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.
In a historic decision the British government has agreed to compensate thousands of Kenyans who were abused and tortured during the Mau Mau rebellion in the 1950s. The sum to be paid each claimant – the equivalent of four thousand dollars.
The amount is trifling, even insulting. Nonetheless, the decision is important. It raises important questions for empire builders everywhere, including Jews.
Writing in the New York Times, David Anderson, a Professor of African History at the University of Warwick,notesthat this is the ‘first historical claim for compensation that the British government has accepted. It has never before admitted to committing torture in any part of the former empire.’ The title of Anderson’s commentary is provocative: ‘Atoning for the Sins of Empire.’
At the end of his article, Anderson proffers his historical lesson: ‘Would the United States be so accommodating to a similar claim? In the current climate, probably not. But times change. Fifty years from now, will Americans face claims from Guantanamo survivors? You might, and perhaps you should.’
What is the take-away for Jews? Applied to Israel, we might add: ‘Would Jews be so accommodating to a similar claim? In the current climate, probably not. But times change. Fifty years from now, will Jews face claims from Palestinian survivors? Jews might, and perhaps Jews should.’
Anderson is hopeful that‘maybe we in Britain have also finally begun to come to terms with our imperial past.”Unfortunately, for Jews the question isn’t the imperial past. The imperial present is with us. It’s on the upswing even as British government retreats.
Once empire-ridden there is no way to become free of empire. The British continue to live off their empire past and confession serves them well. For how can Britain live off its former empire today without trumpeting it has changed?
Atoning for empire is a way of consolidating empire. If the British can lose an extensive empire, then readjust, survive and flourish economically and even have a huge tourist industry that feeds off the empire past – the Queen and all that –they’re still benefitting from empire.
Britain’s compensation doesn’t raise the other more substantial issue. How can the damage empire has wrought on a nation’s patrimony be repaid?
What this means to Jews in general, to Israel and to Jews of Conscience who struggle against Jewish empire in America and Israel is important.
Jews should listen carefully to Anderson when he writes of the further damage done as British Empire collapsed: ‘Empire was built by conquest. It was violent. And decolonization was sometimes a bloody, brutal business.’
Do Jews think that the decolonization of Israel and Jewish life will be any less bloody and brutal?
Unlike the British, the Jewish margin for error is slim. Jews are less numerous and more dispersed. The state of Israel is much smaller. The Jewish ethical tradition is already battered beyond recognition.
When empire leaves Jews or is taken away, as it surely will, what will be left of Jewish life?
Britain’s elite families have a lot of reparations to pay because they were given compensation when Britain ended slavery in its colonial jurisdictions: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britains-colonial-shame-slaveowners-given-huge-payouts-after-abolition-8508358.html
More, and specific: http://www.nationnews.com/index.php/articles/view/yes-to-reparations/
with the delegitimization of israel, as surely will happen, what will become of jewish life?
same as for everyone else, jews will by busy adjusting to a changing world, one in which there are no privileged people, only equals among equals.
Reparations help. Nahum Goldman said in 1976:
Without the German reparations, the State of Israel would not have the half of its present infrastructure: every train in Israel is German, the ships are German, as well as the electricity, a large part of the industry … without mentioning the individual pensions paid to the survivors … In certain years, the amount of money received by Israel from Germany exceeds the total amount of money collected from international Jewry-two or three times as much.
As a result of the West German reparations program, Jewish historian Walter Laqueur wrote:
The ships laden with German capital goods began to call at Haifa regularly and unfailingly, becoming an important — ultimately a decisive — factor in the building up of the country. Today [1965] the Israeli fleet is almost entirely “made in Germany,” as are its modern railway equipment, the big steel foundry near Acre, and many other enterprises. During the 50’s and early 60’s about one-third of investment goods imported into Israel came from Germany … In addition to all this, many individual Israelis received restitution privately.
And, my gosh, what would Israel do without those deeply discounted German Dolphin submarines?
From Wiki entry “Agent Orange”
“By April 1993, the Department of Veterans Affairs had only compensated 486 victims, although it had received disability claims from 39,419 soldiers who had been exposed to Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam.[51]”
However,
“The Vietnam Red Cross reported as many as 3 million Vietnamese people have been affected by Agent Orange, including at least 150,000 children born with birth defects.[36] According to Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 4.8 million Vietnamese people were exposed to Agent Orange, resulting in 400,000 people being killed or maimed, and 500,000 children born with birth defects.[1] Women had higher rates of miscarriage and stillbirths, as did livestock such as cattle, water buffalo, and pigs.[37]
Children in the areas where Agent Orange was used have been affected and have multiple health problems, including cleft palate, mental disabilities, hernias, and extra fingers and toes.[38] In the 1970s, high levels of dioxin were found in the breast milk of South Vietnamese women, and in the blood of U.S. soldiers who had served in Vietnam.[39] The most affected zones are the mountainous area along Truong Son (Long Mountains) and the border between Vietnam and Cambodia. The affected residents are living in substandard conditions with many genetic diseases.[40]”
Of course Israel is in an endemic precarious situation – that has been true since day one of its establishment and, correspondingly, the constant predictions of its undoing ever since. This had only encouraged the Arabs to try harder and harder at materializing “the inevitable”, which turned out to be a terrible disservice to them – just compare the situation of the Arab world then and now. Of course a lot of what goes on there has not much to do with Israel – macro-historic forces at work – but with time Israel has become a meaningful catalyst. Instead of dealing with what really were important for them – a long list – they wasted a lot of time and efforts on Israel, which only made their situation worse – not better. So what`s exactly the point of pushing them further on that line with promises of “being successful” in the end – and doing that in the name of being “on their side”. Just imagine what will happen to the region and entire Arabia if it goes down the way of the use of WMD in the region?