About the author Marcelo Svirsky is a lecturer in international studies at the School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong. He teaches subjects in international studies and researches on Middle East politics and continental European philosophy; his focus is on social transforma- tion, activism and revolutionary action, and on bilingual education. AFTER ISRAEL TOWARDS CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION Marcelo Svirsky Zed Books London | new York After Israel: Towards cultural transformation was first published in 2014 by Zed Books Ltd, 7 Cynthia Street, London n1 9JF, Uk and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, nY 10010, USA www.zedbooks.co.uk Copyright © Marcelo Svirsky 2014 The right of Marcelo Svirsky to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 Set in Monotype Plantin and FFKievit by Ewan Smith, London nw5 Index: [email protected] Cover design: www.roguefour.co.uk All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of Zed Books Ltd. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data available iSbn 978-1-78032-614-6 CONTENTS Figure and tables | vi Acknowledgements | vii A statement | ix introdUction . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 the hiker . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 2 the teAcher. . . . . . . . . . . 90 3 the PArent . . . . . . . . . . . 131 4 the Voter . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 A thoUSAnd ProFAnAtionS . . . 202 Notes | 211 References | 217 Index | 232 FIGURE AND TABLES Figure 2.1 Copy of the original front page of the Agreement in Hebrew, and its English translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Tables 4.1 What is the Jewish state?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 4.2 Palestinian turnout in Knesset elections . . . . . . . . . .189 4.3 Critical analysis of the AFI’s co-directors’ speech . . . . . . 191 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost I am deeply indebted to my family, not for having provided me with the time and space to isolate myself and keep on the work of thinking and writing, but precisely for the opposite, for sharing that time with me. For about two years I have been discussing the ideas in this book with my partner in life Michelle and my three children Dekel, Tomer and Gefen. During the time of writing of this book, I have regularly been adding to our family meals my own dish of questions. I was never disappointed. Something always came out of our debates. Mostly, I found myself in the middle of dinners running from the kitchen to my computer to type out the brightest points they raised. Many arguments in this book are the direct reflection of those conversations. I owe the title of this book to my son Tomer, who suggested it when I first discussed with the family the idea of writing a book about how everyday life in Israel confirms the kind of society we need to put behind us. For him, apparently, it was clearer than for me, that I was not talking about Israel, but about its after. I am privileged to have very special friends and colleagues with whom I am able to discuss my work. In our neoliberal academic age, this should indeed be seen as a privilege. Over a few years now I have benefited from having Ian Buchanan as such a friend and colleague. Our weekly conversations are a sort of laboratory of thoughts, and also a great pep pill for my research that has helped me to refine important ideas in this book. It seems to me that Australian weather has boosted this collaboration. If the book has achieved some degree of consistency, the reader should blame the insightful observations and comments of Aura Mor- Sommerfeld, Ronnen Ben-Arie, Swati Parashar, Tim DiMuzio, and my partner in life Michelle Svirsky. They carefully read previous versions of the chapters and suggested corrections that truly helped me focus my thoughts. This book offered me a wonderful chance to actualise viii | AcknowLedgementS my commitment to feminism in writing, something that has been shamefully missing in my previous works. My dear friend Swati Par- ashar is the one who helped me to tread this camino. Similarly, I am grateful to Christopher Muller, Rela Mazali, Lorenzo Veracini, Yoav Haifawi and Ika Willis, who contributed comments, materials and critical notes. I would also like to thank Tal Haran, who copyedited the final manuscript before its submission to Zed Books under a stressful timeframe and also contributed to this text with her own comments and adjustments. To Judith Forshaw, Zed Books’ copyeditor, I owe the colossal work of making this text digestible for the native English speaker without losing the stormy spirit of my own non-English back- ground. Deep thanks go as well to Zed’s anonymous reviewer whose comments were of great significance and helped correct and polish the last version of the manuscript. Lastly, I am indebted to the Institute for Social Transformation Research (ISTR) at the University of Wollongong which granted me a Book Completion Grant during the first half of the 2013 academic year, a support that empowered me with the greatest of all academic re- sources, time. ISTR also assisted in the completion of this book with financial aid for copyediting. A STATEMENT Israel was a bad idea from its inception. At the time the well- integrated lives of Jews in Muslim societies were completely dis regarded by Euro- pean Zionists, the good intentions of securing in Palestine a home for the persecuted Jews were at one stroke ruined the moment Zionism required the dispossession of the Palestinians from their ancestral home. A national home to be established instead of a native home is always a bad idea. After a century of continuing dispossession and warmongering, Israel’s suicidal policies and ways of life have pushed the region into existential instability. Crutched by all sorts of fundamentalists – the American govern- ment, evangelists of all kinds, European orientalists and Jewish dias- poras stuck in the past – Israel refuses to recognise the truth of its situation. Consuming the last drops of holocaustic fuel, it runs on air like a maniac. It fires missiles and bombs at civilian populations, it destroys homes and erects separation walls everywhere, as if to say ‘I will take you all with me’ in a Samson venture: ‘Let me die with the Philistines.’ On the backs of its Jewish citizenry faithfully carrying out the unsustainable mission of a Jewish exclusivist region, Israel refuses to give up on its endeavours. No negotiation of land, borders or sovereignty can divert us from the suicidal track on which Israel has placed life; the time to reconstruct and adapt Zionist modes of being has expired. No golden path, no negotiations, no balance of interests, no place for a healthier Zionism. Jewish-Israelis must realise that Israel compels them to an unsus- tainable form of existence. They must realise that the ways of life described as Israeli wreck their lives in vain. Once they – we – realise it is over, we shall all be liberated from the problem of trying to fix the system of anti-life called Israel. Nothing can be fixed in a political project that deprives the life of its beneficiaries as well as of its victims, Jews and Palestinians. Once we realise it is over, at that very specific