Ralph Seliger has taken on my Zionist history guru Jack Ross re the progressive tendencies inside Zionism. I'm going to offer Seliger's response to Ross's recent post. Then Ross's response to Seliger. I imagine Seliger may wish to respond to Ross, and I expect we'll leave it at that. I like to give guests whose views I disagree with the last word by and large.
Seliger:
Citing Ross: "Is Seliger really claiming with a straight face that before Biltmore conference in '42 (when Zionists endorse a Jewish state in Palestine) Weizman, Ben Gurion, et al were in favor of binationalism?"
I submit that Ross needs to go back to school to further his study
of Zionism, because he apparently does not know about the factional
differences in the historic Zionist movement. Enemies of Zionism seem always to attribute statements or policies of the different factions to all
Zionists: for example, from Labor Zionists such as Ben-Gurion, general
Zionists (centrists) like Weizmann, or Revisionists (rightists) like
Jabotinsky and Begin. Weizmann and Ben-Gurion were not in agreement
with the bi-nationalist views of Hashomer Hatzair
and Brit Shalom or IHUD. Hahomer Hatazair was a
radical socialist-Zionist movement which had attempted to join the
Comintern (Communist International) in 1927 and had opposed the idea of
a Jewish state prior to the Arab attacks of 1947-48; Brit Shalom and
IHUD represented outstanding liberal voices of Jewish conscience in and
outside of Palestine-- including Martin Buber, Judah Magnes and Hannah Arendt. (In its early years, Hashomer Hatzair's political party, MAPAM, was the second largest in Israel's parliament.)
These Zionists all supported a Jewish homeland in Palestine (and
a place of refuge for a horribly persecuted minority) within the
context of a bi-national state or union of Arabs and Jews
in Palestine. Both these strains of Zionism have always advocated peace
and reconciliation. Hashomer Hatzair still exists in name as a Zionist youth movement,
but its political legacy remains with Meretz [of which Seliger is a US leader]. They are no longer
bi-nationalist because this has ceased to be practical, but they do
favor complete equality between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel. Martin Buber's influence lived on via New Outlook magazine (which folded in '91 or '92) and the Palestine-Israel Journal.
If the Palestinian Arab side had emerged with a powerful movement
aimed at peace and reconciliation, rather than largely drifting into
the orbit of the Axis Powers via the Mufti, the history of Palestine might have been very different.
Jack Ross responds:
I know that there were factions within Zionism, yes, as Seliger incredulously suggests I thought otherwise. I thought Ichud and Brit Shalom were the same thing, maybe not, and it is their legacy which I embrace. Seliger is however whitewashing the history of Mapam, which in the late mandate/early statehood period was totally in hock to the Soviets and their party line. In this connection I would remind readers of the anecdote I think I saw on this blog of how Khrushchev's son said in an interview recently that Stalin's pro-Zionism was based on a long term calculation of giving the west an intractable stumbling block to sound policy, which unfortunately succeeded brilliantly.
Re Martin Buber. This is a red herring, no one was opposed to Palestine as a refuge insofar as it was amicable with the native population, though "homeland" to me is a weasel word, or what Ayn Rand called an "anti-concept" - indeed exactly the sort of weasel word or anti-concept which was used by the Yishuv and Jewish Agency to duplicitously solicit support.
Meretz was the merger of what was left of Mapam and the pro-peace faction of Labor led by Bellin. Yes, they support a two-state solution, but, with the facts on the ground, for how long? It is the two-state solution which has never been practical. Many very good people have sincerely believed in it, but in the hands of Israeli leadership it has been nothing but a ruse in order to serve world opinion.
As to the Arabs, I have never been an apologist for the Arabs, and the Mufti was a vicious mother, no question. But it is irresponsible to deny that the Mufti, Chandra Bose, and the Free Iraqi Government had legitimate anti-imperialist aspirations which led them to collaborate with the Axis. And the Mufti's Axis collaboration was no better or worse than that of Irgun as late as '38.
In fact, if you've seen this insane new neocon biography of the Mufti meant to argue that we've always been at war with East Asia, which goes so far as to claim that the Mufti, not Hitler, first proposed the Final Solution. I suspect that the grain of truth to this is that some time in 1941-42 Hitler made the calculation that his fortunes lay not with the likes of Begin and Lord Haw-Haw but with the anti-imperialist forces of the British Empire such as Bose and the Mufti, which helped push the Final Solution along, though of course by no means exclusively.
Jack Ross responds:
I know that there were factions within Zionism, yes, as Seliger incredulously suggests I thought otherwise. I thought Ichud and Brit Shalom were the same thing, maybe not, and it is their legacy which I embrace. Seliger is however whitewashing the history of Mapam, which in the late mandate/early statehood period was totally in hock to the Soviets and their party line. In this connection I would remind readers of the anecdote I think I saw on this blog of how Khrushchev's son said in an interview recently that Stalin's pro-Zionism was based on a long term calculation of giving the west an intractable stumbling block to sound policy, which unfortunately succeeded brilliantly.
Re Martin Buber. This is a red herring, no one was opposed to Palestine as a refuge insofar as it was amicable with the native population, though "homeland" to me is a weasel word, or what Ayn Rand called an "anti-concept" - indeed exactly the sort of weasel word or anti-concept which was used by the Yishuv and Jewish Agency to duplicitously solicit support.
Meretz was the merger of what was left of Mapam and the pro-peace faction of Labor led by Bellin. Yes, they support a two-state solution, but, with the facts on the ground, for how long? It is the two-state solution which has never been practical. Many very good people have sincerely believed in it, but in the hands of Israeli leadership it has been nothing but a ruse in order to serve world opinion.
As to the Arabs, I have never been an apologist for the Arabs, and the Mufti was a vicious mother, no question. But it is irresponsible to deny that the Mufti, Chandra Bose, and the Free Iraqi Government had legitimate anti-imperialist aspirations which led them to collaborate with the Axis. And the Mufti's Axis collaboration was no better or worse than that of Irgun as late as '38.
In fact, if you've seen this insane new neocon biography of the Mufti meant to argue that we've always been at war with East Asia, which goes so far as to claim that the Mufti, not Hitler, first proposed the Final Solution. I suspect that the grain of truth to this is that some time in 1941-42 Hitler made the calculation that his fortunes lay not with the likes of Begin and Lord Haw-Haw but with the anti-imperialist forces of the British Empire such as Bose and the Mufti, which helped push the Final Solution along, though of course by no means exclusively.
"The Jews might have had Uganda, Madagascar, and other places for the establishment of a Jewish Fatherland, but they wanted absolutely nothing except Palestine, not because the Dead Sea water by evaporation can produce five trillion dollars of metaloids and powdered metals; not because the sub-soil of Palestine contains twenty times more petroleum than all the combined reserves of the two Americas; but because Palestine is the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa, because Palestine constitutes the veritable center of world political power, the strategic center for world control." -Nahum Goldman, President, World Jewish Congress
"If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country . . . We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?" -David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, speaking to Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress
"I do not believe that Palestine can ever become a Jewish State or that both the Christian and Islamic world will ever be prepared to entrust their holy places to Jewish care. To me it would have seemed more sensible to establish a Jewish homeland on a historically unencumbered soil; I do know that with such a rational plan one could never have won the enthusiasm of the masses or the financial backing of the rich. Also, I regretfully admit that the unworldly fanaticism of our fellow Jews must bear some responsibility for awakening the mistrust of the Arabs. Nor can I summon up any trace of sympathy for the misguided piety that has made a piece of Herod's wall into a national relic, thereby provoking the natives' feelings." -Sigmund Freud
"The principle holds that no citizen loses his property or his rights of citizenship and the citizenship right is de facto a right to which (Palestinians in Israel) have much more legitimacy than the Jews…. If all nations would suddenly claim territories in which their forefathers lived two thousands years ago, this world would be a madhouse." -Erich Fromm, Jewish Letter, 2/9/1959
"Right now, there is an influx of Soviet Jews into Israel. They are fleeing because they expect religious persecution. Yet at the instant their feet touched Israeli soil, they became extreme Israeli nationalists with no pity for the Palestinians. From persecuted to persecutors in the blinking of an eye." -Isaac Asimov
"I do believe that the Jews have been cruelly wronged by the world. But in my opinion, they [the Jews] have erred grievously in seeking to impose themselves on Palestine with the aid of America and Britain and now with the aid of naked terrorism… Why should they depend on American money or British arms for forcing themselves on an unwelcome land? Why should they resort to terrorism to make good their forcible landing in Palestine?" -Gandhi
"My sympathy (for Jewish persecution) does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and in the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after their return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?" -Gandhi
"It is difficult to deny that Zionism, in practice if not theory, amounts to ethnic chauvinism, colonial ethnocentrism, and national oppression."
-Tim Wise, "Reflections on Zionism From a Dissident Jew"
How do those arguments address the historical status of Jews as persecuted, with the pinnacle in the holocaust, and then the status of large numbers of permanently displaced refugees post WW2.
Seliger's point was that different options were possible and debated prior to the naziis, but after the real holocaust, Zionism was necessary.
Greater Israel was never necessary, and represented the fantasy of Jabotinsky and his followers that became prime ministers under Likud (Begin and Shamir, and then Begin's follower Sharon – who renounced the Jabotinsky thesis in 2002-3 and formed kadima).
As much as I respect Sari Nasibeh, who now advocates for a single-state, in which Palestinians and Israelis are equal citizens, I strongly disagree with the proposal, as does Abbas.
Absent primal mutual acceptance of the other, there is no prospect for a single-state.
Phil's reference to the post about Jenin is a hope. But, the response of the "activists" here functionally condemning the effort as mere PR for the "evil" Israel, is an indicator of the smallness of vision of prevailing anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist dissent, rendering that prerequisite of a single-state (ACCEPTANCE of the other) impossible.
There is also the issue of whether justice is constructed in reference to the past, or in reference to the present->future.
Certainly elements of the past affect the prospects for the future, but if the primary reference is anger, outrage, and NOT proposal and commitment, then the outcome of that will be violence only.
The choice of outrage vs proposal impacts the question about how to regard "facts on the ground". Nassibeh for example, in his advocacy for a single-state, as well as Abunimeh (per my understanding) are that the individual settlers should have the right to remain in their current homes (with compensation to those that were taken by less than fully legal means).
Whenever I've encountered more assertive activists, they respond to that as a betrayal, that the settlers do not deserve a vote, do not deserve equal due process before the law, and should simply be removed.
That is a conclusion based on outrage, rather than democracy. Democracy implies one-person one-vote, and equal due process before the law.
Personally, I think Israel should stop screwing around and accept the Arab League proposal, accept 1967 borders as the jurisdiction of Palestine (adjusted by consent of the two parties as peers), allow Palestinians deprived of equal due process under the law in making title claims for land in both the West Bank and Israel, and stop waiting.
Do it.
But not as demon, not as chased, but as morally confident, proud of their achievements, proud of their ability and commitment to help others.
The response to the removal of the settlers is to uphold international law, respect the wishes of Palestinian self-determination and to decrease the possible amount of bloodshed that will take place the longer this situation exists.
It also attempts at feigning realism: these settlers have no desire to live amongst the Palestinians. It seems more evident that their removal (similar to the Gaza evacuations) is the least offensive to each party here.
Joshua,
You don't know what the settlers would choose.
You presume generalized evil on the basis of a caricature of some. For example, there are 450,000 non-Palestinians living on the Palestinian side of the green line, since 1967.
Of those, less than half are in settlement blocs that extend more than 5 miles into green line Palestine. The majority live in suburbs of Israeli cities.
We are in agreement that that should never have been allowed to occur. But, NOW it has occurred, and those people are mostly plain working people civilians.
Its too easy to see pictures of Hebron settlers and then generalize that that represents the population on the Palestinian side of the green line.
As angry as that makes you.