Reclamation

Words cannot express how much I hate this and how much contempt I have for this project.

OK. Let's talk. Judith Butler and Tony Kushner and the rest of them can congratulate themselves all they like about their anti-Zionism. And I respect Butler's agony when she says, "The idea that one might, absolutely and unconditionally, abhor the Nazi genocide and object to the basis of the founding of the State of Israel took a long time. It was as if -- to take that linkage apart was to cleave my own soul." Wait, actually, I'm lying. I don't respect it at all.

I refuse to accept that the only way to be loyal to humanity and liberalism is to reject Zionism. To be loyal to humanity and liberalism requires, instead, rescuing liberal Zionism from its dire condition. The State of Israel has placed itself on a precipice. To throw one's hands up and say the whole project was evil from its conception improves not a single person's life. And it ignores -- rather willfully -- the overwhelmingly dire condition of European Jewry that gave birth to Zionism. Judith Butler, I'd like you to meet Ahad Ha'am.

Let's go really quickly through 19th Century Zionism. I promise you this will not be painful. Establishing a Jewish state in the mid-19th Century is an impossible, fanatical, ludicruous idea. Accordingly, European Zionism is incoherent and deeply factional. One thing it agrees on: if it's to work, it needs a big, powerful patron. So different Zionist thinkers make different arguments to different potential benefactors about why a Jewish state was in their interest. Then they also had to make different arguments to Jews who viewed them like we view street preachers today. Why should an assimilated middle-class Jew with a promising law practice in Berlin want... political independence? Among the effects: Zionism develops both a universalist strain (There ought to be a Jewish State because all peoples deserve statehood) and an exceptionalist strain (There ought to be a Jewish State because the Jewish people have suffered so tremendously and we're actually super-awesome). All Zionist thinking flows from one of those two basic propositions; some pick and choose from either, depending on convenience or cynicism.

I believe the just basis for Zionism is the universalist strain. And you know what that obligates me to also believe? That there must be a State of Palestine. (Ideally, one day there will also be an independent Kurdistan, even if I don't particularly want the U.S. to be its midwife.) Not "should." "Must." To betray the State of Palestine, as a Zionist, is to cast your lot in with the exceptionalists. That way lies madness, injustice, occupation, war and all of the things the State of Israel was supposed to alleviate for the Jews. And to be an anti-Zionist, one must also make the choice: should statehood not exist for anybody, or just not for the Jews?

I'm looking at Israel and America, on the verge of an epic strategic -- and, I contend, moral -- mistake in opposing the creation of a State of Palestine at the United Nations. They are blundering so badly that they are inadvertently strengthening Hamas and spitting in the eyes of the Mideast's democratic revolutions. I worry that we will look back on this moment and view it like the decision to invade Iraq -- an unforced error of profound and awful magnitude that severely set back the hopes for a more humane Mideast.

But I can't accept that the only course of action is to wash your hands of universalist Zionism. It is the obligation of those who believe in Zionism to rescue liberal Zionism. It is the only Zionism that is in the interests of the world and the interests of Israel. Because the other Zionism doesn't go away. It would only get stronger in the absence of its moral and strategic counterbalance. That, I contend to you, is what the real impact of Judith Butler and Tony Kushner and the others' argument is. If they want to opt out of the project, they can opt out; they're free to do so. But to opt out has consequences of its own. There's a reason why all of those early Phillip Roth novels feature such agonized protagonists who can neither escape or reject nor be "free" of their Jewishness.

One last thing. This film's focus is wrong. Right now, in this eclipse of liberal, universalist Zionism, it isn't the right-thinking, liberal, cosmopolitan Jews whose opinions hold sway. As Matt Yglesias has written, this is the dawning of the era of post-Jewish Zionism. All that stuff that Jews believe about social justice that animates universalist Zionism? The new crowd don't play that. They play power and millenialism and force and fire and blood. They play, above all, tribalism. That's what's on deck if they are not stopped and universalist Zionism dies a death of weakness and apathy. 

OK, now yell at me in comments, tell me I'm a fascist, etc.

Comments

[Robert Farley]

Fascist.

(Just wanted to be helpful.)

[Kate]

Do you think that every people should have it's own state? Or just that they have a right to? Also, who gets to decide how to define "a people?".

Personally, the primary objection I have to Zionism as an idea is that it aims to define a state along religious/ethnic lines, which is a form of discrimination. One that many if not most states participate in, but that doesn't make it right. More troubling, unless you are willing to be very flexible about what it might mean to be a Jewish state, Zionism requires creating and maintaining a Jewish majority in a place that for centuries did not have one, which means in practical terms trying to displace, disenfranchise or kill those who live there and are not Jewish, and then after that to keep non-Jews out. How can a state have a preferred religion whose population they try to maximize without discriminating? I think what it boils down to is that I believe every human has a fundamental right to be treated equally wherever they may live regardless of religion or ethnic identity, but I don't think any of us has a fundamental right to live in a country where our ethnicity or religious group is the majority. Does one also have the right to live in a neighborhood where their ethnic group is the majority and kick out or bar from moving in anyone who isn't part of that group?

It's not that I don't understand the appeal of being in the majority - minorities the world over are marginalized and abused, though obviously there are places and times where it's worse and where it's better. And I don't mean to gloss over what it has often meant for Jews to be a minority historically. But I don't think the solution to this problem is to put the whole world all in separate, homogeneous states for every identity and give entirely on the idea of states that know how to respect diversity - and it gets even murkier when you try to pin down what counts as an identity, when people often identify with multiple and changing identities, and it's not necessarily that clear where the boundaries lie between one identity and another. Defining a state along ethnic/religious lines is also a bad idea because it requires policing and legislating who legitimately can claim that identity - and as I understand it in practice, you actually do see this with the Israeli religious orthodox authorities telling some people who consider themselves Jews that in fact, they aren't Jews.

What makes all of that acceptable in universalist terms?

Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting that the mere fact of having a majority of one group or another is wrong, it's the attempt to make and keep a majority I think is wrong, and I also am not a fan of the idea of a state of Palestine that defined itself exclusively in an official sense as Muslim, or Arab, or that tries to keep out people that didn't fit with that, which may be what a lot of people have in mind when they talk about Palestinian statehood. I don't think the problem is that Palestinians don't have a state that matches their identity so much as that Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are treated as second class citizens and West Bank Palestinians do not have any state that they belong to at all, that they have almost no rights and very little recourse while they are in this limbo. The Israeli government still has a large degree control over their lives but doesn't consider them citizens, so they lack most avenues of accountability for those decisions and protection under Israeli law, while the PA and Hamas have no real sovereignty, and are both rather overdue for the next elections. And all of these parties in my observation frequently and flagrantly violate their basic human rights.

[Marshall Pease]

Personally, I think Joshua made a mistake when he entered the Promised Land with sword and fire, and you can see right away it turned to ashes. I think Yhwh wanted them to build a land of milk and honey and make everyone rich, descendants of Esau or Cain and everybody, which is what "taking Dominion" means to me. Maybe that's why the Lord kept the Israelites circulating in the desert, they weren't ready to do lie down, lion with lamb. And they still aren't willing to make the Palestinians rich by sharing what Yhwh gives. Which in the end will probably bring destruction down on them, as always.

Personally, idealist that I am, I think the notion of a "State" one more example of the troublesome modern trend towards absolutism in all things. High technology, empty morality.

If you insist on state-universalism, then I think those of us who think like I do should have a state of their own, a stateless state of hippie tranquility. We would be happy with a few thousand square miles here on the West Coast somewhere, thanks very much. How large/powerful/troublesome do you figure a group needs to be to qualify?

[sean]

Personally, I'm uncomfortable with the entire idea of nationalism based on blood, soil and/or sect, but if the Jewish state had been set up in an uninhabited part of the world, I wouldn't really give it much thought one way or the other. The primary, and pressing, problem with Zionism is not the idea of a Jewish state, but the dispossession of Palestinians. As much as Zionism (universalist or otherwise) would like it to be so, the cold, hard fact is that Palestine was inhabited. Inhabited by actual people who were actually forced out of their homes and denied the right to return to those homes. These people, and their children and grandchildren, live in refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza. That basic injustice means that you can't fit the square peg of Zionism into the round hole of liberalism.

[sean]

And as long as we're talking about Ahad Ha'am, let's read what he actually had to say:

We who live abroad are accustomed to believe that almost all Eretz Yisrael is now uninhabited desert and whoever wishes can buy land there as he pleases. But this is not true. It is very difficult to find in the land [ha'aretz] cultivated fields that are not used for planting. Only those sand fields or stone mountains that would require the investment of hard labor and great expense to make them good for planting remain uncultivated. [...]

The Arabs, especially the urban elite, see and understand what we are doing and what we wish to do on the land, but they keep quiet and pretend not to notice anything. For now, they do not consider our actions as presenting a future danger to them. They therefore do their best to exploit us, to benefit from the newly arrived guests as much as they can and yet, in their hearts, they laugh at us. The peasants are happy when a Jewish colony is formed among them because they get better wages for their work and get richer and richer every year, as experience has shown us. The big landowners also have no problem accepting us because we pay them, for stone and sand land, amounts they would never have dreamed of getting before. But, if the time comes that our people’s life in Eretz Yisrael will develop to a point where we are taking their place, either slightly or significantly, the natives are not going to just step aside so easily. [...]

If we have this ambition to settle in a new country and radically change our way of life and we truly want to achieve our goals, then we can’t ignore the fact that ahead of us is a great war and this war is going to need significant preparation. [...]

It is not our way to learn nothing for the future from the past. We must surely learn, from both our past and present history, how careful we must be not to provoke the anger of the native people by doing them wrong, how we should be cautious in our dealings with a foreign people among whom we returned to live, to handle these people with love and respect and, needless to say, with justice and good judgment. And what do out brothers do? Exactly the opposite! They were slaves in their diasporas, and suddenly they find themselves with unlimited freedom, wild freedom that only a country like Turkey can offer. This sudden change has planted despotic tendencies in their hearts, as always happens to former slaves ['eved ki yimlokh]. They deal with the Arabs with hostility and cruelty trespass unjustly, beat them shamefully for no sufficient reason, and even boast about their actions. There is no one to stop the flood and put and end to this despicable and dangerous tendency. Our brothers indeed were right when they said that the Arab only respects he who exhibits bravery and courage. But when these people feel that that the law is on their rival’s side and, even more so, if they are right to think their rival’s actions are unjust and oppressive, then, even if they are silent,and endlessly reserved, they keep their anger in their hearts. And these people will be revenged like no other.

By the by, this is from an essay of Ahad Ha'am's that Solomon and Kushner republished back in 2003.

[Naelok]

What Sean said.

I respect you, Mr. Ackerman, but I think you're defending a type of Zionism that never has and never will actually exist outside of the realm of theory and imagination. Israel is a colonial state that dispossessed a large number of people of their homes to establish itself. Shutting your eyes to that and talking about national ideals isn't going to change that.

[Jim Thompson]

The right to self determination for all people must be the goal, else we fall short of what is right. The Jewish people needed a homeland for many reasons, just as the Palestinians do today. How can anyone enjoy a privilege which they purposefully and conspicuously deny others? What does "Do unto other..." look like?

Defining a nation along ethnic/religious grounds does little more than contribute to a sense of seperation. Community is made of people who buy-in, or decide to join. If your skin has to be a particular color in order to become part of the community, it only places people on the outside - it is exclusive. Some people like this and will do all they can to rationalize or defend it. In the end though - its all star-bellied Sneetches.

Which is the highest, best expression of Zionism? Can Zionism become the axample for others to follow?

I hope always for the best.

[moncler jackets]

Go for someone who makes you smile because it takes only a smile to make a dark day seem bright.