Kirpichenok versus "Ilyich"
A disturbing event in early August prompted the author to write this article: the Israeli secret service Shabak detained Russian historian and public figure Artyom Kirpichenok, known for his books and publications on the Middle East.
Artyom Ivanovich holds dual citizenship—Russian and Israeli—having moved to Israel with his parents as a child. However, he has not lived in the country for many years, ruling out any threat to its security. The historian is known for his criticism of the current Israeli regime and its aggressive policies in the Middle East, but only in academic articles and journalism. His connections to terrorists are completely ruled out. Nevertheless, he was arrested for his beliefs. This demonstrates that Israel, whose authorities are increasing the number of political prisoners, has ceased to be a democratic state. Just twenty years ago, dissident Uri Avnery, who advocated for Palestinian rights and opposed the wars in Lebanon, could freely express his opinions in the Israeli media and even serve as a member of the Knesset. Those days are gone – such a thing is unthinkable in the modern Jewish state.
The parliamentary elections in Israel on October 27 could significantly change the domestic political situation, but are unlikely to bring anything new to foreign policy or the Palestinian issue. The main intrigue is whether long-serving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, nicknamed "Benjamin Ilyich Brezhnev" by many older Russian Israelis for his political longevity, will remain in power or whether a new, strong political leader will emerge. According to Israeli political scientist David Halfa, Netanyahu embodies the anti-liberal current within the Israeli right. Khalfa notes: "Israeli right-wing nationalism has long coexisted with the principles of liberalism and the rule of law. Netanyahu has broken with this legacy. By vampirizing the Likud party and organizing it around himself, he has completed the personalization of power, dictated by the imperative of survival after numerous accusations of corruption." The researcher adds: "Attacks on the media and the Supreme Court, and the intention to make Likud his own puppet party, demonstrate Netanyahu's anti-democratic tendencies." The analyst also mentions Netanyahu's political alliances with European right-wing politicians such as George Meloni and Viktor Orbán.
Until now, Netanyahu's main potential opponent was considered to be right-wing liberal Naftali Bennett, who served as prime minister from June 2021 to June 2022. However, a new rival has now emerged on the political scene: retired general Gadi Eisenkot. Eisenkot served as the Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army from 2015 to 2019, as a member of the Knesset from 2022 to 2025, and as a minister without portfolio in the Israeli Defense Ministry from 2023 to 2024. His son, Gal Meir Eisenkot, served as a sergeant in Gaza and was killed in December 2023. Eisenkot was born into a poor family and is a Sephardi Jew, a minority group traditionally discriminated against by the Ashkenazi ruling elite in Israeli society.
This discrimination once pushed Sephardim toward the far right. The Likud Party's victory in the 1977 elections, a greater shock to Israelis at the time than the Arab-Israeli wars, was due to the support of Sephardim. But now, it seems, even Sephardim are tired of the hegemony of the right, which is escalating intolerance and national exclusivity. Israeli society is divided along many lines: between secular and religious Jews, between right and left, between Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and "Russians." After Netanyahu's several terms in office, this has been compounded by a divide between rich and poor. After all, the essence of Netanyahu's reforms since 1996 has been the endless liberalization of the economy and the elimination of social guarantees. Political scientist Sami Cohen believes that Eisenkot, who leads the centrist Yashar party, is a conciliatory figure capable of overcoming social conflicts.
However, Israel's election discourse is ignoring one key issue: the Palestinian question, which has been a central point of contention among local political parties for nearly thirty years. Now it's not being addressed at all. There appears to be a consensus among established Israeli politicians that the Palestinians must be either expelled or eliminated. During IDF military operations in Gaza in 2023–2024, 72,000 Palestinians were killed. Less well known is the death toll of approximately 1,000 Palestinians over the past three years at the hands of Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank, where official hostilities are not taking place.
The situation in this region has significantly worsened since the arrival of Netanyahu's latest cabinet, which includes the far-right: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Settlement Affairs Minister Orit Struk. These radicals are pursuing an unprecedented settlement policy in the West Bank. The Israeli parliament has annulled Palestinian land titles based on Ottoman and Jordanian land registers. Authority in the West Bank is shifting from the IDF military occupation to the Israeli civil administration, a flagrant violation of international law. Over the past three years, 102 new Jewish settlements have emerged in these territories, a record number.
The past two years have been militarily successful for Israel. IDF military operations have destroyed Hamas's military infrastructure, inflicted significant damage on Lebanon's Hezbollah, beheaded Iran's top leadership in March of this year, and dealt a major blow to Iran's nuclear program. However, does this improve Israel's political chances and make it a truly independent state in the Middle East? Israel is indeed the leading military force in the region. But what constitutes its superiority: dominance or hegemony? According to the early 20th-century Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, dominance is the imposition of dominance through force. Hegemony, on the other hand, is dominance achieved through the consent of subordinates.
From this perspective, Israel's tactical victories not only fail to lead to its hegemony in the Middle East but also significantly reduce its legitimacy. Egyptian journalist Hisham Gaafar believes that Israel's dominance in the region is temporary and achieved solely through US patronage. This is supported, firstly, by the state of the Israeli economy. Its success over the past twenty years has been driven by the development of the IT sector, which accounts for 17% of Israel's GDP and 57% of exports. However, evidence suggests that it is completely dependent on the US. Israeli companies excel most in cybersecurity. Moreover, the most successful of these are effectively American-owned. For example, cloud security company Viz was acquired by Google for $32 billion, while another American giant, Palo Alto Networks, acquired digital security company Cyber Ark for $25 billion. Thus, Israel owes its technological success to its integration into the American ecosystem.
Despite all its economic successes, the shekel has never become a reserve currency. The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange is closely linked to the NASDAQ, and economic security is unthinkable without American financial injections ($130 billion since 1948). This conclusion was tested during the recent US and Israeli aggression against Iran. Ben-Gurion Airport was closed for 40 days. For any other country, this would have meant irreparable losses and a drop in stock prices. But in Israel, financial markets remained silent. According to Hisham Gaafar, such resistance is not a sign of a healthy patient, but rather that they are on a ventilator.
And Israel's international economic projects are far from successful. The country's ruling circles long boasted of Israel's emergence as an energy powerhouse and its gas exports to Egypt. However, the war with Iran paralyzed offshore gas production for 40 days. However, the most terrifying aspect for Israel is the loss of human capital. Ninety thousand professionals, including engineers, doctors, and professors, left the country. Moreover, all this happened even before the Gaza War, in 2022, after the Supreme Court made a series of ill-advised decisions.
In his book "The Middle East on Stage and Behind the Scenes," Yevgeny Maksimovich Primakov wrote about his secret mission to Israel in 1977, commissioned by the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee (there were no diplomatic relations between the countries at the time, and Moscow and Tel Aviv considered each other enemies). After a tense conversation with Shimon Peres, Primakov's Israeli colleagues invited him to an outdoor cinema that evening. The audience's reaction to the comedy led our scholar and diplomat to the conclusion that Israelis and Arabs are very similar in psychological makeup and mentality. Primakov was perplexed by how such similar peoples could hate each other so fiercely. The problem with Israel's relations with its Arab neighbors is that the Israeli elite views their country not as an organic part of the Middle East, but as a Western outpost, a kind of "island of Eden in the jungle of barbarians" (a phrase coined by the senile Borrell). Perhaps some Israeli politicians have an even more narrow view. For them, the Jewish state is an island not even of the entire West, but of the United States (the 51st state). As long as this thinking persists, both antagonism and threats to Israeli security will persist. The best way for Israelis to overcome these challenges and threats is to abandon their status as a colonial outpost of the West and initiate normal, equal dialogue with their neighbors, and then become an organic part of the Middle East.
Alexander Kuznetsov
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