The other day Richard Witty challenged me, "Do you find anything of merit in the liberal Zionist critique of your blog?" Then attacked me for evading the question. I think I did evade the question, (though I responded to something else Richard said). At the risk of misrepresenting that critique, here's what I find of merit: They are urging me to be more sensitive to the mainstream Jewish position. I think that's meritorious. The dehumanization of the other is one of the great risks of this sort of engagement, and I feel as if I've made some progress in my own mind toward humanizing the liberal Zionists because of their critique.
On substance, I'm not really persuaded. A year ago I had a debate with Dan Fleshler, where at one point he equated the power of the Palestinian terrorist with the power of the Israeli border guard. Something like that. I don't think they're equal; and my problem with liberal Zionism is that it's a Jewish communal movement and so it tends to be Inside the Jewish community. When the great challenge of this era of Jewish history is to Look at our effects on other communities. That's where the liberal Zionists really fail for me. Ralph Seliger thinks that Israel is an essential place as a refuge against antisemitism. I don't think he's considering how safe Jews in America feel. I would ascribe the same attitude to Richard. I don't know him intimately, but I feel that he also is psychologically engaged by a time when Jews were the biggest victims in the world. This is the psychological error of Daniel Goldhagen and Doug Feith, both the sons of Holocaust survivors. Goldhagen needs full-time security when he's traveling in Germany. That to me is nuts. He's underseparated from his father's experience. I don't think he's a liberal Zionist, but Richard and Ralph Seliger both make a similar error: of failing to understand Jewish power.
I do think there's a way to reconcile liberal Zionism and progressivism. I get that vibe from M.J. Rosenberg and Dan Fleshler and Gershom Gorenberg and Jerry Haber. They're not deceiving themselves about the costs of the occupation. That's everything to me. A few weeks back, Gideon Levy in Haaretz reported on the Palestinian community that is fighting the separation wall that confiscates so much Arab land in Nil'in, and the girl who has been attacked for taking a video of Israeli soldiers shooting a bound man. Levy reported that the girl's father was jailed for 26 days after he lost his temper with Israeli soldiers and started grabbing earth and eating it. To show it's his land. There is no more piteous or poetic image of injustice than that one.
And that's enough for me. I don't need more information. When other Jews are doing that to someone in my name as a Jew, I don't care about anything else, it's time for me to bear witness. It's why David Bloom is such an activist, and why Adam Horowitz is active with the Friends. It's why Henry Herskovitz of Ann Arbor came back from Israel/Palestine and started protesting outside synagogues, it's why Hedy Epstein, a Holocaust survivor, went to Cyprus to join the Gaza blockade-runners last month. All these people saw enough injustice to say, Not in my name. And they're all Jews.
Steve F says to me I'm only looking at the bad stuff on the Jewish side of the ledger. Well he's largely right (though I do put in a word or two now and then about the oppressions of Arab society; and I'm no fan of radical Islam). But two wrongs don't make a right. I actually have some power over the wrongs my community does. I have been asked to sign off on it with an idiotic grin since 1967…
The same thing goes for the human devastation in Iraq, inasmuch as I believe that it originated, in some measure, out of neoconservative ideas that were aimed at protecting Israel. I don't want to protect Israel, or any other country, at the price of so much suffering. I feel that Richard and the other liberal Zionist critique'ers are stuck in a period of Jewish history that really doesn't illuminate this one; and that there's something terribly selfish about their worldview. They truly are thinking about what's good for the Jews. And thinking that way isn't good for anyone. Now Richard, tell me if I got you wrong here…
