It’s even truer than people think that Israel is one of the world’s most religious countries. Religion and state are one, and Orthodox Judaism accompanies citizens from cradle to grave, whether they are believers, agnostics or atheists. And there is another dogma that frames Israelis’ lives with inflexible rules: security.
This faith is based on the belief that Israel is perpetually under threat, a conviction based on a particular concept of reality and stoked by carefully cultivated myths. Israeli politicians orchestrate campaigns of fear, exaggerating real dangers and inventing others to deepen the belief that Israelis are victims of constant persecution. This has gone on since the founding of the Israeli state.
The stance was probably justified during the 1948 war, in the wake of the Shoah (holocaust), when Israelis saw themselves as David confronting Goliath. But since then the country has become a substantial regional power. Its technologically advanced army is among the most powerful in the world. Yet the belief persists: Israel is fighting for its survival, even when confronting organisations whose members are almost barefoot, such as Hamas, even when no powerful state, other than Iran, threatens it and even when Israeli forces themselves are the occupiers. The formula is neither new nor unique to Israel: an external threat, real or invented, has often been used to justify ‘national unity’ and a state’s hold over its people.
According to the IHS Jane’s research centre, Israel’s 2015 defence budget of $15.6bn was 16th largest in the world in absolute terms and, at 6.2% of GDP, the second highest GDP ratio after Saudi Arabia’s — though Israel, with a population of eight million, is only the world’s 98th most populous nation. Israel’s defence budget is between two and six times that of other industrialised nations. Despite falling as a proportion of the national budget, defence spending has kept growing in real terms. The 2015 Global Firepower Index (1) put the Israel Defence Forces 16th in firepower, with one assault tank for every 1,930 citizens (5,948 in North Korea and 157,337 in France) and one fighter plane for every 11,800 citizens (23,904 in the US and 51,914 in France).
No debate over security needs
Defence spending is proportionally greater than in the US, Russia and France, and disadvantages other sectors, such as education, health, housing, transport and programmes for migrants. But this preferential treatment is not open to public debate, even when thousands of Israelis take to the streets to protest about housing rent levels, as they did in 2011 in the largest social protest in Israeli history (2). The country has 14 submarines. Would ten, or even five, not be enough? The cost of building just one — $1.6bn — could fund the redevelopment of entire city districts. But even though Israelis complain about the cost of living and crumbling social services, they accept defence spending and the rhetoric of security without complaint. Articles of faith are not up for discussion.
It is worrying to see some European countries, including France, following the same path of ‘security’, which can be used to justify undermining democracy. Israelis have experience of how ‘security’ can be invoked to make people forget about injustice. ‘Security’ can be used to whitewash crimes and provide a gloss of legitimacy for the most discriminatory practices. Politicians, generals, judges and journalists all know this, but remain silent, as do most Israelis.
If you arrive at Ben Gurion airport by car, an armed security guard will listen to your Hebrew for a hint of an Arab accent, and if he detects one, he will pull you over. This gives Jews a sense of superiority, and makes Palestinians feel they are inferior, or dangerous: every Arab citizen of Israel is treated as a suspect package, a time bomb.
No one denies that terrorism exists, but there is too little discussion of how counter-terrorist measures create perverse effects. Endless daily checks on Palestinians cause anxiety for Israeli citizens made docile by the fear of an attack. Stereotypes develop insidiously; prejudices worsen and harden into racism. This contributes to the destruction of Israel from within. Will the same thing now start to happen in the US and Europe? Aren’t there fairer, more proportionate ways to fight the danger?
In the name of security — and in contravention of international law — Israel has occupied Palestinian territories for over 50 years. It is one of the few colonial powers of the 21st century. When the late Shimon Peres, a future Nobel peace laureate, authorised the establishment of the large settlement of Ofra in the northern West Bank in 1975, he emphasised the importance of keeping its telecommunications aerial trained on the occupied territories. But the settlement was built on private land stolen from Palestinians, under the aegis of the state. Temporary guardians quickly became occupiers, and their settlement an Israeli suburb. The rest, with its bloody crimes, is history. In Gaza today more than two million people are effectively held in the world’s biggest prison.
The judicial system, like most of Israel’s institutions, prostrates itself before ‘security’, which like the god Moloch demands ever more sacrifices. Invoke security requirements, and the supreme court, which is normally capable of punishing injustices that come before it, will approve the unacceptable, including expulsions and the destruction of homes. Challenges from the supreme court have been too rare during the long history of the occupation. It was many years before it dared criticise targeted assassinations and torture, and it persists in legitimising ‘administrative detentions’, arrests that never lead to an appearance before a judge. For years, thousands have been locked up without trial. Detainees and their lawyers are not entitled to know their alleged crime, and so have no way to defend themselves. The state of emergency, in force since the British mandate (which ended in the 1940s), is used to justify this scandal; the state of emergency is no longer necessary, but the measures remain.
Travesty of justice
Military courts sentence Palestinians in political trials that are a travesty of justice. The homes of ‘terrorists’ are destroyed in the name of security and there are collective punishments, forbidden by international law. Every day thousands of people are subjected to arbitrary checks, arrest and night raids by the army. Some are prevented from working or travelling; some have been killed when a military recruit suspected a threat. Soldiers killed a ten-year-old girl holding a pair of scissors: were they frightened she would stab them?
Arab citizens of what Israelis claim is ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ lived under military rule from the early years until the mid-1960s. Then came 50 years of occupation and arrests on security grounds. Security is always the state’s alibi when it is called undemocratic. Arabs are now the principal victims. After years of the fight against terrorism, Palestinian deaths outnumber Israeli deaths by a hundred to one. But as democracy becomes more fragile, attacks on freedom of expression and civil rights (3) affect everyone. The religion of security is in the ascendant: what happens today in the occupied territories may happen tomorrow in Tel Aviv; today Arabs suffer, tomorrow it may be Jews.
The world sees Israelis as spearheading the fight against terrorism. Israeli companies advise governments and export expertise as well as arms. But foreign governments can also learn from Israel what not to do. The demands of security do not make everything permissible. The risk to democracy may be more dangerous than terrorism.
