The illusion of a democratic opposition in Israel

It’s a familiar scenario, almost automatic : all it needs is for a single voice to be raised against Benyamin Netanyahu and his cabinet, a single act of dissidence on the political or public scene in Israel, for the French media to revive a comforting old fiction : that of a democratic, liberal, progressive opposition, standing up to a far right government which is basically no more than an authoritarian footnote in the history of the exemplary, democratic state that is Israel.

This dynamic is particularly clear today. When hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets to protest Netanyahu’s plan to maintain permanent military control over Gaza, our media present these demonstrations as pacifistic, liberal, humanistic appeals to end the war. This reading obscures their primary objective, which is the liberation of the hostages. The end of the war is seen not as a demand in itself but as a price to be paid, as the only way to achieve it. The ongoing genocide in Gaza and the humanitarian catastrophe befalling the Palestinians is largely absent from their demands.

The opinion polls confirm this: in June 2025, according to the Israeli Democracy Institute, 74 % of Israelis feel that the suffering of the Palestinians should not be taken into account in “planning the pursuance of the military operation”¹. Only a marginal minority makes it an issue in its protests, which are diversely motivated. On the one hand are those represented by the movement called Standing Together, which denounces the crimes committed in Gaza but refuses to speak of genocide, maintaining that the problem is this far right government and that Israeli society deserves better leaders than these; and on the other hand there is an anti-colonial group, composed informally of members of radical left-wing organisations but also of non-affiliated activists, who condemn the genocide and link it directly to the colonial policies pursued by Israel since its inception.

The same thing when reservists were called up on 10 April 2025 to put an end to the war : our French media speak of “an awakening of the world’s most moral army”. The outdated nature of this appellation, coming from individuals who have already taken part in the war on Gaza, is ignored, as are their individualistic, and for the most part not at all political, motivations. Worse still, the media coverage fails to point out that these calls never mention the Palestinian victims: they present ending the conflict as “the price to pay” for the liberation of the hostages - only the hostages. Just two statements, signed by air force pilots and members of military intelligence, refer to the death of “innocent civilians” but without ever specifying which civilians are meant.

An awakening of the army ?

And then there was that remark made by reserve Major-General Yair Golan, in May 2025: “Israel is killing children as a hobby”. It was picked up by every French media outlet as the expression of a moral conscience, an illustration of the return of the left. But this is to forget that the same man issued, in October 2023, a call to starve Gaza, and in September 2024, another to refuse any ceasefire with Lebanon. And above all, just a few days after that “hobby” remark, he back-pedalled, claiming on Channel 12, the most-watched channel in the country: “Israel is committing no war-crimes in Gaza.”

This media obsession with these opposition figures is partly due to ignorance of the facts, of the political strategies and more generally, of Zionism. It also reflects a political and symbolic need in France and in many western countries, to preserve the image of Israel as an island of democracy in a dark and authoritarian Middle East. Ultimately it is an element in the fabrication of an “innocent” Israel, since the crimes committed are rarely described for what they are but are presented as betrayals of its supposed principles, as though these actions were alien to the country’s very DNA.

A shared ideological matrix

One of the main arguments set forth in defence of the existence of a true opposition to Benyamin Netanyahu’s far right government rests on the fundamentally false notion of a “Zionist left”. For the last twenty years and since the emergence of a political centre in Israel, it is the Zionist centre-left that is presented as a credible alternative. This current is often described as the antithesis of the Israeli right, especially as concerns its plans for the Palestinians under Israeli occupation, from the Mediterranean sea to the river Jordan. But how can it be described as an opposition when it shares the self-same ideological fundamentals as those it is supposed to be opposing ?

All the Zionist currents, from the most critical left-wing to the far right, adhere to a set of basic principles which they never call into question. At the heart of these is the conviction that their country must remain a Jewish state, and that its creation in Palestine is legitimate - justified, exclusively or essentially, by the Bible, considered as amounting to a title deed. This being the case, certain rights must be granted only to Jews. It is also understood that the majority of the country’s citizens must remain Jewish, and that the state should actively maintain that demographic balance.

This ideological foundation rests upon three main elements. First of all, the national dimension: the state is seen as the nation-state of the Jewish people and it is that nation alone which is meant to be expressed in its institutions. Here I must point out that the very idea of an “Israeli nation” - a civic entity including all its citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike - does not exist. In Hebrew, the word “nation” is understood solely in ethnic terms. Each citizen belongs to an ethnic “nationality”, distinct from their Israeli citizenship, recorded in the official registries and artificially created by these: Jew, “Arab” (the term “Palestinian” is excluded), Druze, Circassian, etc.

Next comes the religious dimension, inseparable from the Zionist project: the legitimacy of the State of Israel rests upon the biblical narrative. Even the most critical groups accept, more or less, some form of connection between religion and the state. And finally the colonial dimension is a constant factor, though it is rarely mentioned by name. The colonisation of Palestine, begun even before the creation of the State of Israel, is presented as a legitimate process or at least a necessary one. This justification can be found all across the Zionist spectrum and is stated explicitly to a greater or lesser degree according to the ideological positioning of the group or individual in question.

Thus the Zionist centre-left cannot be regarded as a true opposition or as an alternative to the Israeli right, since it subscribes to the same ideological spectrum, the Zionist spectrum. What differentiates the various groups are not basic principles but the degree of visibility and intensity of their nationalism, their religiosity and their adhesion to colonial logic. The further we move to the right, the more these elements become explicit, proudly exhibited. But the ideological matrix is the same across the board.

Consolidating Jewish supremacy

By placing all the Zionist currents in the same ideological spectrum we can also better understand their shared conception of democracy. Over and above the quarrels between the centre-left and the right – be it over the role and powers of the Supreme Court, the influence of the Jewish religion on individual liberties, or other socio-economic considerations – there emerges a common vision which rests mainly on national and colonial dimensions.

The national definition of democracy is determined by its usefulness to the Jewish people, meant to constitute a majority within the state and therefore to ensure its “democratic” control. Thus democracy is perceived not as an end in itself but as a tool in the service of a given ethnic group with which the majority is deliberately conflated. This conception was explicitly endorsed by David Ben Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister and key figure of the Zionist left, during a 1950 parliamentary session :

An anti-Zionist majority is impossible so long as there is a democratic regime in this country, a regime of freedom and majority rule. An anti-Zionist regime will be possible only if the anti-Zionist minority were to take power by force [...] and close the country’s doors to Jewish immigration. The only way to prevent an anti-Zionist regime from taking power is to protect democracy².

By this logic, every action aimed at strengthening the Jewish presence in the state is regarded as profoundly democratic, since it continues to preserve the Jewish majority, perceived as guarantor of the regime.

This conception converges with another interpretation of democracy: the colonial interpretation. The growing implantation of the Jewish people in the Middle East is thus an indispensable condition not only for the expression of its national aspirations - made possible by the formation of a demographic majority - but also as a vector of so-called “liberal” Western values. Stated differently, democracy in that region would be dependent on the continued existence of a Jewish state, run by the Jewish people, supposedly embodying and representing the values of the west.

The villa and the jungle

One of the most emblematic formulations of that vision among left-wing Zionists originated in the nineties with former Prime Minister and key figure of the Zionist left, Ehud Barak. It was then that he fashioned an image of Israel as a Western stronghold of morality in the midst of an environment perceived as uncivilized, authoritarian and fundamentally incompatible with liberal democracy: the famous “villa in the jungle”. An image which he trots out still today, as in the interview he gave me in April 2024. “Inside the villa, you can listen to classical music or old French songs, have fun in your jacuzzi. But as soon as you go out, the first thing you do is have your gun at the ready, otherwise you won’t survive.”

From that point of view, democracy can neither exist nor thrive if it isn’t protected - or imposed - by Israel’s colonial domination which, needless to say, is never qualified as such. That representation not only justifies the colonisation of the land but also the permanent colonial domination exerted over the indigenous population, the Palestinians, which is claimed to be the indispensable condition for the survival of the democratic regime - and hence the apartheid.

These visions, shared by every Zionist current - including those which criticize the Netanyahu government as “a threat to democracy”- help towards a better understanding of the behaviour of the civil and political opposition in this time of genocide. For example, on 20 May 2024, over forty members of the opposition signed a petition condemning as antisemitic the warrant issued by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), asserting that “the Israeli army is the most moral in the world” and that “our heroic soldiers are fighting with unequalled courage and morality in compliance with international law.”

We also see many Israelis, associated with the opposition, holding demonstrations in the name of equality against the non-enrolment in the army of ultra-orthodox youngsters; on the other hand they have nothing to say about the restrictions placed on Palestinians, citizens of the state, who wish to display their solidarity with Gaza. Another example, which occurred at the end of June 2025: members of the centrist party Yesh Atid (“There’s a future”), also in the opposition, voted in favour of the suspension of the Palestinian MP in the Israel parliament, Ayman Odeh, simply because he had dared to rejoice over the liberation of Palestinian prisoners. The list of these apparent “contradictions” is long indeed.

“The outpost of civilization”

When we consider all the Zionist groups as belonging to the same ideological spectrum - sharing the same fundamentals and a similar notion of democracy - the conclusion is inevitable: no genuine alternative to Netanyahu and his cabinet can possibly emerge in Israeli politics. Worse still, there exists no truly “democratic” or “liberal” opposition so long as it is attached to Zionism. In this context, democracy remains subordinate to the nationalist and colonialist project, and cannot possibly embody idealistic western-style democracy.

Apart from their ignorance - deliberate or otherwise - it must be pointed out that western governments need that democratic image of Israel to justify their unconditional backing of its policies. These governments perceive Zionism in general and Israel in particular as the outpost of European interests in the Middle East, as characterised by Theodor Herzl, founder of political Zionism, when he set forth, as early as 1896, his plans for a Jewish state in Palestine:

“We will form out there for Europe a component of the wall against Asia and the outpost of civilization against barbarity. We go to the Land of Israel in order to extend the moral confines of Europe as far as the Euphrates”³.

In other words, Israel has the task of policing what the European powers consider the barbaric forces of the Middle East. This vision is part and parcel of a colonialist logic which is well known in Europe, where the “civilising mission” trope serves to justify or excuse a series of mass atrocities.

Otherwise, how to explain France’s supplying machine gun parts to a country accused of genocide by an increasing number of organisations and officials? How to justify the overflight of European territory by Benyamin Netanyahu’s jet when the ICC has issued a warrant for his arrest? How to explain the absence of any real sanctions, given the magnitude of the crimes committed?

If France and other Western nations were to admit that no truly democratic opposition can exist so long as it remains rooted in Zionism, they would be obliged not only to call into question decades of blind support for Israel but above all to open a debate on Zionism as a colonial project. This, however, is a topic which they themselves have placed off limits, or even, in certain cases, made illegal, by deliberately conflating it with antisemitism.