We’ve already gone after Colin Shindler’s irresponsible piece in the New York Times yesterday that rubbed out the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism because he relied on a dubious quote attributed to Nasrallah.
The piece is also irresponsible because it whitewashes the Nakba and the occupation, by framing contemporary anti-Zionism in an earlier generation’s dewy-eyed vision of Israel:
Given the deep remorse for the misdeeds of colonialism, it was easier for the New Left of the 1960s to identify with the emerging Palestinian national movement than with the already established social democratic Israel….
AMID this rising hostility toward Israel, the French philosopher and political activist Jean-Paul Sartre advocated a different way forward. He was scarred by the memory of what had happened to France’s Jews during World War II — the discrimination, betrayals, deportations and exterminations. He understood the legitimacy of Israel’s war for independence and later commented that the establishment of the state of Israel was one of the few events “that allows us to preserve hope.” Yet Sartre also strongly supported Algeria’s fight for independence from France.
This double legacy of supporting Israel and the Algerian struggle symbolized the predicament of the entire postwar European left.
The obvious answer to this is, That was a long time ago. We’ve learned a lot since about the virgin birth of Israel involving the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians. Ilan Pappe’s book about this is a core text at any anti-Zionist gathering. And today there is apartheid in a colonized Palestine and even Jeff Halper warns that the Algeria model is gaining ground among activists.
More of Shindler’s blindness:
as Israeli settlements proliferated after 1977, strengthening the left’s caricature of Israel as an imperialist power and a settler-colonial enterprise.
Why is that a caricature? It’s not. Palestinians talk about ethnic cleansing because they are being forced out of their homes in East Jerusalem and in Area C. Why isn’t settler-colonial a precise characterization– with some messianism thrown in?
Then this mischaracterization of the left:
Sartre understood that the conflict was not simply between Israelis and Palestinians, but between those advocating peace on both sides and their rejectionists. This conflict within the conflict is something that many on Europe’s left, as they ally themselves with unsavory forces, still fail to comprehend.
This is inaccurate. The organized left I associate with is generally for BDS, a call that originated in 2005 and is a nonviolent means of seeking to resolve a conflict that involves the destruction of a historic consensus on partition (Oslo) by the fact that one side has occupied the entire land.
The piece identifies Shindler as “author of ‘Israel and the European Left: Between Solidarity and Delegitimization.'” But as the late sociologist Daniel Bell said in the 1970s, post-Vietnam, delegitimization is an inevitable tool of critics when a society faces an insoluble fundamental problem that involves racial discrimination and militarism.
And again I’d point out, there’s an op-ed editor at the Times, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, who wrote a fine book on Israel and South Africa in which he stated that Israel was a “pariah” state. He ascribed this status to Israel’s policies, not to anti-Semitism.
Weiss writes: “Palestinians talk about ethnic cleansing because they are being forced out of their homes in East Jerusalem and in Area C. Why isn’t settler-colonial a precise characterization– with some messianism thrown in?”
Yes, ethnic cleansing includes on-going, current crimes.
But never forget the ethnic cleansing that produced the exiles (called refugees) of 1948 and 1967. Palestinians remember these, too, even if “dewy-eyed” romancers of “the virgin birth of Israel” prefer to forget them or to say that because the creation of Israel was justified (as they claim), the means adopted to create it (terrorism 1945-5/1948, war after 5/1948) were likewise justified.
The moral problem for Zionists who say that BDS is correct as to ending the occupation and all other current (i.e., post 1967) Israeli crimes, is to say that it is wrong to seek to correct the Israeli crimes of 1945-48.
One help for Zionists (of the “a Jewish State was needed” sort) would be to observe that the “need for a Jewish State” is not (when so expressed) a recipe for a Jewish state of any particular size (or place). And if it is all but universally agreed that Israel has no right (and no need) for the territories it captured in 1967, it may also be agreed — in time — that Israel has no need for ALL of the territory it captured in 1948. If Israel would agree to withdraw from all its post-1967 gains and also from a significant chunk of its pre-1967 territory, then the “return” of Palestinians called for by BDS would be far less onerous to Israelis since a part of the Palestinian exiles would “return” to the “significant chunk” (their own particular ancient homeland) and fewer would seek to “return” to reduced-Israel, and the Jewish Character of Israel would thereby be protected from the (as Israelis see it) onslaught of the “returning” exiles.
(Boy, did Judah Magnes call it right when he said the attempt to create a nation built on bayonets and oppression was not worth doing even if it succeed.)
Israel’s and Zionists’ anticipated refusal to consider such a minimized Israel shows that their project was not just for a “necessary” Jewish State. but for the biggest Jewish State they could (by force of arms, propaganda, and otherwise) achieve. That being so, it may be time to stop listening to exculpatory explanations of the “dewy-eyed” “virgin birth” folks.
The best response to those who dismiss the settler-colonialist nature of Zionism/Israel as a figment of the leftist imagination is to point to the mass of historical evidence showing that from Herzl right up until the interwar period the Zionists saw themselves as engaged in a colonialist enterprise. It did not enter their heads to deny such an obvious fact. They were even proud that Jews too could be colonialists. Of course, at that time colonialism was a respectable and admirable thing for the European ruling classes among whom the Zionists sought support. Then after WW2 colonialism became disreputable and — hey presto! — all this is wiped from the slate as though it had never been. Suddenly associating Zionism with colonialism becomes an obscene leftist slander. But the sleight of hand can only work where people are deeply ignorant of history.
Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War That May Never End
Daniel Gordis
2009 National Jewish Book Award
Clearly, peace is not a national priority for Israeli Jews.
“conflict was not simply between Israelis and Palestinians, but between those advocating peace on both sides and their rejectionists”
Rejection won in Israel, and the book prize I am citing is merely an example. Rejection won because inside Jewish community there are no rational arguments why Palestinians should be accommodated: an extreme fringe argues that this would be a moral thing to do — a rather extreme position to include moral consideration regardless of the national interest — while the moderate opposition for years was arguing that rejection would undermine Israel standing among the nation — which it did not.
It follows that
1. unconditional support of Israel is the support of rejectionists in Israel and opposition to moderates in Israel, in other words, it is the support of “war that may never end”
2. the fight for the unconditional support of Israel uses labels like “new anti-Semitism”, “delegitimization”, “Lefto-Islamofascism” to preserve the “war that may never end”.
3. our Establishment (which apparently includes Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations while the leaders of major Protestant churches are in extreme opposition as defined above) form a War Party. At this point I like to link to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh1nUaSd-OI
Colin Shindler’s irresponsible … rubbed out the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism … dubious quote attributed to Nasrallah. – Phil
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I don’t understand why Phil goes along with Shindler’s interpretation of the supposed Nasrallah quote – rubbing out a distinction. The quote is opaque on the distinction between “the Jew” and “the Israeli”. Whether the quote is authentic is an alltogether different matter.
One has to point to Shindler’s own rubbing out the distinction when he writes:
“a majority of Israelis happen to be Jews.” What counts is obviously not their Israeli citizenship but their being Jews. (See my comment above.)
I’m going to forward both this and the other piece to the NYT public editor. I suppose the justification the NYT might give is that it is an opinion piece, but there ought to be some standards of accuracy for these things and apart from the Nasrallah quote, to ask why Israel was criticized before the 1967 occupation without mentioning the Nakba is like asking why people criticized Mississippi for its treatment of blacks before Jim Crow was established. (Well, you see, there was this institution called “slavery”).