This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
The Presidential debate last night was a real yawner. There has to be a better way if – and this is a big if – we’re serious about changing the direction of our country.
There should be more fireworks when the debate focus shifts to foreign policy. Israel will be red meat for the candidates. Will the discussion be about the real Israel or about the mythic “israel”?
When we talk about smoke and mirrors, Israel in the American public debate takes the cake. And eats it too. That’s why it’s that Iran and Libya will probably be the topic instead of Israel. Since iconic “israel” is just a stump speech item there’s little reason to bandy it about in the debate forum.
Turkey and Syria are mixing it up now. Which means NATO is on deck. No question that the Syrian government is collapsing. Syria is already the next Libya. What will arrive after is in question.
Much more interesting are the reports of the Global Citizen Festival in Central Park headlined by Neil Young. The New York Times review has Young in his full prophetic glory, describing his set as “molten and unkempt, yet it had its own kind of finesse.” Sounds like the Biblical Isaiah. The review includes the disturbing reminder that Isaiah would as well: 1.4 billion people subsist on less than $1.25 a day.
Also a full page paid statement in the New York Times– “Israelis and Palestinians Together” – alerting the reading audience to an election of officers for a proposed Israeli Palestinian Confederation. The election, to be held on December 12, 2012, will the “first time in history”when Israelis and Palestinians will “vote together for a new government, a confederation that will speak for both peoples.” Details: The voters, who have to be citizens of Israel and Palestine and resident there, will elect 300 Parliament members from a pool of candidates representing districts throughout Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. Also elected will be a President and Vice-President who will represent both sides. The elected members will draft legislation that “supports peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”
Checking out the Israeli-Palestinian Confederation website, it seems that they see their Parliament as working with and transcending the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority. In their view, each side has its own autonomy – and veto power – while the Israeli-Palestinian Confederation serves to link the two peoples.
Obviously the confederation idea is largely symbolic. Yet seen from a different angle it poses interesting questions. From the Jewish angle, Homeland Zionism may be making a comeback, the only kind of comeback it can make within the context of a state. From the One-State angle this third political force could be seen as a bridge to the future. I suppose it can be seen as moving in the opposite direction as well; as a lame attempt to accept the unacceptable with some pacification of both sides.
Returning to the kitsch “Israel” angle from yesterday, when bantered about politically as the epitome of everything good and sacred, kitsch Israel can be seen from the negative side as well. Once again everything in the world hinges on “Israel.”However, this time rather than Israel as salvation, Israel is the quintessential the bully on the block. This understanding is in direct continuity with the negative kitsch “Jew” of yesteryear. Both positive and negative views of “Israel” coalesce when used for political purposes. They represent something other than living and breathing Jews.
Years ago Francois Lyotard, a French philosopher, distinguished between “Jew” and “jew.” For Lyotard “Jew” stood for real flesh and blood Jews while “jew” stood for the concept of Jews in history. He saw the concept attached to “jews” in a positive light. “jews” were disturbers of the peace. They broke through what was acceptable in the broader society. “jews” were essential to the broader society for those very reasons. Moreover, “jews” stood out by refusing assimilation. Often “Jews” acted as they were viewed. For Lyotard, there is a connection between the real and conceptual J(j)ew.
Since society identifies “jew” as something beyond “Jews,” the connection is also tentative. There can be a separation; “jews” can exist in the individual and societal imaginations without “Jews.” As well, the conceptual “jew” might only be marginally related to “Jews” that actually live in a particular society. Often in history, “Jews” are defined by conceptual “jews” in the mythic imagination.
Applying Lyotard to the contemporary scene, we now have “Israel” – that is, the real Israel that is complex, difficult and interesting – and “israel” – the conceptual Israel that is endlessly held up as the archetype of goodness and the epitome of evil.
Likewise this is true of the Holocaust. In many ways, the real “Holocaust” of unimaginable suffering has been eclipsed by the conceptual “holocaust” which is either unanalyzable or is a made-up conspiracy of the “J(j)ews.”
Walking this path of real and conceptual there are many communities who have similar dual sensibilities:.Islam/islam, Women/women, Blacks/blacks and so forth. Edward Said’s Orientalism has this dichotomy within it. The real “Orient” and the imagined “orient.”
Still, the longest standing dichotomy and the biggest play in American political discourse today revolves around Israel/israel. In fact, many of these other dichotomies are assumed within “Israel/israel.” Since “Israel/Israel” moves along the ancient historic line of “Jew/jew” it has added resonance. Besides, it has become politically incorrect to speak about these other communities in an easy-going negative way. So “Israel/Israel” becomes a handy substitute. It has the further advantage of placating the “disturbing” Jewish population. How can Israel supporters complain when the main benefit of this language is the real Israel?
So another (un)change in the Jewish condition. Jews are highlighted but at the same time they are invisible. Jews through an imaginary “israel” are once again mythologized. Now it is true that it’s better to be romanticized than demonized but “israel” carries the flip side demonization as well. What we have is “Jews/jews” seen through “Israel/Israel. Jews are still placed at the center of world history.
Jews are there again, at the center, but as in the past most of the center is controlled and defined by others. Some of the center is defined by the Jewish establishment. The power to define “Jews/jews” is contested. The Jewish establishment sides with any outside force that fits their agenda.
With “Israel/israel” being trumpeted as the “Jews/jews” of the modern world, where does this leave Jews of Conscience? Is it worth entering the race of defining what is and what isn’t “Israel/israel/Jews/jews”? Is there any alternative?
Marc, I am very upset by the casual breeziness of your reference here to the ongoing crisis between Turkey and Syria, and inside both countries (especially Syria.) This crisis has already left somewhere around 20,000 Syrians dead and many thousands more gravely wounded– with many of these casualties caused by the hands of the “opposition”, as well as those caused by the Syrian government and its allies. This crisis and the attendant foreign “interventions” have also, like the earlier west-backed “interventions” in Mozambique, Nicaragua, etc, left hundreds of thousands of residents of the targeted country displaced either within or outside their country, and have wrecked a substantial proportion of the country’s basic, life-sustaining infrastructure.
Our country has major culpability in this situation, Marc. Do not evade that fact.
What do you mean, therefore, by your glib reference to Syria and Turkey as “mixing it up”? Marc, there is a possibility of deeper, considerably escalated warfare between these two countries, and your language there is too glib by far.
Also, when you say, “No question that the Syrian government is collapsing”– what is the evidentiary basis on which you build this abrupt conclusion? People in the west have been “predicting” the imminent collapse of the current Syrian government for >18 months now. Syria is NOT, as you claim, “already the next Libya.” Luckily, in Syria’s case, major portions of the power elites in the NATO powers (including Turkey) have already realized that the idea of using military means– in addition to the extremely long-drawn-out and actually very damaging imposition of sanctions by the US and its allies– may be counter-productive for them. So we in the ‘west’ still have a good chance to avert NATO military action.
Words are powerful tools, Marc. I hope that in the case of a deeply tragic situation like the current one in Syria you might try to deploy yours in a way that is a lot more considered and more compassionate than the way you do here?
is there an the alternative to defining what is and isn’t Israel/israel/Jews/jews?
how about the delegitimization of Israel so that Israel/israel is no more,
which leaves Jews/jews, but devoid of any Israel/israel distortions?
I saw in a “Harper’s index ” feature of Funny times magazine that 27% of US Jews believe in God.
Presumably this is correlated to non orthodox numbers.
For those who don’t believe in God I think Israel has replaced Him/Her.
I guess there is a lot of guilt and that some of it can be assuaged by paying for the IDF.
Meanwhile many Jews in Israel have gone off in the other direction
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/following-the-dream-of-a-third-temple-in-jerusalem.premium-1.468221
From the time of the Second Temple, Naiweld explained, there have been two approaches in the Jewish world to the essence of halakhic law. “Daniel Schwartz addressed this subject 20 years ago in a groundbreaking article. There is the approach of the priests, which presents a realistic conception of halakha, holding that the law is determined by the nature of things. In other words, something will be pure or impure because it is pure or impure by the nature of its creation; because God created it pure or impure. In the face of this, there is the Pharisaic-rabbinical conception of the law, which is a nominalist concept. It holds that the halakha was determined by the human agent, which in the case of the Talmud consists of a group of rabbis who decide whether something is pure or impure, and this categorization does not derive from the inherent nature of the things.
“The struggle between these two approaches existed throughout Jewish history,” he added. “In the Second Temple period, it is seen in the struggle between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. You can see it in the form of people like [the late] Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who sanctify the law, the halakha, which is the determining element: intellectual religiosity, as compared with messianic movements − for whom halakha is divine law, because it expresses the true nature of objects and of human beings. That is why viewpoints like this will assume a very essentialist direction in terms of racism as well, because of the difference between Jews and Gentiles: A Jew is by the nature of his creation a purer being. Similarly with the holiness of the land: The soil of Israel is essentially holier, the stones are holier because the land was destined by God to serve as the place of the Children of Israel.”
I think my Israeli colleagues buy this schtick.
given, the peril that the continued existence of the zionist entity poses to jews (to all life on earth, actually) on account of blowback from the entity’s insistence that it acts and speaks for all jews, isn’t it long past due for not only jews of conscience but all people of conscience to do whatever it takes to help bring about the delegitimization of israel and the liberation of palestine, en route to a just and peaceful world?