Further argument about PEP, Progressive Except Palestine, the label used against liberals for their support for freedom in all places but Palestine. Jack Ross first, then Weiss, then Ross gets the last word.
First, I don’t mean to go in for gratuitous UN bashing, only understanding it honestly. Most "isolationists" of the time actually supported the creation of the UN and only objected when the US was given veto power among other things. I do not pretend that it has always functioned as an arm of American and European imperialism, nor that it is some sort of nefarious conspiracy against "sovereignty", but you are too quick to attach gratuitous labels on me. And perhaps that’s the whole problem with "PEP" in the first place.
Your litany of the causes of the white left, all of which I generally support, are revealing in that they are all concerned with changing American society and not with the larger world. The sole exception of Vietnam is telling, because after Vietnam, with numerous exceptions of course, the left generally became convinced that American power could be a force for good in the world. The Clinton interventions were the ultimate expression of this, and in these cases it was clearly all about their idea of armed progressivism and had little if anything to do with Jewish identity.
What we have seen since 9/11 is a perfect storm by which this progressivism can be enlisted in the service of Israel’s wars, and it is only the intervention of the facts on the ground in Israel/Palestine that have brought about any sort of conflict in this respect. It is naive to think you can "isolate the problem" with your PEP construct, because even if it succeeds it lets the progressivism off the hook, but more likely you have to proceed to argue why it is not just to wage war or subjugate the benighted brown people in the name of that progressivism, and that is a challenge to first principles that most of these "progressives" can not accept.
I realize that there have always been those who have stood for the Palestinian cause in the name of serving the integrity of the international system. Goldstone is only the latest example of this, just as the leaders of J Street are desperate to save the two-state solution, Goldstone is concerned with the mutually dependent desperation to save the international criminal justice system itself, for its failure in this case would be to expose it once and for all as nothing more than a vehicle for victor’s justice.
Lest any Israel apologists out there accuse me of double standards, I would be opposed to any Hague trial of Israeli officials for the same reason I would have opposed the Nuremburg trials. Ideally there can ultimately be something on the model of the South Africa Truth and Reconciliation, but failing that if anything they should be tried by the Palestinians themselves, just as if anything the Nazis, Milosevic, and all the rest should have been tried by their own people.
As for my not being "conventional", I frankly have to conclude that this amounts to nothing more than that I do not come to my views on Zionism from the perspective of some variation of Communism, whether it be simply the watered-down revolutionary internationalism of the EU and UN or some kind of full bore Orthodox Trotskyism or anarcho-communism. And let me take this opportunity to plead that you stop boxing me in as some kind of right-wing stereotype:
I am, in my heart of hearts, a Norman Thomas socialist, which in this day and age puts me closer to The American Conservative than The American Prospect. Norman Thomas was among the most vocal critics of this "new world order" as it first emerged, and as far as where the Jewish socialism comes in and is in harmony with this position I refer readers to my past elegy on this site to the legacy of the Yiddish old left.
I can also affirm the impeccable Jewishness of my views – from Judah Magnes, who declared in 1947 as he desperately pleaded for reconciliation with the Arabs and against the emergence of Israeli militarism that "if there was one victory as a result of the last war, that was the victory of totalitarianism, even among the democracies which were once liberal"; as well as from the great pacifist and anti-Zionist Rabbi Abraham Cronbach who spoke out against the Nuremburg Trials.
Weiss: Great post, Jack, and fascinating. Largely agree. Where you’re completely off is your failure to understand the conventional Park Slope Upper West Side progressive understanding. This is not the Clintons per se, it is the progressive Jews who are on the boards of organizations and who listen to NPR. I say you are unconventional, because as I understand it, and forgive me if I’m boxing you in, but you were extremely coy with me once about your Second Amendment views and I don’t like coyness, I think Leo Strauss valorized coyness as Jewish exceptionalism, I am for political transparency– you are just not in this crowd. You are an intellectual with diverse influences, but you don’t munch brie with this crowd. And they are The Crowd. And they by and large do not support intervention, they were against the Iraq war, though, critically, they refused to expose the neocons for pushing that war. They blame it on Bush. These are the people with the bumperstickers against American interventions, who refuse to look at the Palestine piece. You don’t seem to understand their social significance. Because they bore you. You wouldn’t last 5 minutes at a goatcheeseeating party with them. And that’s actually created a doughnut hole in your considerations.
Jack Ross responds:
I’m not saying the type you describe doesn’t exist – and yes, I’ve been to such gatherings, and they’re not my bag. But I’m not as sure as you are they’re so steadfastly pro-Israel on the whole. I doubt very many are seriously opposed to J Street. I suspect many just avoid the issue as best they can because they know they can’t deal with it. And maybe, just maybe, a few are even principled enough to reject endless "peace-processing" for the same reason they oppose other interventions.
