Loading AI tools
The concept of Jewish supremacy accompanies discourse pertaining to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, asserting that the ethno-nationalist views, policies, and identity politics of some Israeli Jews arise to the level of a form of supremacism vis-à-vis the Palestinians, who are an Arab people.[1][2][3] The term has been used by a variety of critics of Israeli policies, with some arguing that it reflects a broader pattern of discrimination against non-Jews in Israel.
In 2021, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem classified the State of Israel as "a regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea" through laws amounting to apartheid. It also took note of the fact that, after it was established in 1989, it initially focused on the legal and social situation in the Israeli-occupied territories, but that "what happens in the Occupied Territories can no longer be treated as separate from the reality in the entire area under Israel’s control," owing to the fact that there "is one regime governing the entire area and the people living in it, based on a single organizing principle."[4]
Proponents of the one-state solution cite the development of Jewish supremacy as one of the main reasons for the necessity of a single country that applies democratic principles across all sectors of society, regardless of ethnic or religious affiliations.[5]
Ilan Pappé, an expatriate Israeli historian, writes that the First Aliyah to Israel "established a society based on Jewish supremacy" within "settlement-cooperatives" that were Jewish owned and operated.[6] Joseph Massad, a professor of Arab studies, holds that "Jewish supremacism" has always been a "dominating principle" in religious and secular Zionism.[7][8] Zionism was established with the goal of creating a sovereign Jewish state, where Jews could be the majority, rather than the minority. Theodor Herzl, the ideological father of Zionism, considered antisemitism as an eternal feature of all societies in which Jews lived as minorities, and as a result, he believed that only a separation could allow Jews to escape eternal persecution. "Let them give us sovereignty over a piece of the Earth's surface, just sufficient for the needs of our people, then we will do the rest!"[9]
Since the 1990s,[10] Orthodox Jewish rabbis from Israel, most notably those affiliated to Chabad-Lubavitch and religious Zionist organizations,[10][11] including The Temple Institute,[10][11] have set up a modern Noahide movement. These Noahide organizations, led by religious Zionist and Orthodox rabbis, are aimed at non-Jews in order to convince them to commit to follow the Noahide laws.[10][11] However, these religious Zionist and Orthodox rabbis that guide the modern Noahide movement, who are often affiliated with the Third Temple movement,[10][11] expound a racist and supremacist ideology which consists in the belief that the Jewish people are God's chosen people and racially superior to non-Jews,[10][11] and mentor Noahides because they believe that the Messianic era will begin with the rebuilding of the Third Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to re-institute the Jewish priesthood along with the practice of ritual sacrifices, and the establishment of a Jewish theocracy in Israel, supported by communities of Noahides.[10][11] David Novak, professor of Jewish theology and ethics at the University of Toronto, has denounced the modern Noahide movement by stating that "If Jews are telling Gentiles what to do, it’s a form of imperialism".[12][13][14]
In 2002, Joseph Massad said that Israel imposes a "Jewish supremacist system of discrimination" on Palestinian citizens of Israel, and that this has been normalized within the discourse on how to end the conflict, with various parties arguing that "it is pragmatic for Palestinians to accept to live in a Jewish supremacist state as third class citizens".[1]
In the aftermath of the 2022 Israeli legislative election, the winning right-wing coalition included an alliance known as Religious Zionist Party, which was described by Jewish-American columnist David E. Rosenberg as a political party "driven by Jewish supremacy and anti-Arab racism".[15]
Various discriminatory (or allegedly discriminatory) policies and practices have been cited variously as perpetrating Jewish supremacy in Israel,[16] including the 1952 Citizenship Law and [17] the 2018 Nation-State Law.[18] The banned Israeli political party Kach, the phenomenon of Israeli settler violence, and all of the Netanyahu-led Israeli governments have been accused of pursuing a Jewish supremacist agenda, particularly against the Palestinians.[17][19]
Wikiwand in your browser!
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface.
Wikiwand extension is a five stars, simple, with minimum permission required to keep your browsing private, safe and transparent.
