Gorenberg’s case for Israel’s “democracy” is a good example, and is itself a contradiction, because the Zionist state was established by the Nakba (catastrophe), during which military forces expelled at least 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland.

This article draws its title from two opposing articles—Gershom Gorenberg’s opinion piece “Israel is Best Understood Through Its Contradictions” in the New York Times and Erica Caines and Geechee Yaws, “’Ignorance is Bliss’ and Other Fallacies of Counterinsurgency,” an article in Hood Communist which stresses the importance of confronting uncomfortable truths in order to achieve liberation.

“The media presentation of Israel’s mass protest as a fight for democracy is misleading, at best,” writes activist/journalist Ramzy Baroud, “as it fails to address the historical, ideological and, ultimately, class divides in Israeli society.”

Gorenberg’s case for Israel’s “democracy” is a good example, and is itself a contradiction, because the Zionist state was established by the Nakba (catastrophe), during which military forces expelled at least 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland and murdered 15,000 more in a series of mass attacks, including dozens of massacres. Hence, as Baroud contends, Israel’s establishment as a settler-colonial state was “made possible by the expulsion of most of the native Palestinian population.”

“There is little that sets the Zionist venture apart from many other colonial quests,” writes Ahmad H. Sa’di, “other than its late appearance on the world’s stage” (Ahmad H. Sa’di, “Towards a Decolonization of Colonial Studies,” Decolonizing the Study of Palestine: Indigenous Perspectives and Settler Colonialism After Elia Zureik, Ahmad H. Sa’di and Nur Masalha, Eds, 2023, p. 13). Sa’di continues that “the legacy of colonialism still pervades all aspects of Western cultures” (p. 13), as it does in Gorenberg’s essay.

Indeed, as Baroud explains: “Israel’s dichotomy is that it was founded by an ideology, Zionism, which purposely conflated between religion and nationality.” In recent years, Israel’s “religious zealots,” once allocated to the margins, have far outflanked their fellow secularists, making possible the Jewish only laws that are the rational outcome of Zionist logic.

“The irony and the source of confusion,” Baroud concludes, “is that all past and current leadership of Israel – liberal, conservative or religious – are proud Zionists who saw Judaism as a centerpiece in the Israeli identity.” There never was a democratic Israel that Gorenberg says is now in danger of being lost, anymore than America, founded on the extermination of Native tribes and on the backs of enslaved people, was founded as a democracy in any broad sense of the word.

In his article covering the protests over proposed judicial reforms, Gorenberg states that the “size of the protests [have] been possible” because those “who oppose the occupation are intensely involved.” He contends that only by preserving this “big tent” can the “democracy movement” defeat the government’s drive towards dictatorship.

Who frequents this tent that is supposed to save the Zionist state’s democracy? Not ‘48 Palestinians, it seems, for, as Suheir Abu Oksa Daoud explains, they understand that whichever way the issue is decided, Palestinians will still be the target of discrimination. “A state that explicitly defines itself as Jewish, rather than a state for all its citizens,” Daoud contends, “cannot guarantee fundamental democratic rights and equal citizenship to its minority, and their integration into state institutions will be always conditional.”

Moreover, as Baroud explains, Yet, there were no protests “when Israel passed its Nation-State Law in 2018, defining Israel as the ‘national home of the Jewish people, in which it fulfills its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination.’” Indeed, he continues, most Israeli Jews have no problem with laws that seek to further disenfranchise Palestinian Arab citizens of their country.

There does appear to be an anti-occupation bloc within the larger protests. Members post frequently on Facebook regarding where to meet, what signs to carry, etc. For example, Tzvika Markovitz calls on others to join the “parade of the dead,” a demonstration in which protestors carry pictures of Palestinians who are the victims of state-sponsored murder. Like the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina (1976-1983), who carried photos of the disappeared, their action is in direct contrast to the majority who see no contradiction between state-sponsored assassination and democracy.

But are they really a part of the broader scene, and if so, are “big tents” a good idea? In a similar vein, organizers of the Rage Against the War Machine rally that was held in D.C. on February 19 proposed a “big tent” venue, a gathering of the left and right, all committed to ending the war.

In “Apologies Not Accepted: Or I Love It When the Universe Proves me Right,” journalist Jacqueline Luqman explained that when she pointed out the “very public bigotry” of the Libertarian party, which took part in the protest, she was accused of being a COINTELPRO agent who was “sowing division” within the ranks.

Luqman’s dictum that “Black people will not make common cause with racists and bigots. Racists do not get a pass because they call themselves anti-war” should be a warning to Israeli activists who oppose the occupation. “Pro-democracy” protestors care mostly about democracy for Israelis and are content to leave apartheid as it is.

“For now,” Gorenberg writes, “everyone trying to save Israel’s democracy is on the same side.” Even if this were so, when the protests are done, whoever wins, pro-democracy protestors, who refuse to contend with Palestinians, will not come to the aid of fellow Israelis who understand that democracies do not co-exist with occupation.

Gorenberg admits that there “is an essential contradiction between liberal democracy and the denial of rights to Palestinians.” As proof, he points out that he can report on the occupation and then return to his home “without fearing government retribution”; in fact, he is denying the existence of Palestinian journalists who have been assassinated for the crime of reporting what they see.

Indeed, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reports that over the past 20 years, Israel has murdered 22 Palestinian journalists, including Shireen Abu Akleh, a correspondent for Aljazeera, who was killed on May 11, 2022, by Israeli forces. As of this date, no one has been held accountable for these crimes.

Moreover, Zionist state repression reaches far beyond its borders. Indeed, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) recently adopted a resolution condemning the attacks on Palestine solidarity and Palestinian community organizing in Europe. It also encourages institutions and legal organizations to reject the so-called “IHRA definition of anti-Semitism” that seeks to equate anti-Zionism and support for Palestinian liberation with anti-Semitism.

Here is the crux: “A great many Israelis who ignored the chronic crisis of occupation, or long ago gave up on finding a cure,” writes Gorenberg, “nevertheless recognize the new and acute threat to the country’s fragile democracy.” Without a “cure,” ostensibly the dismantling of the Zionist entity to make way for a secular state with equal rights for all, there is no democracy, fragile or otherwise.

But Gorenberg fails to go there. It seems that he might think he lives within a “flawed but real democracy,” but by leaving out the entire Palestinian population, the indigenous people of the land, is his ignorance really bliss?

“In a world full of challenges which desperately requires sharp minds to resolve them,” write Caine and Yaw,  “we should view phrases like these as methods of counterinsurgency that prevent us from pursuing awareness of not only past and present conditions, but of the way things could be in the future as well.”

“You’d have a hard time finding a point in history where the US government *wasn’t* running concentration camps and forcibly sterilizing people.” Onyesonwu Chatoyer, organizer for the All African People’s Revolution Party was responding to a recent lawsuit which alleges that a doctor subjected women to unwanted hysterectomies while being detained by Immigration Control and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

As Tina Vasquez writes, several organizations filed the complaint on behalf of immigrants inside the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC), a facility in Georgia run by private prison company LaSalle Corrections. According to the whistleblower Dawn Wooten, a licensed practical nurse at the center, several women told her that they were transported to an outside facility to see “the uterus collector,” their name for the doctor believed to be responsible for the measures.

“When I met all these women who had had surgeries, I thought this was like an experimental concentration camp,” a detainee said in the complaint.

Indeed, ICE has a long history of targeting pregnant migrant women and other vulnerable people in the detention system. Under Trump’s new “birth tourism” policy, so-called after parents who allegedly travel to the United States to gain citizenship for their unborn child, certain applicants for visas must provide proof that they are not traveling for that reason.

Much of these policies are based on fear of changing demographics, a fear among white Americans that their cultural capital is losing value. Because presidential hopeful Joe Biden claims that a “shared soul that unites our countries [Israel and the United States}, generation upon generation,” it makes sense that both countries fear changing times.

For example, after years of denying it, Israel admitted in 2013 that it ordered doctors to inject Ethiopian Jewish women with a drug that would involuntarily sterilize them. In much the same language used by white supremacists in America, Netanyahu warned that illegal immigrants from Africa “threaten our existence as a Jewish and democratic state.”

Coerced or forced hysterectomies can be contextualized within a broader history of eugenics in both countries. Hitler is perhaps the most infamous proponent of a master race, but as Edwin Black observes, the movement for ethnic cleansing originated in the United States.

A pseudoscience directing at “improving” the human race, its most extreme form aims to exterminate “undesirable” human beings. Facets of this idea are found in strategic plans such as forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as restrictions on marriage between white people and African Americans that lasted well into the 20^th century.

Well into the 1970s and 1980s, too, Native American women received tubal ligations when they thought that they were getting appendectomies. Perhaps as many as 25-50 percent of Native American women underwent such procedures between 1970 and 1976. Even more sterilizations are recorded in Puerto Rico where such acts form a dark part of the island’s history.

In a 1927 decision, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind… Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

This rhetoric is reiterated in Israel, where officials such as Ayelet Shaked, of the Jewish Home Party, are known for their racist remarks. For example, in 2015, Shaked openly called for the genocide of Palestinian people by posting a quote from Uri Elitzur, the late right-wing journalist and leader of the Israeli settler movement:

“Behind every terrorist, stand dozens of men and women, without whom [the enemy] could not engage in terrorism. Actors in the war are those who incite in mosques, who write the murderous curricula for schools, who give shelter, who provide vehicles, and all those who honor and give them their moral support. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.”

According to Ben Norton, Shaked’s views are held by others in Netanyahu’s government. During Israel’s 2014 attack on Gaza, named “Operation Protective Edge,” Norton reports that the military carried out in action Shaked’s extreme rhetoric.

At that time, Moshe Feiglin, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, called for the “conquest of the entire Gaza Strip and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters.” His statement follows along the lines of ethnic cleansing. “This is our country – our country exclusively,” he said, “including Gaza.”

On September 14, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action tweeted:

“Forced sterilization is genocide. ICE is performing mass hysterectomies on immigrant women. ICE is committing genocide. It is part of a long history of eugenics and assaults on reproductive freedom in the United States — a system that directly inspired the Nazi regime.”

A “progressive” Jewish organization that calls attention to such issues, Bend the Arc fails to make the connection with Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, also genocide as defined by the Center for Constitutional Rights.

If common values unite Israel and the United States, as Joe Biden claims, then we should all be worried. We should all be connecting the dots.

When news broke a few days ago of the forced sterilizations in Georgia’s detention center there was shock and outrage, as well there should have been. On the other hand, this treatment of “undesirables” has a long history in both Israel and the United States. Indeed, both countries could easily be charged with genocide, in Israel of Palestinians and in the US of the Indigenous people here.

Moreover, if there is very little difference between Trump and Biden regarding their 100 percent support for Israel, as Ramzy Baroud claims, then it seems that the best action for activists in this country will be education work and grassroots actions in the streets.

Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) once said that in order for non-violence to work your opponent must have a conscience. The US, he concluded, has none.

The same could be said for both candidates, at least regarding Israel. Indeed, Biden’s refusal to reverse many of Trump’s Israel policies, writes Baroud, including his application of the Jerusalem Embassy Act, makes clear the “moral bankruptcy” of the Democratic Party which seems motivated much more by its political, rather than ethical, agenda.

– Benay Blend earned her doctorate in American Studies from the University of New Mexico. Her scholarly works include Douglas Vakoch and Sam Mickey, Eds. (2017), “’Neither Homeland Nor Exile are Words’: ‘Situated Knowledge’ in the Works of Palestinian and Native American Writers”. She contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.