In a new book, a genocide scholar examines the transformation of Zionism in Israel

In asserting its historical and moral right to exist, the State of Israel declared itself into being in 1948 with a remarkable document, popularly referred to in the country as its “Independence Scroll,” promising equal rights and dignity to all its citizens, including those it called “the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel.” Had a constitution in its spirit followed, it could have become the basis of a state formed on liberal and democratic principles. That, of course, never happened. No constitution was ever agreed on, and the legal standing of the Declaration is at best disputed. Even as different versions of it were being frantically drafted and then finalised by the first leader of the state, David Ben-Gurion, Jewish militias – and later the IDF – were engaged in turning the land’s Palestinian majority into a minority through intimidation and violent expulsion.

Zionism instead became Israel’s guiding ideology, under the ambivalent definition provided by the Declaration of Independence. The new political entity, it announced, would be “a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel,” which would nonetheless “ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its citizens irrespective of religion, race or sex” – a promise, as far as Palestinian citizens...

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