Rabbi Lelyveld on the ‘Revolutionary’ Spirit in Jews

"Recently I argued that anti-Zionism might just be the new Zionism for Jewish youth, because it appeals to the same idealistic/prophetic chord in Jewish history that Zionism formerly appealed to."

This isn't accurate. Zionism appealed not to idealist but to realists in the Russian Pale.

In fact, all the revolutionary movement appealed to Jews because they were being denied their rights as human beings.

Anti-Zionism does appeal to "idealists," so called and that is what is wrong with it.

On the one had there fear drives anti-Zionism among some Jews, on the other hand they try to put on a brave face by attacking other Jews knowing full well that they risk nothing.

I am not a neo conservative though I may be cranky, who isn't these days.

btw:Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld was a Zionist. He was the President of the Anerican Zionist Congress I believe. I am sure you know that but many of your readers may not.

As for marching against desegregate , been there done that. Do I feel proud of that? No.

I feel it was the necessary thing to do and that I was doing my duty. I never thought of myself as an idealist.

Real leftists don't think of themselves as idealists.

The magazines I subscribe to are Dissent and Telos, not Tikkun.

I also subscribe to the Euston Manifesto, check it out:

http://eustonmanifesto.org/joomla/

Part of the problem may be that the younger generation don't like being lied to, and figure that any concept based upon lies must be invalid. There's also the problem that the proponents of Zionism tend to deal with critics under the dictum, "Oderint dum metuant"–let them hate us as long as they fear us. Nobody likes a bully.

It's also only natural that Diaspora Jewry come to a parting of the ways with Israeli Jews, since their interests are sometimes contradictory. Here's an article about German Jews reacting negatively to an Israeli immigration society being set up in Germany. The article notes that American Jews have exactly the same reaction–"Include us OUT!"

http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=12962

Zionists are merely racists in disguise, White Supremacists of a different stripe, if you will. How many times I've heard Jewish colleagues talk about exterminating the arabs. Not all, no, not even many, but enough that I came to view them as a racist sub-type of Jewish person. It was the same dull malevolence I saw in black-hating southern rednecks and Boston Irish, and in the vile anti-semitism of the only ex-nazi I ever met (a tenured professor at a prestigious university in beantown, no less): it was a malevolence not approachable by reasoned argument, implacable and yes, Hannah, banal. After listening silently (like a good goy should) to their tirades, I would sometimes ask them "if there were a button here which you could push, and instantaneously annihilate all the arabs/moslems, would you push it?" Without hesitation they would give an emphatic 'yes.' Obviously some bluster, some showmanship, but still…

The more motivated of this subclass of racist Jews morphed themselves rather neatly into "neoconservatives," and in league with amoral oil profiteers were able to engineer the dismemberment of Iraq, and now they clamor for the use of nuclear weapons against Iran. What is more mad than that? As someone else has asked, if this is not barbarity, to use nuclear weapons on innocents, then what is barbarity?

It is an action only a deeply racist person could contemplate. People who advocate first use of nuclear weapons against Iran should be shunned, treated as pariahs, by all normal members of civilization.

But that's just me.

I don't see anti-zionism being a "new Zionism," because anti-zionism is not predicated on racism, does not necessarily, as a precondition, think of arabs as untermenschen. Is it idealism or is it
fanaticism, when one marshalls one's energy for a cause that is, in actual practice, abhorrent to any
accepted standards of decency?

As repugnant as it is to supporters of Israel, the South African model still applies. There are, I'm sure, many white Afrikaaners who still look on blacks as inferiors, but they've made their political peace with them, and at least in terms of the structure of their society, acknowledge their basic human dignity. We will not see an effective end to the Zionist imperative until the racist element in Judaism (the same people are always quick to speak sotto voce about "the schwarze")can at least recognize in arabs a common humanity.

I laugh as I write that, knowing how quixotic it sounds.

"More than half the Jews in the world today live in Israel."

I thought it was less than a third. In fact, most sources say more Jews are living in the U.S. than in Israel. Perhaps you're applying your own customized definition of Jewish?

I have argued endlessly that Zionism (which has become a nationalist secularist religion) will be bad for Jews everywhere. In fact, Jewish sages were arguing the same thing at the very beginning of Zionism. But it's more so today than ever before.

The problem with nationalist-racist ideologies of the 19th century is that they are relics of the past. Zionists can keep on denying historical facts and attacking everyone who doesn't accept their dogmas and mythology forever, but this will only backfire. It is backfiring today.

Today, in an age when the internet provides so much information for free to anyone genuinely interested on any subject, Zionist propaganda simply has no chance anymore. And even without the internet, people everywhere know a brutal occupation when they see it and understand the difference between the rhetoric of the Israeli State and reality. This is what explains world public opinion and the position of Israel in the bottom of every survey on national "brands", not the supposed anti-Semitism of the whole planet.

Even more importantly, the new generation is very intelligent and doesn't like being lied to. And to give credit where credit is due, nobody has helped debunk Zionist mythology and outright lies more than Israeli historians themselves.

There was a time when Golda Meir could shamelessly say that there is no such thing as a Palestinian. Joan Peters could write "Time Immemorial" to support this claim, only to be exposed later as a shameless fraud. It worked for a while, but what good does it do today? That's the problem with propaganda in general. The exposure of such lies only makes apologists look foolish. The more lies are debunked, the more they have to backpedal. Like Phil Weiss once wrote, it's no fun to defend Israel's present policies, the occupation, the settlements. More accurate would be to say that it's a shame that also destroys any pretense to belief in human rights or ethics or morality as far as apologists are concerned.

Israel and her apologists could also claim for a while that Palestinians fled in 1948 on their own will and at the behest of their leaders, but today it has been proven that it was ethnic cleansing. Even more importantly, recently declassified documents actually prove that this ethnic cleansing was not "accidental" (the new line of defense, a sort of "shit-happens" argument, you see the backpedaling keeps going), but was deliberate and a plan executed well.

Moreover, whatever the rhetoric of the Israeli Left or Right, the settlement project has been going on for 3 decades and is still going on. It was actually accelerated by Israeli Labour governments, thus destroying the ridiculous argument that it's only the extremist right-wing zealots who work for Greater Israel. How can anyone defend this?

Then you have Zionists propagate the myth that Israel is not an apartheid state when all one has to do is read Israeli newspapers online and see for himself whether that's true or not. Besides, how can anyone seriously deny the apartheid laws and accuse South Africans, Desmond Tutu and even Carter of anti-Semitism? How can this be possibly be good in the long run?

I could go on and on, but I think people get the picture. The position of Israel today is unattainable. Moreover, the misguided blind support that Jewish communities give to Israel, whatever her policies, only make the arguments about dual loyalty stronger. Iran today is a good case in point. The only ones actively lobbying for a new war, a war with Iran, are Jewish organizations and the Israel Lobby. Every American is aware of that. One wonders, have these Jewish leaders stopped for a moment to consider the consequences of this? If this war happens and it is a catastrophe, who will take the blame? Is this a classic case where what is supposedly good for Israel is bad for Jews everywhere, yes or no?

It is high time for Israel to make peace and be just with the Palestinians. It is high time the settlements be dismantled and the messianic visions of Greater Israel go to the dustbin of history. And it's high time for Jewish communities everywhere to pressure Israel in that direction. As every parent or family member or friend knows, when someone you love and you really care about misbehaves, it is a duty to reprimand them. Defending them to outsiders while patting them on the back only makes things worse.

Yes, Zionism today is bad for Jews everywhere. Many suspect this, but it's time for action. Either it will be peace or I'm afraid Israel will be doomed in the long run. Nobody in their right minds can possibly believe that Israel can continue those policies and survive in a sea of hatred for long. And for those quick to say that Israel's policies have nothing to do with this hatred, pick any history book that comes out of Israel today, and the ones that will come out in the future and face reality. The more documents get declassified, the more of Israel's reputation, whatever is left of it, gets destroyed. It's now or never for Israel and the clock is ticking.

on reflection what interests me about Lelyveld statement is the huge shift in Jewish identity from 1964 to 2004. Then it was: unsynagogued, civil rights movement. Today it is identificatoin with Israel and, to one or another degree based on crankiness, the so-called war on terror.
My problem with Israel-and-Jewish-identity is that we truly have allowed the tail to wag the dog: we have absorbed Israel's experience with its neighbors–they want to push us into the sea–as our outlook on the whole Muslim world.
We have abandoned the teaching of the civil rights movement in favor of militarism. I am shocked by the number of liberal affluent Jews who express Exterminate-them-all ideas.
I think they have taken that tough lesson from the Jabotinskyites in Israel, regurgitated by Thomas Friedman and other liberals.
When the true intellectual challenge is to say, Yes Islam is behind us in crucial ways; but neocolonial militarist arrogance is not the way to take that on…

"on reflection what interests me about Lelyveld statement is the huge shift in Jewish identity from 1964 to 2004. Then it was: unsynagogued, civil rights movement. Today it is identificatoin with Israel and, to one or another degree based on crankiness, the so-called war on terror. "

Jewish community is not "synagogued", but it is self-identified, and not only by values.

Jewish identity results from Jewish community in many flavors.

"I am shocked by the number of liberal affluent Jews who express Exterminate-them-all ideas.
I think they have taken that tough lesson from the Jabotinskyites in Israel, regurgitated by Thomas Friedman and other liberals."

Can you quote? Most of the individuals that you've quoted at length as important influences, have NEVER stated anything remotely resembling "exterminate-them-all".

Phil,
I think the important distinction that I hear in your comments, is that you express your Jewishness as residual, NOT of current participation in Jewish community.

The mortar that presses it is children, FUTURE.

Judaism is familial, father to son, mother to daughter, community to student. Being Jewish includes values, perspectives, philosophy, and many regard that as the NUT (in contrast to the dead shell).

But, it is also of current and active present -> future association.

Its not idealistic, as in hopes and principles to weigh experiences against. The guiding value is of the real.

Phil, do you think the the anti-semitic message to the American people — of Jews as dual loyalist psychopathic warmongerers — is heartfelt, or a cyncial manipulation of public opinion?

"Nobody in their right minds can possibly believe that Israel can continue those policies and survive in a sea of hatred for long."

The problem is that a significant number of Jews need a sea of hatred in order to feel alive. And Israeli society seems to need a shared sense of persecution in order to keep from flying apart. So I'm not optimistic that the problem is going to fix itself anytime soon.

"And if real peace does come to Israel, the question will be asked: Can we, and how do we, survive without an external enemy?" (Avraham Burg)

"The problem is that a significant number of Jews need a sea of hatred in order to feel alive."

That is an attempt at generalizing the subjective condition of large numbers without clear evidence, and seems at the least a distortion, and most likely a falsity.

"And Israeli society seems to need a shared sense of persecution in order to keep from flying apart."

Again, a distortion of a much more complex reality. The same could be true for all countries, as noted by Alan: the presence of external threats usually bolsters the current regime (outstanding exception: Czarist Russia in WW 1, where the rulers fell despite being at war with a mortal foe (Kaiser Wilhelm).

Must a people remain in a crucible to maintain their identity, once forged? The crucible serves to strengthen an identity, but is it a sine qua non of the identity? Certainly debatable.

——————-

"And if real peace does come to Israel, the question will be asked: Can we, and how do we, survive without an external enemy?" (Avraham Burg)

As an outsider (with all the attendant qualifiers as to my ability to comment on these matters), I think Burg's idea of substituting a Zionism of the Land for one of the Soul is interesting. Their is a reciprocity: the one permits and encourages the other. The Forward has an interesting editorial written by JJ Goldberg (who I think is appearing on the panel tomorrow with Phil,) Burg's ideas.

"To Avraham Burg, former Knesset speaker, former chairman of the World Zionist Organization and son of one of Israel’s founding fathers, it is all of those things and more. In a new book, “Defeating Hitler,” and in a much-discussed interview in Ha’aretz last week, Burg argues that the time for Herzl’s Zionism is past. Now it is time for Ahad Ha’am’s Zionism, for Israel as a spiritual beacon.

Israel has lived long enough in the shadow of trauma and fear, he argues. Now is the time for trust — trust in Israel’s place in the world, in the possibility of coexistence, in the moral legacy of Judaism."

Sounds good to me.