Expert Comment: Israel’s election and the idea of the state as saviour
Professor Yaacov Yadgar, Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies and the Department of Politics and International Relations, explains the foundational stories that shape Israeli politics, and why they are likely to outlast today’s vote.
It is, of course, impossible—and foolish indeed—to try and predict either the results of the parliamentary elections held today in Israel, or more importantly, the outcome of the ensuing negotiations between the different parties towards forming a ruling coalition. Yet it seems safe to expect that dramatic and consequential as these results may be, this election cycle, like many of those that preceded it (between 2019 and 2022 Israelis had a chance to vote no fewer than five times) will not mark a fundamental change to the prevailing political mythology or imaginary that underlies Israeli politics.
These terms—“imaginary” and “mythology”—aim to capture the foundational stories and worldviews that instil (political) reality with meaning. They shape collective identities and orient political action by telling members of the group who they are, what their place in the world is, and what the future holds for them. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of these imaginaries and mythologies, but since they underlie much of what we take to be “reality” itself—working in the background, as it were, as the “taken for granted” and “obvious” lenses through which we view reality—it is also quite easy to ignore them. The renewed focus of attention on Israel may be, then, a good opportunity to spell out at least some of the very basic contours of these imaginaries.
“The prevalent political imaginary tells us that the state saves its people not just from any kind of violence, but from nothing short of the threat of total annihilation of the nation itself.”
Probably the most foundational and consequential of all is the place held by the state itself in the stories that make the Israeli collectivity. Deeply shaped by the formation of the State of Israel under the shadow of the Holocaust—the need for such a state being the widely accepted lesson of the catastrophe that befell the Jewish people in Europe—the foundational narrative of the Israeli political order renders the state nothing short of the guarantor of the very existence of the Jewish people, in Israel and outside of it.
Soteriologies of the state—that is, stories of the state as saviour—are, of course, not unique to Israel. Yet like in so many other aspects of nation-statism, Israel proves to be “just the same only more so”. The prevalent political imaginary tells us that the state saves its people not just from any kind of violence, but from nothing short of the threat of total annihilation of the nation itself. It is not hard to see that political reality takes on quite a different shape when coloured in such hues. Basic elements of the political world, from compromise and accommodation to the use of violence, are taken to quite a different level of significance when they are understood to deal not just with this or that political problem, but with existential concerns.
“Basic elements of the political world, from compromise and accommodation to the use of violence, are taken to quite a different level of significance when they are understood to deal not just with this or that political problem, but with existential concerns.”
Closely related to this is the notion that Israel is a Jewish state. The meaning of this “identity” of the state is key to understanding Israeli politics writ large, but is far from clear or agreed upon. Rather, it is a matter of a fundamental internal disagreement among Israelis (especially, but not exclusively, Jewish Israelis). Yet it is interesting to note that the quarrelling parties in this debate agree that Israel’s Jewish identity, however understood, underlies the state’s role as the saviour of the nation. According to this prevalent view, Israel can be the guarantor of Jewish existence only in its identity as a Jewish state; if it ceases to be a Jewish state, then it won’t be able to guarantee Jewish existence. Hence, any threat posed to its identity as Jewish is tantamount to jeopardising the existence of the Jewish people itself.
It might be prudent to remind the reader that we are dealing here not with a set of rationalistic arguments, but with the imaginaries and mythologies that render reality meaningful. In any event, the implication of this imaginary clearly tends to evade many who attempt to engage in what they would hope is a meaningful, “constructive” criticism of Israeli nation-statehood: a demand — or even a suggestion — that Israel give up on its Jewish identity (and, again, let us ignore for now the fact that we are far from having a clear picture of what this really means), is quite simply equal (according to the mythological logic at play, of course) to a call for the elimination not just of the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people as a whole.
“It seems safe to expect that dramatic and consequential as these results may be, this election cycle … will not mark a fundamental change to the prevailing political mythology or imaginary that underlies Israeli politics.”
This is the lens through which most Israelis have viewed and understood the earth-shaking upheavals of the past three years—from the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, through the devastation of Gaza in the war that immediately ensued, to the wars with Iran (this is a partial list, of course; at one point, the Israeli Prime Minister counted no fewer than seven fronts in which his country was simultaneously engaged in warfare). Ferociously critical of each other as the parties and personalities competing in today’s election may be, it is quite apparent that the vast majority of the mainstream of the Israeli political map, segmented and divided on other issues as it may be, adheres to this foundational aspect of the political imaginary as the kind of truth we usually assign a sacred status.
Imaginaries, however, are not static. While they hold, they continuously evolve. At times, they can also prove so deficient in explaining reality as to be abandoned altogether, replaced by other ways of seeing the world. It remains to be seen whether the elections today may be seen in retrospect as marking a turning point in the development of the prevalent Israeli imaginary.
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