Suicidal Cultural Genocide in “Super Sparta”

With the continuation of the genocide against the Palestinian people, the voices and images from Israel provoke grim thoughts of a second genocide: a suicidal cultural genocide committed by us, Israeli Jews, against ourselves. These are two sides of the same coin—or perhaps, it should be said, the same pill—one that Netanyahu places on the table again and again. Despite moments of resistance, the public as a whole does not refuse to swallow it.

One can say many bad things, and some good ones too, about Zionism. Either way, until the past two years, the idea that the State of Israel could exist without maintaining a certain degree of legitimacy among the world’s nations was never part of Zionism. Not for past leaders, and not even for Netanyahu himself. In his speech yesterday, he alluded to this transformation when he took credit for turning Israel into a free-market state. But there can be no free market without international legitimacy, because capitalism requires the global movement of goods. The Abraham Accords were only one example of the kind of legitimacy Netanyahu once sought to secure.

In that same speech, Netanyahu blamed the “uncontrolled” migration of Arabs and Muslims to Europe for the erosion—and the further erosion—of Israel’s legitimacy. This claim appeals to the most racist instincts of his Israeli audience. On the international level, it means seeking legitimacy exclusively among the most extreme elements of the far right. The neoliberal world of the Abraham Accords seems finally to have been pushed aside. Gradually, every political scenario in which this far right does not take over European governments becomes, in the eyes of Israel’s mainstream media, a diplomatic nightmare.

Some will say: Netanyahu is dismantling the old Israeli identity, one that does not deserve to survive. This Israeliness belonged to a small minority of Jews in Israel who lived at the expense of others—both Jews and non-Jews. That is true, and I do not seek to romanticise Israeli identity or Israeli culture. But it is now clearer than ever that instead of leaving behind some other, more egalitarian Israeliness, Netanyahu is leaving only ruins.

Yesterday, Netanyahu announced his programme of suicidal cultural genocide twice. Once in words, during the day: the expression “super Sparta” is a declaration of cultural liquidation, signalling that in place of culture Israel must have an arms industry (with emphasis not only on high-tech, but on factories). And once again in deeds, at night: the ground invasion of Gaza, with the most direct risk imaginable to the lives of surviving hostages, is an act of destruction aimed at the very social contract itself.