Zionism

Confronted with the illiberal temptations of the Netanyahu government, how can we sort out the criticisms of Israel that aim to find a solution by recalling what was the main intention of this state and those that aim to destroy it ? And, in particular, how can the criticism from Jews in the Diaspora, especially from Europe, free itself from its inhibitions and fears of being misused in order to assert its singular position?

This text is a friendly but critical reaction to Danny Trom’s article – “Israel: Towards a rupture? – in K., which discussed the dramatic course of events in Israel since the last elections and, in particular, the plans of the new government to change key aspects of Israel’s regime and identity. In it, Israeli scholar of modern Jewish history Amos Morris-Reich emphasizes what he believes is difficult to see clearly from Europe: Benjamin Netanyahu’s active role in Israel’s crisis and the extreme fragility of the unity of its society.

How can we understand the composition of the new government formed by Benjamin Netanyahu, which gives pride of place to religious Zionism and to a nationalism itself increasingly tinged with religious references? How can we understand it historically and circumstantially? Danny Trom looks back at this event, which marks a break in the history of Israel and of Zionism itself.

On the 1st of April 1925, the great poet Bialik gave the inaugural speech of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This speech takes us back to the world of a still fragile yichuv and of Zionism in its pre-state phase. It was a time when the Zionist project oscillated between the affirmation of a political solution for the Jews, in rupture with Europe, and that of a cultural achievement which continued to be part of the trajectory of the Jews in Europe. The University, like many institutions in Mandatory Palestine, preceded the State and saw itself as the intellectual centre of the Jewish people to come.