What divides and what unites Israeli Zionists

I'm sure almost all of our readers have already come across expressions portraying the State of Israel as a democracy, or more emphatically, as the only democracy in the Middle East.

For those who endorse what has just been said, it matters little that Israel maintains a system characteristically of apartheid for its native populations; that this State is the only one in the world structured on a racial basis, since, as we know, Israel is officially the State of the Jewish people. It is also irrelevant to them that the very meaning of the term "Jew" is unclear to anyone. And, by "anyone," that "anyone" includes the Israelis themselves.

Therefore, we are talking about a racial state whose underlying race cannot be clearly defined by any minimally logical method.

If the criterion adopted to define the meaning of "Jews" is religious, we would be forced to exclude from this category a significant portion of its current members, as well as most of its founding leaders. This is because a large part of the Israeli population categorized as Jewish does not profess Judaism. Many of them are even atheists or agnostics. Something similar, or even more pronounced, is observed when we analyze the cases of those who led the Zionist movement in Europe for the creation of the State of Israel.

On the other hand, if we appeal to indications of nationality in constructing the concept of Jew, the confusion becomes even more glaring. Even among Jews of European origin (who constituted the vast majority of the founders of this State) there is little that unifies them in national terms.

However, as we learned from studying Benedict Anderson's renowned book Imagined Communities, no nation is formed based on criteria explainable by rationality and scientific logic. It is the manipulation, conscious or unconscious, of various subjectivities that leads to the unification of large groups of human beings to identify themselves as part of the same nation. In the case of Israel, the process could not be very different.

What ultimately served as the most relevant point for the construction of the State of Israel was the colonialist motivation imparted by the great Jewish bourgeoisie of Europe through their Zionist theorists.

As we will see in the videos from the links (https://youtu.be/Ret3DxAvbJ4; https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8u675m; https://vimeo.com/921719729), in the State of Israel, Zionists are in a constant state of fierce conflict with each other. There are religious Zionists against secular Zionists; right-wing Zionists against left-wing Zionists; conservative Zionists against progressive Zionists; etc. The battles between them are fierce, a relentless war all the time.

However, there is one factor that always serves to unite all these factions and make them act in unison, as a single force. This unifying factor is their hatred of the Palestinian people. At any moment of internal turmoil, it only takes one of the warring Zionist factions to choose to launch its attacks against the Palestinian people, and immediately all the others will ally themselves with it with all their commitment and determination.

When it comes to exterminating Palestinians, killing their children, destroying their homes, expelling them and occupying their land, it makes no difference whether we have right-wing or left-wing Zionists, religious or secular, conservative or progressive. If it's about consolidating colonialism and eliminating the Palestinian people, all Zionists, regardless of their skin color, consider themselves part of the same family.