Summary
Moshe Zuckermann’s term, as presented by Zionist Israel and the Question of Palestine, for Israel’s depoliticized understanding of peace, prevalent since the founding era: a fetishistic relationship to the term “peace” in songs, political rhetoric and diplomacy, in which “peace is on everyone’s lips, but nobody has ever really put it to the test” by showing the willingness to pay the necessary price (Zionist Israel and the Question of Palestine, PDF p.159 / printed p.150).
Details
- Zuckermann speaks of a “psycho-collective fear of peace” inherent in Israel’s political culture: Israel kept evoking the “longing for peace” while proving unable to legitimize peace politically in its own society (PDF p.159).
- The peace ideology is the flipside of the “security question”, which serves as cement for the conflict-laden society (PDF p.159).
- Amar-Dahl finds the language of the peace ideology already in David Ben-Gurion’s cabinet remarks of May 29, 1949 — peace is important and worth a considerable price, yet “we need not regret too much that the Arabs refuse to make peace with us” — and in Shimon Peres’s 1955 and 1965 texts, where the longing for peace is presupposed as self-evident while peace remains unrealizable (PDF p.164, 171).
- In the final part, the peace ideology is what traps the Zionist Left: because working towards peace is perceived as isolated from Israel’s own policy and as hinging solely on the willingness of “the Arabs” to recognize Israel, the Left can only keep hoping Arab hostility will disappear while continuing to imagine peace and fight terrorism by military means; the book’s Conclusion adds that the ideology points to the tension between the “peace-seeking” Israel and its “unruly” Arab environment, claims there is “no dialogue partner” for peace, reinforces Israel’s self-image as a peaceful and just state, and veils the pressing of interests understood as connected to Jewish statehood (PDF p.187, 197).
Related pages
Moshe Zuckermann, Security Myth, Imagined Peace, Zionist Israel and the Question of Palestine