Humanities Honors Program

The moral dissonance of accepting the violation of moral standards in pursuit of religious ends must be accepted as a premise of Israeli geopolitical affairs. However, the devices by which Israel continues to both physically and ideologically expand reveals a logic of domination that extends far beyond the mere realization of religious ideals. Zionism can be read as an attempt to overcome the chronic impotence and diasporic condition Friedrich Nietzsche associates with priestly ressentiment by transforming a historically persecuted people into a sovereign political power. However, the persistence of moral narratives grounded in existential victimhood suggests that state power does not automatically dissolve reactive value-structures. The case of Israel complicates Nietzsche’s master/slave morality dichotomy by demonstrating how modern nationalism can fuse sovereign force with priestly moral legitimation. Using Nietzsche’s Genealogy and some aphorisms from Beyond Good and Evil as a guide, this paper examines how the Zionist State is ultimately the culmination of a priestly will to power and considers how moral systems counterintuitively sustain Israel’s immoral conduct in Palestine and other regions.