SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: Avigail Abarbanel - important insights into Israeli society and why many Israelis are turning their back on the country.

https://x.com/MaryKostakidis/status/2022615772678492666

*** Must Read Avigail Abarbanel - important insights into Israeli society and why many Israelis are turning their back on the country.

‘What’s happening now isn’t a crisis or a deviation from Israel’s path. It is the reality that is finally emerging from beneath the cosmopolitan ‘Western’ façade Israel has cultivated for decades.. But beneath that surface performance, the real Israel—the one I grew up in during the 1970s and 80s and that the Palestinians have continuously experienced—was always there: insular, suspicious, militant, ultimately uninterested in genuine mutuality with the world outside of it… In addition to the unsavoury prospect of living permanently in a state of war, I also experienced a constant rumble of unease from the threat of a religious takeover. As a result of the historical ‘Status Quo’ agreement the Israeli Rabbinate had a stranglehold over lifecycle events—marriages, divorces, deaths, burials. No matter what you believed, if you wanted to marry in Israel or bury a family member, there was only one way to do it: the religious way. In my time civil marriages were not considered legal in Israel. If a couple wanted to marry in a civil ceremony they’d usually take the short trip to Cyprus and marry there. Israel counted these couples for statistics, but they were not considered married. This wikipedia page makes an interesting reading on the topic of civil marriages in Israel. The vast majority marry in a religious ceremony because of concern for the status of their children and because it’s much less hassle… 'Jewish Family Law prohibits any physical contact between husband and wife during menstruation, and for seven days after bleeding ends. The woman is required to check herself with white cotton swabs for seven days after the period. If even a tiny speck of blood is found, all physical contact remains forbidden. During this time, couples sleep in separate beds, cannot hand things to each other, cannot even sit together on a sofa in case proximity triggers sexual desire. After the seven ‘clean’ days, the woman goes to the mikveh to perform the ritual bathing so that she is once again ready for sexual contact with her husband… Those who worry about religious states like Iran must recognise that Israel is already making heavy concessions to religious law, and that the general movement is for Israel to be governed by Jewish Halacha, not by democratic principles of inclusiveness and equality. On the inside Israel does not look the same as it does from the outside.. 'Pappé reports that more than half a million Israelis have left the country since October 2023. These are overwhelmingly the educated, secular ‘State of Israel’ cohort—the very people who built the high-tech economy, who paid 80% of the taxes, who believed in liberal democratic values even whilst supporting the apartheid system imposed on Palestinians. They’re leaving not because they support the Palestinians. They realise that unless they adopt religious life, there is no place for them in the State of Judea.. 'Here’s what the world needs to understand: the State of Judea’s expansionism isn’t strategic overreach. It’s theological requirement. The complete eradication of Palestinians from historic Palestine isn’t policy; it’s divine commandment as they understand it. The Third Temple cannot be built whilst Palestinians remain. The Biblical kingdom cannot be restored whilst ‘foreign’ populations occupy the land.. 'The international community enabled this. Every arms deal, every UN veto, every ‘Israel has a right to defend itself’, whilst systematically empowering religious extremists who believe they have a divine mandate to cleanse the land. The world treated Israel as though it were a rational state actor pursuing security interests. It isn’t. It never was. The ‘State of Judea’ is a theocratic cult pursuing apocalyptic aims.’ avigail.substack.com/p/settler-colo

9:15 PM · Feb 14, 2026