The following is dialogue from a dinner party I went to with four other liberal media/literary folk in their 50s and 60s, this weekend in the New York exurbs. (Names changed. Jewish/non-Jewish not a factor.)
Dave, the host, to me: And what is it you do, you write about Israel?
Me: I work for an anti-Zionist website.
Dave: But you do it because you’re pro-Israel?
Me: No. I don’t really like Israel. It’s not for me.
Dave: So what do you want– no Israel?
Me: No, I’m an anti-Zionist. I’m against the idea of a Jewish state. That’s where I put all my energy. It’s like if they said the U.S. was a Christian state, tomorrow, I’d throw myself into the struggle against a religious state here.
Dave: But we’re not a Christian state, and that is a Jewish state.
Me: Yes, and it’s in my name. I’m against it.
Dave: What do you mean by Zionist? That’s an awfully big word.
My wife: Yes Phil. Good question.
Me: It means people who are for having a Jewish state in Palestine.
Dave: But the world said there should be a Jewish state. The U.N. did.
Me: That’s true, back in 1947.
Dave: And you want to just end that?
Me: Well, it didn’t work out. That’s just what has happened. Communism was great on paper, but we saw how that turned out, and Zionism didn’t work out. It has just led to the oppression of other people. Not to mention the effect on U.S. foreign policy.
Amory, the hostess: I don’t like all the settlements. That they kept building homes on the land that’s supposed to be for Palestinians.
Dave: We’re not talking about that part. That’s after 1967.
Me: But Netanyahu and his ministers would say that they are just doing with the settlements what they did in the beginning. That it’s the unfolding of Zionism. Zionism turns out to be about one thing. Land without Palestinians on it. And everything follows from that belief. Ethnic cleansing and occupation and checkpoints. More land for Jews.
My wife: Yes, they were given half the land in 1947 and now they have 90 percent. And I’ve been there, and you go around with a Palestinian, it’s awful. They tell you, this is where our house used to be, then we got kicked out, this was our backyard before the Jews wanted to build a road. That’s where so and so lived and they got killed. It’s really like seeing what it was like in the South in Jim Crow or in slavery.
Dave: See that is why I really want to go there. To see that. But you can’t just get rid of Israel.
Me: I don’t want to get rid of Israel, I want it to reform. I didn’t want to get rid of the south, or white people, we wanted them to change the order.
Amory: But what would you do– right now?
Me: Israel should become a country of its citizens, not a Jewish state. Just as I would be against a Christian state here. Everyone under its governance should get to vote. That’s pretty simple.
Dave: I don’t see how that happens. It is a Jewish state. The world went along with that.
Me: I’ll tell you the wisest thing about the conflict I’ve heard. A friend who works there says she goes back to Spain and everyone says, What is the peaceful resolution of that conflict? And she says to me, you’ve been here so you know, There is no peaceful resolution to this conflict. They have heaped up the materials of a huge political conflagration. And they keep on heaping them up. So there is bound to be violence.
Amory: Here is the part I don’t understand. What about the Arab countries? Why are they so dysfunctional?
Dave: And the Palestinians don’t get along either.
Amory: But the Arab countries– they have come up with nothing.
Me: Well algebra and zero. Arabs invented that.
Amory: I mean now. What do they have to show for anything? And it doesn’t count that you wound up living on land filled with oil! What have they done? Where is the Picasso or even the Mark Zuckerberg, I don’t see it. And I think, it has to do with how the women are treated. If you treat women well a society will prosper. There will be achievements and great distinctions and culture.
The conversation shifts to a different subject. At a lull I touch my hostess’s knee.
Me: I want to return to something you said, Amory. The treatment of women. Some people would say that our society hasn’t treated women well. That we’re also on a path to greater freedom for women but they have much lower status.
Amory: But that’s not true. Women are treated very well here.
It’s late, and the conversation pitches on in another direction.
It must be bliss to be a Hasidic female in Brooklyn or the settlements! Thank goodness there’s no physical abuse or making women wear special garments or headgear to show an inferior status!
“Where is the Picasso or even the Mark Zuckerberg.” Wow. I can think of Marc Chagall as one of the supreme artists of the world, but otherwise…. “Wow! Camille Pissarro was a decent artist and his work goes for a lot at auction because people can’t afford good Monets any more! Wow!”
And Mark Zuckerberg??? Do morals and how he betrayed the Winklevoss twins even matter? I guess caring about morals is just for losers….
And why do Arabs or Palestinians or Bedouins need any sort of artistic or intellectual accomplishments that any one else might deign to approve of before they deserve basic human rights?
These friends of Mr. Weiss sound like old-time British colonialists at the height of the Raj.
Thanks for sharing Phil. A lot of what was said is said often in my conversations with those interested in israel/palestine.
I always end with – what would you do if I told you I had a religious right to take your house and throw you and your family to the curb. And that your neighbours allowed for and supported this along with the police. Daily you walk past your old house on your way to the tent you pitched in the park – a tent you have to continuously move when the police show up. Often the police arrest or detain you and your family for any resistance you partake in. The newspapers are not interested in your story and instead have written well of me and my family living in your former home. Each day you see me enjoying your former home, bbqs in the back yard, a blossoming garden with cherry tomatoes, a new car, kids playing ball, neighbour’s visiting all the while you struggle to feed your family and find fresh water. People look at you and your family as vagrants, filthy and beneath them. They often express their low opinions of you by calling you vulgar names. Every time you push back you are beaten or jailed. Your kids see and experience all this emotional and physical violence as does your wife.
Look them straight in the eyes as I always do and ask them – what would you do – im all ears?
Gee, I know something else we are always complaining about “the world going along with”.
Not surprisingly, the Zionist arguments are:
– entitlement (Jews are entitled to a religion-supremacist “Jewish State” in as much as possible of Palestine); and
– whataboutism.
“Well algebra and zero. Arabs invented that.”
Algebra yes
Zero, not really. It seems it was the Indians.
““Brahmagupta’s text Brahmasphutasiddhanta, written in 628 A.D., is the first text to talk of zero as a number in its own right and to include a discussion of the arithmetic of zero, including the dangerous act of dividing by zero,” he said.
Historians theorize that zero was spread from northern India by Arab traders along the Silk Road, an ancient trading route that connected Europe and Asia, and may have helped to develop more complex schools of mathematical thought.”https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/09/origin-zero-bakhshali-manuscript-video-spd/