Commenter Profile

Total number of comments: 28 (since 2010-01-04 18:32:22)

BenjaminS

School kid

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  • 'NYRB' on nonviolent demos
  • Goldstone removed from Hebrew University board
  • Obama: No daylight
    • BenjaminS June 1, 2010 at 3:39 pm

      After reading this Beinart interview in Haaretz, it does seem like the only reason he is taking this postion is to ward off the possibilty of a bi-national state, in that sense he is a realist but it also makes me think that Tony Judt's postion has greater integrity.

      link to haaretz.com

    • BenjaminS June 1, 2010 at 2:48 pm

      @MHughes976 I think it's important to get past the initial skeptical position to recognise that public shifts of opinion have the potential to translate into public policy shifts which may then lead to Israel modulating it's behaviour. Beinart wouldn't have receieved the criticism he has had if this wasn't the case.

  • OK you're not brave enough to take to the seas; but can you go to 42d and 2nd?
  • Many flotilla activists still unaccounted for; access to lawyers being withheld
    • BenjaminS June 1, 2010 at 1:48 pm with 2 replies

      @GodsChosen, are you

      a) an agent sent to spew hate in order to discredit the rest of us

      b) a neo-nazi hiding behind the cloak of a jewish idenity

      c) a radical islamist with no regard for that religions own ethics

      d) as u claim - a culturally jewish atheist - but an incrediby ignorant one who advocates extremist violence.

      These aren't options that you should feel any need to answer btw - either one shows your own reprehensible ethics, in the end, people will to make up their own minds.

  • Klein: 'These boats were like the messages passed between prison bars'
    • BenjaminS June 1, 2010 at 3:19 am

      Shmuel is right, it is clearly apparent that jewish dissent has, and still is effective in shaping discourse within Israel and in the diaspora because it goes to the heart of it's raison d'etre - much more so then dissent or criticism outside jewish communites which Israel see's as wholly anti-semitic and not concerned with the safety of jewish lives. Israeli dissent is probably much more effective then jewish criticism outside of Israel, because it's 'in here', not 'over there', and lines that can't be crossed are one's of universal human rights and one's own ethics. .

    • BenjaminS June 1, 2010 at 2:46 am

      Albert Einstein , Desmond Tutu, Sara Roy and Yeshayahu Leibowitz , make appropriate careful analogies in specific political contexts. They certainly don't deploy the language you do.

    • BenjaminS June 1, 2010 at 2:32 am

      @GodsChosen, Your incendiary language is turning this whole debate sulphurous, how on earth is it meant to be good for both the collective jewish and palestinian people?, don't you realise that by attacking an identity as you do, you will only drive it deeper, so that it becomes more obdurate, quite the opposite of your stated aims. I consider myself a non-zionist or an a-zionist, but to call your opponents 'nazi's' or 'vermin', not only recycles anti-semitic tropes (weren't the jews also called vermin?), but it also mirrors Israeli political rhetoric (the palestinians can 'live like dogs').

  • 'I cried when they threw out Noam Chomsky'
    • BenjaminS May 31, 2010 at 2:34 pm

      Heartbreakingly honest post Phil, it's important not to lose sight of our critical faculties both inwardly and outwardly. Marek Edelman and Marcel Liebman - two of my hero's, showed us there is always another way, their narrartives, sense of humanity, and resistance to injustice need to be retold now more then ever.

  • Who lost Zionism?
    • BenjaminS May 29, 2010 at 12:17 pm with 1 replies

      'As I say, I would have been a Zionist then',

      Phil, I hope you're going to expand on this! I'm really interested to know what kind of zionism you would of adopted and whether this would of been a response to an anti-semitism itself based on german romantic nationalism. I only say this because a majority of european and american Jews pre-WWII didn't make that seemingly automatic identification, particularly the Jewish socialist Bund.

  • Recovering from the special relationship is going to involve a lot of historical accusations/confessions
    • BenjaminS May 23, 2010 at 10:46 pm with 2 replies

      Hi Phil,

      Reading this just reminded me of something that doesn't get talked about often enough, but is certainly a very strong strand of thinking amongst some of my family and friends - this idea of Israel (and it's nuclear capacity)as a collective insurance policy.

      Here are some thoughts i've had on the subject, particularly the need to question the idea of 'never again' of Israeli state rhetoric. Firstly, as Hannah Arendt says, it's dangerous to see Antisemitism as this historically eternal force that is always going to be with us because it obfuscates our need to confront the political realities it arises from in the here and now.

      Secondly, the Holocaust will not happen again. Israel is in no danger of being annhilated, and the nations that it identifies as it's enemies have very small jewish populations - so the danger doesn't exist there, except where confrontation is induced purposefully.

      But thirdly, the idea of 'never again' is a dangerous myth, I read a comment recently in the NYT that went along the lines of [I'm paraphrasing] 'If America became unsafe for Jewish Americans then we have Israel'. But even if we take an extremely worst case hypothetical scenario, that perhaps, God forbid, in the future, a catholic, deeply antisemitic, fascist, genocidal government came into power in the USA - are we really suggesting Israel could survive this confrontation?

      America is a superpower and is probably the only country where such a hypothetical second Holocaust could occur on the scale of the first. But we know it could easily overwhelm Israel's defences (both convential and nuclear), and could potentially carry out another Shoah both internally and externally, and Israel would be pretty much powerless to stop it. Most states are unable to gurantee the safety of their citizens in extreme scenarios. So I think this whole idea of an 'insurance policy' needs to be re-examined and questioned, as it's making the situation is Israel-Palestine more dangerous.

  • 'NYT' falsely suggests that anti-Zionist scribes are beavering away in Jewish media
    • BenjaminS May 3, 2010 at 6:26 am

      'My question was posed only to ascertain whether you were applying your rule about your perceived inability to be “anti” a philosophy equally across the board to all philosophies'

      I think this is slightly disingenuous considering, out of all the combination of philosophical movements availible to you, you chose the ones you did.

      'So by your definition, does that make YOUR comment fascistic too? '

      No, it doesn't. To ignore the very real divsions and counter currents within a political discourse, even if they are ineffectual at that moment in political time is fascist, because you've immediately set them up as immobile fixatives and dismissed their creative capacities for radical thought.

      'jumped to assumptions about me'

      Again, I haven't jumped to any assumptions about you, I was critical of trying to set up political identities as fixatives - you said earlier I condemned you too, which simply isn't true. It's very important for you to undertsand that I haven't done either of these things nor would I want to.

      'You seem awfully eager to throw around terms for someone who claims to be all about nuance and diversity of belief within a philosophy.'

      Again, as was by no means calling you fascist, I'm suprised you would wilfully mis-read what I was actually saying. Of course, I do believe it's important to see difficult nuances within an entire spectrum of political discourse, I think it's incredibly reductive (as fascism inevitbly is) to see otherwise.

      I think their are basic assumptions (not necessarily 'core beliefs', because assumptions do not necessarily correspond with each other (they just assume they do), to any group, how mobile or contested these are we can't know). This is why I would contest the idea that philosophies have 'core beliefs' that everyone subscribes to and they could all sit down and agree as to what they are. That isn't how a philosophy actualizes itself, it's where totalitarianism begins. What about racism as not just a concious thing, what about when it can be both a concious and an unconcious thing. No one can ever know how racist they ever really are tree, and it's important to be critical of the assumptions people make based on race, but it's something you have to explore, which is why it's never a fixed thing. Identities are never fixed things, they are highly mobile, and carry within them the capacity for change by their own radical self questioning.

      Again, cultural zionism can't be divorced from political zionism because cultural zionism has it's own politcal framework within zionist politcal discourse. It would be like trying to divorce zionism from messianism, there is an established link there that only wishful thinking could deny. So I do think it's quite reductive to attempt to seperate these things out, Edward Said pointed out that the banners we use, the West, Islam, you could extend it to other discourses, were inadequate ways to describe the discourses that were taking place within them - I tend to agree.

    • BenjaminS May 3, 2010 at 5:28 am

      tree,

      'The criticisms of Zionism and the advocacy of a bi-national state were minor ones that had no real currency within mainstream Zionist thought, and are used today to excuse political Zionism’s excesses by conflating it with cultural Zionism and Zionism’s critics.'

      Again, these political discourses and critiques may have been ineffectual (I would dispute Arendts criticism of Herzl's vision of nationhood as minor btw) - I've never disageed with that, and they are certainly not the dominant forms of zionism we see today, but this is no way invalidates my point about your earlier statement not being true,

      ‘Political Zionism, as opposed to the cultural variety, has at its base always been about putting the desires of one group of people ahead of the needs of others.’

      The very fact that they existed did not base themselves on some kind of exclusivity is why I would argue it's important not to see this kind of political thought closed within zionist political discourse, nothing you've said actually invalidaes that point i was making. I'm also unsure as to what you mean when you say critics of a certain form of zionist discourse are conflated with other critics of zionism (what would be the point?) in order to excuse the excesses of political zionism.

      ' if one was sincerely placing the other’s needs on the same plane as your own desires, then the proper action would be not to take a bite unless invited to.'

      If this was the case then no refugee in the world is not guilty of failing the test of concern for the other. Is it not possible to live bi-nationally even when you, yourself are a minority?

    • BenjaminS May 2, 2010 at 8:02 pm with 1 replies

      'Political Zionism, as opposed to the cultural variety, has at its base always been about putting the desires of one group of people ahead of the needs of others.'

      Also, this simply isn't true. Not of the past, and not of the present either. Egalitarian forms of zionism in the form binationalism are discourses within zionism that were very real and certainly didn't advocate the desires of one group over another; quite the opposite. What you suggest may be true of modern revisionist zionist thinking, but it certainly isn't true of zionist political discourse as a whole.

    • BenjaminS May 2, 2010 at 7:36 pm with 18 replies

      By pointing out that ignoring the very real divisions within a discourse is indeed fascist (what else is it?), is by no means an act of anti philosophy, it's actually using reason to be critical of that philosophy. You can't discredit reason tree. Secondly, I by no means condemned you, only the assumption that you put to me - it's important you undertsand that.

      Again i'd like to ask which forms of political zionism you feel you would not be anti. I think it's important however you do distinguish between certain forms of cultural zionism that I'm guessing you aren't anti, but don't these have their own political framework too ? (in the same way that voting and not voting are both political acts?)

    • BenjaminS May 2, 2010 at 6:59 pm

      Also, a discourse assumes a debate or conversation is going on within that ideology, which is what is what marks it out from fascism or totalitarianism.

      hope that helps!

    • BenjaminS May 2, 2010 at 6:46 pm with 1 replies

      tree, I actually find attempts to set up political discourses as fixatives, as you have done, is fascist in and of itself. Your either with us or against us, where have we heard that before? All the isms that you mentioned were never fixed things, in their inception, they were highly contested and mobile things. Heidegger's Nazism for example is based on certain notions of german romatic nationalism based on blood, soil and descent that rigidified themselves into totalitarianism. Freud says quite explicitly that we must oppose the action, but not the desire from which they stem. Simply, you can't be anti a philosophy, only critical of it, using reason. You can of course oppose the actions which may stem from the interepretation of that discourse. The last point I'd make is that zionism was never one thing, have you ever thought about which forms of zionism you're not anti?

    • BenjaminS May 2, 2010 at 5:50 pm

      Julian, I wasn't for a moment suggesting that the lack of voices critical of current mainstream zionism in the NYRB was a good thing. Quite the opposite. I share Phil's frustration that not enough of these voices are being heard, and as Chaos as quite rightly said, are being silenced because they are seen to be shifting the public discourse (and could therefore perhaps be seen to shifting Israel's political discourse).

    • BenjaminS May 2, 2010 at 5:27 pm with 4 replies

      Shmuel,

      With respect, I'd like to question what you say about Phil being an anti-zionist. I would also consider myself a non zionist, a critic of zionism but not an anti zionist simply because I think it's important not to consider any form of political discourse completely closed and ridgified. In many ways, we rely on zionism to modulate it's ethics in the ways early zionists like Buber and Arendt argued for.

    • BenjaminS May 2, 2010 at 12:54 pm with 12 replies

      While I agree with you about the NYRB Phil, I think it's important to recognise that the US Jewish community is probably much more fervently zionist than comparable communities in europe. Even in europe, the younger Jewish generation is much more fervently zionist then their parents (Edward Said famously referred to the impact of Israel on social cohesian in the diaspora, -so that probably explains a lot of it). So, I think you are more unlikely to see pieces like in the NYRB then you do in the LRB.

  • Jacqueline Rose on Zionism
    • BenjaminS April 30, 2010 at 11:33 pm

      I would advise everyone to read the book in it's entirety before passing uninformed judgment on it. It is actually much more provocative and subtley radical in it's thesis than the extract Phil has posted. I found the first two chapters on messianism and psychoanalysis particularly interesting.

  • Grossman: occupation is carnivorous plant 'slowly consuming every good part' of Israel
    • BenjaminS April 12, 2010 at 11:22 am

      I think what you are saying Citizen is the ferocity with which people have in holding on to their most cherished identities, and of course, when those identities are challenged people tend to hold on to them ever more tightly and see any criticism as a direct affront to their individual or collective sense of self.

      It often seems depressingly easier for those who fear introspection to be evasive rather then to acknowledge that a different or no tangible meaning could be appropriated to an event like the Shoah. It's why criticism seems to have little effect on those zionists who share the state's exclusive redemptive vision.

    • BenjaminS April 12, 2010 at 12:30 am with 2 replies

      I think the real dilemma that Grossman and the majority of Israeli's face is a refusal to accept that the seed was sown in 1948 - in how the state decided to actualize and constitute itself. In a way, I'm still not convinced that the Nakba of 1948 will ever enter Israel's collective public consciousness other than to be seen as a historical fact and a necessity. The creation of a Palestinian state would serve as a constant reminder, either of the event (these people came from inside Israel, and have legitimacy), or of Zionism's own hesitancy, or as Benny Morris says, the ethnic cleansing wasn't total - hence Golda Meir's wishful thinking '' There is no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist."

      In many ways, we don't appreciate how effective what many saw as a modern day miracle (the creation of the state) was in helping the Jewish psyche displace the immediate pain and horror of it's worst catastrophe - the Shoah. 'Only a miracle could wipe out a catastrophe'. In this way the Shoah really did give Zionism a dark and dangerous new inner life (how 'humanity, morality, and civil rights' are seen after the Holocaust in relation to the Palestinians), which then itself goes on to appropriate a new redemptive meaning to the Shoah.

      But even by it's own goals, Zionism has been successful, it's brought half the diaspora to Palestine, but as David Grossman says, it does Israel harm by remaining. I'm actually more struck by the insistence that Israel and Zionism are one (as if Israel was a body and Zionism the purest form of it's soul), especially in the mainstream Jewish community I'm growing up in - it's as if to say that only Zionism can fully comprehend the Shoah (in the sense of both feeling it's pain and redemption), and if you don't get it, you'll never understand.

      Despite this I am a fan of Grossman's though.

  • New Israeli military order on 'lawful permits' would seem to allow expulsion of all West Bank Palestinians
    • BenjaminS April 11, 2010 at 4:27 pm

      It's much more likely, as Noam Chomsky has said, that Israel is preparing to annexe large swathes of West Bank (area's around Jerusalem, large settlements, the relatively less populated Jordan Valley) rather then attempting to depopulate the West Bank as a whole. They will/are doing this by internal transfers and permit restrictions within the West Bank, so this is the next phase of that program - 'internal transfer'.

      They're probably doing this to impose a unilateral 'settlement', thereby undercutting or pre positioning themselves for an expected attempt by the Obama administration at some kind of US imposed solution. We're watching the creation of illegal Bantustans basically, although, unlike the case with the RSA, the Israeli Govt expects the world will have no option but to except it as reality.

  • (Sometimes the news takes 9 years) Petraeus says lack of progress for Palestinians is 'root cause' of Arab anger
    • BenjaminS March 16, 2010 at 12:42 pm with 1 replies

      Dear Phil,

      I might be cynical, and maybe because it was of Obama's refusal to speak out on Gaza, or perhaps his expansion of the afghan war...or his reneging on bringing the troops home...or his abandonment of universal healthcare...or...the list keeps growing...but doesn't this recent 'spat' sound just a little contrived to you?...if anything it reminds me of James Baker in the first Gulf war, coming down alledgedly 'hard' on Israel over the settlements...or GB II and 'the need to have a palestinian state in 4 years'. That was in 2004. In both cases, progress on IP was used to justify another war, somewhere else. I think everyone should be careful about delinking what is going on now with this administrations increasing belligerance on Iran.

      link to heraldscotland.com

  • Is declaring yourself an 'anti-Zionist' like declaring you're a 'Communist'?
    • BenjaminS March 4, 2010 at 1:40 pm

      I don't find it particularly helpful to use zionism or anti-zionism as 'dirty' words. These are words that mean, have meant historically more than one thing. It's therefore reductive to reduce them in that way. There's a brilliant book actually that talks about this in depth called 'A Question of Zion' that i just finished reading that I urge everyone to read.

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