Ralph Seliger of Meretz accuses me of intolerance, proselytizing assimilation, Palin-flipflopping, and anti-Zionism here. Though Ralph has I think acknowledged that I might be helpful to progressive Zionists in terms of support for the two-state solution.
Because as my Zionist friends know, Israeli society really is in existential crisis now, and as I tell them, the smartest thing for the progressive Zionists to do is to try and build a coalition with all who support a fair solution, including Jimmy Carter, Walt and Mearsheimer and an assimilating Jew like myself. Because as I blogged yesterday in reference to Ian Lustick's amazing article, Israel has lost its way, militarism and [hatred–Weiss excised] mistrust are its only answer, and even David Grossman says it faces "the abyss."
I haven't embraced the word anti-Zionism because I think Zionism really is ending as a living ideology and the most important thing is to help Jews get past it. And I prefer post-Zionist because– yes, it sounds nicer. But it's fine to call me anti-Zionist. Indeed, the Zionists often remind me of American Communists who were in complete denial of what Soviet society had become.
That's the only issue: The divide between my camp and the progressive Zionists always comes back to whether the progs will go after the occupation and the U.S. support for it. We feel the occupation has resulted in countless social evils–to use Scott McClellan's excellent word when he was trying to uproot hazing at his UT fraternity–and that it has darkened the entire Israeli polity. I mention McClellan because in the end he nobly chose to resign the presidency of his fraternity (as he nobly turned on the Bushies). And many young Jews would rather simply resign their membership in The Jewish State than enable the occupation in any way; and if that means the end of the Jewish state and an effort to imagine a one-state solution, so be it. Even the Times, the tribune of the liberal American Jewish community, has begun to acknowledge a political possibility that Tony Judt accepted five years ago.
The progressive Zionists basically allowed the settlement projects to continue because they never took on AIPAC publicly in the U.S. until lately (and then only mildly). And why not? Because they secretly regard AIPAC as Israel's breathing tube, which is AIPAC's own view of its role, and they didn't want to damage it.
Here's the amazing Israeli activist Jonathan Pollack on Democracy Now arguing with Seliger's colleague Lilly Rivlin about progressive Zionism three years ago. Notice that she holds forth the Jewish state as a litmus test (exactly as Annie Roiphe said to me in a forum a year ago that if I wasn't for the Jewish state she couldn't talk to me), and Pollack refuses the test:
POLLACK: I have no hope that [the left] will actually change the political
situation in Israel. People should remember that the left was in
control in 1948 with the expulsions. It was in control in 1967 when
Israel occupied the Occupied Territories. It was in control when the
settlement project, the illegal settlement project in the West Bank
began in the 1970s. The left, the Zionist left, is the one that took
the so-called peace process in Oslo and used it to cantonize the
Occupied Territories and to maintain control over the Palestinians
using less military might, but just as much control. And this is what
we see from the Zionist left throughout history. And I don’t see any
reason why Amir Peretz will be different. And his rhetoric is still
racist. It’s maybe more progressive, but it is still racist. So, I
don’t see a big change. It may affect the Israeli political map, but
that doesn’t mean there will be a real change on the ground. There’s a
very strong consolidation of Israeli politics around the center, and
Amir Peretz isn’t a variation to that.
AMY GOODMAN: Lilly Rivlin.
LILLY RIVLIN:
Thank you for—I think what you see right here is what is the problem of
the left in Israel, and everywhere else. I mean, the disagreements
between the two of us is—will get us nowhere, that this young man,
Jonathan, is—I’d like to hear from Jonathan what his solution is,
because it sounds to me like his solution would be a one state. Is that
your position? It feels like it. And before—I mean, I’d like to hear
you, but I see this as a no-win position. Jonathan’s position is a
no-win position. Our position, Meretz, and maybe hopefully Labour, will
be a position that finally maybe we can move further. I’d like to hear
what the Palestinian point of view is, but it gives us some hope.
Jonathan’s position, there’s no—where you are going to go from here?
JONATHAN POLLAK: Well, my position, if I may say what my position is—
LILLY RIVLIN: I’d like to hear.
JONATHAN POLLAK:—is
that the responsibility is on Israel. Israel is the occupying side. I’m
not a politician. I don’t speak of one state or two states. First of
all, the occupation has to end. And this should be the outline of
any—of every plan, and Israel has to recognize its history and its
responsibility as a colonizer in the Middle East. And all we do now is
talking about what are Palestinians willing to do about Hamas’s
charter, about the PLO’s charter, etc., etc. But the side that is
occupying the other side right now, the side that isn’t recognizing the
other side is Israel, including the Zionist left. Throughout, the
Zionist left had maintained control over Palestinian civilians and over
the Occupied Territories in a variety of ways…
