Manifesto, 2016

This is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.

At times, New Year’s resolutions become manifestos. In the Middle East manifestos are important, if sometimes dangerous. After all, one person’s manifesto can become another’s call to arms.

Robert Cohen, the British blogger, has issued a New Year’s manifesto. As a Jew, his involvement with Israel-Palestine continues to deepen. Cohen offers five points of view for the year ahead with their counter-argument as well: Challenge the deniers, Pursue peace with justice, Support BDS, Occupy Judaism, Keep a sense of proportion and a sense of humor.

Overall, Cohen is upbeat within defeat. Cohen believes that 2016 is liable to be worse for Israel-Palestine than it was in 2015. The downward spiral is obvious. Still, he doesn’t want defeat to overwhelm the possibility of remaining sane and ethical. Jews have a “storehouse” of ethical values and prophetic action. Cohen counsels Jews to keep their heads high for the year ahead.

Is there another option?

When the abyss of injustice opens wide and is about to open wider, the small victories Cohen counsels us to celebrate seem small indeed. Defeat can overwhelm us. Then what?

Should we celebrate the recently-leaked revelation that President Obama ordered spying on Prime Minister Netanyahu during the Iran negotiations as part of US national and global interest to prevent a nuclear war? Few believe the “leak” of spying was happenstance. For this to become something more substantial to celebrate, however, spying would only be the beginning. If Israel doesn’t change its behavior, US aid has to be at risk. In 2016, the US-Israel special relationship has to be tested in concrete ways. Consequences for bad behavior have to follow.

The real issue is Israel’s ongoing assault against the Palestinian people. On this, Israel continues to be protected. In 2016, for example, aid proposals for Israel will continue to expand. Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, will argue for that increase. Would Bernie Sanders do otherwise? Likely, Congress will be on board. The defeat continues.

In 2016, then, what can Jews do beside draw on our storehouse of ethical values and prophetic action? Years of small victories within an overall defeat will, at some point soon, take its toll. The storehouse will become depleted.

In 2016 Jews need to contemplate at a deeper level that depletion and what it means for the future of Israel-Palestine, for Judaism and Jewish life itself. Are there other views and visions that need to be added to the Jewish storehouse? Or should the Jewish storehouse, once full and expanding, be abandoned, closed down, moved elsewhere, and joined with other storehouses that are also being depleted?

Perhaps we live in a world where religious, cultural and political traditions of justice and peace are being depleted.

In past years, we have had theologies and ideologies of liberation and relinquishment as spurs to action for justice and peace. Do we now need a a theology of depletion?

Surely, our Jewish New Year manifesto has to include this depletion as call to action. Cohen is there, no doubt, but the situation, I think, is more dire in the long run. In the short run, too.

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RE: “Cohen believes that 2016 is liable to be worse for Israel-Palestine than it was in 2015. The downward spiral is obvious.” ~ Marc Ellis

SEE: “Israel’s Moral Erosion” | By Alon Ben-Meir | ConsortiumNews.com | December 10, 2015
• Amid global anger over militants citing the Koran as a defense for terrorism, less attention gets paid to Israel citing God’s will as expressed in the Bible as the moral justification for stealing Palestinian land, an ethical crisis that is eroding Israel’s world standing, writes Alon Ben-Meir.

[EXCERPTS] I have long maintained that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank defies the moral principle behind the creation of the state. Contrary to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assertion, the occupation erodes rather than buttresses Israel’s national security and cannot be justified on either security or moral grounds.

Unless Israel embraces a new moral path, no one can prevent it from unraveling from within only to become a pariah state that has lost its soul, wantonly abandoning the cherished dreams of its founding fathers.

There are four ethical theories — Kantian, utilitarian, virtue-based and religious — that demonstrate the lack of moral foundation in the continuing occupation, which imposes upon Israelis the responsibility to bring it to a decisive end. . .

. . . Finally, we need to consider the moral theory which says morality is acting in accordance with what divinity commands from us. There are two basic theories, both of which can be traced back to Plato’s Euthyphro where Socrates raises the question: “whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.”

The first is the divine command theory, which states that what makes an action moral or right is the fact that God commands it and nothing else. The second theory, defended by Socrates, is that God commands us to do what is right because it is the right thing to do. In other words, morality precedes God’s will and is irreducible to divine command.

In the context of this ancient debate, the usurpation and annexation of Palestinian land may appear to be defensible on the basis of the divine command theory because if God requires us to perform any set of actions, then by definition it would be the moral thing to do.

Many orthodox Jews hold to the divine command theory, as they interpret the concept of “mitzvah” (good deed) first and foremost as “command,” the goodness of which cannot even be contemplated apart from the fact that this is what God has commanded us to do.

As such, those who take the Bible as the revelation of God’s commands use it to justify the concept of Greater Israel. As a result, they view the Palestinian presence as an impediment God placed before them to test their resolve. Therefore, their harsh treatment of the Palestinians becomes morally permissible because it is consistent with divine decree.

By adopting the command theory, they are ascribing to a position which has and continues to be used to justify acts which are blatantly immoral. The defender of this theory may counter that because God is good, he does not command anything which is immoral.

However, this argument is hollow because if morality is simply what God approves of, to say that God is good is merely to assert that he approves of himself and his own will. In this case, there is still no safeguard against the extremists who use the command theory to justify even the most heinous crimes.

Furthermore, if the command in question satisfies a deep seated psychological need — say, for a God-given Jewish homeland — then what humans ascribe to God eventually becomes “the will of God.”

Another problem with the divine command theory is that, as the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz observed, it turns God into a kind of Tyrant unworthy of our love and devotion: “For why praise him for what he has done, if he would be equally praiseworthy for doing just the opposite?”

Turning to the theory that God commands us to do the good because it is good, what becomes clear is that any action must derive its moral worth independently of God’s will. In that case, the Israeli policy toward the occupation will have to be morally justifiable without reference to some divine mandate.

We have already examined, however briefly, Israel’s policy in light of deontology, utilitarianism and virtue ethics, and found that it comes up short and fails to meet the basic requirement of these theories. Therefore, it lacks independent moral justification on which God’s commands could possibly be based on.

Israel’s occupation cannot be defended on moral grounds or in terms of national security. Israel can defend itself and prevail over any of its enemies now and in the foreseeable future, but it is drowning in moral corruption that the continued occupation only deepens. It is that — the enemy from within — that poses the greatest danger Israel faces.

ENTIRE COMMENTARY – https://consortiumnews.com/2015/12/10/israels-moral-erosion/

Is the USA-Israel special relationship unravelling? If so, is that a good thing? Well, it always seemed to me a form of slavery, where the dog was wagged by the tail, the enormous slave did as it was told by the tiny slave-master. Israel cannot control the USA by threatening to cut off $3B/yr or by threatening to stop exercising its UNSC veto. But it can and does control the USA through thye USA’s misguided but deeply ingrained system of governance by oligarchy/plutocracy/deep state. Adelson, Saban, AIPAC, et al. With the help (as I presume) of other centers of oligarchic control, such as the military-industrial-complex, America is the helpless pawn of Israel. And as no-one likes to give up power, one expects the American pro-Israel oligarchs to keep at it, and to keep American Jewry prisoner as well through their control of Jewish organizations, synagogues, and American media generally.

Obama must therefore be highly praised for seizing such opportunities as presented themselves to let some “daylight” shine between Israeli and American interests. (And thanks too to Snowdon et al. for helping expose much dirt.)

If Jews only had a richer set of political organizations through which to express dissidence, it would make things easier. J-Street is still AIPAC-lite (for me). JVP is still too Zionist to suit me. Polling is so cautious that important questions about Jewish attitudes toward Israel never seem to get asked. And thus silent Jews (who might be less silent if they knew they were in large company, as I hope they are) stay silent on the whole.

Different people have different timetables for hope and despair. There used to be a lot of “not in my lifetime” jokes about I/P with punchlines involving God’s lifetime. I don’t hear them anymore. I guess they are not so funny now. And now, I suppose, there could be (if not jokes then) comparisons between the time it will take to get useful motion on I/P as against the time to deal usefully with global warming.