I'm still thinking about my post about Israel not having a true democracy because Tzipi Livni would not include Arab parties in a coalition. Instead she reached out to the rightwing, Shas, but Shas wanted guarantees on Jerusalem. So she can't form a government, and can't openly urge the division of Jerusalem, a necessity to the two-state solution. Barak did something similar in forming a government in 1999, embracing the right so as to escape Arab demands. Whatever happened to one-man, one-vote, if when it really counts, you don't get counted?
I recommend the comments on that post. Particularly Higginslads on Hamas's peaceable statements, and Eurosabra's explanation of the anti-Zionism of the Arab parties in Israel. I have no idea of that political culture, it makes Livni's decision more understandable. It is a different picture; I accept that. But even Eurosabra says it's "chicken and egg." I.e., how radicalized is someone going to be if you deny them rights on a religious basis? If you don't try to get them in the military. If you ethnically cleanse Palestinian lands, and Palestinian holdings in Jaffa?
This goes back to the central question here, of course, which is whether Israel didn't start down the wrong path years ago in its definition of itself as a Jewish state. It is the question that Avraham Burg raises in his new book, which begins with a dedication to Hannah Arendt and which urges Jews to get out of the ghetto. Last night at dinner I told my wife about Livni's political calculus, and she said, "I don't think they realize how racist they are. That's the shocking thing."
One reason Israelis don't understand how this looks is that we protect them from this understanding. We nullify U.N. criticism, we support them in anything they do. Our media and political institutions justify the demonization of any Palestinian who opposes Zionism–even as we have pushed suicide terrorist factions into a coalition government in Iraq, forgiving them their violent resistance, and are now openly discussing the idea of power-sharing with the Taliban (as was suggested on this blog by Ambassador Lane, last summer).
This can't last. The complete ignorance in this country of conditions in Israel/Palestine is insupportable when, as I point out so frequently, Jews here are living the minority dream, and when one of Israel's leading voices here, Alan Dershowitz, is supporting Obama because he will maintain the separation of church and state that so empowered Jews in America. It's just too hypocritical, to be celebrating minority rights here, and upwards of 30 percent of Supreme Court clerks being Jewish, and allowing them to be trashed on the grounds that Israel lives in a bad neighborhood. How much have its militant border-policies and religious exclusivist ideology contributed to the bad neighborhood, and to the radicalization of the Arab parties?
Another reason it can't last is that Obama is about to reframe the American scene, and the world scene, as the Republican National Committee and Republican Jewish Coalition recognize. Israeli religious policies are going to seem more and more out of step with the postracial democratic first world.
It's time for American Jews to start giving their democratic lessons to the Israelis instead of taking their marching orders from the architects of apartheid. In Chutzpah, Dershowitz says that his generation was "too American" to make "aliyah" to Israel, or emigrate there, but we started the Israel lobby here. There's some guilt in that statement. Many Jews feel guilty that they didn't make that ultimate commitment to Israel. Because "aliyah" means going up. Yoredim–the Jews here in the Diaspora–means lower. What if we're not lower? What if we're actually higher? Look at this American-aliyah website, which compares Obama to Hitler. Is that going up? No, it's going down. When I told my wife about these ideas of aliyah and moral superiority, she told me about this thriller she's reading about neo-Nazis in Sweden that is filled with just these sorts of moral distinctions between religious and ethnic groups, on the part of the villains. And some people are enfranchised, and others not.
I offer to Eurosabra a lesson from American history. We used to have segregated armed forces here, and in World War II the black forces fought with valor and distinction. Many of them died. It became an embarrassment to Americans, all kinds of Americans, especially because the white forces were now filled with recently-arrived ethnics who fought alongside one another. A couple months after he recognized Israel in '48, Truman issued an executive order desegregating the military, and spoke of having "the highest standards of democracy" in the military. Obama wouldn't be on the cusp of the presidency if it weren't for bold strokes like that in my country's struggle forward. Can Israel ever ever take a more inclusive step?
Related posts:
- If Israel’s a Democracy, How Come Arabs Can’t Help Form the Government?
- If Israel Is a Democracy, Why Does a Liberal Jewish Leader Forswear a Coalition With Arabs?
- Bob Simon: Israel rejects a democracy that would be one-man, one-vote
- Obama aide calls Israel her ‘homeland’ and a ‘healthy democracy’
- Kid leaves West Point to emigrate to Israel and join elite forces there
{ 12 comments }
Weiss: "It's just too hypocritical, to be celebrating minority rights here…and allowing them to be trashed on the grounds that Israel lives in a bad neighborhood."
But isn't that the kind of hypocrisy built in to the practice of modern organized Judaism (ie one set of rules for gentiles, another set for the chosen)?
This rule would read something like the following: 'In whatever state the Jews shall be a minority, minority rights shall be celebrated and venerated above those of the native majority, and majority rights shall be steadily weakened; In whatever state that the Jews shall be the majority, majority rights shall prevail and be steadily strengthened, and minorities needled and flogged beyond the borders. So it is written, so it shall be.'
One factor is that Israeli-Arabs are underrepresented in the major parties. They have generally not voted "en bloc" for Arab parties, but there is still a shortage of Arab MKs, probably because few want to be identified with Zionist parties, and because of the decline of the traditional extreme Left, which used to have more seats.
There are essentially 3 flavors of Arab party: Communist, Arab-nationalist-reformist, and Islamist. All of them would repeal Zionist tenets of law immediately, and all of them have to finesse the "Jewish and democratic state" requirement of the Basic Law in order to stand for the Knesset anyway. Perhaps the most interesting immediate reform would be to allow parties to stand regardless of their future plans to de-judaize and arabize state institutions, or non-recognition of a Jewish state.
You can't really bring a party into a coalition if it calls for a radical re-making of the state, if no other party in your coalition will accept that. A potential Hadash-NDA coalition with a massive rejection of Zionism by the Israeli electorate COULD do that, but even the NDA isn't Arabs who are arguing for a bigger slice of the Israeli pie, it's people who define themselves as Palestinians who want to live in a radically restructured state.
On the issue of Israeli self-awareness:
"'I don't think they realize how racist they are. That's the shocking thing.' … One reason Israelis don't understand how this looks is that we protect them from this understanding. We nullify U.N. criticism, we support them in anything they do."
Exactly right. And most importantly we constantly block the international community's boycott efforts. When the boycott of South Africa broke apartheid there it wasn't just because the economy was squeezed, but because the cultural boycott forced white South Africans to start seeing themselves as the world did.
Can "a people apart" also feel this pressure? As universalists we have to believe that eventually they can.
"In Chutzpah, Dershowitz says that his generation was "too American" to make "aliyah" to Israel, or emigrate there, but we started the Israel lobby here. There's some guilt in that statement. Many Jews feel guilty that they didn't make that ultimate commitment to Israel."
I don't think so, never knew anyone who felt that way who didn't go. Guilt is primarily about Israelis getting American Jews to open up their wallets. They'd be less able to if they ascended. But even that appeal is more likely to refer to the past and future holocaust than to aliyah. Guilt is about enforcing silence and denying criticism. Like I was once told at my former synagogue: "If you want to criticize Israel, move there and vote." That doesn't really sound like a sincere invitation to me. I think liberals pretty well understand that they can maintain their image of Israel only if they don't go there except on luxury propaganda tours. Why be just another Jew when you can be part of the establishment in this country?
'Can "a people apart" also feel this pressure? As universalists we have to believe that eventually they can.'
D., this is where I break from you and Weiss. So many of our (the West's) notions of right and wrong, and even universal rights, flow not from the Jewish ethic, not from the Islamic ethic, not from the statist/socialist/left-liberal ethic, but from the Christian ethic. The Christian ethic is the basis of Western civilization, the basis of the US Constitution and even the basis of classic liberal notions of societal right and wrong.
Because statists/socialists/left-liberals have been acculturated largely by atheist-materialists and Jewish intellectuals who themselves were indoctrinated by their upbringings, they have incorporated a hostility to Christianity into their world view and seem to think the world can somehow make a "great leap" to universalism while completely ignoring and dismissing all notions of Christian morality and the Christian underpinnings of Western society.
A ‘great leap’ isn't going to happen. In fact, a libertine universalist society will be prime hunting grounds for Zionists and New World Order statist types, as we have seen.
America did not become a total pawn for Zionism capable of being lied into a war by money-worshipping Capitalists, Zionists and souless Empire statists like Cheney and McCain, (and charlatans like Bush) until it totally abandoned its Christian groundings and started practicing flaky New Age beliefs like Christian Zionism , multi-culturalism and political correctness, and began worshipping "democracy" and market Capitalism.
Universalism is Godless, statist, soulless. And its high priests are have already been incorporated either by the Zionists or the New World Order Capitalists, who wash each others backs.
Universalism? It's easy pickings for highly motivated, highly organized, highly disciplined special interest tribes and money men.
I think Phil's list of options is incomplete and over-simplistic (good vs bad, in the same limited number of options as George W).
For me, the question of Zionist or not is already answered. Israel is Zionist and will remain that way. Any external imposition to force it to not be is an intrusion.
The only relevant question to me is what kind of Zionist, how will it act/behave.
My own value system is live and let live.
That means consuming enough, but not excess, and leaving room for others.
"Christian ethic is the basis of Western civilization, the basis of the US Constitution and even the basis of classic liberal notions of societal right and wrong."
Ed, although Christianity certainly can be said to be a major component of "Western civilization" (however one chooses to define that, I'm not exactly sure), but it certainly should not be confused as being
"the basis of the US Constitution." The word "god" never appears in said document, and that's remarkable given the religiosity of the time. As I understand it, this is because many of the "founding fathers" were Deists, which were not at all religious, and were in fact products of the Enlightenment, which of course was much more based in reason than in religion.
The Founders were, almost to a man, raised as Christians, and a few of them “graduated” to Christian Deism. My point, perhaps poorly stated, is that Christianity is the basis of the kind of thinking that led to the Enlightenment, the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, etc.
The idea that all of mankind longs to embrace liberal secular democracy, market Capitalism and universalism is Neocon/Neolib propaganda. Even they know that it isn’t true, as the reality of their precious Israel proves. But it’s all part of the bill of goods they are selling. America will get nowhere by simply embracing a leftist, “universalist” variation of their doctrine and thinking.
I think the best we can and should do is state some basic principles, orient ourselves towards realizing them, and lead by example. Let’s start with the basic principles expressed at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence:
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Of course, atheistic universalists and left-liberals cast that all out as the ravings of dead white Christians. I don’t cast that out, nor do I cast out some of the basic truths in the Ten Commandments. I just don’t think contemporary Jews should be institutionally venerated because their ancestors wrote them (which is the case in Israel), nor do I think white Christians should be institutionally venerated in America because theirs wrote the Constitution (but in fact here, the opposite is true; they are institutionally despised, which flows in part from contemporary Judaic laws on how to treat majorities in the diaspora like the ones a paraphrased above [ie erode and undermine their status] and in part from atheistic left-liberals).
Left-liberal “universalists” have been in a partnership with Zionists in America for decades, many of them just didn't know it. Maybe that partnership is now coming to an end over Israel.
I just can't ever trust anyone willing to partner with Judeofascists, be they Leftists/Universalists (Leninists/Stalinist with the Jewish Bolsheviks), Christian Zionists, or Neocons/Neolibs. The fact that they are willing to make Faustian bargains morally disqualifies them from the right to any kind of authority.
"As universalists we have to believe that eventually they can."
…
"D., this is where I break from you and Weiss."
Actually I meant it more as question and a hope. I'm far from optimistic myself.
And I agree that many times we use "universal" just to avoid saying Christian/West. But in this case I just wanted to oppose the tribalism of Zionism with the idea of non-racial openess. Christianity is a good, and maybe the earliest, exemplar of this, but it's not the only one.
Christ separated God from the State. Give to Caesar what is Caesar's.
Saul (St Paul) extended Jesus's concern regarding the brotherhood of man to non-Jews. In that sense, it was Saul who is the universalist in terms of Jesus's teachings, parables, the Sermon On The Mount, etc.
The founding father's justification to mankind for splitting with England was based on their version of inalienable rights, recognizing a Deist God doesn't interfere with the politics of Man–how does that differ from Giving to Caesar what is His, while simultaneously
using Saul's version of Christ's teaching, that is, that what Christ said applies to both Jews and non-Jews?
Israel is clearly a Jewish state first, a democracy second. The USA
by very Constitution is Christian, that is applies universal principles for secular ends.
There's a reason why Israel has no written Constitution.
Interesting comments – thank you everyone.
The Left seeks to deny that Christ's teachings are a basis of universalism because if it acknowledges that Christianity has merit, it has to throw out its dialectical materialist basis and its "scientific" pretensions. Also, because many left-wing Jewish intellectuals don't like Christianity, or have been indoctrinated to dislike it. So Christianity has been characterized by them as bigoted, and pseudo-Christians like Bush, Hagee and Robertson (all Zionists) have reinforced that perception. It's probably true that a lot of contemporary Christians, if they'd been alive in Christ's time, would have been with the Jewish mob demanding his crucifixion. But there’s no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater because there are a minority of ignorant, idiot Christians. That's one of the few benefits of Zionism — it attracts pseudo-Christians like flies to s**t.
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