Fear, Resentment and the Slide Towards Authoritarianism in Israel

In November 2022, Benjamin Netanyahu came back to power after a short hiatus in 2021-22, in spite of his indictment in 2019 for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. His current government is the most extreme right-wing religio-nationalist populist government in Israel’s history, which proceeded immediately to transform Israel’s judicial system in a Hungary-style illiberal fashion. The key points of this program are:  Enacting a law that would allow the Knesset (parliament) to overrule decisions of the High Court of Justice (HCJ) with a majority of 61 members out of 120, a majority that in Israel’s parliamentary system the executive branch enjoys by definition.  Changing the composition of the judicial selection committee that appoints all judges, so that the governing coalition would have the final say in judicial appointments.  Appointing a Chief Justice from outside the Court, as against the current system by which the longest serving justice becomes Chief Justice automatically.  Eliminating the reasonableness test when assessing the validity of government decisions. This law, the only one enacted so far, would have denied the courts the primary instrument they use for judging such decisions, but it was subsequently annulled by the HCJ. Over ten months hundreds of thousands of people had been going out to demonstrate against this “judicial reform,” led by some of Israel’s most prominent members of the academic, professional and technological elites, including a number of retired military leaders. The massacre carried out by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s apocalyptic punitive campaign in Gaza that ensued, initially slowed down the implementation of the government program and the protest against it. With time, however, the program was rekindled, whereas the protesting public, aggrieved by the massacre and exhausted by war, has dwindled. The populist electoral “base,” counting about one-third of the electorate, consists mainly of Mizrahim (Jews origination in the Moslem world) residing in communities of low socio-economic status. Right-wing populism normally feeds on economic and/or cultural insecurity caused by deindustrialization, immigration, or the empowerment, real or imaginary, of an outside ascriptive group. Israel, however, does not accept non-Jewish immigrants, and ethno-national populism has persisted and gathered strength here through bad and good economic times for its base. Thus, the income gap between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim (Europeans) has narrowed significantly since the mid-1990s, while the voting gap between them has widened. My argument in this paper is that in Israel right-wing populism does not feed on current economic deprivation but primarily on a number of factors, negative and positive: • Historical resentment against the Ashkenazy-dominated Labor Zionist Movement, which governed the country at the time of the Mizrahim’s arrival in the 1950s and 60s. • Resource competition with the Palestinians, both citizens and non-citizens, at both the working- and middle-class levels. • Existential insecurity that is common to all Israeli Jews because of the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict. • Economic liberalization, introduced in 1985, after initially hurting Mizrahim economically, has subsequently benefited many of them. • Much of this beneficial effect occurred under Netanyahu, as Prime Minister.