The Agony of Living through Jingoism
Why it's so hard to cut through the nationalist fervour and talk humanist politics
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc6e2e241-4560-48ba-9530-b4cbd3d2c2c4_1200x630.jpeg)
I had another post planned for today, but I spent the night thinking about a news item I knew I couldn’t in good conscience overlook.
Yes, we’re going to talk about Bezalel Smotrich and what he’s doing in the West Bank.
And there’s no “below the fold” today, because it’s important to talk about this openly.
I’ve been trying since the start of this latest war, and well before it, to remind people that the idea of Israel is not the same as the actual government of Israel. Whatever higher value many people think they’re defending, when they stand at the ready to deflect conversation from any news involving brutal Israeli actions, they’re not.
A rigid nationalism that does not allow for democratic reckoning will always be the downfall of a state’s best dream of itself.
And here’s the problem that tends to get lost in this latest conflation of nationalism with a genuine love and care for the many diverse peoples of our world:
Many antisemites are pro-Israel. They make up a significant portion of Christian Evangelicals in the US who want Israel to exist so that it can carry out grand religious wars to bring about what some Jewish persons call the “Messianic Age” and what Christian fundies also consider to be the end times. (Many of the latter also think that Jews will either die or convert after the end times have come—so again, Jewish people are just pawns in their religious schemes.) Other US conservatives are either openly or tacitly white supremacist, and love the idea of Israel a) as a place where Jewish people should go rather than live in the US, and b) as a way to get two less-desirable groups to kill each other off (Muslims and Jewish folk alike).
This is not to say that the left side of the political spectrum is free of antisemitism.
It’s only to say that far-right conservatives have been having a field day with leftist manifestations of antisemitism as of late, because it provides cover for their own.
This is also why militant Zionists are a coherent phenomenon (as I discussed when reflecting on different ideas of Zionism in tension at the turn of the 20th century, through the 1920s and the 1940s, and in the 1970s turn with the rise of the Likud Party). These are people who know they can’t really trust outsiders to show genuine care for the Jewish people—only, as far as Jewish people are useful to Gentile secular and religious goals, and inasmuch as helping Jewish people helps to soothe Gentile consciences after a long period of Western antisemitism that last found its “out” by being able to point at Nazis and Shoah as a sign that, however bad other countries were to Jewish residents, at least they weren’t Third Reich bad. If militant Zionists are committed to spreading disinformation in this war in service to their mission goals (and they often are: they’re at war, after all), it’s in clear response to centuries of most Gentiles only giving a hoot about Jewish people in service to their own ends.
The problem, of course, is that militant Zionists often claim to speak for all Jewish people, flattening the rich diversity of political and spiritual positions that make up this global culture—and Jingoists in other cultures are then super eager to speak this militant language, even if it means shutting down all other Jewish voices, too.
So even though the US is, say, currently dismayed by the rise of its own far-right, and the diminishing of its judicial branch as a potential precursor to the rise of a dictator… it’s still filled with people who cannot for the life of them process the fact that Israel, as a real state, not a vague idea of one, is also in the throes of a terrible far-right moment.
The actual government of Israel is the most far-right coalition in the country’s history, rising to power amid a decades-long shift to the extreme right—but not without push-back. Israeli citizens started 2023 by taking to the streets in weekly-building protests against a prime minister facing three corruption trials who was attacking the judicial branch to reduce resistance to his appointments and the agenda set by his far-right allies. Israel was demoted in global democratic standing because of those attacks on its system’s checks and balances, but protesters have not stopped. People in Israel have been fighting valiantly for a better democracy there, just as people are in the US.
But if the US hasn’t really cared about how far-right the Israeli government is, this is in part for a reason that became abundantly clear on October 7, which triggered an immediate comparison to 9/11. Even though the US was somewhat more measured in its own response, by waiting three weeks before it started to bomb Afghanistan in retaliation, the US was also under right-wing rule when it was attacked by a foreign power. And that meant that the US, too, had a lot of right-wing extremists ready and waiting to leverage this horrific national disaster to launch a sweeping “culture” war.
We watched it all unfold in horror. We grieved the dead of 9/11 and wanted those responsible brought to justice. We also protested a war with its own massive casualty counts against civilians not responsible for the attacks. We witnessed and raged against the abundance of war crimes (especially as the US turned to drone warfare and outsourced military operations), and grew embittered by the forever-war mentality baked into the impossibility of “total victory” amid ever-shifting goalposts in the US’s “war on terror”. We watched conservatives deepen domestic surveillance and carceral-state systems at cost to the very “freedom” they claimed to be defending. We watched ridiculous with-us-or-against-us campaigns, like “freedom fries”, and a huge uptick in Islamophobic, xenophobic, and generally racist action—all in keeping with the Jingoist tribalism of that era. We watched as the loudest militants shut down dissent.
Our blood ran hot and cold at blatant lies about “Weapons of Mass Destruction” advanced by the US government before the UN, to secure an expansion of war to Iraq. More protests emerged, criminally under-reported by legacy media often just as gung-ho about the idea of the US returning to its so-called glory days as “world police”—but so too did the scope of the mission. The US would spend 20 years in Afghanistan, leaving over 46,000 civilians killed, along with some 76,000 allied forces, against nearly 53,000 opposition fighters. The Taliban would return after US troops left, and make life a living nightmare for women all over again. In Iraq, where the main conflict ran from 2003 to 2011, estimates vary, but with up to 210,000 civilians dead, in a conflict that killed around 300,000 total.
And that’s really why many in the US have struggled with how to articulate any kind of nuanced moral response to Israel’s actions in the wake of an horrific attack that left some 695 local citizens slaughtered, along with over 70 foreign nationals and 373 security forces, and hundreds of people kidnapped by Hamas and its allies:
Because the US and the rest of the West lost their own damned minds after 9/11.
From what possible foundation of righteous indignation are the leaders of such countries, and all who supported them in their retaliatory actions, supposed to express coherent concerns about extremist positions taken now by the Israeli government?
But while that might be a problem for the leaders, it needn’t be a problem for citizens—especially those of us who watched in horror as decades of war unfolded before.
I know a lot of people are still terrified of saying anything negative about Israeli government actions—because they’re smart cookies living in a highly Jingoistic moment, and they’re worried about being considered traitors for the slightest dissent from local status quo, or consideration of other points of view.
As such, they’ve concluded that if they give even an inch by acknowledging awful things happening in and by Israel’s government, they’re surely as good as giving aid to Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and behind them all Iran. The way that wheels turn in Jingoist minds is simple: the moment you no longer support your “guy” 100%, you’re as good as letting all the enemies of the US / Western world win instead.
The problem with this thinking—now, as after 9/11—is that the moment this is the calculus you’re using when trying to grapple with the complexity of world events, you’ve already let the terrorists win. You’ve let them take from you the ability to receive new intel without overwhelming fear of where it might lead. You’ve let them take from you the ability to hold ideas in tension, replacing it with a rigid mentality that refuses to allow people to be people: complex, and containing multitudes.
And you’ve let them flattened rich, diverse global demographics to the most reductive and militant members of their political and spiritual spectrum.
Let me repeat myself, then, because this matters:
A rigid nationalism that does not allow for democratic reckoning will always be the downfall of a state’s best dream of itself.
Now, that said, here’s the awful latest news around Smotrich and the West Bank.
An ultranationalist in action
Back in January, the far-right finance minister for Benjamin Netanyahu’s government called for Israel to resettle the Gaza Strip, claiming that if Israel didn’t, it would face “2 million Nazis” that want to annihilate the country.
This was perfectly in keeping with eliminationist rhetoric that Smotrich, among other sitting members of the Knesset (Israeli parliament), has been advancing throughout the war. It’s also in keeping with his long-standing animosity towards the Palestinian Authority, which he can hinder by withholding taxes that Israel collects on its behalf.
Back in late October and early November, when he and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken clashed over withholding of funds to the PA, Smotrich was also meeting with outrage from other Israelis over the ways in which he and far-right Knesset-member Itamar Ben-Gvir were escalating hostilities in the West Bank (which many Jewish Israelis refer to as Judea and Samaria, and consider their rightful land).
But while many in the West haven’t been inclined to learn much about Israel’s version of US Congress’s own far-right extremists, Smotrich’s mission has never been in question among Israelis. In 2017, he made his intentions abundantly clear in a document called “Israel’s Decisive Plan”, which states, among other things, that
Ending the conflict means creating and cementing the awareness—practically and politically—that there is room for only one expression of national self-determination west of the Jordan River: that of the Jewish nation. Subsequently, an Arab State actualizing Arab national aspirations cannot emerge within the same territory. Victory involves shelving this dream. And as motivation for its fulfillment dwindles, so will the terror campaign against Israel.
This is entirely in keeping with the Likud Party’s own original platform, which starts:
a. The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable and is linked with the right to security and peace; therefore, Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.
b. A plan which relinquishes parts of western Eretz Israel, undermines our right to the country, unavoidably leads to the establishment of a "Palestinian State," jeopardizes the security of the Jewish population, endangers the existence of the State of Israel, and frustrates any prospect of peace.
But despite this overlap in these right-wing parties’ intentions to reclaim the whole of the region for Israel, the inclusion of Smotrich in Netanyahu’s far-right coalition at the end of 2022 was still quite alarming to many local citizens. Racist, homophobic, and a denier of Palestinians as a people, Smotrich has been quick to try to escalate hostilities in the West Bank, where he’s been put in charge of most regional policy.
Back in February 2023, Smotrich advocated for a state strike “without mercy, with tanks and helicopters” on Palestinian villages, and this was part of what had Israelis so concerned about Netanyahu’s attack on the country’s judiciary. The removal of the “reasonableness” clause (first advanced in July 2023, risking a constitutional crisis in September, and struck down by the High Court in January 2024) would free ministers like Smotrich from legal challenge for actions taken in his official roles—the same thing that has many people terrified for US democracy today.
Suffice it to say, then, it was no surprise back in January, when Smotrich called for Israel to resettle the whole Gaza Strip to keep out a Palestinian people he sees entirely as “Nazis”. And it was no surprise when he doubled down on such rhetoric in May, in response to countries around the world committing to recognize a Palestinian state, by calling for Netanyahu to sanction PA officials and their families, ending the PA tax transfer workaround arranged after his standoff with Blinken last year, and proposing the creation of a new Israeli settlement in the West Bank for every country that proclaimed its endorsement of a Palestinian state. (He and Ben-Gvir are decidedly against even the utterance of a two-state solution, and always have been.)
Now, in a week when Netanyahu’s government is also struggling with ultra-Orthodox Jewish men’s refusal to comply with new military draft rules (an event that threatens his coalition), and when the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict is dangerously escalating the risk of another all-out war, Western news is prominently noting that Smotrich has made this year a record-breaker for land seizures in the West Bank: around 12.7 square kilometres in the Jordan Valley in the latest deal, on top of up to 10 square km announced in March, and 2.6 square km in February.
NB: Even though this latest deal is just hitting Western coverage, Smotrich has been involved in related discussions, along with ugly blame-throwing around October 7, for the last few weeks. He’s also still pushing for Netanyahu to retaliate further against other countries for their widening support of a Palestinian state.
Smotrich’s land seizures are also entirely in keeping with what he laid out for his Religious Zionist Party recently, in the way of bypassing formal annexation issues while still achieving ultra-nationalist goals. The PA is already barred from operating in around 60% of the West Bank, Israeli settlers have been driving out Palestinian residents in an accelerated fashion since October 7, and Smotrich has made it abundantly clear that he is preventing the West Bank from becoming part of a Palestinian state by using a civilian system to get around the blatant illegality of military seizures of such territory in war.
The problem is… the West really doesn’t know what to do about this.
Even reading this, I’m sure a lot of folks are nervous because they’re still caught up in our Jingoistic moment, and unsure what is “safe” to consider in the way of conflicting data. Supporting “Israel”, as a vague idea removed from the material realities of this far-right government and its aims, is an incredibly loaded concept. It’s tied up for many in the desire to be good allies—whether as Gentiles, or from the Jewish diaspora, which is absolutely facing an uptick in antisemitism, alongside the world’s surge in Islamophobia and general xenophobia and racism.
Jingoist anxieties are also tied up in the desire to be properly patriotic. If the US is backing Israel’s government to the hilt (sort of: in practice, the US has also tried to sanction West Bank settlers, and Blinken and President Joe Biden have sparred plenty with members of the Knesset and war cabinet while signalling readiness to work with other Israeli government partners), then how much can one criticize Israeli internal politics without also criticizing one’s own nation, for allying itself with bad actors?
And then there’s the fear that all of this is really just one more sneaky way by which Iran, Russia, China, or some other enemy of the US / the West / “the free world” is trying to demoralize its most loyal citizens. There are genuinely people who will read this and come to the conclusion that I’ve misled by psy-ops. (It’s happened already!)
There are also people who, even they don’t want to admit it to themselves, really don’t care if Palestinians are slaughtered or driven en masse from the region. They do think that a one-state solution, like the one Smotrich and other ultra-nationalist Israelis advance, is the best outcome here, and that Israel should be granted the fullest sweep of regional territory possible. And so they’ll pay lip service, maybe, to the idea that it’s really awful what’s happening to civilians in Gaza and the West Bank—but all the while, they’re secretly hoping that the militants do win, and that they do resettle the whole region the moment this war is over. To them, that’s the “easiest” solution of all.
It is really hard to be a humanist and pro-pluralist democracy amid this grinding return to Jingoism, and to not piss people off for one and the same.
Even though many US citizens are rightfully terrified about what the latest Supreme Court decision might mean for their democracy, they still find it extremely difficult to apply that same concern for the preservation of a just, democratic society elsewhere.
And in part, that’s because most of the Western world involved in the aftermath of 9/11 never truly reckoned with how that madness morally compromised our societies.
We come to this latest round of nationalist atrocities, then, with open wounds from very recent run-ins with other forms of Jingoism that we never properly addressed.
This is why I fight so hard—and so annoyingly—for people to remember that we contain multitudes. It would be so easy to say that “the US” did this, or that “Israel” did that, but the much more challenging truth is also our best hope of being able to break free from this whole humanitarian nightmare of a nationalist century:
Human beings, while shrouding themselves in oft-competing versions of fealty to state and demographic interests, do horrible things to other human beings.
Always have. Always will.
And so, it behooves us not to fall prey to the idea that any state exists above and beyond its heaving mess of a body politic.
Every state is us at our best. And every state is us at our worst.
And so sometimes the very best that we can do, when bearing witness to the worst of us especially, is to remember the power of democratic thinking—including the ability to hold multiple points of view in fruitful tension. When we comport ourselves like democrats, not like statists, we find the courage to call out what we know to be wrong… even when it’s done by people we want so very much to be in the “right”.
Be well, be kind, and seek justice where you can.
ML