Oh, Weakness; or, Shylock with a Split S: An excerpt from Udi Aloni’s What Does a Jew Want?

. . . and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, heal’d by the same means,
warm’d and cool’d by the same winter and summer
as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us,
do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.
If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility?
Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his
sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge.
The villainy you teach me, I will execute,
and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

—Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

BEFORE THE LAW

One morning, when the storm started shaking the treetops and the dogs howled in terror because of the thunder and flashes of lightning, fifty children of different ages went out to school in the city of Lydda in Israel. During the day most of them worked diligently, hoping the storm would abate so they could go back safely to the home where they were born and raised. At the sound of the bell announcing the end of the day, they were off and running back home. The tempest intensified, and with it the will to find oneself in the warmth of one’s home, in the warmth of the seven homes of their extended family—the Abu Eid family.

But when they got home, the home was utterly destroyed. Fifty children stood shocked in front of their seven demolished homes, an uprooted palm tree and water bursting out of the broken pipe; they stood frozen in front of the haphazardly strewn furniture and the cries of their mothers facing the destructive power all by themselves. It was not the tempest that wrecked the homes of the fifty children, nor was it the conflagration of forest fires; the culprits were demolition contractors of the Judeodemocratic State of Israel, backed by the Judeo-democratic Supreme Court. The demolition was accompanied by the gloating looks on the faces of their Jewish neighbors.

Could it be that the Court did not consider the welfare of the children, citizens of the state, only because of their Palestinian ethnicity? Now that the slogan for the Jewishification of Lydda is back, may we suspect the Supreme Court of once again taking an active part in the crimes of racism and the renewing of the Nakba?

When the hip-hop group D.A.M.’s member Suhell Nafar and I arrived, everything was already in ruins: heaps of rubble in the heart of the neighborhood for all to see and beware. Suhell photographed the ruins. I wiped a tear. But rage is in order here, not pity. We must be strong and think of ways to struggle. Meanwhile, a protest tent and a shelter for the families were set up nearby. The demolishers did not leave a house or two for the families to take refuge in, nor did they wait for the spring in order to alleviate the suffering. It seems they wanted the destruction to be as painful and humiliating as possible.

HOW WOULD YOU SAY NAKBA IN THE PRESENT CONTINUOUS TENSE?

There are many forces in Israeli politics that hope the Palestinians in Israel will rebel, and so, in due course, it should be possible to expel them from the country. They say they do not seek a final solution since they oppose genocide; they are not barbarians. They only want to make sure the Arabs don’t multiply like rabbits on Israel’s holy land. That’s why there are loyalty laws; that’s why there is constant encroachment upon their living space; that’s why more and more actions that distance the Arab citizens of Israel from the political, cultural, and physical arena are taking place.

Destroying a home is a cruel action in any context, but it’s even crueler when it serves to emphasize who is allowed to stay in their home even without permission and who isn’t. The Supreme Court is aware of the neighboring Jewish neighborhood, Ganei Aviv, which was approved retroactively. The Supreme Court is aware of the fact that for the Jewish neighborhood a bridge was built over the railroad tracks so that Jewish children would not be run over, while for the Arabs the railroad was laid inside the neighborhood without a single bridge. The Supreme Court is aware of the neighborhoods that are being built for the religious settlers in Lydda instead of a
luxurious neighborhood for those Arabs whose land the state covets.

The Supreme Court knows that in the mixed cities of Jaffa, Acre, and Lydda cruel creeping deprivation of Palestinian citizens of Israel is taking place.

The Court knows and collaborates. With my own eyes I saw Her Honor Dorit Beinisch de facto and retroactively approving a blatantly illegal new settler neighborhood situated on the robbed land of Bil’in. One cannot but wonder why she won’t retroactively approve a neighborhood of Palestinians in Lydda, where they’ve been living for decades.

The Supreme Court of the State of Israel is a loyal servant of a racist ideology that does not differ much from the racism of the rabbis who signed the manifesto of the Israeli Nuremberg Laws. Like the court in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, which bends the civil law in favor of the Christian ruler in order to harm Shylock the Jew, the Supreme Court in our reality has become a verbal whitewashing machine for occupation and plundering on a nationalist basis.

Do Beinisch and other liberal Israeli Jews really believe that there is a fundamental difference between expulsion under the guise of democracy and expulsion under the guise of theocracy? Is there a difference between the Jewish National Fund, which forbids leasing lands to Arabs on nationalist grounds, and the fascist Rabbi Eliyahu of Safed, who forbids it on religious grounds? For the Palestinians, they are both parts of the same well-oiled machine that advances their banishment from the public space
and maintains them as strangers in their homeland.

THE NON-EUROPEAN SHYLOCK

Recently I saw Al Pacino playing the role of his life as Shylock on Broadway. Having deprived him of all his possessions, the enlightened people of Venice forced him to be baptized a Christian. The director added a shocking scene, which does not appear in Shakespeare’s play. In the scene we see the people of Venice baptizing the defeated Shylock. Al Pacino comes out of his baptism wet and humiliated, bent and helpless before the “mighty and merciful” ruler who had spared his life having taken his home, his faith, and his dignity.

Despondently, Shylock picks up his fallen skullcap from the floor, puts it back on his head, and stares at the complacent people of Venice. The stare begins despondent and defeated, but it strengthens and sharpens and says: I, Shylock, adherent of the Mosaic faith, believe in a jealous and vengeful God; I shall return to take what’s lawfully mine.

Edward Said could have seen the ultimate non-European in Shylock. Shylock refuses to speak for the God of grace. He, the weak who refuses to be a victim, knows that the virtue of grace is imposed upon him, in order not to act violently against the master, the master that never had mercy on him. Shylock, who understands the ruler’s ruse, positions his own god as the god of justice against the Christian god of grace. He might too seek grace, but he soon identifies the grace as a part of the oppression mechanism to which he is subjected.

We can see Shylock as the Jew who was slaughtered in Europe and has come back to life as the contemporary European Muslim. It is possible that he has been resurrected only to take his revenge and be slaughtered anew. Tragically, the new Jew, as expected, does not recognize himself in the new European Muslim.

Whom does Shakespeare choose to send as the defender of the West from the non-European? Who might be the one who will save civilized, capitalist, law-abiding Venice, which believes in commerce and in an economic and political order? Shakespeare did not choose a fearless warrior for the mission, neither did he choose a fleet loaded with treasures. In fact, the ships in The Merchant of Venice are all lost at sea, in order to show the transience of the capitalist system and its inseparable vanity. Shakespeare chose a woman disguised as a man to come and save Venice from its own law—a law meant to protect the privileged, but suddenly being used against them. The woman appears as a male judge, presented as the law itself. Portia comes to save a member of the elite from Shylock’s claws. He, on the other hand, demands equality before the law and revenge for the inequality and humiliation imposed on him merely for being a Jew.

The demand to be equal before the law is the revenge itself, because true equality is a death sentence to the privileged. Therefore, the privileged always equate the demand for equality with pure violence.

In her appearance as a male judge Portia injects divine law into state law. Ever since Antigone, and even before, women appear in Western culture as keepers of the divine law. Antigone is not only connected to the divine law but also acts as its extension and thus cannot act differently. As we remember, she is willing to die for it rather than submit to the political law of the father. Even Lacan, who claimed that the woman does not exist, in his seminar 20 attributes to her the direct connection to the real (the
mystical), which is beyond the law of the father, beyond language itself. According to this line of thought, only the woman can touch and link us to the Real, which is beyond language, to the source of universal divine law. State law is the particular political law of the father. And here Portia, unlike Antigone, uses divine law not in order to sabotage state law but in order to obliterate its enemy. She chose not to follow Antigone but to collaborate with the law of the father. She will wipe out the villain who dares to show fidelity to the law only in order to destroy it and hence destroy the language of the privileged class. Portia would not die for justice with her beloved in a dark cave. At the expense of non-European Shylock, she will end up living forever with her metrosexual beloved. They will live the happy ending of a European ideal: love will win in the end, and the odd creatures with the beards, like Shylock and Ahmad, will return to where they came from, or shave their beards, and take the burka off their daughters so that coveting sons can have their way with them and teach them the nature of European love.

In a brilliant tortuous move, Portia as a judge shows that Shylock’s mere will to shed the blood of a Christian justifies not only dropping his civil claim but also depriving him of his property, his life, and his faith. Demonstrating Christian grace, she spares his life. His daughter’s conversion to the religion of the victors and her opting for progress also help to keep him alive. His tender daughter will not continue the covenant (of circumcision) manifest in the body of the Jew (or the Muslim). All he has
to do to avoid execution is convert to Christianity, and thus he will live as one of us, in the universal body of progress—forever different.

As an antithesis of Portia, Antigone is willing to die to maintain the divine law of absolute equality among all human beings—equality that transcends the particular and the politics of difference. Thus she acts against the head sovereign, King Creon, who represents the state law—the sovereign who distinguishes between enemy and friend, between one brother and another. In contrast to her, Portia decides to present a model of an opportunistic or practical woman. As a woman, she knows that she is linked to the divine law and that she represents it, but instead of executing it against Creon and the state, she uses it to freeze the state law for the benefit of the rulers of the state itself. She executes the divine law only against the enemies of the state and applies grace when it comes to the class of the rulers, against the justice of those deprived of rights. In The Merchant of Venice the Christian divine law, which is supposed to be universal, cynically turns into the law of the state of emergency of secular democracy—a law that appears as divine intervention against everyone and everything non-European when needed.

Shakespeare realized that the woman had to meet three necessary conditions: 1. she had to be as much of a woman as possible; 2. she had to act and speak as a man, and thus by impersonating a man she would become a man; and 3. she had to act relentlessly against the non-European, that is she would not appear as a moderating force between the virtues of justice and grace, but rather as an intensifying force of the virtue of Christian grace, which would become the source of merciless cruelty toward the non-European. While in the Jewish Kabbalah of spheres it is believed that evil is a consequence of the excessive virtue of justice, in our model Christian grace materializes as merciless cruelty toward the non-European enemy.

Shylock identifies the root of the problem from the very beginning, and thus his two actions argue with the ruling European Christianity and of course with Pauline theology as well, even if unconsciously. Shylock demands the pound of flesh to be cut off nearest the heart. What does that act hint at? It hints against Paul, who contended that the bodily circumcision is a mere metaphor and that the real circumcision is in the heart: a spiritual practice, not a physical one. According to Paul, in spirit we are all equal before God, as written in the Epistle to the Galatians: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female.” [Galatians 3:28 (King James Bible)]. Shylock’s action is to bring the metaphor of the “circumcision which is in the heart” back to the concreteness of the body; he wants to circumcise the Christian’s heart to remind him of the body that separates them. Shylock’s well-known monologue, which supposedly presents itself as a repetition of the Pauline text stating that there is no difference between human beings, is in fact about the inability of the text about equality to subsist. The text sabotages itself, as Pauline universalism is impossible without profound understanding of identity politics. Shylock understands that the race of the masters and he himself do not feel pain in the same manner. They are not cold in the same manner, and they are not wounded in the same manner. As, during a symposium, a famous actor once told me, “all human beings urinate in the same manner,” and from the audience a man from Africa shouted, “you pee vitamins while I pee blood.” Shylock understands that, and so, in order to save the text about equality from itself and enable it to have a space for subsistence, he chooses the way of terrorism and revenge, mainly in order to expose the structural lie of European equality.

And so I return to that shocking scene where Shylock picks up his skullcap from the floor and places it back on his head, a look of despair and revenge on his face. Shylock is no longer only a Jew. Having been baptized, he is a Christian, and so from now on the figure of Shylock is split. He demands revenge for the injustice imposed on him when he was baptized Christian. As a human being he demands universal justice, knowing his particular identity: “I am a Jew.” And so he will fight for every outcast and against any injustice. But the very same act for which he takes his revenge on the Christian is the one that made him a Christian. Having been baptized, and good  Christianity having penetrated his soul, he will imitate Portia, who has said, for the sake of her equal position, “I am a woman-man.” Thus Shylock, for the sake of his equality, will say, “I am a European Jew.” So stands Al Pacino and stares at the “decent people of Venice,” and in my mind’s eye I see the European and non-European Shylock directing his split gaze at me.

THE FREEDOM THEATRE IN THE JENIN REFUGEE CAMP

Facing Shylock’s split gaze, I lower my eyes. The inability to contain the split makes me opt for purifying terrorism, but I realize that terrorism is in fact the representation of the weak pretending to be strong, the helpless fantasizing about gaining power. Terror attempts to ruin the figure of the collaborator, without contaminating the pure one that has split from him. But, in its quest for purity, terrorism, by not understanding that the split lies within itself, always ends up ruining itself.

Art can be another option. It fantasizes about the pure but almostalways-already ends up a collaborator.

Therefore, the artistic act as well should acknowledge the split gaze. For this reason I have been experimenting with militant art from a place of abandoning power, of abandoning victorious ideologies. One can choose to identify with weakness in an attempt to act from within the heart of weakness, not as a victim but as a warrior. Out of the presentation of the place, from the place, for the place, which is hardly a place, we might be able to create a revolutionary place.

What one needs to understand is that art—perhaps distinct from culture—is not supposed to be welcoming, and creating bridges that span nations and cultures is not its job. Militant art is the art of the weak, the person who barely exists in the public sphere. The person whose density is hardly noticed in the political world, the one whose opinion is taken into account by no one. Militant art is the artist’s ability to act from a condition of near total disappearance and to create unrivaled power from that
position of weakness.

It is important to say here that not every instance of establishment art is wrong establishment art has created wonderful things throughout history. Nevertheless, the greatest artists always knew how to breach their agreement with the devil at the right moment. If artists do not bow to the state they will be defeated by it. But those willing to take risks for the sake of art will be those who create the beginnings of a new art. For this reason I have followed my friend Juliano Mer Khamis to Jenin. At the Freedom Theatre in the Jenin Refugee Camp, where I am now working, I could understand the real power of Shylock for the first time. While in a new production Juliano and the actors are penetrating the magical world of Alice in Wonderland, I am experiencing the power of weakness and art’s ability to state something new. Or, as my friend Hezi Leskali once wrote in his horribly simple poem, “Oh, Weakness.”

BACK TO LYDDA

On that cursed day of destruction, Nur—one of the fifty children who left home in the morning and went back to heaps of rubble—lost his dog; it was shot. The look on his parents’ eyes, seeing their son kneeling on the doorstep of his destroyed home, holding the body of his slain dog in his arms, was like Shylock’s despondent look, staring at the people of Venice. The parents’ gaze defies us and says: I am here for all eternity; we are Palestinians.

EXCESS: THE RING

Antigone’s dream as reported by my daughter, after viewing The Merchant of Venice, in which she was astonished by the seeming excess of act 5, scene 1:

Portia: If you had known the virtue of the ring,
Or half her worthiness that gave the ring,
Or your own honour to contain the ring,
You would not then have parted with the ring.

—Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, act 5, scene 1

“I am presenting a work of art which is really important to me. Instead of admiring it, people are mocking it, or fail to understand it. I am really hurt, and so I send a group of supermodels to rob prestigious malls and steal high-quality fashion items. Among the girls there is one who doesn’t look like the others, and though she is pretty she is really not a supermodel. Everyone likes her for her supernatural powers. Her boyfriend has some superpowers as well, but his dad is a real sorcerer, and they are scared of him. Meanwhile the police are chasing the supermodels, but the girl manages to escape. Her boyfriend gives her a ring, and she must hide it so that neither his dad nor the police catch her. She decides to swallow it, and then she grows a penis and she is becoming her own boyfriend. In order to get the ring back she has to urinate it out, but that really hurts. She and I woke up in the tomb from the pain; the
ring is already out, for Life.”

EPILOGUE: “ONLY WHEN IT IS DARK ENOUGH . . . ”

Our right for self-defense does not give us the right to oppress others; occupation leads to foreign rule, which brings resistance, resistance leads to oppression, which brings terror and counterterror. Terror victims are usually innocent people. Maintenance of the occupied territories will make us a nation of murderers and victims. Let us get out of the occupied  territories immediately!

—Paid ad by Matzpen, Haaretz, September 22, 1967, shortly after the Six Day War

Today what remains of the Israeli Jewish left is marching deliriously in demonstration trails, trying to collect their shards, which are spread on the streets of Tel Aviv. After years of an unsuccessful attempt to be both Jewish and democratic, socialist andgreedy, enlightened and racist, fighting whole-heartedly against the occupation and serving in a brutal occupying army, the Jewish left understands it has reached a dead end. For decades the Israeli Jewish left perceived themselves as the lords of the land, only to find themselves losing ground, with awe and despair in their eyes.

However, for the Zionist left, it is time for repentance. Only by becoming accountable to their role in fostering this racist monster can the Zionist left experience tikkun (self-repair).

It would be a repetition of the same if the left tries to reconstruct itself as pure when its foundation is always already contaminated. The result will look as ridiculous and ugly as contemporary Jaffa, where leftist Jewish Israeli planners give reverence to Arabic architecture while dispossessing the Arabs themselves.

For the first time in history what remains of the left is sharing a bit of the same destiny as persecuted Palestinian citizens of Israel. Alas, this creates an opening for Palestinians and Jews to collaborate in reconstructing a determined, militant left. This left can structure itself as a nonviolent resistance movement, sabotaging the legitimacy of the theocratic democracy of Israel. This multicultural, binational front will act with conviction, fidelity, and a reasonable measure of self-irony.

Forty-four years have passed since the publication of the mythological prophetic analysis ad by Matzpen. The genuine ones in the Zionist left now understand that it was them, not necessarily the right, who planted the seeds of racism in public discourse.

The abandonment of democracy for ethnic superiority is woven through the entire Israeli Jewish left ideology. This includes the role of the Supreme Court in legitimizing the Occupation, Ben-Gurion instituting military rule over Palestinians (despite being citizens of Israel), and, cruelly enough, it was immediately following the experience of the collective trauma of Nakba. And even the prestate foundation of the Jewish left
advocated Hebrew-only labor.

Why bother intellectualizing whether a Jewish and democratic state is oxymoron or axiom? Reality teaches us that today those two values stand as rivals at high noon, and only one can survive the duel.

For those who choose the proper model of a democratic and egalitarian state, it is time to prepare for battle. The weekly demonstrations in Tel Aviv are, and always were, insufficient to ward off the evil. Darkness is breaking out; there is no mercy. Indeed, we are a negligible minority, but perhaps if we break the ethnic, gender, and class barriers and stand as one, Palestinians and Jews, we can become a powerful minority alongside the forces of democracy and justice throughout the world.

Maybe, along with the Tunisians, we can be a new generation who seek justice and pleasure in the Middle East, inshallah.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “ Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.” Let us pray that the stars we see will not be the missiles over Tel Aviv, Beirut, and Gaza announcing with their shining tails the apocalyptic war bequeathed to us by the Israeli government. Let us hope that the stars are of grace and justice. Stars that can open the gates to our mutual Middle East, for life.

From What Does A Jew Want by Udi Aloni. Copyright (c) 2011 Columbia University Press. Used by arrangement with the publisher.