I struggle to understand the righteousness of Israelis when it comes to international criticism, and so I’ve typed up a fascinating passage about the colonial mindset from Doris Lessing’s novel A Proper Marriage, which is set in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, during World War II.
In one episode in the book, liberal colonial women stage a performance by “colored” children for a white audience in the capital, Salisbury (now Harare). The organizer of the show, Mrs. Maynard, is upset that she is not getting much help from young lefties, including the heroine of the book, Martha Quest (who like her creator leaves the colony for England in 1949).
The passage below explains Mr. and Mrs. Maynard’s colonial mindset. The Maynards are liberals. Mrs. Maynard had grown up thinking of herself as a “rebel.” And at the very end of the passage, the reference to young people is to Martha’s set, the young lefties.
For it is by no means an accident that people find themselves in the colonies. Mrs. Maynard, as a girl [in England], had infuriated her family by refusing to get married at the right time. Instead, she had become a crusader for better housing in Whitechapel. She had been prevented from marrying a penniless clergyman who was similarly devoted only by the greatest effort on the part of her relations. As a revenge she had married Mr. Maynard: Africa had seemed to her both romantic and suitably exasperating to her family. She had seen herself ministering to grateful savages. And Mr. Maynard had left England because he found it insular. They had both been rebels, of a kind. Perhaps the strongest strand in their relationship was the feeling that they were rebels against tradition–even now, when their first concern was to uphold it.
For that matter, there is no white person in the colonies who has not arrived there for some similar reason: they are crusaders against tyranny to a man. Which accounts for that shrill note of protest when the world suggests that it is both stupid and old-fashioned to suppress native populations: for when these same colonials are passionately engaged in fighting against a minimum wage of one pound a month, or advocating the sjambok [whip] as a means of guidance for the uncivilized, they are always, in the bottom of their hearts, quite convinced that this too is part of their character as rebels against the tyranny and conservatism of the mother country which they left as adventurers into a free world.
Mrs. Maynard was quite genuine in her cry that these young people must feel with her in helping the unfortunate half-castes; that they should not must kill her idea of herself as a fearless and progressive person.
Phil, you write: “I struggle to understand the righteousness of Israelis when it comes to international criticism”.
I do not so struggle. To me it is plain. When Americans (or English, etc.,) came to these shores as colonists, they felt they had a right to live here. That implied to them a right to displace the savages. “Savages”? Well, if you have a right to displace someone else, you identify them by names that sound like “bad names” to you. “Indigenes” is not “bad” enough. The longer you live there, the longer you pursue your project of colonization, the more secure you feel (the more secure you MUST feel, to preserve your sanity) in your “right” to displace the “other”.
The intending-to-be-Israelis arrived in a colonial mood. The need to displace the “other” was clear and become clearer, especially when the “other” fought back. You said, “I want a Jewish state, nothing wrong with that, noble — and indeed necessary desire”. So when the “other” said, “not in my backyard”, you decided that you had all the rights to that “backyard.”
Now there is a very slight, very muted, international criticism of the extremely ugly face of Israeli colonialism — generated, I suppose, because Israel was not satisfied to take what it took in 1948 and said, with Oliver, “Please, sir, I want MORE”. This business of taking MORE has become very ugly. International criticism is indeed justified.
The Israeli, however, never identified the territorial extent of her beloved “Israel” and thus never felt the need to say, “I have a right to this much, but no right to any more.” The Israeli territorial ambition was always boundless. The idea of necessity (of taking land from the other) justified anything and everything. If 1948 was not a crime, then 1967-2011 is also not a crime.
So, Phil, I have no trouble understanding “the righteousness of Israelis when it comes to international criticism”, but I’ve got to fight it tooth and nail.
I’m not sure what specifically you are referring to “the righteousness of Israelis when it comes to international criticism”.
There are many things that phrase could mean.
A simple jazz riff with lots of room to interpret, just two notes, no chords, revealing all of our mental and political habits out on paper.
Noone is proud, maybe a couple fools are. They are all choosing politically among less bad options.
The compensating life comes in intimacy, family, friendships, not in realized ideals. Among liberals. They don’t have a refreshing path currently, only a gauntlet.
Is the comment on Lessing a comment about others, or a comment about your own attitudes.
that they should not must kill her idea of herself as a fearless and progressive person.
did she really write that?
yes. she is saying that if the young people do not go along with her liberal idea, then that would kill her idea of herself.
i know, i read it two or three times…
Phil,
Did you see the March and April interviews with Judge Goldstone that I linked to?
You had characterized him as weakened, conforming, beaten.
Most of the themes he alluded to in the April op-ed, he articulated in the interview and a speech accepting a Tikkun award.
Not weakened, not distracted, not conforming; but principled, consistent, clear, backbone.
He spoke eloquently about his experience of being distraught at seeing the destruction in Gaza, but without polemic, moving, not dismissable.