Abed Abou Shhadeh writes:

Historian Yuval Noah Harari has described this moment as a spiritual turning point for Jews – perhaps the most significant since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. Jews, he argued, have survived catastrophe after catastrophe, but never faced a spiritual threat of this magnitude.

Israel’s current path, Harari warned, risks dismantling 2,000 years of Jewish thought and culture. In his view, Israel could end up ethnically cleansing Palestinians, dismantling democratic structures, and replacing them with a system built on Jewish supremacy, military dominance and glorification of violence.

Harari pointed to the alarming ease with which many of his peers endorsed the idea of population transfer in Gaza, floated recently by the US president. When his interviewer noted that a minority of Israelis politically support the extreme right, he replied that history is often dictated by the 10 percent who advocate for change, while the majority remains passive.

These assumptions should be challenged. Israel was never as democratic or moral as his narrative suggests: its founding involved the expulsion of around 750,000 Palestinians, and for nearly eight decades, it has built a judicial system that champions Jewish supremacy. Since the Partition Plan, Israel has never stopped expanding. [Continue reading…]