Israeli Sammy Smooha presents his take on current Israeli government

Benjamin Netanyahu and the current Israeli government want to create a new Israel, according to Sammy Smooha.

“They want to revolutionize Israel as a society, culture and state,” he said. “They want a new Israel. The don’t want the kind of Israel we have today.”

Smooha’s Dec. 11 talk, “The Challenge of the Palestinian Arab Minority to Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State,” was presented by J Street Pittsburgh and attended by about two dozen people.

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Smooha is a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Haifa and a recipient of the Israel Prize, the state’s highest cultural honor.

The current government of Israel, he posited, is the most right-wing in the history of the country and is interested in replacing the top levels of society — which he dubbed the “elites” — with a new “elite,” separate from those who founded the country as part of the Labor Zionists.

“They want elites that are loyal to the governing right-wing group, which is Netanyahu and other people,” Smooha said.

In order to do this, the right needs a stable electoral majority, something that he said is already forming. He estimated that for every voter who defines themself as center or left, there are at least two who are on the right.

Part of the goal of the right, Smooha said, is to prevent the partitioning of Greater Israel — which he defined as from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River — to create a Palestinian state.

“They want to take all kinds of measures to prevent any possibility that this will be partitioned,” he said. “After a partition, the option is, of course, to build a separate Palestinian state.”

Eastern Europe, he said, is going through a similar “de-democratization,” citing Poland and Hungary, as examples. And like those countries, Smooha said, it is important for the right-wing elements of the government to rework the judiciary.

Those who disagree with the government fall into two camps, or voting blocs, he said: liberals and centrists, and Arab citizens of the country. The government, Smooha said, labels the liberal voting bloc and its supporters as traitors and the Arab voting bloc as terrorists.

“In politics, if you use this kind of strategy, deligitimacy, this is the strongest thing you can have within the bounds of democracy because you can use force, you can have people arrested, people within the government,” he said.

Hatred, Smooha said, is also used as a tool.

“Disunity and incitement strengthen hate among their supporters,” he said.

Smooha’s talk presented the Israeli government, and Netanyahu, as attempting to bend the arc of law to support their goals.

As examples, he cited the prime minister’s corruption trial and said that Netanyahu and his supporters are claiming it is a fake trial. He also alleged the government is refusing to accept responsibility for the war in Gaza; instead, he asserted, they blame the army and the central left.

Smooha said before Oct. 7, the center-left organized demonstrations against the government and its attempts at judicial reform. As part of those demonstrations, IDF reserve pilots threatened to not serve or train; as a result, Israel was not prepared for its war against Hamas.

“They said, ‘We aren’t going to volunteer for training.’ As pilots, you have to train all the time,” he said.

The Netanyahu administration, Smooha said, doesn’t want an inquiry into the lead-up and causes of Oct. 7, something he believes is part of a larger objective.

“They want to destroy belief in the system. That’s the idea,” he said.

The goal, he said, is a state that is both Jewish and democratic, favoring the former at the expense of the latter.

“For them, democracy is secondary. It’s not a primary value. They want Israel to be as Jewish as it can be. Israel today is super Jewish,” Smooha said. “It is very much not democratic and very much extra Jewish, but they want it even more.”

And, he said, “For them, Zionism is not ethnic, it’s not civic. It’s an ideology which includes every citizen.”

The result, he said, is that if you live in Israel and are not Jewish, then you are an outsider. This moves Israel away from being a classic, liberal democracy, where all individuals all equal and free, Smooha argued.

It also leaves Arab Israelis as a minority.

“They are a national minority. They are a religious minority. They are a linguistic minority. They are a cultural minority. They are part of the Palestinian people, and they want to stay apart,” he said.

On the other hand, Arab Israelis want both a Palestinian state and equality in Israeli.

“They want a state-and-a-half,” he said.

That goal, he said, is frustrated not only by the Israeli government but also by Palestinian leadership, which presents no viable partner for peace.

In the end, he said, despite the challenges and Israel’s right-wing leadership, the country is a stable democracy that is struggling with many issues.

“What I’m saying is that the situation will continue for a long time to come,” he said. PJC

David Rullo can be reached at drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.