I emailed Tony Judt to tell him how Dershowitz had characterized his position re Israel. Judt responded:
“It is a lie, and implicitly defamatory (a dissolver of Israel is an anti-Zionist is an anti-semite, etc…). From Dershowitz one expects no better. But thanks to Leon [Wieseltier] it is the received reading of my text. What I actually said was that Israel cannot remain an exclusively Jewish state while aspiring to be a democracy and must, if it is to survive, become the state of all its citizens.”
In all fairness, some aspects of Israel have been changing to become more open to its non-Jewish citizens, such as the first Arab cabinet minister. This topic is attached to a lot of emotional baggage and thus can't be discussed. In a way, it is more a matter for Israeli citizens and Jews to deal with. Outsiders can't tell others how to live when they are not severely encroaching on the freedoms of others. Thus I draw the line at criticizing the occupation and I push for a resolution but let the parties involved pick the resolution which at the moment is the two state solution. I do realize that there are likely going to be continued problems with the two-state solution, but I see just as many problems with a one-state solution. The issue comes down to a resource competition (mostly for land, and water) between groups who view themselves as completely distinct and not capable of mixing. If they could view themselves as partners who need to cooperate in the pursuit for shared/common goals, then I could see things working out. Maybe a one-state solution would force them to cooperate, but I could just as easily see it turning into a faction-based political gridlock because of the distinct economic and ethnic differences and because of the near parity in ethnic demographics.
I caught Niall Ferguson on the telly the other day talking about his new book and how there is always an upswing in conflict (particularly ethnic conflict) in areas at the fringes of an empire when its influence is in decline.
BTW Glenn Greenwald has a great piece on "The Meaning of Marty Peretz" today.
The parallel that I suggest you bear in mind is the ultra-Orthodox rhetoric that refers to the departure of large numbers of Jews from halachah as "spiritual genocide".
I do not mean that ultra-Orthodox are "behind zionism" – I simply mean that the mode of rhetoric has rubbed off from the ultra-Orthodox onto the zionists, many of the most aggressive of whom present themselves as religious in their own terms (Kahane, the Kooks, and Chabad).
I should clarify that Niall didn't say that the American Empire is in overall decline, but that its situation in the Middle East may end up being similar to the British Empire's losses in North American in the late 1700s. The American Empire is capable of recovering from such setbacks, although its current reliance of debt financing and its collective attention deficit disorder remain significant liabilities going forward.
The idea of "ethnic nationalism" and its sister concept of the "right to self determination" make it difficult to argue against having a Jewish ethnic homeland from within the prevailing ideological framework of international human rights. One needs to establish a way of confronting the issue such that the benefits of a binational solution clearly outweigh the alternatives.
The only major benefit I can imagine would be a significant improvement in the long-term stability of the region — because the competition between Middle East states would no longer be seen through the prism of religious competition, but between various multiethnic states with emotionally tempering transnational ties between their respective populations. But, as it is probably obvious, regional stability may not be in the interests of the major players as it reduces regional arms sales as well the ability of the major players to wield influence.
Leaving aside Judt's critique of the Jewish state as an anachronism, his suggestion that a single, bi-national state would somehow be easier to achieve than a two state solution is the product of magical thinking. It is a foreign policy fantasy that belongs in a Walt Disney movie or a little child's game.
Now, he is certainly right that it MAY be too late for a two-state solution. But his analysis of why this will be MORE difficult than a bi-national state is not based on anything that resembles reality.
For one thing, he exaggerates the (admittedly considerable) ability of Israeli settlers to sabotage a withdrawal from the occupied territories
He writes:
"There are too many settlements, too many Jewish settlers, and too many Palestinians, and they all live together, albeit separated by barbed wire and pass laws. Whatever the "road map" says, the real map is the one on the ground, and that, as Israelis say, reflects facts. It may be that over a quarter of a million heavily armed and subsidized Jewish settlers would leave Arab Palestine voluntarily; but no one I know believes it will happen. Many of those settlers will die�and kill� rather than move. The last Israeli politician to shoot Jews in pursuit of state policy was David Ben-Gurion, who forcibly disarmed Begin's illegal Irgun militia in 1948 and integrated it into the new Israel Defense Forces. Ariel Sharon is not Ben-Gurion."
That is his main argument in favor of the impracticality of two states. Now, Judt is correct that a quarter of a million settlers are "heavily subsidized." But if they are "heavily armed," that does not mean that more than a tiny minority would violently resist withdrawal. I don't remember the precise percentage of settlers who have told pollsters they would willingly leave right now if they got monetary compensation, but it is not insubstantial. And a majority would clearly leave willingly in the context of a comprehensive diplomatic settlement.
Yes, there will be a minority of hard core of militant resisters, and it will be extraordinarily difficult test of Israel's political and military system to get them out of there. But the Gaza withdrawal was implemented with minimal violence; it was a sign of what is possible.
For the two-state solution to endure, much of the "security barrier," as it currently stands, will need to come down. There are a host of daunting challenges. Are there big odds against any of this happening? Yes. But it is not beyond the realm of the possible. Compare its likelihood with what Judt admits would be required to establish a binational state:
"A binational state in the Middle East would require a brave and relentlessly engaged American leadership. The security of Jews and Arabs alike would need to be guaranteed by international force�though a legitimately constituted binational state would find it much easier policing militants of all kinds inside its borders than when they are free to infiltrate them from outside and can appeal to an angry, excluded constituency on both sides of the border.
"A binational state in the Middle East would require the emergence, among Jews and Arabs alike, of a new political class. The very idea is an unpromising mix of realism and utopia, hardly an auspicious place to begin. But the alternatives are far, far worse."
Perhaps, in his Walt Disney movie, it is better and more realistic to wait around for this "new class to emerge," and for an international force willing to insert itself into what would be a cauldron of ethnic resentment, and for Israeli Jews to renounce their entire national mythos and accept minority status, and for some kind of stable multi-ethnic democratic system to emerge in a region that doesn't exactly have a good track record for such systems…
But in the real Middle East, this idea is actually a cruel diversion.
tough dove, wrote "Now, he is certainly right that it MAY be too late for a two-state solution."
The way to avoid the human rights ideological framework's support of "ethnic nationalism" and the "right of self-determination" is to use the powerful but rather blunt argument of "apartheid." I'm obviously a bit off today.
Everyone one is aware of the power of this line of reasoning and the way it undermines any arguments put forth by Israel, the dominant party. An apartheid-based resolution would involve mounting international pressure on the Israelis for the creation of a binational solution, but ultimately the decision will or will not be made by the Israeli leadership. Even after the emergence of Mandela's peaceful leadership in South Africa, a resolution didn't come about until De Klerk was able to acknowledge and accept the end of the apartheid era — and that happened in part because of the United State's reluctant imposition of sanctions. With South Africa it was a slow world-wide multi-generational debate about what to do — the academic proto-boycotts of South Africa date to the late 1950s.
Was a two-state solution ever truly possible in South Africa? I know that they tried the bantustan solution, but it was obviously a sham designed solely to benefit the dominant whites.
I can't help but emphasize with the situation Jewish Israelis could find themselves in. A slow descend into a binational solution will be demoralizing in the extreme given how much effort has gone into the project.
A bi-national state is supported by everyone who either doesn't have to live in it or who thinks that somehow it will ultimately lead to a larger uni-national state.
Judt wrote:
" Or else Israel can keep control of the Occupied Territories but get rid of the overwhelming majority of the Arab population: either by forcible expulsion or else by starving them of land and livelihood, leaving them no option but to go into exile. In this way Israel could indeed remain both Jewish and at least formally democratic: but at the cost of becoming the first modern democracy to conduct full-scale ethnic cleansing as a state project, something which would condemn Israel forever to the status of an outlaw state, an international pariah.
"Anyone who supposes that this third option is unthinkable above all for a Jewish state has not been watching the steady accretion of settlements and land seizures in the West Bank over the past quarter-century, or listening to generals and politicians on the Israeli right, some of them currently in government. The middle ground of Israeli politics today is occupied by the Likud. Its major component is the late Menachem Begin's Herut Party. Herut is the successor to Vladimir Jabotinsky's interwar Revisionist Zionists, whose uncompromising indifference to legal and territorial niceties once attracted from left-leaning Zionists the epithet "fascist." When one hears Israel's deputy prime minister, Ehud Olmert, proudly insist that his country has not excluded the option of assassinating the elected president of the Palestinian Authority, it is clear that the label fits better than ever. Political murder is what fascists do."
***
Unfortunately, this is what the whole Israeli and Diaspora Zionist Establishment are going for. Avigdor Lieberman's ascendance is no accident. Here is a blatant racist, a settler from Moldova, who has been promoted to Deputy Prime Minister in an Israeli Government coalition that includes the Labor Party. He is responsible for dealing with "Strategic Threats". What are his qualifications? He was a disco bouncer!!!
Whether it will be Lieberman or someone else who will enforce this policy doesn't matter. There are plenty nationalist racists, religious or secular in Israel, who would do this right now if they had the green light from the Zionist leadership.
I don't see any meaningful counterforce to those plans. Israel becoming an "international pariah" has never been part of the equation for the Zionist Establishment, and if anyone has any doubt, you are more than welcome to review all the UN Security Council Resolutions (which are legally binding) condemning Israel's policies of the last 60 years and their zero effect. In fact, Israel has been condemned (and has defied) more UN Resolutions in UN history than all other countries combined!
So while someone like Lieberman, whose views just a few years ago were supposedly too extremist to be taken seriously, leaves the wilderness of the "fringe" and becomes Deputy Prime Minister and someone who can meet the Clintons and Rice in the US without a single eyebrow being raised, we are sitting here discussing the merits of the one-state solution.
Heaven help us all…
Seth wrote "A bi-national state is supported by everyone who either doesn't have to live in it or who thinks that somehow it will ultimately lead to a larger uni-national state."
I think the latter fear is common but it is a product of the rhetoric of the current zero-sum conflict. If there was a middle ground solution, the extremist rhetoric and impulses are likely to die down.
The question may become, as I suggested in my last comment, not whether the binational solution is a good solution but whether it is better than any of the alternatives for all parties involved.
The mostly homogenous ethnic organization of modern Europe resulted from mass migration, some of it forced/induced. It is likely, if one can go emotionally cold for a moment, make the argument that the South African whites could have avoided the apartheid-forced unification solution if they had been more historically brutal in driving the non-Whites completely into the neighboring countries or had created more viable/generous bantustans for the original non-white inhabitants.
I wonder what the historical literature on what the South African whites were thinking in the 1980s has to offer and whether there are parallels with the current situation in Israel-Palestine.
I think neither a one state or two state solution would work. In a two state solution, I don't see how the continued regional hegemony would stop, given America's desire to project its power by not reigning in on its rabid pit bull (while encouraging its rabid behavior). A one state solution would likely not work also because the euro-ethnocentric caste system will never go away, with divisions along skin color even among the jews. There could always be an democratic facade, but laws could easily be passed(and are currently being passed) that don't specify discrimination, but has the effect of oppressing whichever group they desire.
A better solution would be to relocate the state of israel to where it unofficially is already, that is the united states. A reason for middle east hegemony would be eliminated (we will still want to suck dry their oil though). The option of providing a state within a state would be beneficial since we won't have a complete brain drain if the elites wants to repatriate to their homeland, since now they could coexist in both places that is not half a world apart. If we had given them some deserted land in texas, it would have become silicon valley, seattle & redmond all in one. Plus it would have become twice the size of texas, with a good possiblity of slurping up half of mexico.
wild man wrote: "In a two state solution, I don't see how the continued regional hegemony would stop, given America's desire to project its power by not reigning in on its rabid pit bull (while encouraging its rabid behavior)."
While United States regional hegemony in the Middle East is an issue, I don't think it should be a major consideration in picking which solution is appropriate for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There will always be regional actors, and often they will attain hegemonic status. The issue is already too complex to try to find a solution that also addresses your need to mitigate the United States' regional ambitions. If Israel didn't exist, the US would find other client state to empower.
wild man wrote: "A one state solution would likely not work also because the euro-ethnocentric caste system will never go away, with divisions along skin color even among the jews."
Israel has disparities between ethnicities in terms of success and political roles, even within the various Jewish ethnicities. But this is the way it is everywhere on earth. Ask the blacks and latinos in the United States. Ask Canada's non-white minorities. Ask the Muslim immigrants to Europe or even the poor European states in comparison to France and Germany. This isn't a problem that one can really solve perfectly anywhere, thus I do not see it as a valid concern to introduce into this issue. There are many things that states can do to help mitigate these issues, such as a re-distributive tax and social welfare system as well as various types of affirmative action programs.
wild man wrote: "A better solution would be to relocate the state of israel to where it unofficially is already, that is the united states."
A Jewish friend of mine suggested that Israel was put in the wrong place. I never asked him if he was serious. I think that non-Israelis bring this up every once in a while, but I expect that Israelis would completely reject it as it amounts to the "transfer" (AKA ethnic cleansing) of Israeli Jews. If you thought a binational solution was controversial… ha!
I can't believe the hypocrisy of the comments on this thread. USA has gone to great lengths to smash "ethnic nationalism" in all other cases accessible to it, usually bvecause Jewish agitators have demanded they do so in the name of opposing racism.
Just for the novelty of it, you might want to hear a Palestinian voice on the question of what would be good for the Palestinians –
PALESTINIAN RIGHT OF RETURN IS FEASIBLE
Interview with Salman Abu-Sitta
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/archive/archive?ArchiveId=12613
Rowan Berkely wrote "I can't believe the hypocrisy of the comments on this thread. USA has gone to great lengths to smash 'ethnic nationalism' in all other cases accessible to it…"
I think you should state some examples because I see it differently. There is Iraqi Kurdistan which the US tacitly accepted. While it is not a true nation state, it is pretty close to one in many ways. Also the US allowed for the creation of Slovenia, Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, and Bosnia (the ethnic nations which were formerly known as Yugoslavia.)
Although there is logic in opposing ethnic nationalism in areas when one desires regional hegemony. Internal divisions can make it harder for a nation to determine a coherent national interest, opening the door to external influences which can play internal factions against each other. I think the United States doesn't support or oppose ethnic nationalism movements, it just pragmatically acts in what it feels are its best interests.
Rowan Berkeley wrote: "usually because Jewish agitators have demanded they do so in the name of opposing racism."
I haven't seen much evidence of that, thus I can't say that I agree.
Philip wrote quite rightly that it is not possible to be an anti-Zionist and be acceptable in the mainstream.
Taking a cue of Luntz and Lakoff, I would suggest that the term "anti-Zionist" itself is the problem more than the specific position that Judt was advocating. The term "anti-Zionist" suggests opposition to the existance of Israel which suggested that you may want to push the Jews into the sea or that you are anti-Semitic or you simply oppose "ethnic nationalism" or you do not feel the Jews have the "right to self determination." The term anti-Zionism is closely connected to all these negative and counter productive associations and thus the issue with the term is a lot larger than just "Leon."
Because of all the negative connotations, I can't see any reason why one would want to use the term "anti-Zionism" unless you like swimming up stream.
More productive language may be found in the phrase "binational solution" in my opinion. The term "binational solution" which suggests a dual nation for both the original regional inhabitants and the more recent Jewish arrivals, allowing both their respective rights to self-determination and giving both of them a relatively-ethnic state. The binational state shouldn't be framed at all in an anti-Zionist construct but rather as the best stable long-term solution that deals with the difficult "apartheid"-like situation from a human rights perspective of compassion. ("Apartheid" is also a key frame that I discussed in an earlier post.)
In many ways, these two frames, "apartheid" and "binational solution" are complementary and near perfect in dealing with the more powerful and common counter arguments.
"Because of all the negative connotations, I can't see any reason why one would want to use the term "anti-Zionism" unless you like swimming up stream.
More productive language may be found in the phrase "binational solution" in my opinion."
I agree with the general thought, but how about the officially approved "Two States living side-by-side in peace."?
How about "there'll be pie in the sky when you die"?
(p.s. – memo to self : do not in future make claims that would require access to the lexis-nexis database to substantiate.)
Robert Hume wrote: "I agree with the general thought, but how about the officially approved 'Two States living side-by-side in peace'?"
I wish it the best of luck. If I keep going I'll end up in Atlas Shrugged territory… oh well.
I think that a binational solution would diffuse a lot of the ethnic envy going on, but you could then criticize me as trying to force some false egalitarianism. But some forced egalitarianism, such as redistributed taxes and social welfare are necessary to maintain a stable society. The replacement of a "Jewish state" with a "Jewish Palestinian binational state" will make it harder to envy as an "other" because it will be harder to label it as a simply the selfish project of those foreign Zionists. Instead it will be a partnership, albeit a difficult one, between two people who have both had it pretty rough.
Israel isn't a stable solution in my opinion as long as it continues to grow as a target of envy/hate and is understood as an exclusive project of foreigners who view themselves as distinct/separate than the regional natives. I think that the neoconservatives stated desires to transform the region into a series of democracies was in part an attempt to make the region more hospitable to Israel by (via the theory of free market democracies) furthering economic growth and living standards in Arab/Muslim nations thus reducing the growing disparity between them and Israel and thus reducing the envy/hate. But the social engineering of other nations is a lot more risky that trying to do it to your own nation.
A great book I read on this rough topic area is "World on Fire" by Yale Law professor Amy Chua.
Wild Man wrote: "Plus it would have become twice the size of texas, with a good possiblity of slurping up half of mexico."
hehe
Ben wrote: "I expect that Israelis would completely reject it as it amounts to the "transfer" (AKA ethnic cleansing) of Israeli Jews. If you thought a binational solution was controversial… ha!"
Perhaps, but the "transfer" argument is undermined by the fact that 80% of the inhabitants of Israel today were born elsewhere (I believe). And most of them are still holding on to their citizenship from their earlier "homeland."
I think that the neoconservatives stated desires to transform the region into a series of democracies was in part an attempt to make the region more hospitable to Israel by (via the theory of free market democracies) furthering economic growth and living standards in Arab/Muslim nations thus reducing the growing disparity between them and Israel and thus reducing the envy/hate.
– That is just the Thomas Friedman liberal consumerist spin on it, that isn't an argument a genuine neocon would find meaningful.
David – That seems like an incorrect figure. Please provide us with a citation for that.
The vast majority of Israelis and Jews in the Diaspora seek a two-state solution based on some rough version of the Geneva Accords. What do the vast majority of Palestinians seek?
Ben wrote: "I think that the neoconservatives stated desires to transform the region into a series of democracies was in part an attempt to make the region more hospitable to Israel by (via the theory of free market democracies) furthering economic growth and living standards in Arab/Muslim nations thus reducing the growing disparity between them and Israel and thus reducing the envy/hate."
Ben, I think that before parroting the neo-conservative official narrative one should at least do his homework and read the history of the Middle East in the 20th century. A good start is the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement. Most people don't even know that most of the present borders of the Middle East nations were carved in the British Foreign Office according to the "divide and rule" tactic that created artificial nations with no homogeneity whatsoever, usually favoring a minority group over others to rule effectively (see India as well). The French Mandate regarding Syria is also very instructive.
Either people will start reading or they will continue to be victims of the most ridiculous propaganda. We didn't see and we won't see any "democratization" efforts in Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and the other Gulf Kingdoms simply because it wouldnt serve American interests, it's as simple as that. Democracy is unpredictable, better to do business with reliable puppet regimes, royal families and dictators who wouldn't survive without the West's support and thus keep playing ball.
In fact, Iran is much more democratic than any of the aforementioned countries but since democracy tends to bring anti-Western parties to power, suddenly the narrative changes.
If people can't see the blatant hypocrisy and double standards that are used to manipulate ignorant public opinion in supposedly caring for democracy in Iraq (and now Iran), two countries that also happened to be outside the West's sphere of influence, while at the same time supporting all the other ruthless dictators and royal families who are useful to the West and who among other things also fund the fundamentalists while beheading dissidents (see Saudi Arabia), then we deserve Bush, the neo-conservatives and all those warmongers who keep treating the public as morons.
For an introductory lesson on what motivates the interference of the West in the Middle East, see the overthrow of democratically elected Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 – who wanted to nationalize the oil industry – by the British and US governments to get a clue on what is really at stake here.
Unless anyone would rather believe that had the Middle East exported watermelons instead of oil we would still have been involved there in order to advance Western and humanistic ideals!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosadegh
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes-Picot_Agreement
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria#French_mandate
Rowan Berkeley and Alan rightly called me out on my parroting of some neoconservative propaganda I most likely picked up from reading Thomas Friedman in the 2000 to 2002 time frame. I apologize for displaying such ignorance, but in my defense it wasn't central to the argument I was making with regards to the "binational solution."
I have read about Mossadegh via an article a few years back in the New York Review of Books and am familiar with Iran's current democratic system and Iran's previous significantly more moderate president. I'll read about Syria and the Sykes-Picot agreement now; thanks for the links.
Seth asks:
"The vast majority of Israelis and Jews in the Diaspora seek a two-state solution based on some rough version of the Geneva Accords. What do the vast majority of Palestinians seek?"
I've sent the Jimmy Carter book back to the library, so I have no citation, but it was my distinct impression on reading it that huge majorities of Israeli & Palestinian populations both desired the same thing — to live peacefully side-by-side. There were several polling results in Carter's book.
The Geneva Initiative was well received by both populations, Israeli and Palestinian, and it was an exhaustively negotiated two-state solution.
Seth, why do you mention only Israeli and Diaspora Jews in your question? The Palestinian negotiating team for the Geneva Accords was the equivalent of the Israeli team. What do Diaspora Jews have to do with the Geneva Accords?
Ben,
I apologize for the combative tone of my response. In my defense, I have to say I am becoming increasingly more frustrated by the failure of the mainstream media to serve the citizenry and give the public even the most basic and fundamental facts that would help them understand policy, see beyond propaganda and make some common sense decisions.
Instead, the mainstream media treat almost anything the political establishment says – even the most outlandish claims! – as sincere, even on the gravest decision a country can ever take, to go to war.
Remember when Bill Clinton was almost taken out of office for having an intern give him blowjobs and lying about it? That was serious enough, even though not a single person died! Yet, when Bush's government lies shamelessly to get the country to war, with the consequences being 3.000 soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead and no light at the end of the tunnel, he gets a free pass, because, after all, he has that "vision thing" for the transformation of the Middle East through "democracy"!
I'm glad you weren't put off by the tone of my post and decided instead to do some research and read on the basics of Middle East history and our involvement there. If only more people were willing to do just that before they let their leaders send their sons and daughters to wars…
P.S. Don't even get me started on why exactly the mainstream media is so complicit!
I've been appreciating Ben's pragmatic strategizing. But I can't help thinking that everything depends on how people like Seth respond to Brenda's question: What business is it of the diaspora Jewsish community? The only reason there has not been a resolution between the Palestinians and the Jews of Israel is that the diaspora Jews make one impossible. Their shielding of the Israeli Jews from the consequence of their actions has been catastrophic.
Maybe the most productive thing we can do as Amercans is to just stop the diaspora lobby from interfering.
The vast majority of Israelis and Jews in the Diaspora seek a two-state solution based on some rough version of the Geneva Accords. What do the vast majority of Palestinians seek?
If we only look at the ones in the homeland, a recent poll showing 68% of Israeli Jews in favor of expelling all Palestinian citizens of Israel. Is that part pre-condition to the acceptance of the Geneva Accords?
Remember when Bill Clinton was almost taken out of office for having an intern give him blowjobs and lying about it? That was serious enough, even though not a single person died! Yet, when Bush's government lies shamelessly to get the country to war, with the consequences being 3.000 soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead and no light at the end of the tunnel, he gets a free pass, because, after all, he has that "vision thing" for the transformation of the Middle East through "democracy"!
They got Clinton for something, if not for the genocide in Iraq in which 1.5 million people died.
And why constantly dwell on the 3,000 terrorizers that died in Iraq? Do we constantly dwell on the 19 hijackers?
The essence of Israel's own divide-and-rule strategy was spelled out in a Israeli publication by a certain Oded Yinon in 1982:
http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/articles/article0005345.html
Then one needs to read the original 'Clean Break' proposals, as written for Netanyahu's government by Richard Perle et al, and published in 1996:
http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm
"They got Clinton for something, if not for the genocide in Iraq in which 1.5 million people died."
wild man,
I was being sarcastic. Besides, I wouldn't have any problem or objection to have Clinton removed from office for the devastating effects the sanctions had on the Iraqi people, including the deaths of roughly half a million Iraqi children. I would be all for it.
On Pivotal Documents:
Even more instrumental and relevant to today's situation in the Occupied Territories is the World Zionist Organization's 'Drobbles Plan', a very, very important document which I can't find on the net for some reason, only references to it.
Here is a quick one:
"… When, as President, Carter helped to negotiate the Camp David Accords, the Likud government of then Prime Minster Menachim Begin was in the early stages of implementing an ambitious settlement program in the West Bank. At that point, these were but 50,000 Israeli settlers living in the occupied territories, mostly along the "Green Line" (the 1967 border separating Israel from the West Bank) and in the area around East Jerusalem. According to the 1978 Likud initiative (which was called the "Drobbles Plan"), the intention was to "make concrete the right to Eretz Israel," by "constructing settlements and roads around the settlements of the minorities [i.e. the Palestinians] and in between them" in order to deny the Palestinians territorial contiguity.
Condemning this practice as a clear violation of international law and US policy, the US voted for a United Nations' Security Council Resolution – which Carter reprints, in full.
Israel was not deterred. It continued to seize more Palestinian land and build more settlements. Even during the "Oslo decade" of the '90's, settlements continued to grow – doubling in overall size, as did the construction of Jewish-only roads designed to connect the settlements to Israel and further encumber Palestinian freedom of movement. Today there are about a half million settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem!"
www.huffingtonpost.com/james-zogby/carters-critics-warp-the_b_39082.html
******
The essence of the plan is what Jude describes in his NYRB article as the 'third option', "starving them of land and livelihood, leaving them no option but to go into exile". This is also the purpose of the roadblocks, most of them within Palestinian communities, to make life hell for Palestinians.
Recently Olmert insisted his government would remove all 'non-essential' roadblocks, a promise he also gave to Rice, the US Secretary of State, "in order to revitalize the peace process". Here is what happened instead:
******
IDF source: 44 West Bank obstacles said removed didn't actually exist
"… Peretz's comments came a day after the Israel Defense Forces admitted Sunday that the 44 dirt obstacles it said had been removed from around West Bank villages did not actually exist.
Last Tuesday, the IDF announced that it had removed 44 dirt obstacles that blocked access roads to West Bank villages, to fulfill promises made by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas during their meeting a month ago.
Olmert had pledged measures to ease the lives of Palestinian civilians.
A military source admitted Sunday, however, that these obstacles "had either been removed before the political level decided on the alleviations or had been bypassed by Palestinians earlier, and a decision had been made not to rebuild them."
This statement confirms a claim made recently by United Nations organizations operating in the territories: that most of these barriers were not removed, because they had not existed for months.
In response, the IDF Spokesman's Office said: "The IDF recently removed 44 barriers in an effort to ease the movement of the Palestinian population in Judea and Samaria. These actions are being carried out in line with assessments of the situation."
The IDF has erected close to 400 such dirt obstacles in recent years."
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/816346.html
******
I think that the IDF is making a serious effort to surpass even the humorous genius of Comical Ali, a.k.a. Baghdad Bob!
Brenda writes: – Seth writes "The vast majority of Israelis and Jews in the Diaspora seek a two-state solution based on some rough version of the Geneva Accords. What do the vast majority of Palestinians seek?"
…
Seth, why do you mention only Israeli and Diaspora Jews in your question? The Palestinian negotiating team for the Geneva Accords was the equivalent of the Israeli team. What do Diaspora Jews have to do with the Geneva Accords?
You're kidding right? The primary meme on this blog is that Jews both in and outside of Israel are somehow guilty of some nefarious conspiracy plot to destroy Palestinians and create a war of civilizations. The fact that so many Jews inside AND outside of Israel support a PEACEFUL Palestinian state living side by side Israel and understand that Palestinians have as much right to a national homeland as Jews do, is contrary to some of the points made here by others.
Seth, in review, here is the total of our short correspondance:
"David – That seems like an incorrect figure. Please provide us with a citation for that.
"The vast majority of Israelis and Jews in the Diaspora seek a two-state solution based on some rough version of the Geneva Accords. What do the vast majority of Palestinians seek?"
Posted by: Seth | January 27, 2007 2:26 PM
"Seth asks:
"The vast majority of Israelis and Jews in the Diaspora seek a two-state solution based on some rough version of the Geneva Accords. What do the vast majority of Palestinians seek?"
"I've sent the Jimmy Carter book back to the library, so I have no citation, but it was my distinct impression on reading it that huge majorities of Israeli & Palestinian populations both desired the same thing — to live peacefully side-by-side. There were several polling results in Carter's book.
"The Geneva Initiative was well received by both populations, Israeli and Palestinian, and it was an exhaustively negotiated two-state solution.
"Seth, why do you mention only Israeli and Diaspora Jews in your question? The Palestinian negotiating team for the Geneva Accords was the equivalent of the Israeli team. What do Diaspora Jews have to do with the Geneva Accords?"
Posted by: brenda | January 27, 2007 8:12 PM
I actually thought you were looking for information. Silly me. Now I guess I have to go and figure out what a meme is.
New Diasporism
Nobody is considering a new Jewish Diasporism as a solution. Most Israelis probably still hold the citizenship of their own, their parent's or grandparent's country of birth. So they can back. Isn't Diasporism the 'natural' state of the Jewish people – in a long historical perspective?
Klaus
Frankfurt, Germany
Seth wrote: "That seems like an incorrect figure."
Yes, my memory failed me. According to the CIA fact book, 33% (not 80%) of Israel's Jewish population was born elsewhere. Sorry.
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/is.html
(I've often wondered whether population statistics like this include Israeli citizens who are chosing to live in the U.S. Does anyone know the answer — are population statistics for citizens or inhabitants?)
P.S. Brenda, I suspect Seth is of the school that believes Israel has been trying to give back the West Bank all these years, but just hasn't been able to find anyone to give it back to.
Inhabitants, Citizans
The population statistic that David is referring to is about inhabitants of Israel (including 'Judea and Samaria' and East Jerusalem) that have Israeli citizenship. It does not include expatriate Israelis living abroad and not inhabitants of Israel that are foreign nationals (guest workers from say Slovakia).
My question is: How many Jewish Israelis still hold or are entiteled to a foreign passport. My guess is: the majority.
Klaus
David and Klaus – I don't have the facts that you are both guessing at, so I'm unable to venture further.
Klaus – I honestly don't know enough factual Jewish history to explain the reason why the Jewish Diaspora went on for so long, but I do know that it didn't really play out all that well for the Jews in Europe, particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries. So I agree that a new diaspora is not likely to be accepted as a solution by the Jewish Israelis.
David – In response to your comment that I am of the school that Israel has been trying to hand back the West Bank all these years, but hasn't found someone to take it off your hands. You're incorrect. I realize that this may be simply part of your style of trying to delgetitimize any perspectives that don't adhere to your own orthodoxies, but in any case your'e wrong. I do think that many Israelis and many American Jews have finally come to realize the need to return the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians and establish a 2-state solution. While it is not raised in this forum in any serious way, there is tremendous resistance from Palestinian rejectionists who don't believe in trading land for peace. While you may not find this problematic, those of us who wish to see a genuine peaceful settlement with both Jews and Palestinians living in peace and security, find it incredibly troubling. IMHO Arafat failed his people miserably. I see quite a few Israeli leaders as similarly culpable, but had Arafat genuinely sought a peaceful settlement, and not a means to an eventual eradication of Israel, the world would be a much great place right now. If you doubt my analysis then closely examine Arafat's speeches in Arabic during the Oslo years. In combination with the criminal annexation of further Palestinian land it strangled the potential for a real pace.
Seth writes:
"While it is not raised in this forum in any serious way, there is tremendous resistance from Palestinian rejectionists who don't believe in trading land for peace."
Seth, you may be interested to know that this point has been raised quite frequently on this board, although not for a week or so since Bill Pearlman last posted. It was one of his favorite — and always unsubstantiated –arguments.
Where is your citation or reference?
Seth:
It's not the Israelis' land to "trade" in the first place. "Give back" (what they stole) is a more apt term.
Seth wrote: "The primary meme on this blog is that Jews both in and outside of Israel are somehow guilty of some nefarious conspiracy plot to destroy Palestinians and create a war of civilizations. The fact that so many Jews inside AND outside of Israel support a PEACEFUL Palestinian state living side by side Israel and understand that Palestinians have as much right to a national homeland as Jews do, is contrary to some of the points made here by others."
Seth,
This is a logical fallacy. Why? Because it's not an either/or situation. BOTH those things have been happening, due to extreme differences of opinion between different parts of the Jewish populations in Israel and the Diaspora, namely between the average person and a major component of the Jewish Establishment (or Elite, or Leaders or whatever you want to call it). You present Jews inside and outside Israel as some likeminded entity which would be as a whole either for a Palestinian homeland (your take) or against it (your take on this blog and regular posters). But this is of course false. Here is why:
1) Let's start with Israel. While a consistent majority of Israelis have for decades supported and continue to support a Palestinian homeland, and vote accordingly, the Israeli Governments of the past 40 years, Left-wing or Right-Wing, have been following the exact opposite policy. (With a brief exception being Rabin, who was murdered, at the time when thousands of nationalist extremists and religious fundamentalists were gathering outside his house and shouting their chants of "death to Rabin". And even Rabin continued the settlement project, actually he accelerated it!).
2) While a consistent, overwhelming majority of Israelis have for decades NOT supported and continue to NOT support the settlement project, all the Israeli Governments of the past 40 years, Left-wing or Right-Wing, have been following the exact opposite policy.
Those are undisputable facts.
Let's consider American Jews now. While it is true that a significant majority of American Jews also support a Palestinian homeland and hate the Occupation, all major Jewish organizations which comprise the Israel Lobby (not just AIPAC mind you), for some reason have been consistently supporting the Eretz Israel project and the settlements and have a strange preference for the Likud and anyone to the right of the Likud. And this, while something like 80% of American Jews traditionally vote for the Democratic Party.
These are facts as well.
So who is calling the shots Seth? The majority of Jews in Israel and the Diaspora, or the Zionist Establishment and the World Zionist Organization with their incredible policy recommendations like the 'Drobbles Plan', which became the 'Likud Initiative' of 1977 that continued for 25 years and is still the actual policy, regardless of which party was in power in Israel? And would you dare suggest that the policies they favor – and for which they use all their considerable power to support – have any other objective than to destroy the Palestinians and add to Israel what they call 'Judea and Samaria'???
So here are some of the most common fallacies that still confuse well-meaning people:
1) It is wrong to talk about Jews as a whole as if they were a likeminded entity. One has to differentiate between common Jews and the major component of the Jewish Establishment, inside or outside Israel, which seems to be calling the shots as far as policy towards the Palestinians goes.
2) One has to differentiate between Judaism and Zionism. Contrary to Zionist propaganda, the terms are not identical. Actually a very, very good case can be made they are antithetical, especially if one reads what the overwhelming majority of the Jewish sages and Rabbis had to say about Zionism in its early days and how feverishly they opposed it. Here is a brutal reality check for anyone who thinks otherwise:
www.jewsagainstzionism.com/rabbi_quotes/index.cfm
3) One has to differentiate between the Zionism of the past and its many different ideological leanings and the monolithic Zionism of today. In the beginnings, there were even Zionists like Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt who were for the one-state solution! The Zionism of today is the Jabotinsky flavor, which has inherently what could be very accurately characterized as 'fascist' and racist orientations. Anyone who has ever read Jabotinsky, the grandfather of what became the Likud movement, knows this only too well.
The sad thing is many young Jews today do not make these distinctions because they consistently get indoctrinated by Zionist mythology and 'birthright' trips.
Judaism does not equate Zionism, and even if it did, Zionism does not equate Jabotisnky's fascist leanings.
But this is unfortunately what we are dealing with today, Jabotinsky's Zionism, and worse, those who do have the power to influence policy follow his 'Iron Wall' prescriptions regardless of what the majority of Jews actually want.
Tough Dove writes,
"Yes, there will be a minority of hard core of militant resisters, and it will be extraordinarily difficult test of Israel's political and military system to get them out of there."
I'm not sure why it's the responsibility of Israel's political and military system to get them out of there. It's their responsibility to help them get out, give them an alternative, an inducement — settlers, that is, who want to relocate.
For the rest, though, the key is to get the IDF out of there. Then the remaining settlers can have a more realistic perspective and decide whether they want to live under Palestinian jurisdiction.
Seth,
My post above shows that the actual rejectionists have been for decades those within the Jewish communities in Israel and the Diaspora who want 'Judea and Samaria' and the Palestinians out and who succeeded in making this Israeli policy. You better start looking at actual Israeli policies of the past decades and realize that what we've been witnessing is the eradication of Palestinians from 'Judea and Samaria' due to the Eretz Israel and Gush Emunim crowd. There are those from both sides who want the eradication of the other, but the only ones able to actually enforce their point of view have been the Israeli and Diaspora extremists. After all, they are the ones with a formidable army and the almost unconditional US support.
Please stop parroting the usual Zionist BS that "Israel wants peace but there is no partner for peace". You can't possibly say that, after FOUR DECADES of settlements for heaven's sake. Actual Israeli policy proves she never opted for peace, regardless of rhetoric and propaganda. People should look at governments actually do, not just what they say.
Not to mention that a recent report from Peace Now proves that according to the Israeli government's own databases, 40% of all settlements in the West Bank actually sit on PRIVATE Palestinian land, ok?
www.peacenow.org/updates.asp?rid=0&cid=3189
I'm tired of Israel apologists blaming the clear victim here.
Yeah, Seth is right, how could anyone dispute that Israel really, really wanted peace while continuing the colonization of Palestinian lands?
Only antisemites would dispute that! This is all clearly the Palestinians' fault, including the settlements, poor Israel wanted peace but since the Palestinians are rejectionists, the settlers halfheartedly took their land to build their little homes and swimming pools in Judea and Samaria…
It all makes sense, doesn't it?
"Progressive" Jewish Thought
and the New Anti-Semitism
Alvin H. Rosenfeld
"German fascism came and went. Soviet Communism came and
went. Anti-Semitism came and stayed."1 Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the
chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, offered these discerning words
in response to a speech by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in which the
president of Iran denounced Israel as "a disgraceful blot" that
should be "wiped off the map." A few days after this incendiary declaration,
the Iranian leader followed up with more of the same, dismissing
the Nazi Holocaust as a "myth" or "fairy tale."2 Shocked by
such unabashed outpouring of anti-Jewish venom and by numerous
parallels to it, Rabbi Sacks confessed that the reemergence of anti-
Semitism "is one of the most frightening phenomena in [my] lifetime-
because it's happened after sixty years of Holocaust education,
anti-racist legislation, and interfaith dialogue."
In light of this disturbing trend, this paper will reflect upon two
questions: (1) What, if anything, is new about the "new" anti-Semitism?
(2) In what ways might Jews themselves, especially so-called
"progressive" Jews, be contributing to the intellectual and political
climate that helps to foster such hostility, especially in its anti-Zionist
forms?3 Before proceeding to examine these issues, though, it
will be helpful to review some of the developments that give rise to
them in the first place.
Manifestations of Anti-Semitism in the Muslim World
Over the past year, copies of a new Turkish translation of Mein
Kampf have been selling in Istanbul and other Turkish cities at the
same pace that lottery tickets go in America. The popularity of
Adolf Hitler's diatribe against the Jews is so great that eleven differ-
1
series of programs that portray Jewish surgeons supposedly removing
the eyes of stolen Palestinian children and utilizing them for the
benefit of sight-impaired Israelis. In another version of this same
canard, a recently released Turkish film, Valley of the Wolves-Iraq,
which played to sizable immigrant audiences in Germany and elsewhere,
portrays an American Jewish surgeon operating on prison
inmates in Iraq and transplanting organs from these prisoners into
the bodies of sick patients in New York, London, and Israel.5
These doctors are presumably linked to those clever Israeli scientists
who, it is widely believed, infected Yasir Arafat with fatal poisons
that ended his life. Israeli doctors are also accused of actively
and surreptitiously spreading the AIDS virus throughout the Muslim
world; and, as further evidence of their malevolence, are said to
be creating and spreading the avian flu virus to damage "genes carried
only by Arabs."6 Add to these wild allegations the notions that
Israelis have been sterilizing young Egyptian men with toxins secreted
in chewing gum and contaminating Palestinian water sources
with other toxins, and the picture of the poisonous Jew, long a stock
feature in the repertoire of anti-Semitic stereotypes, widens further.
As if these supposed crimes weren't bad enough, the 9/11 terror
attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., are broadly attributed
to the Mossad, and even the earthquake and tsunami that devastated
parts of Asia in late 2004 are said to be part of the evil plotting of
the Jews. According to a program on Iranian television in June
2004, Jews set the Watergate trap that brought Richard Nixon
down in disgrace and earlier were involved in the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy. More recently, the dean of the law
school of a Jordanian university accused the Israeli secret services of
assassinating Lebanese leader Rafik Hariri and prominent Lebanese
journalist Jebran Tueni. Although the Israelis had nothing whatsoever
to do with the Danish cartoons that caused such an uproar
across the Arab and Muslim worlds in February 2006, they were
attributed to a "Zionist conspiracy."7 Numerous other examples
could be added to this short list of purported acts of Jewish infamy.
Suffice it to say that the list would be as lengthy as the items on it
Manifestations of Anti-Semitism in the Muslim World 3
ent publishers are currently marketing it; even so, bookstores evidently
cannot keep up with the demand. New editions of Mein
Kampf have also appeared in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, and it is
readily available in Arabic translation in London bookstores.4 The
obvious appeal of this noxious book is one ominous sign among
many that yesterday's ghosts are once again stirring.
At the same time, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, another classic
work of anti-Semitic literature, is also selling well in Turkey, as it
is in Arabic translation throughout North Africa and the Middle
East. Long ago exposed as fraudulent, this bogus tale of a Jewish
plot to take over the world has emerged from a period of dormancy
and disgrace to wide circulation today in Arabic-speaking countries.
Two years ago, at a much-publicized exhibition of religious books in
the Alexandria library in Egypt, the Protocols was prominently displayed
next to a Torah scroll as one of Judaism's "sacred texts." A
favorite in Iran, it was made available in English translation at the
Iranian exhibition booth at the 2005 Frankfurt International Book
Fair (as were such related titles, in Arabic, as The Jewish Role in the
9/11 Destruction of the World Trade Center, The World Jewish Conspiracy,
Three Thousand Years of Jewish Iniquity, The End of Israel, etc.). The
notion of a well-plotted Jewish scheme to seize power on a global
scale is reiterated as well in the charter of Hamas, which cites the
Protocols as an authoritative source to prove, among other things,
that "there was no war that broke out anywhere without their [the
Jews'] fingerprints on it." Additionally, the Protocols has inspired
recent TV serial broadcasts in Egypt, Syria, and other Arab states.
The appetite for such fare in broad segments of the Muslim world
seems to be insatiable, and is being fed on a regular basis across the
media of popular culture.
The ancient blood libel against the Jews is also being revived,
with a new twist here and there. The older calumnies that Jews regularly
kidnapped Christian children and drained their blood for
baking matza can still be heard, although now the victimized
youngsters are more commonly said to be Muslim. In Iran, for
instance, television viewers have recently been treated to a gruesome
2 "Progressive" Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism
past few years that has been well documented: Jews have been beaten
on the streets of European cities; scores of synagogues, Jewish
schools, and other communal institutions have been set on fire or
otherwise attacked; Jewish cemeteries and sites of Holocaust commemoration
have been repeatedly desecrated; and the Jewish populations
of Paris, London, Brussels, Amsterdam, and other cities now
live with more uncertainty about their welfare than they have felt
for decades.
In 2004, some 532 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded in
Great Britain alone, including 83 physical assaults against individual
Jews–a rise of 42 percent from the previous year. In 2005, the
overall number of incidents declined somewhat, but authorities
nevertheless recorded 82 violent assaults against Jews.8 In light of
such hostility, Rabbi Sacks has pointed to pervasive undertones of
anti-Semitism in his country and added, with diplomatic understatement,
"There have been times–the first in my memory–
when it has been uncomfortable to be a Jew in Britain." In France,
the numbers of violent attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions
have come down in recent months, thanks to a belated but generally
effective effort on the part of French authorities to take such hostility
seriously. Nevertheless, the climate remains tense in the mixed
Jewish-Muslim neighborhoods around Paris. Especially after the
much-publicized kidnapping, torture, and murder of Ilan Halimi,
in February 2006, Jewish nerves throughout France have been set
on edge. The Halimi case was especially gruesome, but it hardly
stands out as an isolated incident. The fact is that since 2001,
France has seen more open aggression against Jews and Jewish property
than any other country in Europe. The situation reached the
point where the chief rabbi of France publicly warned Jews in his
country against appearing in public wearing a kippah or other religious
symbols that would draw attention to them as Jews. He did so
with good reason, for his counterpart in Belgium had been badly
beaten on the streets of Brussels, and religious Jews in French cities
were being harassed and assaulted on an almost daily basis. Only a
few days after Halimis death, three Jews, including the son of a
Manifestations of Anti-Semitism in Europe 5
fanciful and fraudulent. Nevertheless, for all our dismay that any
rational person could believe such lies, countless people in the Muslim
world evidently credit an array of trumped-up charges against
the Jews as well-established truthsnamely, that Jews are today, as
they always have been, a treacherous, conniving, untrustworthy,
sinister, all-powerful, and implacably hostile people, the eternal
enemy of both God and mankind.
Lest one get the impression that anti-Semitism of this extreme
nature is to be found only in the Muslim world, it is important to
note what has been taking place in the West over the past five or six
years. While Mein Kampf may not be a best-seller in European
bookstores, new translations of it in Czech, Polish, and other languages
have recently appeared. Moreover, the man who wrote this
foul book continues to inspire groups on the European right, some
of whom are attempting to move from the discredited fringes of
political life toward the respectable center in France, Belgium, Germany,
Italy, and the countries of the former Soviet Union. At the
same time, intellectual elites on the European left have become
increasingly outspoken in their hostility to Jews and the Jewish state
and are voicing a kind of animosity to both that has not been heard
in Europe for years. Finally, as is well known, there are those among
Europes large Muslim populations who have been radicalized by
jihadist passions and ideas and feel free to focus their antagonistic
energies aggressively on the Jews.
A Conflation of Interests:
Manifestations of Anti-Semitism in Europe
One manifestation of the new anti-Semitism can be found right
herein a conflation of interests among those on the far right, segments
of the intellectual left, and radical Islam. While formal
alliances among these otherwise disparate groups are not readily
apparent, they share one thing in common: a suspicion of Jews and,
especially, an emphatic dislike of the Jewish state. Growing from
these inclinations, an aggressive mood of censure and hostility has
developed and led to an outbreak of malicious activities over the
4 Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism
that physical assaults against Jews and Jewish institutions have been
growing in these countries. In February 2006, a rabbi was murdered
in Tashkent, a synagogue set ablaze in the Crimea, and other synagogues
have been stoned or burned elsewhere in the former Soviet
Union. Those who keep abreast of developments in Argentina,
Brazil, and other South American countries report similar instances
of anti-Semitic sentiment and sometimes outright aggression. And,
as we know, the United States and Canada are not entirely immune
from such threats and occasional incidents as well.
What Is New in Todays Anti-Semitism?
What does all this anti-Jewish hostility tell us? Despite the huge
scandal of the Holocaust, which most Jews probably thought would
prevent public manifestations of anti-Semitism from ever appearing
again, the genie is once more out of the bottle. Is there a new anti-
Semitism today? There is, and while much of it resembles the anti-
Semitism of the past, certain features of present-day hostility to Jews
and sometimes also to Judaism do seem new.
One is that, like so much else today, Jew-hatred has been globalized
and leaps effortlessly across borders. In the past, antagonism to
Jews tended to take the form of localized activities, but thanks to
the Internet and other global media, anti-Semitism now belongs to
the world at large. With the press of a computer key, it can be
accessed and distributed in a flash.
Two, while often drawing on the same repertoire of fabricated
claims against the Jews as in the pastthat they are clannish, conspiratorial,
money-hungry, manipulative, predatory, etc.anti-
Semitism is protean and evolves. As already indicated, it may, for
instance, promote images of Jews as poisoners, but instead of contaminating
wells, as they were said to do in the medieval period, or
blood, as in the Nazi period, this time Jews may be accused of contaminating
the atmosphere itself or targeting DNA.
Three, some of the most virulent sources of todays anti-Semitism
are located within the Muslim world, not, as in the past, within
Christendom. While some of this negative passion is attributed
What Is New in Todays Anti-Semitism? 7
rabbi, were brutally attacked by Muslim youths on the streets of
Sarcelles, and similar incidents have since occurred elsewhere.
Then there is the ongoing airing in the public media of denigration,
derision, scorn, and rebuke directed against the Jewish state
and its supporters, and naturally, negative social and political consequences
tend to accompany the steady appearance of such verbal
aggression. In a prominent article published last year in the British
newspaper the Guardian, Ken Livingstone, the current mayor of
London, showed no hesitation in accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing
and denounced the Israeli prime minister (Ariel Sharon) as a
terrorist and war criminal, declaring that he belonged in prison,
not in political office.
In this same spirit of open animosity, in 2005, Britains 40,000-
member Association of University Teachers declared a boycott of
Israeli scholars and academic institutions. It was eventually rolled
back, only to be succeeded in May 2006 by an even larger and more
comprehensive boycott effort initiated by the 67,000-member
National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education,
which denounced what it called Israels apartheid policies and
encouraged British academic scholars to sever ties with their Israeli
counterparts. A group of British architects released a strong boycott
statement in February 2006 against Israeli architects, and, at about
the same time, the Church of England weighed in with an official
pronouncement recommending divestiture from certain companies
that do business with Israel. Similar measures against Israeli goods
have already taken place in some Scandinavian countries.
To their credit, the German authorities have been keeping the
lid on animosities directed against Jews, and yet recent polls have
shown the number of people who hold anti-Semitic views is rising
in Germany. The same could be said about popular sentiments
toward Jews in Spain, Greece, and elsewhere. In Russia, over 5,000
public activists, parliamentarians, artists, and members of the clergy
publicly called for the outright banning of Jewish groups, accusing
them of plots against the motherland. A similar call has been issued
by over 100 public figures in Ukraine. It is not surprising, therefore,
6 Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism
the new anti-Semitism, therefore, is precisely this: the singling out
of the Jewish state, and the Jewish state alone, as a political entity
unworthy of a secure and sovereign existence. As Jacqueline Rose,
the author of The Question of Zion (Princeton University Press,
2005), puts it, the soul of the nation was forfeit from the day of its
creation.9
A Jew among the Anti-Zionists: Jacqueline Rose
Rose typifies one of the most distressing features of the new anti-
Semitismnamely, the participation of Jews alongside it, especially
in its anti-Zionist expression. Her book is a disturbingly revealing
example of this tendency. More an indictment than an examination
of its subject, The Question of Zion, dedicated to the memory of
Edward Said, is fashioned as a companion piece to Saids The Question
of Palestine. Rose is intrigued by Zionism, but claims to be
appalled by what she sees as its encouragement of gross wrongdoings.
As if it were foreordained from the start, violence, she writes,
would be the destiny of the Jewish state (p. 124). Moreover, the
cruel powers of this state have not only brought injustice to the
Palestinians, but have subverted the moral mission of Israel(p.
133), put at risk the Jewish nations own safety and sanity (p. 85),
and right now are even endangering the safety of Diaspora Jewry
by helping to provoke a new anti-Semitism (p. xviii). In sum, Israel
on its present course is bad for the Jewish people (p. 154) and also
bad for just about everyone else.
Rose, who leans heavily on the dubious methods of psychohistory,
begins her analysis of Zionism with an extended reference to
one of the most ruinous personalities in Jewish historyShabbatai
Zvi, the seventeenth-century messianic pretender and apostate from
Judaism (to Islam)whom she identifies as a proto-Zionist. Convinced
that a line runs directly (p. 3) from this aberrant figure to
modern Zionism, she proceeds to identify Theodor Herzl as his kindred
spirit. What animated both men, in the authors view, was the
deep passions that fuel Jewish messianism, which Rose associates
with madness. Zionism, the latest incarnation of the messianic
A Jew among the Anti-Zionists 9
to Muslim anger toward Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians,
much of it predates the violence brought on by the recent intifadas
and has roots within Arab Muslim culture. To understand Muslim
anti-Semitism today, one has to see it as part of a crisis within Islam
itself, as well as part of its deep-seated grievances against the West.
Four, and most prominently, some of the most impassioned
charges leveled against the Jews today involve vicious accusations
against the Jewish state. Anti-Zionism, in fact, is the form that
much of todays anti-Semitism takes, so much so that some now see
earlier attempts to rid the world of Jews finding a parallel in presentday
desires to get rid of the Jewish state.
Questioning Israels Essence, Not Israeli Policies
Israels policy of encouraging Jewish settlement in Gaza (which it
abandoned in 2005) and the West Bank has long been a flash point
of dispute, and its sometimes harsh treatment of Palestinian Arabs
living in those areas has also drawn a great deal of negative attention.
Criticizing such policies and actions is, in itself, not anti-
Semitic. To call Israel a Nazi state, however, as is commonly done
today, or to accuse it of fostering South African-style apartheid rule
or engaging in ethnic cleansing or wholesale genocide goes well
beyond legitimate criticism. Apart from the United States, to which
it is almost always linked by its enemies, no country on earth is as
vilified as the Jewish state. Moreover, those who denounce it as an
outlaw or pariah nation are found on both the left and the right,
among the educated elites as well as the uneducated classes, and
among Christians as well as Muslims.
In some quarters, the challenge is not to Israels policies, but to
its legitimacy and right to an ongoing future. Thus, the argument
leveled by Israels fiercest critics is often no longer about 1967 and
the countrys territorial expansion following its military victory during
the Six-Day War, but about 1948 and the alleged crime, or
original sin, of its very establishment. The debate, in other words,
is less about the countrys borders and more about its origins and
essence. One of the things that is new and deeply disturbing about
8 Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism
ries in terms of manifest destinies and unbroken lines of continuity
across centuries, but Rose is not writing factual history so much as
she is developing a psychopolitical myth of Israels origins and
development. Since hers is an emphatically negative myth, matters
only get worse after the creation of the Jewish state. Convinced that
the Jews of Israel have imposed upon the Palestinians an almost
unparalleled degree of suffering, she does not hesitate to pose the
loaded question: How did one of the most persecuted peoples of
the world come to embody some of the worst cruelties of the modern
nation-state? (p.115) Compared to the truly horrendous
crimes committed by other nation-statesthink Sudan, Cambodia,
Slobodan Milosevics Serbia, or Augusto Pinochets ChileIsraels
record actually looks relatively good. Foregoing any comparative
perspective, though, the author presses her case against Israel alone.
She does not deny the legitimacy of the Jewish peoples desire for a
homeland (p. 146), but she rues the form that this desire took and
believes that Israel, now in decline (p.154), is manifestly in danger
of destroying itself (p.155).
As evidence, she alleges Israels wanton destruction of Palestinian
society, including the razing [of ] the town of Jenin (p.103) in
April 2002. Like much else in this deeply flawed book, this charge is
either a blatant error or an outright fabrication. In response to Palestinian
suicide bombings, Israeli forces fought against Palestinian
militants in a refugee camp near Jenin, but the city itself was left
untouched. To claim, as she does, that Jenin was leveled is to
indulge in either bad scholarship or bad faith or both.10
As if the foregoing were not bad enough, to point up how tainted
Zionism is, Rose reaches for the ultimate weapon in the anti-
Zionist arsenalthe alleged link between the Jewish national
movement and Nazismand offers this gratuitous and altogether
baseless anecdote: It was the same Paris performance of Wagner,
she writes, whenwithout knowledge or foreknowledge of each
otherthey [Theodor Herzl and Adolf Hitler] were both present
on the same evening, that inspired Herzl to write Der Judenstaat and
Hitler Mein Kampf (pp. 64-65). Inasmuch as Herzl died in 1904
A Jew among the Anti-Zionists 11
furies, is similarly driven: We take Zionism to be a form of collective
insanity (p. 17). And those who embrace it are part of a group
neurosis. All the early Zionist thinkers and activists, in her view,
were touched by this madness in one way or another.
In fact, as most histories of Zionism demonstrate, the opposite
is the case. Israels founders, by and large, were secular Zionists who
opposed religious notions like messianism and chosenness. The
majority of their successors, likewise, have kept distant from such
ideas and have built the state along the pragmatic and rationalist
lines of other modern states. Rose, though, will have none of that
and prefers to believe that Israels leaders, inspired by Sabbatean and
messianic excess, have brutally activated the latent violence within
Zionism and brought tragedy to both peoples in Israel-Palestine
(p. xvi).
She is fond of using the language of tragedy to describe the
sins of Zionism, but more often she pitches the register of her alarm
and disapproval higher still and takes recourse to catastrophe.
This
word, repeated again and again, is hardly a neutral term in the discourse
on the Middle East conflict, for it is the English translation
of al nakba, the Arabic term that Palestinians commonly use to
describe the events of 1948, which for the Jews led to an independent
state and for Palestinians brought defeat and dispersion. Because
Rose closely aligns herself with this reading of historyI believe
the creation of Israel in 1948 led to a historic injustice against the
Palestinians (p. xvi), she writesher lexicon of descriptive terms
for Zionism and its errant ways is overwhelmingly negative:
agony, anguished, belligerent, bloody, brutal, cataclysmic,
corrupt, cruel, dangerous, deadly, and militaristic
alternate with apocalyptic, blind, crazy, delusional,
defiled, demonic, fanatical, insane, and mad. Presented in
these terms, Zionism appears to be both inspired and nightmarish,
ruthless and deranged. Moreover, Rose speculates, it contained this
explosive mix right from the start: sown somewhere at the very
center of [the Zionist vision] are the seeds of catastrophe(p. xiv).
Most scholars these days are reluctant to think about national histo-
10 Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism
Michael Neumann and the Accusation of Genocide
with all Jews Complicit
Roses unease is mild, though, compared to the pathological fury
one finds among some other anti-Zionist Jews. As a telling example,
let us review the reflections on Israel and present-day anti-Semitism
of Michael Neumann, a professor of philosophy at Trent University
in Canada and author of Whats Left: Radical Politics and the Radical
Psyche.11 Neumann accuses Israel of committing Zionist atrocities
and of waging a race war against the Palestinians, a war whose
purpose is nothing less than the extinction of a people. Toward
this end, Israel has embarked on genocide against the Palestinians
a kinder, gentler genocide that portrays its perpetrators as
victims.
The Palestinians are being shot because Israel thinks all Palestinians
should vanish or die…. This is not the bloody mistake of a
blundering super-power but an emerging evil. Moreover, the guilt
belongs not only to Israelis, but to Jews in general, most of whom
support a state that commits war crimes. Such support implicates
all Jews, Neumann contendsso much so that the case for Jewish
complicity seems much stronger than the case for German complicity
in the crimes committed against the Jews during the Holocaust.
He is aware there are those who will resent an assessment that
paints Jews in such black colors, but he will run the risk of their ire.
Indeed, if saying these things is anti-Semitic, then it can be reasonable
to be anti-Semitic. Moreover, some anti-Semitism is acceptable.
What would he say, one wonders, if an acceptable level of
anti-Semitism were to lead to outright aggression against Jews? He
answers: Who cares?… To regard any shedding of Jewish blood as a
world-shattering calamity … is racism, pure and simple; the valuing
of one races blood over all others.12
The thinking here is so breathtakingly awry that one hardly
knows how to address it. First of all, Jews do not typically define
themselves in racial terms, nor do they value other peoples lives
according to their blood. To claim so shows either gross ignorance
The Accusation of Genocide 13
and Hitler never set foot in Paris until his triumphal entry into the
French capital in 1940, this story is entirely apocryphal. Even if
there were some historical basis for placing Hitler in the Paris opera
house at the time when Herzl was alive to have attendedand there
is notHitler would have been a mere child then and hardly likely
to draw inspiration for the writing of Mein Kampf. Surely Rose
should have known that. Why, then, did she make this historically
impossible linkage between the father of Zionism and the father of
Nazism?
As if to head off a more obvious explanation, Rose more than
once feels compelled to declare that criticism of Israel is not tantamount
to anti-Semitism, and, of course, she is right. But then how
do we account for her constant references to the injustice of Israel
(p. 115), to its capacity for evil (p. 103), to its fundamental belligerence
and inherent violence, to its being mad and crazy,
while no such damning qualities are ascribed to any of Israels neighbors,
who are not generally known for their tolerant and peaceful
ways?
The many false notes in this book point to something badly
awry at the core of Roses treatment of her subject. On several occasions
she claims to be appalled by what the Israeli state perpetrates
on a daily basis in the name of the Jewish people (p. 11). Her overwrought
rhetoric notwithstanding, nothing in her book expresses
any genuine concern for the Jews as a people. In fact, Rose exhibits
only antipathy for collective identities of any kind and most especially
for ethnic or national identities. Like other postmodernists,
she finds the concept of the nation suspect, and large, enveloping
national ideas like Zionism anathema. When she writes that Israel
inscribes at its heart the very version of nationhood from which the
Jewish people had had to flee (p. 83), she comes uncomfortably
close, once again, to equating Zionism with German anti-Semitism
at its worst. Like her historically unsupported effort to tie Herzl to
Hitler, such poisonous linkages reveal nothing about the reality of
Zionism, but a great deal about the authors uneasy identity as an
anti-Zionist Jew facing the reality of the Jewish state.
12 Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism
extreme Orthodox groups have regarded the idea of a Jewish state
established before the days of messianic redemption as blasphemous
and have passionately opposed it on religious grounds.
For other reasons, Reform Jews in the United States likewise
opposed the idea of a territorially-based independent Jewish nation
and rejected any claims of political Zionism on them. And some
prominent Jewish liberal intellectuals, convinced that the creation
of a sovereign Jewish country in Palestine would be unacceptable to
the majority Arab populations in the region and inevitably would
lead to unending war, stood against the state-building ambitions of
Zionism and advocated the idea of a binational state instead.
Prior to 1948, each of these tendencies had its adherents, some
of whom continued to oppose Zionism even after Israels establishment
in that year. Once Jewish political sovereignty became a fact,
however, and the small, embattled, but accomplished Jewish nation
became a source of pride, anti-Zionism among Jews waned, especially
following the war of June 1967, even if it did not disappear
completely. In recent years, however, there are signs of an anti-Zionist
revival, particularly among Jews on the left.
Tony Judt: Israel Is Bad for the Jews
The historian Tony Judt, for instance, has published a series of
increasingly bitter articles over the past three years in the Nation, the
New York Review of Books, and Haaretz, in which he has called Israel
everything from arrogant, aggressive, anachronistic, and infantile to
dysfunctional, immoral, and a primary cause of present-day anti-
Semitism. Israel today, Judt avers, is bad for the Jews,13 and it
would do them and everyone else a service by going out of business.
The time has come to think the unthinkable, he writes, and that
is to replace the Jewish state with a single, integrated, binational
state of Jews and Arabs.14
Far from being new, this is an old idea and, by now, a properly
discredited and discarded one; everyone knows that such an entity,
were it ever to come into being, would before long be an Arab-dominated
state in which a residual Jewish presence would, at best, be a
Israel Is Bad for the Jews 15
or outright malice. Most Jews in Israel, far from wishing each and
every Palestinian dead, as Neumann declares, are looking for ways
either to make peace with the Palestinians or to live apart from
them. By no reasonable standard of historical comparison or legal
judgment can one show that Israel is intent on genocide; nor are the
Israelis engaged in a race war against the Palestinians. Indeed, if
there is racism to be perceived in this conflict, it is far more likely
to appear in Palestinian teachings and preachings about the Jews
than the other way around. Israels aim is to free itself finally from
the state of siege that has been the countrys fate since its inception
and enjoy something like a normal life. Short of that, it does what it
believes it needs to do to protect its citizens from being blown apart
as they sit in cafes and on city buses by Palestinian suicide bombers
intent on their own campaign of extinction.
Given what they know firsthand of the lethal character of anti-
Semitism, most Jews of Israel will not endorse any form of anti-
Semitism as reasonable or acceptable. Prof. Neumann believes
otherwise and even proposes that we should almost never take anti-
Semitism seriously, and maybe we should have some fun with it.
How many other Jews, one wonders, will want to join him in pursuing
such fun?
In fact, there are lots of others, as anyone who surfs the Internet
will see merely by clicking on Jews against Israel. Hundreds of
entries that sound like Neumanns article instantly appear, many of
them representing anti-Zionism at its most aggressive.
Jewish Opposition to Zionism in Historical Perspective
Opposition to political Zionism is not a new development within
Jewish thinking, of course, and, especially in the prestate period,
was even a pronounced tendency within certain political, religious,
and intellectual circles. Jewish Marxists regularly denounced Zionism
as inherently imperialist, colonialist, racist, and repressive; they
saw it as an ideological enemy of those who stood on the side of the
oppressed in the class struggle. At the other end of the spectrum,
rigorously observant Jews associated with Neturei Karta and other
14 Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism
before twenty-first century realities (p. 164). She neglects to say
precisely what these realities are, but inasmuch as she affirms the
extraterritorial ideal of a Jew without borders (p. 165), it is evident
that, for her, the word Zionism, along with the whole Zionist
project, has served their purpose and should be retired.
Still another contributor, Sara Roy, who identifies herself as the
daughter of Holocaust survivors, notes that within the Jewish community
it has always been considered a form of heresy to compare
Israeli actions or policies with those of the Nazis (p. 176). Then she
proceeds to draw just such a comparison by accusing Israel of replicating
Nazi occupation policies.
In more condensed form, Irena Klepfisz, a poet and Holocaust
survivor, declares that you can be a victim and also a victimizer
(p.367)a simplistic charge routinely made by those who wish to
blacken Israels image in the worst way by drawing unseemly parallels
between Jews as victims and those who victimize them.
Some of Israels Jewish critics are irate at the country for still
other reasons: In their eyes, Judaism itself has fallen casualty to
Israels sins, and the cost to their own religious principles is so high
as to render questionable the value of the states existence. Im not
against Israel, writes Douglas Rushkoff, a New York-based author
who writes on media and new culture. His objection rather is to the
version of Israel which he sees as this nationalized refugee camp,
which is a compromise of Jewish ideals, and not their realization….
We get a claim on some land, but we lose our religion in the
process (pp. 181, 182).
Daniel Boyarin, a professor of Talmud at the University of California
at Berkeley, joins Rushkoff in this critique but goes him one
better. Just as Christianity may have died at Auschwitz, Treblinka,
and Sobibor, laments Boyarin, so I fear … that my Judaism may be
dying at Nablus, Deheishe, Beteen (Beth-El), and al-Khalil
(Hebron) (p. 202). As always, the recourse to Holocaust parallels is
a sure sign that lucid thinking has been replaced by bias. In this
case, as in others, Jewish identity is affirmed in opposition to the
Jewish state.
Collections of Critics 17
tolerated minority. In promoting such an obsolescent scheme,
which would spell an end to a territorially-based Jewish national
existence, Judt, as Benjamin Balint persuasively argues, unwittingly
aligns himself with older forms of Christian opposition to Jewish
particularism: Israel is merely the new ground upon which the old
battle over Jewish distinctiveness is being waged.15 Nevertheless,
Judt has his followers, and talk of dissolving the Jewish state and
replacing it with a binational state is once again in the air in certain
intellectual circles.
Collections of Critics
For an exposure to the full range of such sentiments, one could
hardly do better than to consult two recently published collections:
Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, edited by Tony Kushner and Alisa
Solomon (New York: Grove Press, 2003) and Radicals, Rabbis and
Peacemakers: Conversations with Jewish Critics of Israel, edited by Seth
Farber (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2005).
Liberally sprinkled through the pages of the first of these books
are references to Israeli apartheid, racism, colonialism, and
ethnic cleansing. These descriptors have become part of standard
discourse among progressive American Jews, who seem to take for
granted that the historical record shows Israel to be an aggressor
state guilty of sins comparable to those of Hendrik Verwoerds
South Africa and Hitlers Germany. As for Zionism, gone are the
days when it was praised by those on the left as a movement of Jewish
national liberation. One contributor, Joel Kovel, a professor at
Bard College, who is writing a book on post-Zionist Israel, suggests
that Zionism is equivalent to a form of racism and is unforgiving
that it brought about the Jewish homeland at the expense of another
people (p. 357).
The prominent poet Adrienne Rich proposes that the very
word Zionism is so incendiary, so drenched in idealism, dissension,
ideas of blood and soil, in memories of victimization and pursuant
claims of the right to victimize that it needs to dissolve
16 Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism
that Israel is singled out more than any other country on the globe
for inaccurate and one-sided condemnations of its alleged human
rights abuses and targeted for boycotts and divestment campaigns.
And never mind that, alone among the worlds countries, Israels
very existence is considered an aggression, its legitimacy subjected
to doubt, and its right to a future openly questioned.
No historical or political explanations of Israels current
predicament are acceptable to some of the countrys Jewish critics,
nor can the Jewish state be easily redeemed from its perceived
wrongdoings. History is screwing us totally up … forget the history,
suggests Irena Klepfisz (pp. 358-59). She is for less explanation
and more actionand now.
Like other oppressive regimes before it, Israel is judged to be
guilty of the worst and must be brought to heel. Journalist Esther
Kaplan, commenting on the charge by a young Rutgers University
activist that Israel is a racist state, an imperialist stateit is and
should be a pariah state, remarks: [I]f thats what it takes to bring
down the occupation…, Israel should absolutely become a pariah
state…. The time has come when Israel must be totally isolated by
world opinion and forced, simply forced, to concede (p. 87).
While their numbers are still relatively small, activists in groups
like A Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews for Peace in Palestine and Israel,
Students for Justice in Palestine, the Labor Committee for Peace
and Justice, the International Solidarity Movement, and other
communities of the principled and disobedientthe term is
Susan Sontags (p. 348)are organizing to bring about their political
goals, whatever the costs. With others who condemn Israel as a
racist state, an imperialist state, some will do whatever they can to
make it a pariah. The full effects of their efforts may not be clear to
these Jews, for they couch their ambitions in high-sounding terms
like peace, justice, and reconciliation. Should they ever succeed
in reducing Israels already embattled status to that of a rogue
state, totally isolated by world opinion, the result would not be a
fuller measure of peace and justice for either the Israelis or the Palestinians
but, almost certainly, the opposite.
New Rituals of Dissent 19
New Rituals of Dissent
Some Jews devise novel changes in their practice of Judaism to
reflect the ways in which, so they claim, Israel has damaged the religion.
Jews who are members of JATO (Jews Against the Occupation),
for instance, build what they call an anti-occupation sukkah
with pictures of destroyed Palestinian buildings adorning its walls.
Marc Ellis, a professor of Jewish Studies at Baylor University and
the author of several anti-Zionist books written from a liberation
theology perspective, proposes that the synagogue Torah scrolls be
replaced in the Ark of the Covenant by replicas of Israeli helicopter
gunships, which he argues are the true symbol of Israeli reality today
(p. 155).
Anti-Zionist Jews have introduced other rituals as well, such as
taking an oath against exercising their rights under the Law of
Returnthe privilege of citizenship in Israel that every Jew (except
one who has a criminal past and might endanger the public welfare)
currently enjoys. Far from being protected by Israel, I feel exposed
to danger by the actions of the Israeli state, writes Melanie
Kaye/Kantrowitz. I am declaring another way to be Jewish…. I
renounce my right to return (p. 256). At the ritual circumcision of
their son, Meg Barnett and Brad Lander issued a similar declaration:
We are thrilled to pronounce you a Jew without the Right of
Return. Your name contains our deep hope that you will explore
and celebrate your Jewish identity without confusing it with nationalism
(p. 293).
As these gestures of Jewish dissent indicate, there is a tendency
among American Jews who identify themselves as progressive to
embrace positions on Zionism and Israel that are as negative, and
sometimes even as damning, as any to be found among the most
fervent non-Jewish anti-Zionists. One recognizes in their writings
passions of anger and indignation, bitterness and repudiation that
transcend those associated with mere politics. Israel in their eyes is
guilty of a great betrayal and should be punished. Never mind that
more than a thousand of its citizens have been murdered in the last
few years and thousands more maimed for life. Never mind as well
18 Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism
South Africa during the worst years of apartheid rule. Lest these
analogies be considered too tame, Farber quotes the theologian
Marc Ellis, who favors references of a still stronger kind: What the
Nazis had not succeeded in accomplishing … we as Jews have
embarked upon (p. 15).
Others portray Israeli actions in similarly exaggerated and
defamatory terms. Adopting the Palestinian nomenclature, Joel
Kovel calls Israels still incomplete security fence an Apartheid
Wall and compares the lives of Palestinians on the other side of it
to Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto (p. 67). Anyone who knows anything
about life and death in the Warsaw ghetto will find the comparison
as bogus as Roses attempt to tie Herzl to Hitler. But Kovel
is undeterred by the transparent falsity of his analogy and, determined
to smear the Israelis, goes on to make his obscene point all
the same.
In much the same spirit, Steve Quester wonders if Israelis are
going to build gas chambers and kill them all (p. 41), but then
backs off from that idea and imagines that the Israeli plan for the
Palestinians is merely to terrorize and starve them out. Seth Farber
himself holds to the harsher view and insists on conflating Israeli
racism with Nazi anti-Semitism (p. 137). And Rabbi David
Weiss goes him one better by claiming that the Zionists have actually
been worse than Hitler (p. 206).
No serious scholar of history would argue that Israels actions
warrant legitimate comparison with the systematic cruelties of
apartheid South Africa or the genocidal barbarism of Nazi Germany.
The extreme anti-Zionism exhibited in the quotations above
is not driven by anything remotely like reasoned historical analysis,
but rather by a complex tangle of psychological as well as political
motives that subvert reason and replace it with something akin to
hysteria. As one astute commentator puts it, to explain the obsessive,
self-negating thinking of such Jews, psychologists of the future
will have their work cut out for them.16 Instead of attempting to
preempt these analysts, lets simply note the most disturbing consequences
of this Jewish war against the Jewish state: In much left-
Progressives Complaint 21
Progressives Complaint:
Radicals, Rabbis, and Peacemakers
The true end point of these views is not just to force the Israelis out
of the territories they have occupied since 1967, but to force an end
to the Jewish state itself. This goal is suggested more implicitly than
explicitly in some of the contributions to Wrestling with Zion, but it
gets spelled out quite openly in Seth Farbers collection of interviews
with anti-Zionist Jews. The books contributors include Noam
Chomsky, Steve Quester, Joel Kovel, Norton Mezvinsky, Ora Wise,
Norman Finkelstein, Phyllis Bennis, Adam Shapiro, Daniel
Boyarin, Rabbi David Weiss, and Marc Ellis, most of whom are
identified as progressive.
Whatever substantive meaning the term progressive may once
have had, it appears in Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers as little more
than a self-validating honorificthe presumed equivalent of moral
and political virtue itself. Like peace, justice, and much else in
the contemporary lexicon of leftist rhetoric at its most dogmatic,
progressive has worn badly; and in Farbers overheated book, the
term appears either as a pious gesture in the direction of utopian
politics or, with reference to Zionism, signals views that can only be
called regressive. The Israel that emerges in Radicals, Rabbis and
Peacemakersa country characterized as amoral, barbaric, brutal,
destructive, fascistic, oppressive, racist, sordid, and
uncivilizedis indistinguishable from the despised country regularly
denounced by the most impassioned anti-Semites.
As pictured by Farber and his colleagues, Israel is guilty of every
sin that a modern nation-state is capable of committingfrom
apartheid and state terrorism to ethnic cleansing, crimes
against humanity, and pure genocide. No convincing evidence is
offered to support any of these extreme charges. Rather, as demonstrated
by the contributors to this book, it is an unquestioned
assumption of their collective thinking that Israel is an inherently
racist, oppressive, and singularly brutal country and, ipso facto,
stands guilty as charged. For what is alleged to be its racist, systematic
cruelty, the Jewish state is likened to the Ku Klux Klan and
20 Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism
Ramallah compound, sees Chomskys position as seriously outdated
and is certain that the two-state solution option has been over for a
long time (p. 174). Ora Wise, another young Jewish activist who is
convinced the Palestinians are being systematically massacred by
the Israelis, agrees: [A] two-state solution will never lead to true
justice or equality (p. 106). Phyllis Bennis is likewise certain such a
solution is incompatible with the requirements of peace and justice
(p. 148). And Joel Kovel, who denounces the Israelis as wholesale
butchers, believes Jews are badly mistaken if they believe theres
something fundamentally worthwhile about the state of Israel (p.
72). To him, and his fellow progressives, there clearly is not.
What, then, are these Jews of conscience, as Farber self-righteously
calls them, to do? Affirming that whatever human beings
make, they can unmake (p. 68), Kovel proclaims an even more radical
solution to the problems created by Zionism than does Chomsky,
who, in supporting a two-state settlement, comes across within
the context of this book as being an almost conservative thinker.
Jews, in Kovels view, are suffering the burdens of what Marxists like
to call false consciousness and need to free their minds of such
benighted notions as Jewish particularism, exceptionalism, ethnicity,
and chosennessindeed, of their bonds to the ancient biblical
covenant altogether. Because these destructive ideas have now
been incorporated into a Jewish state, it is critical that Jews liberate
themselves from such a mentality and look beyond the raw, sordid
practices of Zionism (p. 77) and the illegitimate state it brought
into being. The Jewish vocation, in other words, is to be fulfilled by
living openly and peacefully in the Diaspora, not narrowly and
defensively within the confines of territorial borders. To be a true
Jew, according to Kovel, Jews have to annihilate their particularism,
annihilate or transcend Zionism, and annihilate the Jewish
state (p. 63) itself.
Like Farbers dagger through the heart of Jewish identity,
Kovels picturesque language is full of violent tropes, an odd gesture
for someone supposedly sworn to peacemaking. Such extreme rhetoric
is typical, however, of much progressive talk about Zionism
and Israel today, which often no longer bothers to mask the murder-
Progressives Complaint 23
wing rhetoric, including that of many progressive Jews, Zionism
has become a term of abuse, meant to convey a dangerous and
defiled ideology that has given rise to a corrupt and evil state. To
bring this state to its knees by aligning it with the atrocious behavior
of the past centurys most notoriously criminal states is the aim of
the anti-Zionists.
To advance this aim, the contributors to Farbers Radicals, Rabbis,
and Peacemakers at times invoke Judaisms own teachings,
denounce Zionism as a perversion of Judaism, and call the state it
created a horrible mistake (p. 224). Taking up a position long
favored by the extreme right-wing rabbis of Neturei Karta, Farber
finds the Jewish state heretical from a religious standpoint and condemns
it for driving a dagger through the heart of our identity as
Jews (p. 15). None of his contributors demurs from that line.
Rather, a given of their collective thinking seems to be that Israel
betrays the prophetic tradition, is stifling … to the notion of
Judaism (p. 63), and is simply unredeemable.
As is well known, the biblical prophets stood on the side of justice
and were never hesitant to denounce their peoples behavior
when they saw it deviating from the standards of justice. To remind
contemporary Jews of these demands is a religious imperative that
deserves to remain rigorously alive. But to cite the prophetic books
to condemn Israeli actions and, at the same time, to forego any realistic
historical and political frameworks that might account for such
actions, is to do little more than gesture promiscuously in the direction
of Jewish religious thinking. Farbers book is replete with such
superficial gestures, whenever Judaism is evoked just to score political
points. Matters hardly improve when Farbers contributors look
away from Judaism and advocate the de-Zionization of Israel on
other grounds. Thus Noam Chomsky, the intellectual godfather of
progressive attitudes toward Zionism and Israel, decries the Zionist
project, but, for pragmatic reasons, claims to be for a two-state
settlement. He regards such a step, however, as only a stage
toward the optimal solution, which is no state at all (p. 28).
Adam Shapiro, an activist member of the International Solidarity
Movement and a one-time comrade of Yasir Arafat in the latters
22 Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism
than ideological fellow travelersJews who mouth the standard
negative clichs about Zionism and Israel to establish their leftist
credentials. Because the ideological package that informs progressive
politics today links anti-Zionism to anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism,
anti-globalization, anti-racism, etc., one is expected as a matter
of course to be against Zionism and the supposedly racist, colonialist,
and oppressive state it has created. As political scientist
Andrei Markovits puts it, If one is not at least a serious doubter of
the legitimacy of the state of Israel (never mind the policies of its
government) … one runs the risk of being excluded from the entity
called the left.19 The fact that anti-Zionismunderstood as the
rejection of the long-established right of Jews to a secure national
homeland in Israelshares common features with anti-Jewish ideologies
of the past either eludes or fails to trouble Jews who identify
with these political tendencies. That is more than just a pityit is a
betrayal. Over the decades, elements within the left stood as principled
opponents of anti-Semitism and fought against it. To witness
some of their heirs today contributing to a newly resurgent anti-
Zionism that, in many ways, recalls older versions of anti-Semitism
is dismaying as well as disheartening.
At least as troubling as the subscribers to this cultural code are
the Jewish intellectuals who have helped establish and advance
many of its most destructive tropes. To the dismay of many, Israel
itself has provided a disturbingly large number of writers, scholars,
journalists, and others to feed this poisonous stream. One such was
the philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who felt no reservations in
talking about the Nazification of Israeli society and was fond of
using the epithet Judeo-Nazi in referring to the Israeli army. And
Leibowitz was hardly alone in employing such corrosive language.
It is a sad but familiar fact that some of Israels most passionate
defamers live within the borders of the state and have judged it
guilty of racism, fascism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, genocide
vilification drawn from the same devils thesaurus of anti-
Zionist derisions and excoriations that the Jewish states harshest
enemies regularly dip into when leveling their own attacks.20
Odd Bedfellows 25
ous fantasies that reside within it. As for the bizarre behavior that
these fantasies sometimes bring about, consider Steve Questers
response to the onset of Palestinian homicidal assaults within Israel:
[W]hen the suicide bombings started one after the other, I was
like, Okay, now everyones got to understand how horrible the
Israeli behavior is. … So, I just went out and bought myself a little
Palestinian flag pin and wore it around all the time (p. 34). Like so
much else in Farbers book, this theatrical gesture of solidarity with
the oppressed reduces progressive political thinking to the level
of the perverse and aligns it with the thinking that drives the new
anti-Semitism. At a time when the delegitimization and, ultimately,
the eradication of Israel is a goal being voiced with mounting fervor
by the enemies of the Jewish state, it is more than disheartening to
see Jews themselves adding to the vilification. That some do so in
the name of Judaism itself makes the nature of their assault all the
more grotesque.
OK, Mader Abu, I read most of that piece you posted. There's a lot of different things I could say about it, but here's the money quote:
"Apart from the United States, to which Israel is almost always linked by its enemies, no country on earth is as vilified as the Jewish State."
And here's my question:
How come the universal vilification of the United States is not a cause for concern for the author? He mentions this only in passing and only to help make his alarming case for 21st century anti-Semitism.
Alvin Rosenfeld is an Indiana University professor writing this piece for the American Jewish Committee.
Alvin Rosenfeld should take a little trip to the West Bank next time he goes to Israel and see for himself what extreme nationalism/racism really means today and who the victims are.
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