In Israel, Zionism Prevents Working-Class Solidarity
Despite unionization rates more than twice that of the United States, many Israeli workers continue to be committed to apartheid and the racist ideology enabling it. The Zionist project is preventing Israeli workers from organizing alongside Palestinians.
A Palestinian flag is waved before an electoral billboard by the predominantly Arab Israeli electoral alliance the Joint List depicting Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a caption reading in Arabic, “the father of the nation-state law says ‘a new approach,’ who is he fooling?” above protesters in northern Israel on March 12, 2021. (Ahmad Gharabli /AFP via Getty Images)
Israel’s snap election last month, the fourth in two years, again centered on long-standing prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s inability to coalesce a government in the face of multiple corruption scandals. In fact, since last May, protesters gather weekly at intersections across the country, waving black flags and Israeli flags, calling for his resignation, prosecution, and an end to government corruption.
But as a movement that seeks to speak for all Israelis across the political spectrum, it stops short of confronting or even acknowledging the greatest injustice in Israel: the occupation. The elections also reveal an all but collapsed Liberal Zionism. Once the cornerstone of the colonial project, the parties of Labor Zionism (HaAvoda) and Socialist Zionism (Meretz) commanded every sphere of Israeli society: the government, the military, most industries, labor, and the kibbutzim.
In the 2021 elections, they each scraped by the voter threshold to enter Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, with 5.92 percent and 4.55 percent, respectively.
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