For decades, the Israeli Left asserted that the Palestinians should be given a state of their own. It asserted this out of an intense longing for normalcy. To the Left, Palestinian statehood was the key to peace, and peace was the key to a normal existence.
Yet this longing for normalcy emboldened not peace-seekers, but rather our Palestinian attackers. It signaled to them that we sovereign Jews may be compelled to surrender entirely. And as our attackers made it clear that Israel giving them land would not lead to peace, many Israelis abandoned the Left's approach. They now sought to spare themselves and their loved ones from what they had come to deem a dangerous delusion.
Having detached itself from the imperative of self-preservation, the Israeli Left became marginalized. But while much of its voter pool evaporated, its desperate longing for normalcy did not. The only thing that changed was how the Left came to frame its longing.
Before, the Left framed its longing as our only chance to achieve peace. After peace processes blew up in our faces, the Left repackaged its longing as our only chance at democracy. A dire warning over our essence replaced the failed promise of peace. Irrespective of peace, they argue, if we rule over millions of non-citizens, we forgo our status as a democracy.
Over the years, mainstream Israel learned to ignore the marginal Left on the topic of peace. The vast majority of Palestinians made this quite easy. They made it clear that they would not supply peace in return for concessions. But today, mainstream Israelis cannot afford to ignore the Left's repackaged longing for normalcy. Even a Left without political teeth can encourage foreign liberal audiences, who long for normalcy no less, to pressure Israel from the outside.
When former member of Knesset Yair Golan tells The Guardian that he is "not sure whether Israel right now is truly a democratic state… [because] the Right today in Israel is people who think we can annex millions of Palestinians," we should not dismiss this as Left-wingers venting to each other. Rather, we must confront such words head-on.
If a peaceful person is attacked with violence, does defending themselves mean they are no longer peaceful? Of course not. They maintain the label 'peaceful' because they are peaceful when given the chance to be. The same reasoning applies to a country that strives to be democratic. Such a country does not lose its democratic status when it rules over people who seek to destroy it.
The Jews whom Zionism made sovereign are overwhelmingly committed to democratic principles. We accepted the United Nations Partition Plan, which would have created two new countries from land that was under interim British rule. Partition would have preserved everyone's homes and would not have stymied anyone's democratic rights.
It was never implemented because opponents of Jewish sovereignty rejected it. They considered any Jewish sovereignty in their midst to be an affront to their own sense of dominance. So, under the banner of 'Palestine,' they waged a fateful struggle against such sovereignty. Far from accepting partition, proponents of this struggle promised a war of annihilation, and to this day, they try to eliminate Israel. They insist that they will kick, scream, stab, and shoot ("by any means necessary") until someone pacifies their rage by forcing the Jews to surrender.
When people attack Israel, it is right and wise for Israel to defend itself adequately, including through military rule. That Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip do not constitute an independent country is not an inevitable undemocratic feature of Israel's existence. It is rather the outcome of others' rage over Israel's existence.
Israel need not enfranchise those who seek to destroy it and kill its people. If certain individuals or groups cannot tolerate Jews being sovereign in their homeland, that should be their own problem. It is not on Jews or on anyone else to placate them. The moral onus is on those who are kicking and screaming and stabbing and shooting to stop. Adequate self-defense is good and right, and makes one responsible, not undemocratic.
People, countries, and world orders that insist unconditionally on normalcy in the name of liberalism will lose to illiberal attackers. If liberalism is to survive against illiberal attackers, it has to be willing to be abnormal when pushed against a wall.
Josh Warhit runs Warhit Media Services. He made aliyah from the United States in 2012 and served in the Nahal Brigade (infantry) in the Israel Defense Forces.
