Between diaspora and Greater Israel

Symbolic meanings of Netanyahu’s Policy

Abstract

The war that started with the massacre on 7 October 2023 and saw Israel fighting on many fronts, from Gaza to southern Lebanon has been a constant story in the news for over a year. Everything has been said, geopolitically and emotionally.  If, however, we wanted to move on to the deep level of collective imaginaries, a factor that remains fundamental in every war and every type of conflict, a central question arises: what does Israel really propose? What does it intend to achieve in terms of symbolism and identity? What is really at stake seems to be the annexation of the West Bank and, therefore, the construction of Greater Israel. Looking at the question from the point of view of the sociology of imaginaries, it is perhaps possible to go deeper into the actions and reveal their symbolic and identity-based purpose. The construction of Greater Israel implies the annihilation of Jewish diasporic identity, that is, of the millennial Jewish constitutive structure. But is this really the case? Or is Greater Israel in danger of becoming another immense ghetto within the global diaspora?