Unfortunately, on February 6, 2020, a day full of terrorist incidents was unlikely for Israel, probably the consequence of the wave of resentment caused by the publication of the details of the so-called "Agreement of the Century" announced by American President Trump and strongly desired by the Israeli Prime Minister. Netanyahu.
Among the various "accidents" that have bloodied various areas of the country, it was the one that occurred on the "Temple Mount" which provoked the most important reactions among the public opinion of the country. Shortly before midday, in fact, the police station positioned to guard the entrance to the "Temple Mount" was approached by a man armed with a gun who immediately started shooting point blank at the policemen present there, slightly injuring one and then fleeing . However, the firing of the shooter did not last long as a few moments later he was reached, surrounded and shot down by the special forces who promptly intervened.
A series of actual checks immediately showed that the attacker was 13-year-old Shadi Bana, an Israeli Arab from Haifa and owner of a flower shop. According to Channel XNUMX News, Shadi Bana was well known in his neighborhood and was equally appreciated by both Jewish and Arab neighbors. The news that, according to some sources, he had recently converted from Christianity to Islam has not yet found complete confirmation and may indeed be an awkward attempt to attribute the gesture to the harmful influence on "Islamic terrorism". What the sources unanimously agree on is the fact that Shadi Bana was described by family, relatives, friends and neighbors together as "the last person in the world with whom to have a fight, let alone think that he could have become a terrorist ".
The event particularly affected Israeli society and undoubtedly brought the problem of relations between the State of Israel and its Arab minority (Muslim and non-Muslim) to the front page. In hindsight, however, this conflict represents in turn only the tip of the iceberg of a much deeper crisis that affects Israeli society entirely in its relationship with the institutions of the state and with the political ideology that, ultimately, has led to the founding of the state itself: Zionism.
The term "Zionism" refers to the national liberation movement of the Jewish people aimed at the reconstitution of a "Jewish homeland" in the territories biblically and historically defined as the "Land of Israel" (roughly corresponding to the Canaanic land of antiquity , or to the Roman province of Palestine or, again, to the medieval "Holy Land").
Fruit of the thought of Theodor Herzl, and despite having undergone a complicated process of evolution and differentiation over the decades, Zionism has always had its fundamental pillar and the events that characterized the Middle East in the construction and defense of the State of Israel East after the First World War (Balfour Declaration of 1917) and the subsequent foundation of the State of Israel after the Second World War (1948), have demonstrated both its ideological power and its political and social vitality.
The problems inherent in ideology have emerged over time over the following decades of Israeli democratic life. Although in fact the work of "building the state" from an institutional and material point of view can be said to have been completed, Zionism has failed to create a "nation" nor have the Israelis managed to produce a new "ideological-philosophical system" ”That could support and replace Zionism in facing the new challenges that would inevitably emerge over time. Those who believe that this need is secondary, compared to the far more pressing problem of guaranteeing Israel's internal and external security from the forces that threaten its survival, commit a serious error of assessment; net of its economic and military strength, Israel is evolving towards a state with strongly "communitarian" connotations much more similar to its Middle Eastern neighbors than to the European and / or western countries to which it claims to have always looked as a source of inspiration.
In the course of the numerous contacts I had over time with both Israelis and Jews of the Diaspora, I realized that, from the Jewish point of view, there is a fundamental confusion between the primitive concept of "people" and that, much more subtle and elaborate than "nation".
We can define with the term "people" any human community linked to a geographical area or characterized by a common adhesion to a particular value identity. It is clear that this definition is very broad and lends itself to numerous interpretations. On the other hand, the definition of "nation" is much narrower and more targeted: it is in fact an ethnic unity conscious of its own peculiarity and cultural autonomy especially as a premise of unity and political sovereignty.
By declining these concepts to the empirical reality, we can affirm that, within the Italian Republic, the Slovenian, German and French-speaking minorities residing respectively in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Trentino-Alto Adige and Valle d'Aosta are (for reasons of geographical location) an integral part of the "Italian people", however they cannot be defined as part of the "Italian nation" because the use of languages other than the Italian one automatically puts them out of the cultural bed that constituted the basis of development of Italian culture (in its vault essential pillar of the nation).
Coming to the Israeli context, the majority of the population of the country is made up of Jews descended from one or more of the numerous migratory waves that have poured into that territory since 1881. Alongside this majority community there are several ethnic or ethno- minorities. religious such as Muslim Arabs, Christian Arabs, Druze, Circassians, Armenians and other smaller communities. The attitude of both the State of Israel and Zionism towards all these communities has always been swaying and unfriendly. From a formal point of view, the various Zionist currents have never managed to find a common agreement if the future State of Israel were to become "a state only of Jews" (as theorized by Ze'ev Jabotinsky) or be a "state Hebrew but also open to others "(as stated by Theodor Herzl before and by David Ben-Gurion afterwards). The theoretical divergences were overcome in practice in the aftermath of the victory in the War of Independence, when the authorities of the very young state immediately decided to extend citizenship to all the "non-Jews" present on its territory and, even if rivers of I was scattered about whether Ben-Gurion's initiative was dictated by a genuine desire to come to a reasonable compromise with the Arabs or was a merely propagandistic move, at least formally and within the borders of 1949-1967, Jews, Arabs and other "non-Jews" should have lived in the same country as equals.
Time has given us a somewhat different reality. While the State of Israel has immediately managed to establish fruitful collaborative relationships with the Druze and the Circassians, the relationship with the other communities has not gone as well. Both Muslim and Christian Arabs were soon seen, not without some justification, as a dangerous "fifth column" of the external enemy and the almost total lack of public and private investment in the areas they inhabited (preferring instead spending in favor of reception of new Jewish migratory waves) has meant that, although between 1949 and 1967 the social indicators showed a substantial convergence towards a common path of development, after this last date this virtuous path practically stopped. Not only that, after 1967, thanks to the victorious Six Day War, the Arabs of Israel were in all respects "reunited" with the Palestinians of the Territories and of the Gaza Strip, thus being exposed to the dramatic reality of the perennial Israeli conflict- Palestinian. The joint effect of conflict and economic and social stagnation in their areas of residence has caused a slow but inevitable estrangement of Israeli Arabs from the identity and values of their own country to the point that many of them ended up calling themselves " Palestinians living in Israel. "
Things are only slightly better for the small Armenian community, largely concentrated in the homonymous district of the Old City of Jerusalem, which, despite having always maintained a friendly relationship with the country's authorities, is very negatively affected both by the continuous climate of conflict and the expropriation actions by the Jewish authorities and settlers belonging to the various religious movements which, in the light of Jerusalem's creeping "Jewishization" program, are more than happy to expropriate the Armenian real estate properties and then distribute them to the colonists.
The trend in recent years has progressed even worse, so much so that His Beatitude Nourhan Manougian, Patriarch of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem said during an interview granted in 2013 to the Haaretz newspaper: "We are third-class citizens"1. But the most interesting transformation process concerned the Jewish majority.
Born as a "container of diasporas", the Jewish community of Israel has fostered, over the decades, the integration of Jews from at least sixty different cultural contexts. Against all initial predictions, the various "founding tribes" (Ashkenazis, Sephardis, Mizrahì, Romanioti, Italkim, etc ...) ended up integrating surprisingly well and, although a certain rivalry between Aschenaziti and Mizrahì still pervades national folklore, the the practice of cohabitation and mixed marriages has meant that, decade after decade, the traditional "ethnic-cultural" division has waned. Unfortunately, however, new confrontation faults have emerged in the political-religious field.
From the 70s onwards, Israel has witnessed a progressive polarization of Jewish society in correspondence with the demographic rise of the so-called "ultra-Orthodox" ("Datim", "Chardalim" and "Haredim") and "religious conservatives" (Masortim) at the expense of the laity (Hilonim). Although the latter were the driving force for the foundation and development of Israel and having held the demographic record so far, the "Hilonim" have seen their numbers dramatically erode in recent years both because of the demographic boom of the more conservative strata of society ("Haredi" women have a total fertility rate that is at least three times higher than "Hiloni" women) than because of emigration (Yerida). An estimated one million "Yordim" currently live abroad and the United States in particular have proven particularly adept at intercepting this river of highly skilled and disciplined emigrants.
The subdivision of Israeli Jewish society into "political-religious tribes" would not worry if this separation remained "ideal" and would not also encroach on the territorial subdivision (different neighborhoods and rural settlements for different "tribes"), in education (unlike the Italy, Israel has never managed to create a single public school for everyone) in public services (the "Haredim" use bus lines dedicated to them) and in synagogues (where a Jew can participate in the rites only if registered in that particular one congregation).
Even the armed and security forces are no longer able to mask the profound social fractures; in fact, it is estimated that only 43% of the theoretically recruited young people regularly come to the draft call, the very few "Haredim" who serve the flag do so exclusively in ad hoc units, and the ranks of the front-line combat departments (such as the deadly " Sayeret ”, the special deep reconnaissance units) continue to operate only thanks to the massive presence of Druze, Bedouins from the Negev, Falasha (Ethiopian Jews) and“ Russians ”(thanks to the positive effect that Soviet and Russian military traditions still have on this segment of the population of recent immigration).
In conclusion, despite the apparent strength, Israel is a small giant with very "clayey" feet and, although it presents staggering economic growth and technological expansion, the fact that, one hundred and thirty-nine years after the start of the Zionist migration waves (1881 ) and seventy-two years after the declaration of independence (1948), it has not been possible to create a coherent "nation" even in the Jewish part of its population (and keeping silent of the dramatic increase in conflicts between Jewish and "non-Jewish" Israelis), it must sound like a dramatic alarm bell in the ears of us all.
1http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.532541
Photo: IDF
