“WE ARE A TRADITIONAL PEOPLE”: The Zionist (Counter-)Revolution Of National Conservative Populism

In the aftermath of the 1967 war, the left–right distinction was based on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict – dovish versus hawkish positions. However, over the last decade there has been a gradual transformation resulting in a new classification: liberal versus conservative. The conservative side, representing the national camp, narrates itself as a Zionist counter-revolution against the constitutional revolution supposedly led by the Supreme Court since the 1992 Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom was legislated. All currents of the Israeli right – the ultraorthodox, the settlers, the “anti-infiltrators”, the traditionalists and nationalists – identify with the national-conservative camp. Yet, none of these currents, this chapter argues, is conservative in a classic way; if anything, they are all revolutionaries. The dilemma of the neoconservatives was the following: how to disentangle the national-liberal Israeli right wing from its political liberalism, and to constitute liberalism as the enemy of the national camp? Changing Jewishness back from a national to a religious approach, and cementing the camp against the Supreme Court were two main vehicles. This amounts to rolling back the (national) Zionist revolution and leading a constitutional coup d’état. Its consequences for Israeli democracy are still in the balance.