Israel’s religious-secular binary functions as a self-purifying rhetoric that masks racial exclusion
Evidence
What I am arguing here directly contradicts the “commonsensical” view of Israeli sociopolitics on matters that are usually called “religion and politics” in Israel. Instead, I see the reliance on a narrow, “religious” reading of Jewish identity as inherent to the intellectual/ideological and political history of Zionism and the State of Israel. The binary distinction between the religious and the secular is used as a self-purifying mechanism that allows the state to proclaim its liberal and democratic self-image and explain the politics it practices, while in effect relying essentially on mechanisms of distinction, inclusion, and exclusion that are, at root, racial. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 708
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Secular imperial ideology racialized civilization in ways that excluded Jews — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 135; Israel functions as a racial state in denial built as state plus shadow state; Israel’s premise of singular Jewish being reenacts the exclusionary logic Jews fled — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 701 (+5 more)
Broader Connections
- Israel functions as a racial state in denial built as state plus shadow state
#expands(0.78) - Secular imperial ideology racialized civilization in ways that excluded Jews
#corroborates(0.75) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 135 - Zionism reframed equality as the right to discriminate
#expands(0.75) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 979 - Israel’s premise of singular Jewish being reenacts the exclusionary logic Jews fled
#exemplifies(0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 701