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…
There won't be 2 states here in our land. The Arabs have had many opportunities for that.
Now they will have NOTHING here in our land.
http://www.israelinitiative.com/
Some people think that dissent alone brings progress towards justice.
They're wrong.
More is needed.
And, the more that is needed looks like less to those that only dissent.
Mafish: You're right. There will, in the end, be one state, and it won't be Israel. It's too bad, really, but with Israeli policy seemingly bent on slow self-destruction, no other outcome is really possible.
Mafish, why do you care what Americans think about Israel? Why should it matter to you?
I'm a non-Jewish American who has spent time in Israel, and I can't stand the thought of working to fund Israel. I don't give a damn what happens to Israel as long as we don't get the emigres and refugees. Does that satisfy your curiosity?
Ralph Seliger wrote: “It’s clear from reading [Weiss’] drumbeat of attacks on Israel and Zionists that he is decidedly anti-Zionist. He is in favor of Jewish assimilationism. This is his right as a personal preference, but it is problematic when this position is presented as the one progressive view – as against "parochial" Jews who insist on sustaining and cultivating Jewish peoplehood, culture or religion as freely-chosen values.”
Oh, is that all the Zionists are doing — sustaining and cultivating the Jewish culture and religion. How quant of them, the little darlings. I guess all those reports of Israeli atrocities are mere conspiracy theories.
Jewish Zionist “progressives” like Seliger simply don’t like it when Jewish majorities (Israelis) are held to the same standards that those in the diaspora hold gentile majorities. It conflicts with their culture of choseness (ie supremacism). After all, we’re all created equal, it’s just that some are more equal than others, particularly those with victim bona-fides (or at least those with effective media propaganda organs and good P.R.), and plenty of money to enforce double standards.
Craig,
There will only be one state and it is Israel.
The Arabs, who chose war INSTEAD OF a state, will have to make a state elsewhere- or not at all.
Todd,
I don't really care what you think.
PS POLL: MORE AMERICANS ARE PRO-ISRAELI
NEW GALLUP SURVEY REVEALS ISRAEL IS ONE OF FIVE COUNTRIES AMERICANS FEEL MOST FAVORABLY ABOUT; PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY RANKS NEAR BOTTOM ALONG WITH IRAN, NORTH KOREA
Isn't that great? :-)
Again, why do you care what Americans think of Israel? You didn't answer that.
Also, I have taken part in polls before, and they are never designed to get at actual opinions. I have no doubt that if the average American had the ability to withdraw his tax dollars that go towards the support of Israel, he would do so. I would bet that few Americans actually freely donate money to Israel. You have no clue what Americans think.
Weiss: "the Zionists often remind me of American Communists who were in complete denial of what Soviet society had become."
Ideological totalitarianism is a stubborn mindset, and murderous, too. But Jewish Bolshevism murdered millions more than Zionism, even when one includes a million or so Iraqi casualties of Jewish Neoconservatism and its treacherous allies (on both the Left and Right).
All of this could have been avoided by giving the diaspora Zionists what they profess to want: a place of their own. Fine, here's a one-way ticket to Israel. Go, and no longer darken humanity's door with your murderous totalitarian schemes, primarily hatched in the diaspora. You don’t want to go? Fine. Then shut the hell up and assimilate.
Todd,
We like America and America likes us. We're not like your jihadi friends.
Isn't that great?
Nighty-night from the land overflowing with milk and honey, your ally.
Mafish Falastin – is this pseudonym a take on Palestinian Mephistopheles aka devils advocate?
I'm not sure if real racists are so blatant and "in your face".
German Nazis never cared what non-German Nazis thought about Nazi racial beliefs.
Mafish Falastin ("No more Palestine" — colloquial Egyptian, probably a student of Pipes) is like Richard Witty yet another ethnic Ashkenazi Nazi.
The Zionist tower is built on sand.
Increasing numbers of Americans are realizing how much we are being conned.
At critical mass everything tumbles down.
BTW, I think the correct non-genocidal equivalent of Mafish Falastin would be:
כל ציונות יותר מדי
Any Zionism is too much.
Its wishful thinking to assume that Zionism is in trouble fundamentally.
Jews do identify as Jews, and while some prefer to live in Jewish communities, or fully assimilated, elsewhere, Israel is still currently necessary and a viable state.
The two-state solution is necessary and practical. Its the only practical solution to any of the real problems there.
There is still the hope that Jews will leave the region. It is a vain hope. The reality that both peoples are there should not be dismissed in any way.
The two communities are not assimilable currently, or in the foreseeable future.
Its a torture to hold out a fantasy, pretending that it is practical or desirable.
On Jon Pollack's comments. ANY strictly political solution, however initiated, is incomplete and unjust. A political solution must yeild law, that enables the resolution of individual determination of title.
Mafish's suggestion is an impossible and undesirable one, for the fantasy that Torah gives Jews the current title to land, and particularly through extra-legal means.
The element that dissenters and rabid Zionists share, is the willingness to view justice through a single lens.
Anything real takes multiple angles to see clearly, otherwise the cardboard standup display looks like a real person (three dimensions and soul).
Martillo,
I'm going to start including an adjective every time I refer to your name.
It is hardly justice for Jews to plunder and kill non-Jews with impunity.
In any case at this point, Zionism is depleting the US economy, Americans are dying to make the ME safe for Israel, and Jewish Zionist oligarchs and Zionist intelligentsia are ruining the US political system.
We Americans have to stomp out Zionism because of the damage it does to us.
It may be cruel but the issue of Palestinian suffering is completely secondary.
"It may be cruel but the issue of Palestinian suffering is completely secondary."
Finally, someone is making sense!
Witty: "Its wishful thinking to assume that Zionism is in trouble fundamentally. Jews do identify as Jews, and while some prefer to live in Jewish communities, or fully assimilated, elsewhere, Israel is still currently necessary and a viable state."
Notice the conflation with 'Jews living in Jewish communities elsewhere' and Zionism. This is correct; the two can be accurately conflated because each are islands with an agenda, system, and political apparatus of their own in a sea of non-Jews whose interests run counter. This is always how organized Judaism has operated, which is why it has always been targeted. None of the current contretemps is anything new. Europe merely exported the "Jewish problem" to the Levant with the help of Jewish Zionists, all of whom understood the unassimilability of organized Judaism and its hostile, Jewish nationalist agenda of Zion within non-Jewish countries.
But naive Americans thought they knew better, and so welcomed organized Jewry with open arms, and have been repaid with this…nightmare. 9/11 and the Iraq war were apparently only the beginning of their education, particularly if the polls about how much America loves Israel and organized Jewry that Mafish Falastin keeps pointing to are true. And nothing is going to change until Americans wise up.
But sooner or later they will learn, as Europe did, as Islam has. And at that point in time my remedy of merely deporting Jewish Zionists to the object of their affection and the one place that has consummated the agenda of Zion will look moderate.
How many untold millions will die between now and then simply in order that Americans can cling to their fantastical thinking, their political correctness, and their religious and social delusions of exceptionalism?
We aren't "untouchable," as 9/11 and the Iraq war prove. Time to grow up.
Some people think that speaking out against injustice is better than rank hypocrisy and apologism on its behalf.
They're wrong.
And wrong is not right, even if what is right appears to be wrong. And vice-versa.
More is needed.
Zionism is not facing any existential threat.
We only talk about Iran that way to trick the U.S. into bombing them.
(Of course once they do bomb them, we will claim to have been against such a barbaric, illegal attack from the beginning.)
Israel is still currently necessary and will continue to remain so as long as anyone voices any opposition to its war crimes.
And Israel is still a viable state, as long as AIPAC still makes Congress and presidential candidates lick their balls on a regular basis.
The two-state solution is the most practical way of permanently (fingers crossed!) dispossessing the Palestinians from the lands they lost fair and square.
There is still the hope that the Palestinians will just pack up and leave us the whole thing. It is a vain hope. The reality is that the IDF will need to continue constructing that Iron Wall, while zionist propagandists must continue their attempts to justify ethnic cleansing by any logical means necessary.
It helps to have AIPAC Wolf Blitzer refereeing the debate on CNN.
The two communities are not assimilable currently, and the Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews seeking to marry but being prohibited by Israeli law to do so are holding out a fantasy, pretending that it is practical or desirable.
Fantasies and dreams are dangerous if they lead people to question the currently favorable status quo.
Mafish is wrong to try to use the Torah to justify the ethnic cleansing. A much better tact is to use the ethnic cleansing of Jews in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries to justify it.
The element that dissenters and rabid Zionists share, is the inability to compromise, from multiple angles, for the sake of what's best for the Jews.
Anything real takes multiple equivocations to see clearly, otherwise the cardboard standup display starts to look like a basic case of the colonized and the colonizing.
Let's see about your Nazi imagery. Who supported the Nazis then?
THE GRAND MUFTI OF JERUSALEM, HAJ AMIN AL-HUSSEYNI
And who supports Naziism now?
THESE PEOPLE DO
THE REAL NAZIS: NOPE. IT'S NOT THE NORWEGIANS