Israel between democracy and militarism

Since the militarisation of the Zionist movement in the 1930s, the military has been playing a major role within the movement, which announced itself a state through usurping the land of the indigenous Arab population. Gaining political leadership within the Zionist Entity or, equally, achieving high office to manage the society or economy, is only possible for those who belong to the security and military apparatus. Zionist generals and military leaders are the ones who make decisions regarding public policies and big strategies. It would be true to say that Israel is an army that has a state, rather than a state that has an army, especially considering the various roles the army plays in all social and political arenas, and its general domination within the Zionist entity – such as the key economic role played by the military industry and its significance for trade and exports in a system in which Israel is the fifth largest exporter of weapons worldwide.

Some Arab defeatists argue that Israel is an oasis of democracy in our region, and show that they are impressed by Israeli technological progress – a result of self-advancement within the Zionist community. But Israeli historian and social activist Ilan Pappé rejects this view, and points instead to the militarisation of Israeli society as a contraction of public freedom. Pappé draws attention to the close connection between Israeli scientific progress and economic prosperity on the one hand, and the fact that the country is based on principles of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and colonial settlement on the other, where one issue cannot be separated from the other objectively.

Pappé belongs to the school of new historians in Israel, an academic and social movement that is concerned with a critical rewriting of Israeli history and of challenging the dominant worldview in Israel. He and a number of his colleagues, such as Shlomo Sand, Avi Shlaim and Benny Morris, have exposed the bloody roots and history of Zionism through the historical documentation of the atrocities upon which the philosophy of Zionism are based: ethnic cleansing and the systematic displacement of the indigenous people of Palestine.

Pappé explains in one of his books that the Israeli army did not only establish the state itself, but has become its central pillar, and the one in control of the nature of Israeli policies, both internally and externally. Within the country, the army followed a repressive policy against any group that does not abide by the “Zionist agenda”, as defined by the political and military elite. Civilian areas have been systematically militarised throughout the country’s history, and from the establishment of the Israeli state until this day the army has played a dominant role in the fields of politics, economics, management and culture. It also dominates Israeli media, undermining its capacity for critical commentary and dictating what can be said; through this process of censorship, the Israeli media effectively speaks for and through the army.

When the second Palestinian intifada erupted in 2000, Israeli media made the army their only source of information, a journalistic practice that continued in the July 2006 war on Lebanon and the 2008-9 war on Gaza. The “facts” that were published during these periods were not based on ground reporting by correspondents, but rather on a specific worldview that reproduced the desired image of the Israeli army. Israeli media did not sympathise with foreign correspondents who were barred from covering Israeli activities following the outbreak of the intifada in 2000, or the fact that some of them became targets for harassment by the Israeli army; moreover, Israeli media agreed to impose the army’s view as a single version of events repeated in all Israeli newspapers and radio stations.

Pappé tells the story of an Israeli military operation that was carried out against Palestinians in March 2002, when the army stormed a refugee camp in Tulkarem. At the time, the IDF Spokesman called TV crews and veteran reporters to accompany the army during the operation, in the hope of highlighting the “human face” of the army. But the images of soldiers destroying everything that came their way, smashing walls of houses so they could access them, and raising panic amongst women and children, were not consistent with the humanitarian image that the media was keen on showing. Thus, the army learned an important lesson and did not allow any of the reporters to accompany it in its following operation in Jenin refugee camp, where the army was only accompanied by one military correspondent, Carmela Menashe, who read out pre-scripted reports provided by the military commanders.

Not only does the army control the flow of information as much as it can, but it also intervenes in the field of education, re-drafting the national curriculum according to its needs; as indeed it does in all spheres of Israeli society. If we add to this the racist nature of the Zionist entity, the self-professed “Jewish state”and its open discrimination against Arabs and non-Jews, then talking about “Israeli democracy” becomes nothing but a farceand yet it remains a dominant trope in Western discourse, betraying the international community’s complicity in promoting the Zionist narrative.

Addressing the reality of the militarisation of Israeli society points to the naivety the Arab review conducted after the defeat of 1967, which tried to attribute the causes of the defeat to the absence of democracy and militarisation in the Arab world. The truth is that Israel did not win in 1967 because it is a democracy; it won because it is a highly militarised society founded on principles of ruthless intolerance and persecution of outsiders.

Studying Israel and understanding its strengths and weaknesses is necessary, but it begins first with refusing to take Western propaganda about “the only democracy in the Middle East” at face value, or accepting it out of a misguided sense of inferiority. In doing so, we would only be contributing to the divorcing of the Israeli narrative from the reality of the occupation, the true nature of its composition and its inherent contradictions and prejudices.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.