Ralph Seliger of Meretz USA sent me some "serious questions." Here are two:
1. As I said, it's fine if you personally believe in assimilation. Is
it not intolerant of you to insist that we who believe in the value of
Jewish peoplehood, culture and/or religion are somehow unenlightened or
not politically progressive?
2. We (although not you, I guess) agonize over Israel's future.
from the fact that a one-state solution won't work as a practical
matter (except to kill or oppress many more people), it will inevitably
deprive one people or the other of their right to national
self-determination. In the short run, it's the Palestinian Arabs who are denied this right; in the long run, it will be the Jews.
My answers:
1. I call myself an assimilationist because it honestly describes my personal progress. No sense in lying to anyone. I wish Zionists would identify themselves openly too. I completely respect people who don't make my choices. I have only always asked other Jews to stop shaming Jews who make my choice. I think I obviously believe in the value of Jewish culture; I'm an embodiment in my view of a certain intellectual tradition, text-oriented. It may be that my choices are affecting the future of "peoplehood." And there are also hundreds of languages dying in the world. I don't know what I can do about this, and also whether the effort to preserve peoplehood is worth the costs. I will not reverse my personal choices on that basis. I think it is possible to reconcile ethnocentrism and love of Jewish life and anti-assimilation with progressive politics. It's harder to reconcile Zionism with progressivism. Though I think some manage to do it…
2. I agonize over America's future, Palestinians' future, and Israelis' future too. Your statements are highly problematic. You say the short term deprives Palestinians of their rights. They have been deprived of self-determination (yes partly by Jordan and Egypt) for 60 years even after India, Pakistan and Israel were given theirs by the U.N. IT IS SIMPLY ABSURD TO SPEAK OF THE SHORT TERM. The short term of occupation is over 40 years old. Expulsion was more than 60 years ago. Generations are deprived of any hope. And you worry about a one-state solution killing people. I'm for a 2-state solution, I remind you Ralph, but the problem is that the status quo is killing lots of people, and enmeshing my country–the US–in the cycle of violence with "radical Islam" in the Middle East. Zionism has played a large part in the radicalization of Islam. I want to turn down the temperature, and try to preserve lives, whatever it takes. Even if that means ending "national self-determination" for the Jews, most of whom don't want to live in Israel anyway.
I'm going to post this and then you can respond and I'll post that…
