Summary
A liberal Zionist writer whose 2023 Washington Post opinion piece, co-authored with Paul Berman, Martin Peretz and Leon Wieseltier, and whose most recent book on liberalism are the two exhibits Liberal Zionism: A Pillar of Israel’s Settler Colonial Project uses for liberal Zionist discourse (Liberal Zionism: A Pillar of Israel’s Settler Colonial Project, lines 189-197, 205).
Details
- The 2023 opinion piece, as Ayyash presents it: it locates Israel from the moment of its founding within the “freedom-loving nations” of the world, argues Benjamin Netanyahu’s new right-wing government “threatens Israel’s standing in world affairs”, insists on continued and full US military funding for Israel, and asks for US support for Israelis protesting Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition government; its formulation is the “double, but not contradictory, support” (lines 189-191).
- Ayyash reads that support differently from its authors: not as protecting democracy in the global battle between “democracy vs. autocracy”, but as resting on the recognition that what was taken by force in 1948 can only be held by force, and that rejecting the new government’s annexationist policies will save the Jewish state as a state for a Jewish majority while blocking the Palestinian critique from mainstream discourse (line 191).
- The piece’s language for Israel’s settler-colonial and apartheid policies, in Ayyash’s account: “an ever-more aggressive” campaign to establish additional settlements and “increasing challenges” for Palestinian citizens of Israel, a government encouraging “extremist Jewish vigilantism” and “ethno-nationalists”, and a warning that Israel is moving closer to Viktor Orban’s Hungary (line 205).
- His most recent book, as Ayyash presents it (the brief does not give its title in the text copy): it praises and promotes “liberal morality” and “liberalism” as a “product of the Enlightenment and the triumph…of the emancipated individual—a Western figure”, needed to prevent us from becoming “monist, dogmatic, intolerant, and repressive”, with no decolonial paradigm centering those who suffered and were erased due to the Western colonial project (line 197).
Related pages
Liberal Zionism: A Pillar of Israel’s Settler Colonial Project, Liberal Zionism, Colonial modernity, Benjamin Netanyahu