Jahangir Mohammed writes that Israel is transforming from a secular Zionist state toward a theocratic Zionist state, and that is not what secular European Jews or their Western backers envisaged or wanted.

Israel at 75: Toward A Religious Zionist State.

The state of Israel marks its 75^th anniversary this week. Meanwhile, Palestinians and Arabs will mark the Nakba (the catastrophe). After the defeat of the Ottoman State in World War I, Palestine was placed under a British Mandate in July 1920, ending 400 years of Ottoman rule. Under the Lausanne Treaty signed in July 1923 (effective from August 1924) the new Turkish state ceded its claim to Palestine. Britain had already expressed its intent to see a Jewish State alongside an Arab one in the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

The United Nations ruled that Palestine should be partitioned into a Jewish and Arab State (November 1947) after World War II. On 14th May 1948, David Ben Gurion announced the creation of the State of Israel. The British Mandate over Palestine ended at midnight on the same day. On the 15th of May, the United States recognized Israel and the Soviet Union followed on the 17th of May. With both global powers supporting the new Israeli state, the Palestinian and Arabs who were still fighting for independence from colonialism, had little chance of securing their rights and interests. Within 50 years of the publication of Theodor Herzl’s “The Jewish State” the Zionist movement had succeeded in creating the secular Zionist State of Israel.

The continuing dispossession of Palestinians and violence between Jews and Arabs led to several wars between Israel and its Arab neighbours. That culminated in the 1967 Arab-Jewish war with a humiliating defeat for the Arab States in six days. Israel annexed the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Gaza, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula. Sinai was handed back to Egypt under a peace deal in 1978. However, the West Bank, East Jerusalem (called by the Biblical names Judaea and Samaria in Israel), and the Golan Heights have remained under Israeli occupation ever since. Whilst Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza in 2005, it has maintained an inhumane, land, sea, and air siege of the territory ever since, with habitual military strikes as and when it chooses. Gaza is neither free nor independent.

The Roots of Western Support for Israel

Support for a separate Jewish state was rooted in a European sense of guilt for centuries of persecution of Jews, culminating in the holocaust at the hands of the German Nazis. Since its creation, Israel has always been sustained and protected by its backers in the West, primarily Britain and the United States. The US has provided Israel with military aid to the tune of $244bn from 1946-2019 and continues each year. At the same time, Israel has acted as a vehicle for achieving Western hegemony and division in the Arab world.

Political Zionism, although a secular racial nationalist movement, has always drawn support from Western Christian Zionists. Central to their support is the view that the Jews must return to the holy land and rebuild the temple of Solomon before the expected return of Jesus to bring the Jews and others to Christianity. Both secular Christians and Jewish Zionists have justified the Jewish claim to Palestine through the Bible and a 2000-year-old history.

“On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring, I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates- (Genesis 15:18)

What both Christian and Jewish Zionists forget is that the Prophet Ibrahim had two sons, not one. From Prophet Isaac descended the 12 tribes of Israel, and the Prophets David, Moses, and Jesus. It is convenient for Biblical Zionists to forget the other son Ismail, and his descendant the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, and Muslims who have already controlled all the areas mentioned. God’s promises to believers is also dependent on righteousness and right conduct, not on notions of race or racial supremacy.

The Muslim and Arab world sometimes find it difficult to comprehend why political and religious leaders in the West can be so pro-Israel; that no matter what the state of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians, they limit any criticism and will more often defend Israeli actions. The Bible is often used to justify this deliberate lack of condemnation (especially in the United States).

“I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3)

The early Zionist movement in Europe was able to successfully use the Bible and revisionist history of the region to press its claims for a Jewish State to political and religious leaders, with little opposition to their narratives. Muslim communities were not present, nor was there non-mainstream media in the UK or the USA, to argue alternatives to those narratives and provide a political challenge

A State based on Jewish Racial Nationalism.

The term Zionism often masks the reality of the Israeli state which is presented as the only democracy in the Middle East. Elections do not indicate the nature of a state. All kinds of states have had elections. Israel is a state based on the idea of Jewish supremacy. This view is even enshrined in the flawed understanding of the Biblical verse which seeks to exclude Abraham’s son Ismail from God’s “promise of land”. The racism in this view against the African mother of Ismail, Hajar, and her descendants, is a discussion for another day.

In July 2018 Israel’s Knesset approved the Nationality Bill which confirmed what everyone already knew about the Israeli state. Benjamin Netanyahu stated: –

 “This is a defining moment in the history of Zionism and in the history of the State of Israel. 122 years ago, after [Theodor] Herzl shared his vision, we have established into law the fundamental tenant of our existence. ‘Israel’ is the nation-state of the Jewish people.”

The law also committed to the dispossession of Palestinians by endorsing continued Jewish colonisation of occupied Palestine.

“the state considers the development of Jewish settlement a national value and will act in order to encourage and promote the foundation and establishment of such settlement.”

Jewish supremacy and a Jewish state can only be maintained by sustaining a Jewish majority population and the expulsion and gradual dispossession of the indigenous Palestinian people. This is a natural consequence of the Zionist ideology behind the colonial project. The granting of a right of Israeli citizenship to any Jew around the world whilst denying the right of return to Palestinian refugees, whose ancestors had lived in that land for centuries, is meant to create and maintain a Jewish majority population. To rehouse the continued Jewish newcomers requires land grabs of occupied Palestinian territory. Therefore, the logical result of Zionism and Jewish supremacy in Israel is the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by changing the population mix of occupied territory.

From a Secular Zionist State to a Religious Zionist State.

Nuclear Israel and its global supporters have always viewed the greatest threat to its survival to be the Palestinian resistance movement and neighbouring Muslim states. However, recently a threat that is closer to home has emerged, the increase in the ultra-orthodox and religious Jewish population. The current coalition government led by Likud and Netanyahu is made up of ultra-religious or far-right parties including Shas, Religious Zionism, United Torah Judaism, Otzma Yehudit, and Noam. Israel is now in the hands of religious Zionists and well on the way to becoming a religious state.

In a political system based on proportional representation, population matters, and increasing population translates into electoral success and political power. In 2012 a report “Israel: Demography 2012-2030- On the Way To A Religious State”, by the University of Haifa, looked at projections for demographic change in Israel. It accurately forecasted that Israel was on the way to becoming a religious state. By 2025, the report predicted that the total population of Israel would be 9.984M, of which 7.6M would be Jews (plus others) and 2.384M Arabs, including Druze (24%). However, of the 7.6M Jews, 3.8M or 49.8% would be Religious Jews (classed as Ultra-Orthodox, religious, and religious traditional). The remaining 50% are classed as non-religious or secular. Combined with Israeli Arabs who are mainly religious that would mean 62% of the population of Israel could be considered religious.

The forecasts above do not include the Palestinian population in occupied territories and Gaza. The Palestinian population is predicted to increase to 6M in 2030 and 9.4M by 2050 by which time the Israeli population will be 11.4M. The population in West Bank is currently around 3M.

Israel is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. The continued importation of Jews from around the world to maintain a majority has consequences for housing, security, resource allocation, and the Palestinian population.

Cities like Tel Aviv are already overcrowded, other parts of Israel are inhabited by Arabs and Bedouins or areas with a high percentage of migrant workers. The demand for housing from Jews, whilst maintaining separated communities, is already creating unmanageable conflicts that we have seen recently. Imported Jews (colonial settlers) and new settlements in the occupied territories add to these tensions and lead to violence. The alternative would be to build high-rise apartment blocks. That is not appealing to Jewish settlers coming from Europe with Western standards of living.

The birth rate among the orthodox and ultra-orthodox Jewish communities and Bedouins is high compared to secular Jews. In the future, Western secular Jews may become a minority to Eastern Mizrahi Jews and Arabs. In fact, outside the main cities in some areas that is already the case. Secular Jews will also become concentrated in urban areas and cities.

The population changes mean that from now on, no new government can rule without the support of the religious parties. Some of these religious Zionist parties and their leaders express even more open hostility to Palestinians and Arabs. They consider occupied territory as Jewish and their religious right and want to annex it. To achieve this goal, they must reform the Supreme Court and judiciary which in 2004 ruled that the West Bank was occupied territory in international law. There are also other religious reforms they want to make around, who is defined as a Jew and Israeli citizenship, LGBT, and other liberal human rights issues. The recent protests in Israel about changes to the judiciary are therefore not about democracy, they are about the nature of Zionism and the Israeli state itself.

Annexation of the West Bank and Jerusalem would pose another problem for Israel. It would mean that the Palestinians would become part of Israel. It would also mean that in many regions, Jews would no longer be a majority or would be equal in population to Palestinians. Hence some ultra-orthodox Zionists have even made statements about deporting Palestinians to Arab states as the solution.

Perhaps the biggest problem for Zionism is that Western secular Zionists would start to leave Israel because in their worldview they see Israel as a state in the image of Western states in the Middle East. They do not wish to live in a theocratic religious state like that of the Taliban. For the ultra-orthodox, many secular Jews are not considered Jews because they are not practicing the faith. Jewishness and Zionism are not a matter of race but religion for the ultra-orthodox.

The Zionist state of Israel has survived 75 years and built itself into a military power to fight its external enemies. However, in the next 25 years, its main battle will be internal, between Jews themselves and two competing views of Zionism and Israel. Israel is on the way to becoming a religious state in the image of the Taliban state in Afghanistan. That is not how the secular Zionists from Europe envisaged their Zionist state of Israel would be, nor did its Western backers. The apartheid state of South Africa reformed itself when it realised that it only had a future based on a society of equal citizens and rights, not one based on racial supremacy. The population dynamics of South Africa were against white supremacy. Israel will one day have to realise that its population changes mean that a Zionist state of Israel that maintains Jewish supremacy, will one day no longer practically be feasible.

“Israel is striding towards becoming a religious state, as the figures show”

“There is no doubt that until 2030 the secular population will still be present in Israel. It will not come to terms with a situation of radical religious life. It will continue to struggle against religious radicalism in attempt to change the situation. In light of the demographic trends, its task will not be simple”

Israel: Demography 2012-2030- On The Way To A Religious State

Jahangir Mohammed Director of Ayaan Institute