When Walt and Mearsheimer’s paper appeared in LRB eons ago, one of the controversies surrounded their statement that citizenship in Israel is based on "blood kinship." Alan Dershowitz said they were reviving the blood libel. Benny Morris said that it was an "outrageous" claim, because Israel has Arab citizens (who are not allowed to serve in its army; how would you feel if blacks couldn’t serve in the American army?). I believe in their book, W&M were more careful in their language.
I bring this up now because the latest issue of Raritan has a fabulous piece by Eyal Press about Jewish identity and Israel, "Death and Sacrifice in Israel," in which blood plays a role. When an Israeli is victimized by terrorism, members of the Knesset send out telegrams saying, "We share in your mourning and may God avenge his blood. " His blood. The same expression has been taken up by the settlers’ movement. So whether or not the idea of blood kinship is legally correct, it sure is important culturally.
Press’s piece is important because he maintains ties to family in Israel, but rejects what nationalism has done to Israel and what it is doing to Jewish identity here, too. It is the most cleareyed discussion I’ve read of these issues anywhere. Press says that Israeli society has long struggled to reconcile the "exclusionary strand in Zionism" with "a humanistic current." In the 90s the humanistic current was on the upswing; writers felt that identity would be less tied to ethnicity. But now the pendulum has swung back to "insular nationalism," which is "a blinding force." Thus "outsiders of any kind" are felt to be antisemitic or at least unworthy of trust, including western reporters and European diplomats.
Press’s cousin’s husband, a military commander, scoffs at the idea that Press is really at home in the U.S. and says that Press is only living for himself here, not for a larger entity. That entity must be the Jewish people. So Arab children in Nazareth were killed as they played in the streets by Hezbollah rockets because no one paid for their community to have sirens. And while every Israeli knows the name of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier abducted in Gaza, none of them know the names of "thousands of Palestinians under Israeli detention–a fair number of them women and minors, the vast majority never having been formally accused or tried."
Press is justly horrified by this exclusive definition of humanity, though he writes with calm precision. He is engaged in the very same activity I am engaged in, to try and save Jewishness from this hateful nationalism, and restore "the ethic of tolerant humanism that elevates social justice above the particularistic claims of any group, including one’s own." Zionism has damaged Jewish life; I remember the guy standing up at the Tony Judt lecture and saying, Well now that Islamic nationalism is resurgent, doesn’t that mean nationalism is the way to go? I don’t want to go that way. I like real democracy. I want my army to be an army of all its citizens.
