Israeli democracy: a constraint that became a habit
The Zionist establishment had a greater affinity for the supposedly democratic Bismarck model of the 19th century but not for the Western democracies of the UK, France, or the US.
By Moti Golani • Haaretz *
“Democracy” is on everyone’s lips lately, even those determined to destroy it. The basic and implicit, if at times unconscious, presumption has always been that Israel was created as a democracy, and that such was the Zionist gestation period from Herzl to Weizmann. According to this presumption, the sovereign state’s leadership, from Ben Gurion onwards (Netanyahu is the exception to the rule), didn’t even consider the question of democracy because it was like the air that we breathe, a self-evident legacy.
But the democracy of the global Zionist movement and Jewish settlement in Israel, which had together created the State, was far from being a natural one. It was democracy from the head, not from the gut. It will suffice here to focus on some key figures to delineate the relationship between the Zionist establishment and democracy. Those pivoted people (as well as the marginal ones) were born into an imperialist Austro-Hungarian or Russian reality. They include Binyamin Ze’ev Herzl, Chaim Weizmann, Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky, along with those that came into leadership positions in the Yishuv itself, here in the country, including Ben-Gurion, Moshe Chertok (Sharett), and others, none of whom brought with them a formative democratic legacy. Furthermore, judging by their origins, it was in fact a something they found disgusting. They had a greater affinity for the supposedly democratic Bismarck model of the 19th century but not for the Western democracies of the UK, France, or the US.
Herzl, the founder of the World Zionist Organisation, paved his path surrounded by democratic embellishments. Finally, just before his death, he’d faced opposition, tellingly called the Democratic Faction, with which he could not contend. He preferred wheeling and dealing on his own, quietly, with kings and emperors, or his inner circle. Having done all that travelling, planning, deliberating, compromising — or not, reaching conclusions and making deals, he couldn’t bear the narrow-minded bickering of Zionist politics, which lacked gratitude, insisted on discussions, votes, and wouldn’t just let him go about his business.
Even Weizmann, the World Zionist Organisation’s [WZO] fourth president and effectively Herzl’s successor, who’d led the charge to making the vision a reality — even he wasn’t a great democrat, to put it mildly. Though he trained himself to be British, his formative years in Czarist Russia always showed. If there was anything he loathed more than the Zionist congress every two years, it was the horde of sweaty, sycophantic, self-important delegates. Weizmann made sure to be sick the night before and after each congress. As was his teacher, master and rival, Herzl, who’d also preferred to promote Zionism along quiet channels, deliberating mainly with himself. As for the motions of the congress, he fiddled with those at his will.
Jabotinsky, although aware of the power of the masses and the need to harness it, even showing some talent in this regard, even he wasn’t a sworn democrat. Time and again he failed to withstand the pressures of Zionist institutions. Unlike other leaders who just threatened to quit or even retire, he actually did it. His horror show in the July 1931 17th Zionist Congress in Basel demonstrated his approach. Frustrated with the majority vote, he tore up his delegate’s card on the main stage before the stunned crowd. To prevent a fight, he was carried out on his acolytes’ shoulders. Quite the democratic display. Four years later he retired from the WZO to establish his revisionist New Zionist Organisation, which had a unanimous vote: his own.
Herzl and Weizmann’s Zionist democracy was a product of the fact that a global movement without a country to back it up cannot exist without the good will of its members. Freedom of expression, the willingness to follow the rule of the majority, considering the minority, the need to devote weeks and months to Zionist politics, sometimes on a voluntary basis, paying taxes and so forth, all this was ultimately up to the good will of the movement’s members. They had no option other than democracy. None of the aforementioned leaders would have been able to sustain their positions on charisma alone. And since Herzl’s production of the world’s first Zionist congress in a Basel casino in the summer of 1897, subsequent leaders made sure to adhere stringently to democratic rituals, almost as though transfixed. Over time it turned out that sometimes this compulsion, even the mere ritual of democracy, was becoming a hard habit to shake.
The era of mass politics, which brought the political parties to centre stage to the detriment of the various national Zionist federations, gave this democracy a very real character. It gave rise to the Yishuv’s leaders, destined to become the leaders of the State. The struggle of the Jews of the Land of Israel for a place in the World Zionist Organisation while being a non-sovereign Jewish community in the country meant that it could only ever be a voluntary political system with democratic rules of engagement. Ben-Gurion, a talented local leader lacking charisma (unlike the other three) was nonetheless adept at using the democratic tools of party and organisational politics of the both local and global structures. The watershed events of 1935, when Mapai [Forerunner of modern Israeli Labour] aligned itself with Weizmann, took over the global movement, and led to Jabotinsky’s resignation, set the stage for what became Israeli coalition-dominated democracy (till now, at least).
Israeli democracy (certainly for Jews) has therefore been a completely unnatural miracle, not just because of its location within a tumultuous State, replete with social and security challenges. Without a doubt, the greatest test of Israeli democracy came in May 1977, when those assumed to forever be in the opposition took over the government by popular, democratic vote. It wasn’t wrong to be somewhat impressed with the way the Labour Party stepped back (historically representing Mapai and the union movement generally), or with the way the Likud and Menachem Begin grabbed the reigns that summer, or with the resilience of Israeli democracy. Those changes were not at all to be taken for granted those days, nor nowadays for that matter. As we’ve recently come to witness, it is still a democracy from the head, and not from the gut.
The author is a historian and heads the Chaim Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism and Israel at the Tel Aviv University.
Translated by Keren Rubinstein for the Middle East News Service (Sol Salbe)
Haaretz Hebrew original: (3 April 2023)
