Defiant Speakers in the Israeli Public Sphere
Despite the receding impact of the defiant discourse scenario in Israeli culture, the figure of the parrhesiastes has not vanished, and from time to time it makes its phoenix-like reappearance in the Israeli public sphere, occasioning new debates about the legitimacy and limits of defiant discourse.
The person who has been most widely recognized as a relentless parrhesiastic figure in Israeli political life was the late natural science professor, philosopher, and public intellectual, Professor Yeshayahu Leibovitz (1903-1994) of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.6 A strictly observant Orthodox Jew, Prof. Leibovitz was known for his ongoing (if unsuccessful) campaign for the separation between religion and the state. He was furthermore widely recognized as a vocal critic of Israel’s military actions, and his moral critique became increasingly harsh and persistent following Israel’s occupation of
Palestinian territories after the 1967 War, which has since been further amplified in the research literature (e.g., Azoulay Sc Ophir, 2008; Barda, 2012; Gordon, N., 2008; Sfard, 2018; Weizman, 2007). His struggle against the occupation included support of conscientious objection as a form of civil disobedience, and he became legendary or notorious - depending on point of view - for his provocative statements concerning the moral and social implications of perpetuating Israel’s occupation regime. For example, addressing Israel’s future as an occupying force, he said (Leibovitz, 1995):
A state ruling a hostile population of 1.5 to 2 million foreigners would necessarily become a secret-police state, with all that this implies for education, free speech and democratic institutions. The corruption characteristic of every colonial regime would also prevail in the State of Israel. The administration would suppress Arab insurgency on the one hand and acquire Arab Quislings on the other. There is also good reason to fear that the Israel Defense Forces, which has been until now a people’s army, would, as a result of being transformed into an army of occupation, degenerate, and its commanders, who will have become military governors, resemble their colleagues in other nations.
(pp. 226-227)
I have often heard this dark prediction by Leibovitz cited by anti-occupation activists, who considered it right on target. Although Leibovitz’s assertion that 500 conscientious objectors would bring an end to the occupation regime was not borne out, his voice still rings loud within the Israeli anti-occupation movement as a prophetic voice of a parrhesiastes who foresaw the social and political processes that are shaping contemporary realities and warned against them insistently and fearlessly. His words are invoked among anti-occupation activists time and time again in both formal speeches and casual conversations, often accompanied by a “Leibovitz was right” tag. His sharp predictions and principled judgments seem to have provided a language for contemporary activists’ view that the occupation is disastrous not only for Palestinian society but also for Israeli society. This position is summarily captured in a dictum that has become the hallmark of the anti-occupation movement - “the occupation corrupts” (hakibush mashhit). Thus, although long deceased, Leibovitz remains a galvanizing figure for the anti-occupation movement through his writings and teachings. Since 2009, he has been commemorated through an annual prize awarded in his memory by the draft resisters’ organization Yesh Gvul [literally, there’s a limit] to one or two activists for their “meaningful public contribution in the public sphere in areas of interest to Yeshiyahu Leibovitz, like the struggle against the occupation, separation of religion and the state, and so on.”7 This award is, inter alia, an annual reminder of the 1993 scandal that followed Leibovitz’s selection for the Israel Prize, the highest intellectual achievement award granted by the State of Israel. His active support of draft resistance and his general status as the country’s top parrhesiastic figure triggered a controversy around his nomination, and he renounced the award after receiving it. He remains to this day a source of inspiration as an indefatigable parrhesiastes, a defiant speaker who never hesitated to speak truth to power, and is remembered by many both for his iconoclastic thought and for his provocative speaking style.8
In the contemporary Israeli public sphere, the parrhesiastic role in the controversy surrounding the scene of occupation (see below) is played by particular media outlets, chief among them the elite daily, Haaretz. Unlike most other Israeli mainstream media, this veteran daily newspaper, whose cultural and political influence far exceeds its readership, provides a platform for both news coverage and opinion pieces that put the issue of the occupation of the Palestinian territories at center stage. It also regularly carries articles by two journalists and authors, Amira Hass and Gideon Levy, who are widely recognized for their documentation of Israel’s human rights violations in the Palestinian territories and for their insistent anti-occupation journalistic advocacy. Other trenchant coverage of these issues can be found in less-known alternative journalism outlets like the online journal Siha Mekomit (translatable as Local Call or Local Conversation) and its English version +972 Magazine (named after Israel’s international telephone code),9 and the online initiative Occupation Magazine,10 whose mission is to disseminate information related to the occupation and the controversies surrounding it. Visual documentation has also been central to the anti-occupation campaign and has been cultivated in the form of photography, notably by the organization Active Stills,n alternative video production on Social TV,12 and documentary filmmaking by independent filmmakers as well as by the activist organization Just Vision, whose focus is on joint Palestinian-Israeli nonviolent struggles and the people behind them. All of these have provided platforms through which highly disturbing images of occupation practices have been documented and circulated (but also glimpses of hope in recording defiant people-to-people projects). Whether they operate as part of the mainstream journalistic scene, or as part of an alternative journalistic or artistic one, these various parrhesiastic endeavors constitute the wider background against which the discourse-centered anti-occupation initiatives discussed in the following chapters operate.
All these parrhesiastic figures, whether individual or institutional, operate in a highly contentious and hostile ideological environment when expressing their anti-occupation stances. In Israel’s increasingly nationalist public climate, the witnessing campaigns promoted by investigative journalists, documentary filmmakers, and civil society groups in the occupied Palestinian territories are either ignored or increasingly considered an outrage. Activists’ insistence on exposing social arenas and social realities that mainstream Israeli society would rather suppress is considered an irritation at best and treachery at worst. The daily Haaretz, whose readership consists of the better-educated, more liberal, and more affluent sections of Israeli society, is often presented by its political opponents as the Palestinians’ mouthpiece. The alternative journalism ventures mentioned earlier rarely reach beyond a small fraction of Haaretz-type readership, performing their political and journalistic work despite their highly marginalized position in the marketplace of ideas in Israel. It is only when central figures in the Israeli elite, particularly those associated with the military establishment, speak out about the dire consequences of the ongoing occupation regime that the boat is slightly rocked. This was, for example, the case in the spring of 2016, on the eve of Holocaust Commemoration Day, when one sentence in the speech of then deputy Chief-of-Staff (and currently member of the Israeli Parliament), General Yair Golan, which was delivered at a central commemorative ceremony, turned the speech into a public scandal. Coming from a well-decorated and highly regarded general, known for his concern for the state’s moral and democratic legacy, his words sounded a warning. He said:
If there is one thing that is scary in remembering the Holocaust, it is noticing horrific processes which developed in Europe - particularly in Germany - 70, 80, and 90 years ago, and finding traces of those here [in Israel] among us in the year 2016.14
Following the public storm created by what was heard as a comparison between the Israeli present and the Nazi past, which marked him as a hateful leftist (just as similar, even more explicit, comparisons had marked Prof. Leibovitz as an extreme leftist years before), Golan retracted his words and claimed he had not meant to make such a comparison, admitting to having made a mistake in choosing the wording he did. Two years later, however, when time came to select a new Chief-of-Staff, and his candidacy was put forward as is common with the person holding the position of deputy Chief-of-Staff, a letter signed by some hundred bereaved parents of fallen soldiers demanded that the Minister of Defense disqualify Golan’s candidacy on account of the aforementioned speech. This demand was rejected, but Golan was not chosen for the position, and has joined a Left-leaning party.
In fact, there was nothing new about the social diagnosis Golan offered with respect to the anti-liberal currents that have become dominant in Israeli society in recent years, and even explicit comparisons between Israel and the fascist era in Europe of the 1930s had already been drawn by other commentators in various public forums before the occasion of his speech, and were widely circulated in both mainstream and, of course, social media. It was obviously Golan’s positioning as a core member of the military establishment that rendered his provocative comment particularly offensive. He could not be as easily marginalized or criminalized - the two most common strategies employed by power-holders against counter-hegemonic challenges. While hailed as a parrhesiastes by some, and sanctioned by others, Golan actually rejected this role, explicitly saying that he did not seek to critique the country’s leadership or the Israeli public. Yet his half-apology (called “clarification”) was not fully accepted, and he was not quite able to throw off the socially problematic tag of a leftist. In fact, his defensive claim that he had not been aware that his comments would be heard as controversial exposed the degree to which he was out of touch with popular sentiment. The role of the parrhesiastes was nevertheless pinned onto him, with the cultural scenario of defiant discourse reinterpreted in derogatory terms as a provocative and offensive gesture, a claim to a high moral ground by someone who is part of the establishment yet places himself in unseemly opposition to it. As this incident indicates, the parrhesiastes role is not always clear-cut, and the issue of self-positioning is central in the expression of dissent as opposition-from-within, a point that will be further elaborated in the next chapter. This role is further problematized by the discursive possibility Foucault refers to as negative parrhesia.
