Mario Vargas Llosa, Israel-Palestine. Peace or Holy WarMr Barbara Jaroszuk, Mr Krzysztof Iszkowski, Mark 2025
If the Palestinian-Israeli conflict had not existed, or if it had been yet resolved, Israel's past would have been seen as 1 of the top successes of fresh history: this is simply a country which in just over half a century – the State of Israel was created in 1948 – moving from the 3rd planet to the First, rich, modernized, merges into 1 nation of immigrants of various races and cultures – although at least seemingly 1 religion – makes the authoritative dead Hebrew language, resurrecting it and modernizing it, attains an highly advanced level of technological and technological development, as well as gaining access to atomic weapons and organizing state-of-the-art military infrastructure...
It turns a rocky desert into flourishing gardens and has a wonderful democracy. Llosa spares Israel words of admiration and even love, which did not prevent him from attacking and accusing against anti-Semitism. due to the fact that it is inactive “if”.
Israel-Palestine is simply a collection of reports that Llosa wrote after a fifteen-day stay in Israel in 2005 and respective texts that were created later. All published in Madrid’s “El Pais” and Latin American press, and 1 even in Poland (in “Europe”, the addition to the “Diary” – eh, utilized to be additives...). Literary – so much.
What to do with Israeli colonization?
His interlocutors were Jews, and Palestinians, from various political camps, politicians, intellectuals, average people – victims of assassinations, families of assassins. However, he listened especially to the pacifists and peace supporters on both sides of the barricade.
2005 is simply a minute so interesting that for a minute there was a flash of optimism: Ariel Sharon made the decision to liquidate Israeli settlements in Gaza (Llosa seems to be on the side of skeptics, not believing in the good intentions of the Prime Minister of Israel). It's a communicative today, but for apparent reasons, we've become more curious in it, and it's not so different from the present, but now it's taken an utmost form.
The basic accusation of Llosa can be summarized simply – yes, Israel has democracy, but only for Jews. arabian citizens are discriminated against, they are hampered by access to education, wellness care, uncovering work, acquiring goods and moving. On the another hand, in the areas occupied after the six-day war, Israel acts as a colonizer, hard to accept from a moral and civilian standpoint. On the another hand, he has the right to be and to defend himself against enemies and fanatics. What do you do about it?
Fascism in populism apple
Eva Illouz, Emotional Life of Populism. How fear, disgust, resentivity and love weaken democracyPaweł Świerczek, Gabriel Narutowicz Political thought Institute 2025
The investigation for this book was conducted and was written long before the deep political and constitutional crisis facing Israel in March 2023. The tragic analyses contained in it proved to be more than full confirmed by current events: what we can only call a fresh form of judaic fascism is in power, threatening to transform Israel into a full spiritual dictatorship.
This is simply a solid sociological technological work based on interviews and data from various sources – as such, of course, it is subject to substantive and methodological criticism. But I don't think that was the reason why the Israeli Minister of Education blocked her award of the Israel Prize in sociology this year.
As with other works of yours, Illouz It deals with what can be called sociology or psychosociology of emotions and passions in their private and political dimension. This time he takes populism into the workshop and hides in it like a worm in an apple fascist tendencies. In her intention, these considerations are to have a general dimension – referring to planet trends, represented by specified characters as Trump, Putin, Modi, as well as Orban or Kaczyński, but the core and the most interesting part of her book is case study Israel and Netanjah's career.
Populisms, as the author writes, have common features, but besides local varieties, depending on historical conditions and specificities of societies. And that's the Israeli 1 she's carefully analyzing. Fear, disgust, resentivity, and love (to the homeland) – it is simply a mixture of emotions that have their sources in real experiences and experiences, but are utilized in ideological narratives, instrumentalized by right-wing politicians, separating themselves from their real sources, becoming toxic and can lead to tragic consequences.
The first of the emotions discussed by Illouz is fear and it is understandable – in the end, the modern past of Israel began with a war against arabian countries for their own state. The Arabs did not accept the United Nations Resolution of 1947 and the plan to divide the territory previously covered by the protectorate of large Britain, and even earlier being part of the Ottoman Empire. Or it started even earlier – with judaic Zionism and settlement in the early 20th century.
Despite the phrase utilized by Llosa that this country was created in a rocky desert, individual lived there. And already in 1923 Zev Zabotynski wrote: “The indigenous populations, civilized or non-civilized, always stubbornly opposed the colonists, whether they were civilized or savage.” And this is what he expected, by creating his very extremist plan – mass emigration, the creation of a judaic state throughout Palestine's mandate, the building of judaic armed forces and the creation of a "new Jew". He was a typical of revisionist Zionism, opposed to the mandate authorities, supporting organizations specified as Irgun or Hagana – would we call them terrorist today? – which attacked both British and Arabs, the Arabs did the same by attacking Jews and British.
(These beginnings, before announcing the establishment of the State of Israel, describes in his fresh Zeruya Shalev, making of the militants any kind of “soldiers cursed”).
Then we have a full cycle of subsequent events that can be feared – outside attacks and interior terrorism, and, on the another hand, justified by Israel's fear of action. present it ended with genocide in Gaza. Israeli historian Omer Bartow compares This situation to the German genocide of the Hereers people who massacred German settlers in Namibia. In response, they were either killed or exiled into the desert and starved.
Amalgam of hostility
Here we contact upon the hard issue of Israel's past as a framework for discourse on colonialism, in this case settler colonialism. Llosa uses this word to describe the situation in occupied areas. Illouz avoids it, although at the same time she is willing to admit opposition to settlement and Zionism as a predictable and understandable reaction. Only that the fear he writes about is much deeper, bigger, existential and fundamental than that which could have grown out of real threats. Israel's threatening arabian hostility was melted into 1 strong affect with another fears, compared with Christian virulent anti-Semitism, pogroms, Holocaust.
Digression: Llosa, Illouz, me and surely you, and the vast part of the planet clearly admit that Israel has the right to exist, but possibly we should not be amazed that the arabian planet may have a different opinion? In the end, however, this is about the logic of the facts achieved – no 1 now demands or imagines eliminating the countries of both Americas or Australia, although we anticipate them to have any reflection on their origins. However, literature can always be counted on. For example, Philip Roth in the fresh Operation Shylock (an interesting analysis of the judaic identity) creates the character of his double, who rides around Israel and promotes the thought of returning to the countries from which he came and may have even more actual ties with them than with another Jews. He besides goes to Wałęsa (the year is 1988) to encourage him to this idea, and Wałęsie likes it.
The consequence of this fear and another emotions attached to it – disgust, nationalistic love for the country – is consent to acts that are incompatible with global law, attacks outside of their own country, human rights violations, building walls, discrimination and everything that we think decent liberal democracy should not do.
Yeah, democracy... According to Illouz, 1 of her enemies is mentioned among the key emotions of love for her homeland – nationalistic, mixed with spiritual justifications and disfellowshipping. I admit that I was amazed due to the fact that I thought that Israeli democracy inactive cared about the facade. But what is the name of a country which, having a non-Jewish number of 20%, is considered to be the “national state of the judaic people”? This was passed by Kneset in 2018. And you can't – there was specified a precedent considered by the court – registry as a individual of Israeli nationality. It is hard to imagine the creation of a democratic multinational state, if it is written in advance that it is owned by 1 nation. Besides, dreams, shared, among others, by Amos Oz, about specified a one-state resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, have long died.
Another emotion from this plexus would besides stand in the way: the disgust resulting from the separation of these national groups and from spiritual concepts of filth and uncleanness.
Left in Israel driven by resentivity
The most interesting, however, seemed to me a chapter on a resent, in which words specified as the Palestinian or arabian barely fall, he talks about something else – about interior divisions in Israeli society.
Resentment is simply a strong negative emotion, linked to a sense of harm, anger, a request for compensation, "which demands equality without acting on its behalf". "It takes the form of a constant rumination around the deficiency or failure of privilege and contains a public or secret desire to exact revenge on what we consider to be the origin of our inferior status."
Illouz meticulously describes how tensions and inequality between Mizrachians (Jews who emigrated from Africa and Asia in the 1950s) and Ashkenazis (eastern and western European Jews) were utilized by the right to gain and consolidate their populist power. The erstwhile were discriminated against from the beginning, and the socialist establishment was almost exclusively composed of Ashkenazis. This real conflict was prescribed for identity conflict, dividing society into 2 tribes. The first is simply a people, or actually a actual nation, who is always a victim, celebrates its own harm, frequently from the past, not necessarily those related to inequality, and religion becomes an crucial admixture of these views. The second is elites that, even if they don't rule, they regulation due to the fact that they've mastered the media, culture, they make deep state (However, this is not about the richest cosmopolitan supporters of neoliberalism), as if Jews, but traitors of the nation. And the left.
Why the left? Llosa first swears that he had long since ceased to be a leftist, to then compose that he is, however, in 1 of the only countries in the planet – Israel, in which the left was mostly marginalized. In his opinion, the left is the only mention to moral criteria. My “criticism of the policy pursued by the Israeli government is due to the love of freedom and justice”, he writes, defending himself against allegations of anti-Semitism.
Of course, loving your own homeland, loyalty to your people and willingness to defend them against all enemies, even with the hazard of life, are besides beliefs or emotions of a moral nature. Populist emotions are always about morality, just different. The left, which almost in the dead mourns Llos and Illouz, is universalistic and liberal. What emotions could it defy those fed by populism and fascist tendencies?
Illouz proposes "brotherhood", the feeling that we are all human beings, we are not fundamentalally different, we are able to trust each other. It calls it "emotions of a decent society", creating institutions that are always ready to defend equality. And – most likely naively – he believes that they could be reborn in Israel through an alliance of liberals (always close to Jews in diaspora) and sects of Judaism delicate to his universalist message.
Llosa, in turn, believed in democracy – yet the governments in Israel will change. Both in their books show examples of people who realize others, want peace, solve conflicts – they are on both sides. Only that there are fewer, and above all, as Illouz explains, social emotion itself is not enough, there is simply a request for stronger communicative and political strength. And I would add from myself that these narratives are unfortunately not governed by literature.
Also, the "realistic" prescriptions – Israel will change its policy under force from the global community, especially the United States – seem utopian today. Trump will build a hotel in Gaza, and Europeans will spin their noses a little, and then go on vacation. I hope I'm wrong.
