor Zionism.

Had it only retired early, repudiated further utopianism, resisted the pressure toward sacralization, and realized that winners possess the bandwidth for compromise, it might today be enjoying an honorable and dignified old age.

Instead, it has been twisted into a vicious weapon helping to push Israel toward becoming what former Prime Minister Levi Eshkol once feared: a Shimshon der nebechdiker– a poor, afflicted Samson – blinded and flailing, yet still capable of bringing the house down on everyone, including himself.

On Tuesday, May 27, at 12:30 PM EDT (tomorrow), Partners for Progressive Israel is presenting;

Israeli Elections - A Primer: When, Who, Why, Where, and What’s It All About?

Featuring Dr. Ilai Saltzman, director of the Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies at the University of Maryland and Associate Research Professor of Israel Studies, who’ll be in conversation with Avraham Spraragen.

Registration is here

Ilai is a former colleague of mine at UMD, my successor as director of the Gildenhorn Institute, and a superb teacher and lecturer. The moderator is my friend and PPI Board colleague, Avraham Spraragen, likewise an expert on Israeli politics. Whatever you already know about the elections, you’ll enjoy and learn from this webinar.

If you missed my last substack post, you can read or listen to it at the Times of Israel version or on my substack site.

See you at the Primer tomorrow!

Paul

The only definition possible for “Zionism” is the simplest: “The modern movement for Jews to immigrate to the Land of Israel aka Palestine.” On the other hand, there is no possible definition for the word “Zionist”; any attempted definition would include many who would deny they are Zionists, or fail to include many who think they are - or would (most likely) be so politically skewed as to be nonsense.

The word was invented by Nathan Birnbaum in 1890 but popularized by Theodore Herzl, whose own Zionism, as expressed in his books Die Judenstaat (The State of the Jews) and Altneuland (Old-New Land) are fantasies, but they inspired, and still indirectly inspire, various progressively more extreme ideologies and movements, many active in the real world.

Perhaps the words “Islamism” and “Islamist” are similar in this respect.

2. Why Zionism?

Zionism was a real expression of Jewish longing; it was not a colonial invention. That said, it is hard to imagine it being actualized any time other than the late 19^th century and the first third of the twentieth. That was a time in which educated, even liberal, Europeans and Americans became used to seeing other Europeans and Americans undertake expeditions designed to take over and rule most of the rest of the world. Undoubtedly the reframing of Judaism into Zionism borrowed from well-known theories of nationalism, but Judaism fit well enough into contemporary nationalism that the lack of significant Jewish presence on the land it claimed seemed remediable, though, admittedly not easily. And the biblical origin and references made more sense to Christian Europeans then than they do now.

3. “Settler Colonialism” is a tautology

Settler colonialism was originally used to describe the Anglo-Saxon colonies, i.e. those that became the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand where, unlike most other colonies, the original (“indigenous”) people largely disappeared through disease and other means, and their few descendants constitute a tiny minority. Israel was added to this category because, well, it fits, except for such details as the lack of a sponsoring country and the occurrence of a major war between Zionists and Palestinians, as well as the failure of the latter to disappear.

The lack of a sponsoring country (“metropol”) became irrelevant to many since “westerners” in the 1970s morphed for many into a category superseding specific national allegiance. Thus the lack of a metropol can be finessed, since “westerner” covers all sins. I call it a tautology because it’s a definition that can’t be proven or disproved by factual analysis.

The Levant was one of the few parts of Asia and Africa not colonized before 1914 because it had already been colonized centuries earlier by a country Europeans had to at least pretend to respect, namely, the Ottoman Empire. European nations had taken away all the Empire’s African possessions and Christian nationalism had nibbled up its European possession since the 1820s, but the Empire’s core, Anatolia and the Levant through Iraq, was still Ottoman. Thus, Palestine was comparatively open to foreigners coming – and staying for the price of a small bribe, something Herzl was unlikely to be aware of. As is well-known, the British offered a part of “Uganda” (actually Kenya today), which Herzl strongly supported. The traditionalist majority in the movement he had created strongly opposed this – and it was dropped. That proves nothing about Zionism except that it was lucky; could Israel have survived the era of decolonization had it been located in East Africa?

4. Zionist Intentions

Once Zionism was a going concern, having survived World War I and astonishingly succeeded in getting Britain on board with the Balfour Declaration, the focus for Zionist leaders became how tp attain a Jewish majority in Palestine. Arithmetically, there were only two ways of doing this: increase the number of Jews or shrink the number of Arabs. Reaching a majority, it should be noted, would be much harder than formerly because of the public health measures the British were introducing, which helped increase the Palestinian population from an estimated 690,000 in 1918 to about 1.050,000 in 1939.[2] Zionist officials talked about encouraging a vast immigration from Europe – and they indeed tried but with initially meager results; the Jewish population of Palestine increased from about 58,000 in 1918 to only 174,000 in the 1931 census as life in Palestine was hard and the new USSR had closed its borders to would-be emigrants. However, it increased to 450,000 in 1939, demonstrating that Hitler, who came to power in 1933, was more successful in inducing Jews to make aliyah than Ben-Gurion or Weizmann.

In 1923, rightwing Zionist leader Vladimir had advocated an “Iron Wall” to prevent Arabs from interfering with Zionism. That was never defined but it was clearly not peaceful. By 1936, mainstream Zionists leaders were talking of “transfer,” the still-employed euphemism for expulsion of Palestinian Arabs. Control of Palestine had, in less than 20 years, become absolutely existential; both sides were determined to prevail by any means necessary. The Zionists did reluctantly accept the first partition plan of 1937 offered by the British, which would have given them about 20% of historic Palestine, but convenient Palestinian rejection of both that plan and of the 1939 White Paper (the best deal Palestinians have ever been offered), allowed Zionist hopes and plans to grow.

5. The 7% paradox and other important numbers

In early 1948 there were 5-6000,000 Jews and about 1,200,000 Muslims and Christians in Mandatory Palestine. Palestinians often point out, correctly, that Jews/Zionists only owned 7% of the land in the territory that became Israel in 1948, though it should be noted that for tax and other reasons dating back to Ottoman times, most agricultural land was not legally owned by those (i.e. Palestinian Arabs) who farmed or lived on it. The 7% figure also proves Zionists had not enserfed or dispossessed of their land the overwhelming majority of Palestinians. However they had unquestionably created a large, growing, and unwelcome presence in what, at the time of Balfour in 1917, had been a land solidly Palestinian Arab, with around 30-35,000 Zionist Jews, plus about 25,000 mainly Sephardi Jews whose families had been there before Zionism, and whose lifestyle harmonized with that of Palestinians, and most of whom did not identify with the Zionist settlers. Thus, the Zionists had indeed colonized Palestine by 1948 , or, more correctly, created an immovable presence there, but had not colonized the people or much of the land itself. In other words, Zionism needed a place, especially that place, Palestine, but not the people.

5.Was the War of 1948 Inevitable?

The 1930s plus the Holocaust made the Nakba virtually inevitable, though one could plausibly argue that the British promise of a Jewish “national home” had already done so. The 1930s proved the Palestinians unwilling to compromise on their right to all of Palestine, which the British would have recognized had they accepted the 1939 White Paper. On the other hand, the Holocaust’s 6 million dead Jews proved, to Jews and to the victorious Allies that Jews/the Jewish People needed protection; most obviously the hundreds of thousands still living strewn across Europe in the wake of the war. Western European countries were unwilling and perhaps unable to resettle foreign Jews while undertaking their own reconstruction. The US certainly could have taken them in but refused, though it did end up admitting between 80,000 and 96,000 Jewish refuges during the subsequent decade.

It must be recognized that the Holocaust was understood by Zionists as the horrific fulfillment of what Herzl and all Zionists had been predicting for half a century, though very few envisaged what actually transpired. From 1939, mainstream Zionists prepared for a war in Palestine once the big war was over, though they also, of course, were committed to an Allied victory. After the experience of the 1930s, Zionists realized, as Jabotinsky had predicted, that the Palestinians were unwilling to compromise, and they started buying arms. Ben Gurion’s famous phrase – to fight the Germans as if there were no White Paper and to fight the White Paper as if there were no war - made that clear, as did the decision at the Biltmore Conference in 1942 to move towards a state after the war. 30,000 Jews from Palestine joined the British with the active encouragement of the Haganah, so they would receive military training. Money was raised for arms purchases – which were freely available as of 1945 as the world (temporarily) disarmed.

Meanwhile, the Palestinians, suffering as usual from terrible leadership, did none of these things. To the extent they thought about the coming conflict, they hoped to be protected by the neighboring Arab states, which had received various degrees of independence during the 1930s and ‘40s. Those states indeed had so-called regular armies, but all suffered from incompetent and corrupt leadership, with the notable exception of the Jordanian “Arab Legion,” led by British officers, which was more than a match for the newly-formed IDF in many, though not all, of their battles.

6. Why the Nakba?

“Nakba” means “catastrophe” in Arabic, universally employed to refer to the events of 1948. I use it here to mean the flight and expulsion of 750,000 Palestinian Arabs during the war.

Neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis (as they were after May 14, 1948) had any other home, and both sides believed their enemies were out to destroy them, egged on by their own propagandists. Had the Arabs accepted the UN’s Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947, would the Zionists have accepted those borders? Probably, until the inevitable next confrontation. But there was no chance that the Palestinians or Arab states would have accepted the resolution, which Zionists gradually realized in the context of the guerrilla war that started the day after the resolution was passed. The Zionists were winning the guerrilla war against the Palestinians by March 1948 – and likewise defeated the Arab armies, which entered Palestine after Israel declared independence. The Zionists were better prepared, trained, and armed and we now know their army was larger than the Arab armies in Palestine, facts not obvious at the time.

Palestinians fled for two reasons: out of the entirely understandable fear of a hostile army, or because they were forced out by the IDF, as soberly described in Ari Shavit’s book, My Promised Land, based on the published memoirs of Yitzhak Rabin, who was in command of the expulsions in the towns of Lod and Ramle. There were also some, perhaps more than some, massacres, whose existence have come to light in the memoirs of aging Palmach veterans. The best known was Deir Yassin, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, where the Irgun and Lehi, under the personal command of Menachem Begin, massacred 105 Palestinians, mostly women and children. The atrocities at Deir Yassin were widely broadcast and even exaggerated by all groups involved: by the Irgun and Lehi to frighten more Palestinians into leaving; by the Palestinian and Arab leadership to show the barbarity of the Zionists; and by the mainstream Labor Zionist leadership to show the barbarity of their internecine rivals, the Irgun. The publicity had the predictable effect, compounded with that of rumors off other massacres and the ongoing war: hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled in understandable fear.

According to credible reports, it was then that that flight triggered the Zionist policy that made the 750,000 Palestinians who fled permanently homeless: No right of return. From a Zionist point of view it made absolute sense: why allow the return of an assured fifth column, whose numbers roughly equaled or exceeded the total number of Israelis when the war ended. A Jewish state, they felt, must have a strong majority of Jews in order to survive. Whether by accident or design, the Palestinian percentage of Israel’s population was a “manageable” 20%, a percentage that has stayed approximately constant ever since. Various fictions were deployed to justify the policy; the best known was the claim that Arab leaders had broadcast calls for the Palestinians to leave so the Arab armies could more easily find and massacre the Zionists. No trace of such a call has been found. All Israeli historians know it is a fiction by now, but many ordinary Israelis still believe it.

7. Was there an alternative?

From a Zionist perspective, not really. I am not defending that decision; I am trying to explain it. Israelis had every reason to believe all Arabs wanted to destroy the Jewish state. The trauma of the war – and the recent, undigested horror of the Holocaust, plus the deprivations as tens of thousands, and eventually millions of Jews immigrated (under a different “right of return”) made most Israelis oblivious to the suffering of Palestinians. The disparate narratives of both sides reinforced their oblivion.

I believe that Zionists genuinely, if self-interestedly, analogized the plight of the Palestinians to that of Jews getting thrown out of European cities and countries, as they had over many centuries. What do you do in that case? You go to another city with a Jewish community, join it, and get absorbed. That was what Jews told themselves that Palestinians would do. They’d go to neighboring countries, be absorbed into them, and within 2-3 generations, Palestine would be barely a memory.

SPOILER ALERT: That didn’t happen.

Next we’ll examine the post-1948 growth and the perversions of Zionism and Palestinian nationalism. I will also explore the Israelis’ failure to come to terms with the obvious failure of their hopes that Palestinians would disappear as a people. Israel argues that a Palestinian state constitutes an existential danger to Israel. I will discuss how it is the lack of a Palestinian state that actually constitutes the existential danger to Israel – and is directly responsible for many of Israel’s woes, including Hamas’s atrocious attack of October 7, 2023.

[1] With apologies to the late Shlomo Avineri

[2] I obtained the figures used here from various online sources; all correlate with generally accepted figures from reputable sources that I have used for years. If anyone doubts a particular figure, let me know and I’ll source it.

It is an interesting artifact from a time not that long ago when Zionism seemed benign. Even though some of today’s corruption was already visible, we could realistically believe (I did) that the whole enterprise hadn’t been corrupted. If I had written it today I’d be much less mild in my jibes and more unambiguous about Zionism’s sins; both historically and currently, and of course more explicit about its effects on Palestinians. The article focused almost solely on Israel and Israelis; something which, in my view, can’t legitimately be done anymore in any discussion of Zionism.

Obviously the word itself has gone through a huge transmogrification in terms of how it’s used - and the magnitude of the sins it’s accused of, some of which are false and ridiculous, of course, but others are real and painful to those of us who hoped and even believed it could have gone in a very different direction.

Israelis should have followed my advice 14 years ago; things might have worked out differently. There are good histories of Zionism, but one cannot write one today and ignore what has been happening in its name for years in both the West Bank and Gaza. Zionism turned out to be open-ended; had Israelis ended their quest for “Zionist fulfillment” in 1948 and concentrated on building up the country they had and not the one they fantasized about, they could have built an admirable state, in ways it sadly – and brutally - isn’t today.

Zionism Had an Honorable Career; Time for Retirement

© Paul Scham 2012

The Zionist movement was officially founded by Theodore Herzl at the First Zionist Conference in Basel in 1897. It was based on an offbeat, truly crazy idea: that Jews would return to the land their ancestors had left almost 2000 years before and found a secular, modern state. Among many improbable 19^th century nationalisms, this was one of the most improbable of all. Nevertheless, the State of Israel was proclaimed a mere 51 years later. Zionism had succeeded.

When the Zionist movement was founded the majority of Jews still lived in Eastern Europe and suffered various forms of prejudice and discrimination, the Holocaust was not even imaginable, and the most famous living Jewish soldier was Alfred Dreyfus, who had recently been convicted of treason against France based on a forged document. Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, and Ariel Sharon were unconceived and inconceivable. And Palestine had been ruled by the Ottoman Turks for almost five centuries. To put it mildly, Herzl’s issues were very different from ours.

Nevertheless, today, 64 years after Israel’s founding, the Zionist movement still appears to be around, though the meaning of the term itself has become more obscure. No one in years has been able to give a satisfactory definition of a “Zionist”. For most supporters of Israel “Zionism” means maintaining Israel as a Jewish state (but what a “Jewish state” is, is still anything but clear). For most Israeli Jews, it means, in effect, being a patriotic Israeli. For religious Zionists it means settling and not relinquishing an inch of God-given Eretz Yisrael, and perhaps expelling non-Jews. For many others around the world, however, “Zionism” is a racist, colonialist ideology whose main goal is to oppress Palestinians and to commit a variety of other nefarious activities.

For years, the use of the term “Zionism” in a non-historical context has rankled me. Movements succeed or fail but in either case their programs go stale. This is even more the case for highly ideological movements like Zionism. If they hang around after their shelf life expires they run the serious risk of becoming meaningless to both their adherents and their enemies. I’d argue that that’s been the case with Zionism at least since 1967, perhaps even longer.

The analogy I like to use is the New Deal, a movement over 30 years younger than Zionism. Like Zionism, the New Deal was based on a highly flexible set of principles that changed with events but kept its eye on the prize. In its case, that meant ending the Great Depression and implementing sufficient economic and social restructuring to prevent a new one. Most historians agree it worked. But was anyone after 1940 a New Dealer? New Deal principles and ideas have been resurrected but in the context of new movements. So should it be with Zionism.

Of course there are those that benefit from the maintenance of Zionism as a semi-official ideology of the State of Israel. Chief among them are the functionaries of the “Zionist institutions”, e.g., the Jewish Agency, the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish National Fund and others. Since 1948 they have been best known to Israelis as dumping grounds for failed or superannuated politicians. They have largely served as conduits for money and for large Diaspora donors to attempt to exert some control over use of the funds they have given. Few Israelis and fewer Diaspora Jews know or care what they do but they keep on going. Occasionally though they make headlines, such as when the JNF attempts to keep Arab citizens from Israel from purchasing land in certain communities because the land is held “in trust for the Jewish people”. This is a concept harking back to a pre-state ideology that should have no place today. The Supreme Courts strikes down the rules but the institutions keep going.

Zionism has a rich past which should and does provide Israelis with both history and legends regarding the founding of the state. It also, again, provides plenty of grist for those less admiring of Israel in theory, or reality, or both. But the Zionism of a hundred years ago should not be seen as providing today’s solutions.

Every few years one organization or another announces a renewal of Zionism and invites a new group to make aliyah. Aliyah is a concept that predated Zionism and will survive it. There are a variety of reasons that Jews make aliyah, ranging from honest enthusiasm for the task of building a Jewish state (religious or secular) to hope of economic improvement, to out-and-out flight for one’s life. But aliyah is now a personal decision; Israel does not need aliyah to survive as the Yishuv did in earlier times.

Retiring Zionism to the status of a movement of the past will not solve anything. It does not mean giving up on the Jewish state or changing its direction. But I think it would herald a long-due recognition that the State of Israel is free to choose its course based on current issues and realities, and that the giants of the past are and should not be our guides, or our judges.

Israeli Elections

No doubt foremost on Bibi’s mind is how to influence this year’s elections, which must be held by October 27. To the extent he hoped that the current Iran War would win him votes, it’s been a bust. There was a small bump early in the war, but then a return to the “normal” polling that has prevailed for 6 months or more. To summarize what they indicate: Likud would be the largest party with about 28 seats, but the current coalition would win only about 50-52 seats, not the 61+ it needs to return to power, and certainly not the 64 it won in November 2022. The Opposition’s Jewish (or Zionist) parties would likely win about 55-58, with the remainder going to a renewed Joint List of four predominantly-Arab parties. For a longer version, see my substack from January.

There comes the rub, since most of the Jewish parties - the Labor/Meretz union, “HaDemocratim” being a notable exception - have pledged “No Arabs in government”. If adhered to, this could start a new round of unsuccessful elections with no new government being formed, as happened three times in 2019-2021. The result would be: The status quo is maintained, and Bibi stays as PM, untouchable even if convicted in his corruption cases. Or, the Jewish parties could break their promises, allow Mansour Abbas’s United Arab List (Ra’am) to join the coalition with a projected 5-6 Knesset seats, and form a potentially stable government. Recall that Abbas’ party was part of the short-lived “Government of Change” (June 2021-December 2022) that briefly replaced Netanyahu.

Then What?

When the previous Government of Change (GoC) took power in June 2021, its eight diverse constituent parties agreed not to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which hamstrung most efforts at fundamental change. But there were a number of areas in which it rolled up modest successes, such as making an attempt to deal with crime and improving infrastructure in Arab communities, repairing ties with the US government, reducing the budget deficit to zero, lowering prices, and increasing competition. But its Achilles heel was its inability to deal with the conflict; and there is no indication that a government composed of the same people and parties would do any better, even if larger by a few MKs.

The Immediate Neighborhood

The GoC didn’t think of itself as taking office in a peaceful and problem-free era, but, compared to today, that time seems so. Israel is still in its post-October 7 trauma; the new government will immediately authorize a Commission of Inquiry, whose principal job will be to rake over the ashes of October 7, assign blame, and make recommendations. This will proceed while Israel is likely to still be occupying large swathes of Lebanon and attempting the destruction of Hezbollah; occupying half of Gaza with few serious plans as to dealing with two million Gazans and an angry world; and also coping with the aftermath of an ill-conceived war in Iran, one which all the Jewish parties supported to various degrees, but about which none have serious policies prepared, much less a joint approach. And, almost as an afterthought, there is a new government in Syria that Israel seems determined to treat as a likely enemy and a stalking horse for Turkey, with little latitude being given to prove itself to be what most of the world thinks it is: a promising experiment of an ex-Jihadist making a genuine new start for his ruined country.

The Region

Arguably even worse is the regional disarray. In stark contrast to 2021, when it seemed that most in the Arab world were eager to forget the Palestinians and regard Israel as their savior from Iran, Israel is now universally seen as the co-conspirator, along with President Trump, in bringing down a favorable and profitable regional and worldwide order. Israel, unlike Trump, can be explicitly blamed by Arab leaders, and these leaders will endear themselves to their people for doing so. Israel is regarded, not unjustly, as slightly crazed, still bristling from October 7 and eager to see any minor security issue as a potential casus belli. Moreover, a Palestinian state is seen as a sine qua non in the Arab world, but a complete nonstarter for Israelis.

United States

A new government may well face a President Trump furious at the defeat of his favorite Israeli. Or not. No one can know. What is certain is that the new Prime Minister will not enjoy the unprecedented access offered to Bibi – nor the opportunity to plan wars together. Moreover, the new government will face an American public, and especially a Democratic Party, which may be unprecedentedly anti-Israel, and most will not be appeased by a change of prime ministers. Israel could well be blamed for any failures of the Iran War, even – or especially – by Trump, who has never been known to accept responsibility or blame for anything.

Domestically

The new government will face an exhausted country, the more so if the war with Iran restarts. War expenses and miluim (reservist) call-ups have gone through the roof, as have murders in Arab communities. The messianic far-right will not accept its loss of power with good grace – and may redouble its violence in the West Bank following an election loss. Moreover, laws have been changed to facilitate de facto annexation, which would be difficult to reverse – even if the new coalition were to decide to do so.

The Rest of the World

Israel will likely have to spend a generation or more bringing itself back to the good graces of much of the world, which can only be compared, perhaps unfairly, to Germany’s task after World War II, as distasteful as the comparison is. I hope it is clear I am comparing tasks, not sins. However, Germany did accomplish it.

In Conclusion

Few of the leaders of a new government have apparently thought about many of these issues, with which they’ll be immediately confronted. One can surmise that their answers will be very different, even opposite to those of their government colleagues from the very disparate parties comprising any new coalition.

Perhaps, deterred by the enormity of the challenges ahead, they’ll duck a new government and turn the country back to Bibi?

Personally, I very much hope not.

Despite the pessimism of this article, I think the first task of any “change” agenda must have as a first priority bringing down the Bibi-apparatus that has pushed Israel into unimagined excesses in recent years. The change is essential, even if it doesn’t immediately conform to our own priorities. I refuse to give up on or walk away from Israel – and the first step must be removing Bibi and his cohort from the government

Perhaps left in the dust by the wild rejoicing at Kristi Noem’s firing, Barak Ravid at Axios reported on March 5 that Donald Trump is demanding that he must be involved in picking Iran’s next leader who will succeed the assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Weirdly, according to Ravid, Ali Khamenei’s son is the front runner to succeed him, but Trump claims he’s too “weak.” The context makes it clear that “weak” is a euphemism for “not sufficiently under Trump’s control.”

Now the US, like every imperial power, has long had considerable influence on the leadership of less powerful countries in its orbit, starting with Latin America post-Monroe Doctrine and continuing to the present in parts of Central America. Perhaps the most famous example is the US and Great Britain (as It was then) “restoring” Reza Pahlavi to the Peacock throne of Iran in 1953, thus paving the way for the Iranian revolution of 1979, which gave the Iranian people – and the world - Khomeini and then Khamenei. Coming back around with a vengeance.

BUT! Perhaps it’s my long-ago legal training but it seems particularly monstrous for a President of the United States to casually, claim the “right” to “be involved” in picking the leader of another country. This is not Germany in 1945; not militarily, not politically, and certainly not in the eyes of the international law that has grown up and matured since 1945. Of course it won’t happen but the General Assembly of the United Nations should pass a resolution stating that no nation, very much including the current world hegemon, has any right to be involved in choosing the next leader of a sovereign nation.

Of course, other countries go further, most notably Israel, which is baldly denying the existence of a nation that most of the world recognizes; namely Palestine, of course. Perhaps it is coincidence that it is these two nations, the only two I happen to have citizenship in, who connived in the current illegal war, and who are publicly claiming what can fairly be called imperial prerogatives over states recognized by the rest of the world. U.N. membership matters, as does a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.

To be fair, I should note that there are dozens or hundreds of submerged nations all over the word; peoples who lost at some point in the great lottery of nations that has constituted most of international history for as long as we have records. There are the prominent losers like the 30-45 million Kurds, divided between Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria – and now likely to be activated by Trump against Iran. There are others like the Basques and Catalans in northern Spain, and so many others. The difference between them, on the one hand, and Iran and Palestine on the other is Law, which Trump is consistently trying to subvert. In that case it’s international law, one of the newer and more fragile branches of law, In economics it’s usually known as “the rules-based international order,” which Trump has cut off at the knees. And, of course, his absurdly-named “Board of Peace” is trying to subvert the United Nations.

What Trump is trying to undermine at every pass is Law, which he correctly sees as inimical to his transactional, i.e. lawless approach. Law can certainly interfere with deals. The law, whether international or domestic, doesn’t prevent A and B from leaving C out of their deal, but it generally prevents A and B from carving C up and eating him for dinner. Trump wants to be able to carve up anyone he wants, whether in Minnesota or Venezuela or Iran – and mini or regional would-be emperors are only too happy to follow Trump. The only hesitation they have is whether they will end up being the diner or the dinner – which is a real dilemma for mid-size countries. If Iran (93 million) and Ukraine (45 million) are on the table, who is safe?

And that is why this war, certainly the US participation in it, is illegal and therefore wrong. The US had no legally cognizable reason to attack Iran. Israel was indeed threatened by Iran but has done a rather effective job of defending itself. If you think I’m waffling on Israel attacking Iran, which has advocated its destruction for much of the last four decades, you’re right.

Would (perhaps “Will”) Israel’s life be easier if the Islamic Republic is gone? Unquestionably. Is it worth the body blow given to the post-1945 norm against regime change absent an imminent threat of invasion (or destruction)? I’d say no, but I understand that most Israelis think otherwise. Of course, that norm has suffered considerable attrition by successive invasions of Iraq, Libya, and Ukraine, not to mention the stifling and prevention of Palestine, including through an arguable genocide. (I realize everyone will hate me for that phrase.)

However, I have to uncomfortably accept that Donald Trump’s second term has taught me more about the essential role of genuine respect for law in a democratic society than did three years of law school. If law can be bent, it can be perverted. And I accept that liberals like me were often willing to bend the law while never considering that after us would come a populism that considers words and law mere “linguistic games” to be rolled over by any means necessary.

Law is ultimately an artifact created by human beings. It can be hallowed, as in the Jewish tradition, which can lead to its own problem, as we see in dangerous trends in today’s Israel. Or it can be mocked and sometimes it is indeed an ass. But when it is perverted and publicly mocked and denigrated, nationally and internationally, then all of us are seriously threatened. We’re losing something precious that we may not have properly valued, And frankly, I can’t imagine how we’ll get it back.

So maybe W.S. Gilbert’s pompous Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe was on to something when he pontificated:

The law is the true embodiment of everything that’s excellent.

It has no kind of fault or flaw,

And I, my lords, embody the law.

This column is “Israel and its Neighbors,” and it’s the turn of the “Neighbors,” given the war that began yesterday, courtesy of the US and Israel. I expect the next iteration will move the focus back to Israel.

Donald Trump’s illusory waiting period has ended and the war Bibi has fantasized about for twenty years is finally underway. While it is by no means welcome nor thought-out, perhaps it’s better that it finally took place under Trump, who believes in short wars and limited American involvement, rather than under, say, George Bush, who was genuinely invested in his his version of “democratization,” come hell, high water, or full-scale civil war, as turned out in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I will go out on a precarious limb and predict that the full scale aspect of this war will end in less than two weeks, very possibly in less than one. This is mainly because one of Trump‘s few positive points is that he demands quick victories –and if a victory does not appear as scheduled, Trump will find a one and proclaim it. See Venezuela and last year’s “Twelve Day War,” in which the Iranian nuclear program was “obliterated,” only to be resurrected as one of the pretexts for the current war.

The length of the current war is at direct issue between Bibi and Trump. Since October 7, Bibi has been all in for war, almost any war, since he sees the enemies of Israel as aligned. Trump, by contrast, prefers one enemy at a time; the better to declare victories and tote them up for Nobel Prize purposes. Thus, the first thing Trump did as president – in fact the day before he was inaugurated so Joe Biden officially got the credit – was to send Steve Witkoff to strong-arm Bibi into a ceasefire. Now, several wars later, Bibi, according to Ronen Bergman, the best-informed investigative journalist in Jerusalem, he is insisting that the current war must last at leas two weeks to give Israel a time to attack all the officials, troop concentrations, and, especially, missiles, on their lists, while Trump insists on four days, or perhaps a bit longer (See Bergman’s discussion with Fareed, March 1, 2026.).

Trump’s fetish about short wars makes sense for him. Besides his temperamental incapacity to focus on any one thing for long, especially if it’s complex, he has no toleration nor understanding of principle or ideology, which were not exactly useful concepts in Manhattan real estate. Thus, for all his admiration (“it’s genius”) for Vladimir Putin’s acumen in attacking Ukraine in 2022, he would not have stayed in the game, had it been his, once it became clear that the attack was one of the greatest military disasters of history. Had it been his troops, he would have, within days, declared his goals had been achieved, he had won a great victory, and he would be returning home with flags flying. Putin, whom Trump continues to admire, is not so flexible, pouring Russia’s men and money down a rat-hole based on ideology and stubbornness.

Of course, this war is illegal, in US domestic terms as well as international law. US law requires that the now emasculated Congress declare war, not the president, though admittedly actions by many presidents have weakened that black letter law, no president has as casually thrown the Constitution under the bus. Likewise, under post-WWII international law, war must be in response to an imminent threat or be sanctioned by the United Nations. I emphasize this lest my arguments to follow may seem to be defending the war and Trump.

As all commentators have emphasized, no one should mourn the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and no one can guess who, if anyone, or what clique might succeed in picking up the reins of government and governing Iran. But the bigger question is in whose name he or they will claim to be governing, with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) being the most likely bet. But whether that leader or clique will attempt to continue the deeply unpopular Islamic theocracy and the already blown-up policy of resting Iran’s regional foreign policy on a series of defeated insurgent militias like Hezbollah, Hamas, the “Popular Mobilization Forces” in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen, is conceivable but borderline insane. Except that that is what the IRGC – and especially its elite Quds Force – have done for decades, and it would have to be a supremely self-confident leader to break from that tradition.

Iranian foreign policy is what both Bibi and Trump care about, but the main concern of any Iranian leader must be the welfare of its 93 million citizens, already divided by religion (though overwhelmingly Muslim). and, ethnicity (half are of non-Persian heritage). Civil war is a very real and immediate possibility, though, to be sure, Iran is an ancient imperial country, with traditions dating back thousands of years, which may help to counteract the centrifugal forces unleashed by foreign decapitation of its longtime leader.

The positive scenario has a real, though small, chance of success, especially in its complete form. That would require a cabal of powerful, though secondary, officials, probably already existing, to seize and hold power against all the other would-be claimants. They would have already decided on a democratic or, more likely, semi-authoritarian government s structure that would control the administrative and political power of the IRGC. It would avoid like plague offers from the US and Israel of special favors and both cut loose the militias and attempt to steer a non-aligned course. The realistic promises such a government could make of oil deals and reconstruction and commercial contracts would attract the attention of both Chinese and western governments and businesses. Its neighboring Arab and Sunni countries,, which have all joined the US/Israeli led war after being attacked by the Islamic Republic in the first day of the war, would swallow their automatic dislike of the Persian and Shi’a colossus next door, and treat it as an erring but contrite fellow Muslim.

That, needless to say, is the near-fairytale positive version of what could transpire now that the regional cards have been thrown up in the air. Needless to say, both Israel and the US would look askance at any emergent non-aligned Iran; they want to control it themselves. But that would likely be among the easiest snares for any non-aligned government to avoid.

To be clear, any such scenario is unlikely in the extreme. But some elements of it could emerge and the non-aligned world – which in this case includes most Western countries – should be alert for them.

Happy Purim – the holiday of the topsy-turvy and the unlikely.

The fourth significant “Arab party” is Ra’am (the United Arab List), which has been the political arm of the Islamist movement in Israel. Since the movement is likely to be declared illegal, its leader, Mansour Abbas, is breaking Ra’am’s ties with it and reportedly will include a Jew on its list. Ra’am, unlike the other three, is culturally conservative, except, of course on the issue of establishment of an independent Palestinian state next to Israel. It supported the “Government of Change” of 2021-22, and explicitly states that is main focus is normalizing the position of Arab citizens within Israel, not changing the ethos of the state.

In 2015, in response to demands from Israel’s Palestinians, as well as to the Knesset hiking the minimum vote threshold to 3.25%, the four parties united in a “Joint List,” which broke apart before the next election. In 2015, the Joint List won 13 seats, while Arabs won seats on 5 other lists, including both left and rightwing parties. That represented the high-water mark of Arab Knesset membership to date, about 14%.

Last week, on January 22, surprising almost everyone, the leaders of all four Arab parties met in Sakhnin, an Arab town in northern Israel, and apparently recreated the Joint list. “Apparently,” since news reports are somewhat contradictory. The Jerusalem Post reported a “commitment” to reestablishing” the joint list, while Raviv Drucker in Ha’aretz more cautiously reported on various possibilities, including that it might be a “trap” for Mansour Abbas. A webinar held by the Abraham Initiatives on Jan. 27 emphasized the Arab community’s intention to use it to make Israeli society more cognizant of the explosion of violence and murder in Israeli Arab towns that has been growing exponentially over the last few years. Few if any American Jewish outlets have even mentioned the meeting or its significance.

That’s unfortunate, because a new Joint List could well make a new government possible without a dreary succession of inconclusive elections, with Bibi remaining Prime Minister, as Israel experienced earlier this decade. It could also make possible a government that finally recognizes that Israel cannot continue to claim to be a democracy when most representatives of Arab citizens are automatically excluded from joining any government coalition.

Sadly It also would almost certainly seal the fate for now of the repeated efforts to form an “Arab-Jewish” party, notably by Avrum Burg in 2022, and seemingly being replicated this year with support from some ex-Meretz leaders and others. The fact is that the traditional model of separate parties tends to be favored by those leaders who have come up through them, even by most of those who ideologically would, at least in theory, favor such a party. Meretz always had one or two (out of 5-6) Arabs in safe spots on its lists, but most of its leaders resisted calls by some to transform it into a “Jewish-Arab” party because it would have to, in effect, drop its identification with Zionism as an ideology in order to fully represent both Arabs and Jews.

The Political Context: What a Simple Arithmetical Calculation Will Easily Discover...

Most “Jewish” parties – with the honorable exception of the Demokratim under Yair Golan – have already pledged not to form a government including an Arab party after this year’s election, even though all the anti-Bibi parties had been part of the Government of Change, which included Ra’am. Benny Gantz’s “Blue and White” even prouced a scurrilous ad implying an Arab party in the government would prevent an Israeli government from defending the country against an attack. We can only hope that Bennett and the and the centrist leaders who have taken such a pledge will, if faced with an actual attainable government, will forget it, as politicians are known (or even expected) to do (“If you don’t like my principles, I have others.”).

Raviv’s article in Ha’aretz warns of the danger of Mansour Abbas and Ra’am being tainted by the radicalism of the other parties in the Joint List – and now they are, at least nominally, conjoined with them. This will obviously be exploited by Likud and its allies in the election campaign, but unless the electoral arithmetic comes out very differently from what polls show now, forming a government without Ra’am will be difficult, if not impossible, and permanently precarious.

Luckily, the flexibility of Israeli electoral law and practice provides a number of ways that alliances and coalitions can be structured to pretend to obscure unwelcome realities. The Joint List can run as one party and then split up formally the day after the election. Or, Abbas could repeat what he did in 2021 and pledge to support the government but not accept any ministries, thus posing the question: “Are you part of a government if you’re not part of it?

On the other hand, we shouldn’t expect miracles from such a non-Bibi government, even if it‘s formed. The genuine blessing for Israel is that he will be out of the office he’s burrowed into since 2009 (plus 3 years in the 1990s), which is longer than anyone should hold the top executive office in a democracy. An independent Inquiry Commission for October 7 will be stood up, eventually providing some closure. Perhaps a similar commission will investigate the epidemic of violence in Arab communities and make some significant changes that could impact longterm Arab-Jewish relations inside Israel. Judicial and other structural guardrails may be restored and even strengthened. Perhaps – and this is less likely – the extra belligerence/aggression Israel has assumed towards its neighbors, especially the new regime in Syria, could be relaxed. Conceivably Gaza - or most of it – might be evacuated by Israel, but since half the government will be composed Greater Israel types like Bennett and Lieberman, that is highly speculative, though they might possibly be persuaded not for moral reasons, but perhaps in recognition of the crucial need to rebuild Israel’s battered standing in the world.

But it is sadly unimaginable that the tumors Israel has carried inside itself since 1967 will be excised by such a government. Bennett and Lieberman and most of the “centrists” do not recognize that at the only way the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be ended is with the establishment of real, independent, Palestinian self-determination. We can hope that the settler incitement and seemingly daily bloodshed and land confiscations will be tamped down – and see if Bennett and Lieberman do want to differentiate themselves from Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. But even Yair Golan avoids calling for a Palestinian state. So the most basic cause of continuing injustice by the Israeli state will not be done away with – unless some new deus ex machina takes the stage and demands it – and that depends more on the American than the Israeli elections.

One step at a time.

Currently the governing coalition is in disarray, since the Haredi (“ultra-Orthodox”) parties have officially left it because of the ongoing dispute over drafting yeshiva students, but do not want to force a new election.

NOTE: Parties must receive more than 3.25% of the total vote or else all their votes are discarded. Polling figures below represent an approximate average of polls taken mid-Jan. 2026.

Current Coalition Parties

Likud. Leader: Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu (PM). 36 seats; Polling: 26 . Traditional mainstream rightwing standard-bearer. In almost 20 years of Bibi’s dominance, all independent voices have been ejected, so the Likud is liable to fragment if Bibi leaves politics. Generally pro-settler, sympathetic to Jewish tradition, split on Haredi draft exemptions, instigator of “judicial reform” and strongly opposes an independent gov’t commission to investigate Oct. 7.

Shas. Aryeh Deri. 11 seats; polling: 8-10. Sephardi (Mizrahi) Haredi, including many traditionalist Mizrahim. Most important issues are institutionalizing Haredi draft exemptions and access to state funds for its schools and institutions. Its base is more pro-settler than UTJ’s.

United Torah Judaism. Moshe Gafni. 7 seats; polling: 7-8. Ashkenazi Haredi. Determined to maintain rabbinical control in its communities, for which draft exemptions are essential.

Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power). Itamar Ben-Gvir (Min. of Nat’l Security). 6 seats; polling: 8-10. Far right religious, emphasizing Jewish strength and nationalism. One of two parties controlling current coalition through credible threats to leave. Split on draft exemptions. Favors annexation of West Bank/Gaza, with expulsion or political neutralization of Palestinian population.

Religious Zionism. Bezalel Smotrich (Min. of Finance). 7 seats; polling <3%. Far right religious, with greater emphasis on public religiosity than JP. Separate parties mainly because their high-profile leaders don’t get along, with Ben-Gvir much more popular. Smotrich has encouraged settler violence in West Bank and organized de facto annexation.

Total government bloc polling around 52. The only other parties that might join a continuation of the current government with Bibi heading it are Blue and White (Gantz) or HaMiluimnikim (Reservists), which are both currently well below the minimum threshold.

Opposition Parties

Bennett 26 (new). Naphtali Bennett (former PM). Polling: 22. Bennett hopes to draw votes from the far right, mainstream right, and center. He was PM for most of the 2021-22 “Gov’t of Change,” which he hopes to replicate but without Arab party participation. He is nationalist and religious but he hopes his reputation for tolerance and inclusivity will allow him to head a new coalition.

HaDemokratim (new). Yair Golan. 4 seats (inherited from Labor). Polling: 12. Liberal Zionist; headed by retired Major General Yair Golan. Composed of remnants of the two parties of Israel’s Zionist left, Labor and Meretz. Currently in internecine conflict, including ex-Laborites trying to break an agreement guaranteeing at least 2 seats to ex-Meretznikim. Only Jewish party currently willing to sit in a government with Arab parties. Does not currently explicitly support the two-state solution but talks of “separation.” Moderate social-democratic.

Yisrael Beiteinu. Avigdor Lieberman. Seats: 6. Polling: 8-10. Pro-settler, nationalist, and strongly secular, traditionally appealing to Russian immigrants. Very strongly against Haredi draft exemption and any religious control. Pro-Greater Israel. Would prefer traditional rightwing gov’t but anti-Haredi. Supports independent investigation comm.

Yesh Atid. Yair Lapid (former PM). 24 seats. Polling: 9. Centrist, strongly secular, and middle-class. Lapid was architect of Gov’t of Change and briefly PM, but hasn’t been seen as showing strong leadership since Oct. 7. Strongly anti-Haredi draft exemptions and for Inquiry Commission.

Hadash-Ta’al. Ayman Odeh (not running 2026; new leader not yet chosen). Seats 5. Polling 5. Officially Israel’s Communist party, its voters are overwhelmingly Israeli Palestinians but always includes 1 Jew in a safe seat. Advocates equality between Jews and Arabs in Israel and a consensual 2SS with Palestinians, as well as traditional moderate socialist policies.

Ra’am (United Arab List). Mansour Abbas. 5 seats, Polling 5. Officially part of the legal portion of Israel’s Muslim Brotherhood org., it made history by supporting the Gov’t of Change. Culturally conservative; supports equality in Israel and a Palestinian state. Ending its relations with the MB, which is being declared illegal; reportedly seeking a Jew to run on its slate. Current polling shows it may be the only route to a government for any viable coalition, but most Jews against a coalition including an Arab party.

Blue & White. Benny Gantz (former IDF Commander-CoGS*). Seats 8. Polling <3%. Center-right. In 2019 Gantz led his party to 35 seats but was outwitted by Bibi and now seems a has-been. He helped stiffen Bibi’s party after Oct. 7 and has called for keeping Arab parties out of Israeli governments, so he’s perhaps the most rightward of the centrist parties.

New or Not Currently in the Knesset

Yashar (new). Gadi Eisenkot (former CGoS*). Polling: 9-11. Retired IDF commanders have traditionally gone into politics, starting highly popular and often falling low. Eisenkot has been in politics for years but only now formed his own party, that may join with another centrist or moderate rightist. Against Haredi exemptions; for Inquiry Comm.

Miluimnikim (Army Reservists-new) Yoaz Hendel <3%. Rightist/quirky. Advocates universal military conscription (including Israeli Palestinians and Haredim), and an independent investigatory Comm’n.

Balad (not currently in Knesset). Sami abu Shehadeh, Polling at <2%. Arab nationalist/leftist. In favor of Israel becoming a state of all its citizens (i.e., not a Jewish state) and creation of a state of Palestine on territory conquered in 1967. Unlikely to enter the Knesset unless it teams up with Hadash, which it has in the past.

Coalition note: Based on current figures, the most probable scenario is a coalition of Bennett’s party with HaDemokratim, Yesh Atid, Yisrael Beiteinu, and Yashar, which seem likely to receive a total of 56-60 seats, with Bennett as PM candidate. Theoretically, a Knesset member from one of the other parties in the new Knesset could “bring their seat with them” but that is unlikely. Thus, Ra’am would seem the likeliest party to help form a viable coalition, if candidates won’t have already committed themselves to refuse to sit in coalition with an “Arab” party.

If no government with 61 seats can be formed a new election must be held, as happened three times in 2019-21.

*Chief of the General Staff, i.e., Commander of the IDF.

Please feel free to comment, complain, or ask questions in the Comments section. And I hope you will forward any post from Israel and its Neighbors to anyone who might like it or, alternatively, whom you think might benefit from it.

Best wishes for a Happier New Year.

Paul Scham

The article beginning the series, below, was the President’s Message in the new issue of Israel Horizons, published yesterday, Dec. 18. Future Substack editions of the Updater will be up-to-the-minute in polls and news. Please also check out Rabbi Margo Hughes-Robinson’s weekly commentary, modestly entitled “From My Desk. She is the Executive Director of Partners for Progressive Israel and has her finger on the pulse of much that is happening in the progressive pro-Israel Jewish communities, which do exist and do make waves.

Israel and its Neighbors will continue to explore the election campaign as well as other elements of the Middle East and even American politics and society. We all recognize by now that we find ourselves living through an extraordinary period, which could be called a wrinkle in time, a major inflection point in which the major elements of stability we have relied on seem to be crashing to the ground. This is unquestionably true of my own worlds, including the Jewish, the Israeli/Palestinian, and the American political ecosystems. The Israeli and American governments, especially at their upper reaches, are now in thrall to bizarre and extremist ideologies, though occasionally mixed with elements of sanity, such as when Trump seems to be restraining Bibi from some of the latter’s worst impulses. Unfortunately, there seems to be no one able to restrain Trump’s own worst impulses; he is like a child in a room of new gadgets that he keeps trying out. I’ll be examining those in some future posts.

Nevertheless, best wishes to all for a Happy Hanukkah, a merry Christmas, and a new Year that I hope will bring new and positive possibilities to all our various and intersecting worlds.

Looking Ahead to Israel’s 2026 Elections

By law, the next Israeli election must be held by November 2026, a year out as I write this message. These elections will be deeply consequential for both Israelis and Palestinians, and I want to offer as a primer a review of the legal background and recent history, and then plunge into what current polls can tell us about the potential outcomes and pitfalls of the upcoming votes.

Note: I will be commenting on Israeli politics regularly, so if you’re interested, you can become a free subscriber to my Substack, “Israel and its Neighbors.” Questions and comments are welcome, in the free-wheeling spirit of Israeli politics

Keep in mind: Israel has a typical European-style parliamentary system. Normally, between 20 and 30 parties compete and around 10 usually exceed the threshold of 3.25% of the vote and actual get into the Knesset. There is fairly strict proportional representation, so 3.25% gets you 4 Knesset seats. No party has ever won a majority of seats; thus, every government has been a coalition.

A Brief History

From the 1960s till the 2000’s, Israel’s two larger parties, Likud (center-right) and Labor (center-left), each usually received 30-40 seats (mandates) in elections held every 3-4 years. About a third of the total of 120 seats were held by 6-10 smaller parties, with several of whom one of the larger two parties formed a coalition, except when the two large parties created “National Unity “ governments during the 1980s (often derided as “national disunity”). After the failure of the Oslo peace process in the 1990’s, Labor gradually declined into insignificance, and the Likud was generally the single largest party. For those seeking a general guide to current parties, I recommend Wikipedia’s chart. Keep in mind that parties, candidates, and even rules will change, perhaps abruptly, over the coming year.

Traditionally, Israeli parties were fairly clearly left, right, or (Jewish) religious. Starting in the 1980s, independent Arab parties began to appear – understood to be beyond the understood Jewish-Zionist consensus – and which were not invited into coalitions. Traditionally the leftwing parties always included Israeli Palestinians in their slates.

Bibi’s coalitions after 2009 generally included some combination of center-right, right, and religious parties, both national religious (pro-settler) and Haredim (“ultra-Orthodox”). However, by the 2015 election, and certainly by 2019, Israelis parties had morphed into pro- and anti- Bibi Netanyahu blocs, almost regardless of ideology, Many of the anti-Bibi parties were led by former Bibi coalition partners (e.g., Lieberman, Bennett, Shaked, Gantz, and Lapid), who swore they would no longer work with him. Each grouping, pro- and anti-, had almost exactly 50% of the electorate, and four inconclusive elections were held between 2019 and 2021, with no one gaining a clear majority, except for a brief anti-Bibi “Government of Change” in 2021-22. Then, in November 2022, Meretz fell a few thousand votes below the threshold and its 4 seats disappeared. Bibi formed a government, still in power, with 64 seats, now increased to 67.

There are some unusual features of the current government which must be understood for the last three years to be comprehensible. Normally, one of the inherent characteristics of a coalition government is that moderately different viewpoints and priorities are represented by the different parties, so extremism is usually curbed and moderation is prioritized. However, due to the unprecedentedly long tenure of one person as prime minister – and especially of the five pro- and anti-Bibi elections in 2019-22 – Likud had become as subservient to Bibi as Republicans are to Trump. Meanwhile the Haredi parties became politically wedded to Bibi, and knew that the anti-Bibi parties would never let them into a different government, largely because of their insistence on military exemptions for virtually all Haredi draft-age men.

Meanwhile, Bibi had been indicted for fraud, bribery, and breach of trust. Due to a quirk in Israeli law, the PM, unlike other ministers, is not obliged to resign if indicted for a crime and, though his trial has been ongoing for 5 years, he has been able to slow it down considerably. If his government falls, however, Bibi may soon go to jail. The far-right party leaders Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, now household names, have not hesitated to use implicit and explicit threats of leaving the government in order to implement their own unprecedentedly far right agenda, including, among many other items, prosecuting the savage war in Gaza for two years and encouraging extreme settler violence in the West Bank, often ensuring police inaction or even participation. Bibi himself, who had previously taken a mainstream right wing approach to Palestinian issues (e.g., strong opposition to a Palestinian state but also to Israeli annexation of the occupied territories), at first appeared reluctant to accede to their policies but, in the last year, has appeared far more aboard with them, even enthusiastic.

The Current Situation (I should note that I get my up-to-date polling information from

https://knessetjeremy.com

, (unconnected to PPI or me), who provides a regular (usually weekly) summary of Israeli polls, in English.)

Keep in mind that the size of a post-election coalition determines who “wins” an election, not the vote for an individual party. Making the Israeli pollster’s job excruciating is having to game out which politicians may run in which party, how many votes each party might garner, and who is likely to join a potential governmental coalition. At this point, most assume that Naftali Bennett, prime minister for most of the 2021-22 “Government of Change” will lead a new party and create the largest anti-Bibi coalition. Bennett’s politics are nominally of the settler far-right, but his apparent flexibility and willingness to work with centrists and even the “liberal Zionist” Demokratim, make him appealing to the broadest array of voters and parties. Polls show his registered but as yet unnamed party just a few seats behind Likud. Meanwhile, Likud is trying to derail it, as one would expect.

Though Bibi’s negative ratings have exceeded his positives since 2017, his base support is only slightly lower than it was in the 2022 election (32 seats then; upper twenties now in most polls). If you are looking at KnessetJeremy’s chart, you will note that Channel 14’s numbers are out of line with the others, skewed in Bibi’s favor. Chanel 14 is known as Israel’s Newsmax, rightwing and pro-Bibi in everything.

Bibi’s coalition, should he be able to form one, would consist of Likud, the Haredi parties United Torah Judaism (Ashkenazi) and Shas (Sephardi/Mizrahi) and the two far right religious parties Otzma Yehudi (Jewish Power), led by Ben-Gvir, and Religious Zionism (now a party as well as a category), led by Smotrich. The two men apparently dislike each other so strongly that they refuse to run together in one party, although their views are similar, though not identical. Smotrich’s party hovers below the threshold; only Channel 14 shows him barely entering the Knesset. In 2022 Bibi essentially forced them to run together and they won an unprecedented 14 seats, providing the power they now have. That seems less likely to happen next year, which would make it difficult for the pro-Bibi forces to reach the magic number of 61 out of 120 seats.

As Knesset Jeremy shows, the “Bennett bloc” is likely to end up in the upper 50s, and the Bibi bloc in the lower 50’s or upper 40s.

What gives? There are 120 seats in the Knesset!

The “missing” mandates are held by those who do not accept the Zionist consensus that still loosely connects the Israeli right and left. Most of those not accepting the consensus are Israeli Arabs/Palestinians; those with Israeli citizenship, who comprise 20% of the Israeli population. There is also a group that is willing to accept the consensus, but is not accepted by it.

In my next post in this series on the Israeli elections and political system, I’ll discuss the anti-Bibi portion of the Knesset and the likely potent role of Israeli Arabs.