CHAPTER FOUR LIBERAL PRETENCE OF A JEWISH STATE Unless one counts the centuries-long, largely unrecorded, and dispersed resistance of the vanished native people against white settler colonialism in the Americas, no liberation movement in modern times has encountered an adversary like the one the Palestinians have faced. Israel obviously shares many similarities with South Africa and may in time come to resemble the apartheid state more than most liberal Zionists suspect. …. A colonialism committed to replacing the native people, it is racist and extremist by nature. Yet, a product of the Western metropolis, constituted mostly of the dispossessed, of dissidents and the persecuted, it is often liberal in ideology and humane in rhetoric (Ahmad 2006, 302–303).1 Of the three common and generally state-centric conceptions of citizenship – namely, liberal, republican and ethno-nationalist – it is the liberalindividualist version which, when applied to Israel, gives the impression of being most inclusive. It appears to protect and prioritize the rights of all members of Israeli society, even in the absence of any active engagement with the state, such as in the form of military service.2 The liberal variant of Zionist thought, or liberal-Zionism, was initially a principal trend within the Zionist movement. Not affiliated with any single political group in Israel, liberal-Zionism (in its various forms) maintains a key presence in contemporary Israeli politics, particularly in the face of its Western adherents, and translates into an acknowledgment of greater rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel and the need for Palestinian statehood, among other points. However, constant reference to dreamy liberaldemocratic concepts of representation, participation, universal equality, non-discrimination, accountability, transparency, rule of law and human rights, along with a barrage of freedoms including opinion, belief, debate and association, is nevertheless paired with practices and policies of ethnic homogeneity, brutal occupation, military invasions, socio-economic 1 This quote is also pointed to in Dan Freeman-Maloy’s (2011) critical reading of liberal-Zionist politics. 2 See Chapter Two, footnote 39 on recently proposed changes regarding the drafting of Arab citizens in the Israeli army.