In shul this morning, the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the rabbi spoke at length about the State of Israel. This is more surprising than you might think. I’ve been going to this shul since I moved to Brooklyn in 1999, and if memory serves, it’s only been in the last two or three years that the rabbi has devoted at least one of her High Holy Days talks to Israel.
Throughout the aughts, Israel didn’t come up much in shul. During flash points of the Second Intifada, you might hear a prayer for Jewish Israelis or nervous temporizing about some action in Jenin or Gaza. But I can’t recall an entire sermon devoted to the State of Israel and its meaning for Jews.
That’s also how I remember much of my synagogue experience as a kid. Don’t get me wrong: Israel was central to my Jewish education. My entire family—my five sisters, my parents, and my grandfather—visited there with our synagogue in 1977. Several of my sisters, as well as my parents, have been back. The safety of Israel was always on my mind; I remember spending many a Friday night service imagining a terrorist attack on our synagogue, so short seemed the distance between suburban New York and Tel Aviv. I wrote about Israel in school essays (I actually defended its role in the Sabra and Shatila massacre). I had a strong feeling for Israel (or what I thought was Israel): a combination of hippie and holy, Godly and groovy, a feeling well captured by Steven Spielberg in Munich.
But for all of Israel’s role in my Jewish upbringing, I don’t remember my rabbi talking about the state all that much. In fact, the only time I remember him bringing it up was in 1982, not long after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. This was the first time that I became aware of international criticism of Israel. I had known, of course, about Arab and Palestinian opposition to the state, but in the world of American Jewry, that was all too easy to dismiss. The 1982 invasion, however, was especially controversial and brought Israel intense criticism from across the globe. Or at least sufficiently intense that I noticed.
Our rabbi—Chaim Stern, who edited the prayer book that’s now used at Reform synagogues across the country—was wry and erudite, not given to hot pronouncements. But something in the air that year stirred him to defend the State of Israel against its many critics. I’ve forgotten most of what he said, but one comment stuck with me: Israel should be allowed to be a normal state. We shouldn’t demand of Israel that it be a nation above others; we should let it be a state among others. Stern didn’t mean what many of us would now take that statement to mean: that Israel should be held to the same standard as other states, particularly states that claim to be liberal democracies. He meant that it should be free to hunt and kill its enemies. Just like any other state.
But aside from this one instance, my memory of my rabbi is that he was relatively silent on the topic. Israel was so much a part of the moral and material fabric of our lives that it didn’t require elaborate sermons and defenses or justifications. It (or an image of it) was something we lived rather than something we were lectured about.
And that’s how it had mostly been at the shul I now attend in Brooklyn. Until about two years ago. I remember the rabbi first taking up the topic in earnest in 2011 (or was it 2010?), almost apologetically, saying that we in the shul had been too quiet about Israel. It was time to talk. And by talk, she meant defend. Israel was under attack, politically and ideologically; its status in the culture could no longer be taken for granted. We had to speak up on its behalf. I remember wondering at the time whether she wasn’t responding to some specific call from other rabbis, a sense that Israel was beginning to lose control of the conversation not just internationally but in the US as well.
But what’s become clear to me since then—and this morning’s sermon confirmed it—is that it’s not the goyim the rabbis are worried about; it’s Jews. And not merely anti-Zionist, middle-aged lefty Jews like me but also younger Jews who are indifferent to Zionism.
In her talk this morning, the rabbi cited a statistic: where 80 percent of Jews over 65 feel that the destruction of the State of Israel would be a personal tragedy, only 50 percent of Jews under 35 feel the same way. I have no idea if this is true or what study it’s based on (this article in Tablet cites the same statistic), and admittedly it’s a high (and kind of weird) bar upon which to hang and measure support for the State of Israel. But my anecdotal sense is that there is something to it. Earlier this year, I had a drink with a 20-something journalist who’s Jewish. He said most Jews his age didn’t think or care all that much about Israel. Where Jews my age had to work toward our opposition to Israel—overcoming heated criticism and feelings of betrayal from friends and family—Jews his age, he suggested, could simply slough off the state as if it were so many old clothes.
But what most stood out for me from this morning’s sermon was how nervous the rabbi was about bringing up the topic. After talking a bit about how Israel felt to her as a kid (her memories are much like mine), she said that nowadays it seemed as if one couldn’t have a conversation with another Jew about Israel without fearing that it would explode into an argument. So fraught is the topic, she said, that many of us have opted not to talk about it at all. An uneasy silence had descended upon the Jewish community—an anxious modus vivendi in which we don’t agree to disagree but agree not to discuss—and it was this, more than anything, that worried her.
Now there are many reasons why a Jew would be made nervous by such a silence. Jews like to pride themselves on their tradition of argument and internal dissent. For every two Jews, three opinions, and so on. (That’s often not been my experience of Jews and Judaism, but it’s certainly a part of our sense of ourselves). Judaism, moreover, is not a religion of inner lights, of atomistic individuals who do their own thing. Ours is the religion of a people, a people with a rather insistent sense of collectivity. We do not shuffle into private confessionals; we declare our guilt publicly and communally. On Yom Kippur, we recite all the offenses we have committed against God and to each other (my personal favorite is “stiff-neckedness”). Individually, we may not have committed all of them, but that doesn’t matter. Somewhere, someone in the community did, and we’re all responsible.
But the rabbi wasn’t concerned about the conversation about Israel for these reasons. Something else seemed to be bothering her. If Jews can’t speak to each other about Israel, how can they defend the state to the rest of the country, much less the world? If defenders of Israel can’t make the case to the Jewish people, to whom can they make the case? Instead of issuing a call to arms, the rabbi pleaded for civility: let’s learn to speak to each other with mutual regard and respect, not to demonize each other simply because we take different positions on the State of Israel. Though she framed this as a universal injunction, I suspect she was speaking more personally. It seemed as if she felt like she had been demonized for her support for Israel (which is not, I should hasten to add, uncritical support but probably something closer to Peter Beinart’s liberal Zionism). And not by Arabs or the French, but by other Jews, perhaps even Jews in her own congregation.
I know how she feels. Though I grew up in a Zionist family, my position on Israel began to shift during my last years as an undergraduate in the late 1980s. In my junior year, I studied at Jesus College, Oxford. On the one hand, the experience solidified my identity as a Jew. Growing up in suburban Westchester, I never felt marked as other, as exotic or alien or strange. But at Oxford I did (I remember visiting a friend’s family over the Christmas holiday. Upon my arrival, the first thing they remarked upon was my being Jewish. It was as if they had been talking about it for weeks, wondering what they would do with this Jew once he crossed the threshold.) I came away from my year in England not only more identified as a Jew but also more interested in being Jewish.
On the other hand, that was the year of the Intifada, which set me on a path of questioning the State of Israel. When I returned to the States, I heard Edward Said speak on campus. I was mesmerized (anyone who had the privilege of hearing Said on Israel/Palestine knows what I’m talking about).
Coming out of these experiences, I recommitted myself to Judaism while rejecting Zionism. I learned how to be a Jew without Israel.
My break with Israel didn’t happen all at once. It was a process, but it did have an end point. In the summer of 1993, I was in Tennessee with my then-girlfriend, who was doing dissertation research there. Toward the end of the summer, I bought a copy of Said’s The Question of Palestine and read it in two days. As we drove back to New Haven, all hell broke loose. She was Jewish and at the time a firm if critical believer in Israel as a Jewish state. I began the car ride by voicing some tentative criticisms, but the conversation quickly escalated. It ended with me declaring that no child of mine would ever step foot in the State of Israel (I was kind of melodramatic in those days). We didn’t speak for a week.
That was my last experience of really getting into it with another Jew over Israel. I learned my lesson. I kept quiet. For about a decade and a half. The topic was simply too painful. I would only talk about it with ideologically sympathetic friends (and a couple of my sisters, who had come around to the same position as me) or with non-Jews. I couldn’t bear the feeling that I was being disloyal to the Jewish people; it was as if I had turned my back on my own family. I didn’t change my position; I just didn’t publicize or push it.
But something has changed in the last few years. The BDS movement has made great strides, critics like Ali Abunimah provide thousands of followers on Twitter with a constant stream of vital information we wouldn’t get elsewhere, books like Mearsheimer and Walt’s The Israel Lobby (whatever you think of its thesis) have blown open a topic long considered taboo, and respected voices in the mainstream media like Glenn Greenwald (and before him, Tony Judt) have made it possible for Jews to speak our minds on the topic. Now my little tribe within a tribe is more vocal, and suddenly it is our opponents who feel like they have to be careful around us and not vice versa.
I don’t want to overstate things. The pro-Israel forces still have an iron grip on the conversation in Congress (not to mention the expenditures and actions of the American state as a whole); critics of Israel are still vulnerable on college campuses; and lock-step support for Israel is still a requirement for mainstream respectability in most of the mainstream media.
I also wouldn’t want to make too much of a few sermons at my shul in Brooklyn, which despite being Conservative is politically progressive. I suspect the conversation in other shuls is rather different.
Still, if what my rabbi says is any indication, something may be happening in the Jewish community. If we look beneath the world of AIPAC and high politics, if we pay attention to the everyday conversation and its unspoken rules of discretion, we may be seeing a subtle shift in manners and mores that portends something larger and more fundamental.
I don’t know what that something larger is, or will be, and despite what Montesquieu and Tocqueville taught us, the politics of politesse is just that. Even so, for the first time in 20 years, I’m hopeful.
Shanah Tovah.
{ 141 comments }
Neil Levy 09.07.13 at 1:38 am
The statistic you cite is one that Peter Beinart keeps repeating. I can’t recall where, but I recently came across another article that claimed the figure was wrong (in the sense that attempts at replication found much stronger support for Israel among young American Jews). It certainly isn’t the case in Australia, where the view that opposition to (where “opposition” means anything less than wholehearted support of) Israel is motivated by anti-semitism is near universal.
Neil Levy 09.07.13 at 1:44 am
This poll reported in Haaretz indicates increasing “attachment to Israel combined with decreasing support for Israeli governments. Hard to know what to make of it, especially since no methodological details are given.
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/poll-young-american-jews-are-growing-more-attached-to-israel-1.449960
Ronan(rf) 09.07.13 at 2:54 am
I’m certainly sceptical off the ‘Jewish attitudes towards Israel’ narrative, at least within Israel (although I can’t speak to the US) Anecdotally I don’t buy it, there is no real opposition towards the occupation of the West Bank (That might, statistically, be a generational thing, as those my age grew up with the Second Intifada and are more likely to hold extreme views) But I never saw the so called ‘peace lobby’, even in places like Tel Aviv or Jerusalem
I was told by people living in (literally) illegal settlements on the West Bank that they favoured a two state (or at least one ‘unified state’– with numerous caveats) settlement. The words mean nothing. Perhaps in the US it’s different, (and I’m reluctant to go against actual empirical evidence), but I never saw it. There is no resolution, or at least there is none that isn’t entirely dictated by the US and Israel (without some major crisis). It’s a myth
John Zuraw 09.07.13 at 4:46 am
“How I Shucked Zionism & Became a Better Person” by Corey Robin. As if there was no Zionism more sophisticated than the Zionism of Professor Robin’s youth. But to decide that in his youth he fell for a second-rate, inadequate version of Zionism would require genuine humility. Instead he should nurture that High Holiday feeling: Zionists are bullies and dupes and our kind of people are Anti-Zionists.
Meredith 09.07.13 at 5:33 am
Not sure where John Zuraw is coming from — life is a complicated place, and I appreciate his emphasis on humility (which, however, I thought fully informed Corey’s post, but that’s me).
As the Christian mother of two Christian-raised children (church-going and more) and the potential grandmother of Jewish (observant) and secular “Muslim” children (well, both of those potential parents are sort of atheists, but it’s never that simple — even self-avowed atheists are never really that simple, are they?), I’d like all this to get sorted out, without any children of any description having to die in the process. (Can’t help but confuse this OP with the various Syrian posts here at CT — also with the cosmopolitan post.)
And I think my personal story may have something to do with Corey’s wonderings. We’re all in this together. Shanah Tovah, truly.
Tiny Hermaphrodite, Esq. 09.07.13 at 5:56 am
@John Zuraw 4
Could you elaborate on your version of Zionism. I’m not trying to be critical here, I’m just curious.
Meredith 09.07.13 at 6:57 am
And before I to bed, some rest, and a new morning,, let me say, Jews are not ever without Israel, or at least, Jerusalem. Tomorrow, next year in.
Walt 09.07.13 at 8:03 am
John Zuraw, you’re reading into Robin’s post. He said nothing resembling what you’re imputing to him.
Amol Alphonce 09.07.13 at 8:59 am
I am not a jew. In fact I am a black African from the tribe of Luo in Kenya(Obama senior). I don’t think I have any connection with the land of Israel, but everytime Israel is mentioned I get very emotional. I love the land of Israel and everything Jewish. Had I but the means, I would enlist into the Israeli army and fight for the country I so much love and the people I cherish dearly. Thank God I am not alone in this one. Zionism is very very popular among my people. In fact nobody can mention anything anti-Israel near my father who is now in mid 60’s. Many people here have names like John, Joseph, Anna, Maria, Barak, Simeon etc. Thanks to our Adventist affiliation. When I was born, my father named me Israel, only for my mother to change it to Alphonce(whose meaning I do not know). I later learnt that my second name Amol is a city in Iran, I country I so much loathe due to its perception of Israel! Long live Israel. Zionism forever.
Foppe 09.07.13 at 9:14 am
@4: I am reminded of the fact that the US military has a ‘social media’ division, wondering which other parties operate something similar.
That aside, I wonder why people feel so justified when attacking others of being insufficiently patriotic; I wonder if it has something to do with how Christians (and, presumably, followers of other religions) see God in everything that happens/they experience. Is nationalism something similar, suffusing, as Corey describes it, every action taken regardless of relatedness/relevance (Corey’s remarks about how you were worrying about terrorist attacks on your synagogue seem quite interesting in that regard), so that all of those memories are threatened by forced reevaluation whenever you attack/criticize that thing (suggesting you should value it differently)? (And how does this relate to being in love?)
H.P. Loveshack 09.07.13 at 12:47 pm
Whenever the subject of Israel comes up, I’m reminded of Orwell’s essay Notes on Nationalism.
Scott P. 09.07.13 at 1:09 pm
“But what most stood out for me from this morning’s sermon was how nervous the rabbi was about bringing up the topic. After talking a bit about how Israel felt to her as a kid (her memories are much like mine), she said that nowadays it seemed as if one couldn’t have a conversation with another Jew about Israel without fearing that it would explode into an argument. ”
Of course, the very Orthodox Jews that have been leading Israel down her current path would also deny your rabbi the right to preach on the matter at all. Doesn’t she realize that?
Seth Edenbaum 09.07.13 at 1:23 pm
Amol is a paid Hasbarista. Israel sponsors them. Google it.
Tel Aviv has built a segregated school system to isolate children of African migrants. Beinart: “I’m not asking it to allow Palestinians who were forced out (or fled) in 1948 to return to their homes. I’m not even asking it to allow full, equal citizenship to Arab Israelis, since that would require Israel no longer being a Jewish state.”
Zionism or modernity: pick one. Robin has now allowed other members her to consider the option of anti-Zionism. The Overton window has moved. And Quiggin may even one day consider arguing that perhaps Israel should be put before an international court.
Ain’t enlightenment grand.
vasvas 09.07.13 at 2:05 pm
I really don’t understand what Corey’s position is. It seems he’s writing more about a state of mind than about concrete political positions, more about a tribe (as he writes) of disaffected Jews who think themselves better than supporting what may seem as an apartheid state. Is he really saying he doesn’t care if Israel exists, or that Israel is a morally repugnant state (that one’s kids should not even visit)? That seems to be ridiculous, as I suspect he’s visited a good number of dictatorships and unsavory places and in any case he has few scruples about visiting for example Turkey or Nepal or Indonesia (of a few years ago, say). So, what’s the position, exactly? Is the gist of the article that it’s a good thing that Jews can talk about not wanting to support the state of Israel any more?
I am really curious: Given the history of Jews, is he indeed really comfortable of a future without a Jewish state? Even more so, is he even thinking of the misery that will be involved in the dissolution of the Jewish state? It won’t just come about. It will have huge human cost for Jews in the Middle East. In particular, if one considers the fate of minorities in Middle Eastern countries, and especially non-Muslim minorities, I wonder how one can remain sanguine about the disappearance of Israel as a Jewish state.
Finally, being Greek, I would indeed consider it shameful if a self-identified Greek American tells me they’re indifferent to whether Greece remains independent or is taken over by some neighbor. I would really not consider it progress or a good thing if Greek people openly talked about the desirability of having an independent Greece (unless it was in the context of federal Europe, but that’s not the kind of discussion here).
vasvas 09.07.13 at 2:08 pm
By the way: I am not trying to impute Corey’s position on travel to various countries. I am just stating my assumption that he’s not considering travel to above mentioned countriesa moral crime.
Philip 09.07.13 at 2:36 pm
Vasvas, I took away the same gist of Corey’s article as you. For the rest of it I think you are reading too much into it. Believing that Israel should be a secular state with Jews as a majority is another view that would be consistent with what Corey wrote.
BT 09.07.13 at 3:08 pm
Running just below the surface of this is a general sense is that the reality of the Jewish State has not at all turned out as it was hoped at the start.
The State of Israel was to become the safe harbor for the Jews. This has not been the case.
The state was set up in a sort of last gaps of European colonization. And the natives would just have to get out of the way. This has not worked out at all.
Setting up a racially based / theocracy society is not much of a showcase, and in an increasingly modern and secular world such societies are looking less and less well. Oddly enough, the Middle East is the place where theocracies seem to thrive, with predictably awful results.
The fact that their are Jewish non-Israeli’s who are willing to consider the State of Israel on its objective merits should not be surprising. The fact there are so few is a testament to human stubbornness and institutional inertia.
Watson Ladd 09.07.13 at 3:26 pm
Israel a theocracy? Yes, the rabbinate is annoying, but there are Masorti and Reform congregations thriving there, and no one suggests they be eliminated. The remnants of the confessional state in the marriage laws should be eliminated, but in practice everyone goes to Cyprus. The religious parties are perhaps more powerful than in the Netherlands, but I have never heard of Israel restricting religious practice, with the notable exception of the Wailing Wall, which has now been changed. One can even order shellfish!
One does wonder why people feel opposed to “Israel”. What does it mean to be opposed to “Belgium”?
BT 09.07.13 at 3:30 pm
To Watson:
What about the racially-based aspects of the State of Israel?
Theology and Tribe are so often intertwined.
christian_h 09.07.13 at 3:48 pm
No Watson, the correct analogy is: “what did it mean to be opposed to Belgian Congo”. And that is pretty to answer now isn’t it.
Hidari 09.07.13 at 3:48 pm
“Finally, being Greek, I would indeed consider it shameful if a self-identified Greek American tells me they’re indifferent to whether Greece remains independent or is taken over by some neighbor.”
Yes but this is precisely the wrong analogy. It’s probably not the most popular of political positions to argue that Israel is, essentially, based on a pun, but here goes.
If you are Greek, it means that you have a Greek passport. It’s not my imagination. It’s an objective fact. You are a citizen of the Greek nation.
The equivalent category for Israel is not, of course, Jewish but ‘Israeli’. Israelis are citizens of the Israeli state. To say or imply that ‘Jews’ are the only citizens of the Israeli state is blatantly racist (and factually false). Of course this has been recognised and the meaningless phrase ‘Jewish State’ is usually appended to the word Israel, or used instead of it. Jewish in this case, of course, is taken to be a racial category. So describing Israel as the ‘Jewish State’ is like describing France as the ‘White State’ or Brazil as the ‘Hispanic State’. This is to imply (without openly stating) that ‘Arabs’ aren’t really citizens of Israel.
There are at least three things wrong with this.
First, modern genetics shows few things more clearly than that there are no races. There is no such thing as a ‘racial’ Jew, or a ‘racial’ white person, or a ‘racial’ African. These categories have no meaning. There is no objective racial DNA test, which could could be carried out in Israel or anywhere else, that could, for example, tell the differences, objectively, between ‘Jews’ and ‘Arabs’.
The second point follows on from the usual defense of the use of the phrase ‘The Jewish State’ which is that ‘Judaism’ is a religion. And this is of course correct and which cuts to the heart of the matter. Describing Israel as a Jewish State is like describing Saudi Arabia as a Muslim State, and reveals that Israel is in fact a quasi-theocracy, as Gideon Levy has pointed out. And he’s right. It is. By definition. But of course this leads to a problem in terms of propaganda, as Israel posits itself as being a secular European style democracy, which it certainly isn’t.
The final point is that even if races existed, which they don’t, the phrase ‘Jewish State’ is simply wrong. As Professor Juan Cole has pointed out, Israel is not, in fact, a Jewish State. It is a multi-ethnic state, in which one religious/linguistic group is privileged above the others.
Races are fictional. But languages, and nationalities are not. Israel is not a Jewish state, it is, tautologously, an Israeli State. But it is one in which Hebrew speaking Israelis have privileges that Arabic speaking Israelis do not (to describe someone as a ‘Jew’ is usually false, unless one means ‘a follower of the religion of Judaism’. ‘Jew’, in other words is a word like ‘Muslim’ or ‘Christian’. To describe someone as an ‘Arab’ is usually not false, as it usually means ‘speaks Arabic as a first language’). It is also one in which followers of the religion of Judaism have privileges which atheist/secular Israelis, Muslim Israelis and Christian Israelis do not (getting married for example).
It was to get round these problems that the meaningless phrase ‘The Jewish People’ was invented. (It’s obviously meaningless by the way. What is my ‘people’? The white ‘people’? The secular ‘people’?).
What’s fascinating is that if you read Shlomo Sand’s ‘The Invention of the Jewish People’ the early 20th century/late 19th century thinkers who coined the phrase ‘Jewish People’ were quite clear that it was completely meaningless. They knew that there was no such thing as the Jewish ‘race’ and that many Jews were secular, so the idea of a the Jewish ‘religion’ as a unifier wouldn’t cut it either. But they had political reasons for putting it forward, so the utterly and completely meaningless phrase ‘A people without a land for a land without a people’ (which is simply a random string of meaningless syllables, frankly) became popular, in a way the more accurate phrase ‘European colonisers! Invade and colonise Palestine!’ would not have been.
Hektor Bim 09.07.13 at 4:00 pm
I have never understood what people mean with respect to “racism” when it comes to Israel. To me it seems to be straight-up sectarianism. Since people have converted to Judaism and gained full citizenship rights (including Muslim Palestinian Arabs), calling it racism doesn’t seem clear to me. Even using terms like ethnonatonalism doesn’t quite cover it, given that more than half of the Israeli population is of Arab or Persian cultural Muslims The country seems oriented around a straight preference for a specific religious group. It’s more liberal than Saudi Arabia, but both countries have groups they control with no political power. In the case of Israel it is the Palestinians. In the case of Saudi Arabia it is the Shiites and non-Muslims.
Hidari 09.07.13 at 4:01 pm
“One does wonder why people feel opposed to “Israelâ€. What does it mean to be opposed to “Belgiumâ€?”
Actually a lot of Belgians are opposed to Belgium, something that has been the subject of many a CT post. In other words, many Flemish nationalists, ahem, ‘deny Belgium’s right to exist’. Scottish and Welsh Nationalists ‘deny the UK’s right to exist’. The Cold War was about the United States’ ‘denial of the Soviet Union’s right to exist’. Almost all British and American politicians deny ‘The Syrian Arabic Republic”s ‘right to exist’ (accepting ‘regime change’ presupposes this). And so on.
William Timberman 09.07.13 at 4:03 pm
In the U.S., and in France — the two countries most associated with the secular revolutions prompted by the Enlightenment — the uneasy relationship between religion, tribe, ethnicity, and the state has always been finessed, sometimes with great delicacy, at other times with equally great brutality. The section in Democracy in America where De Tocqueville advances the idea that religion determines the shape of the American polity without interfering in its politics, is perhaps the most subtle discussion of this relationship than anyone else has managed before or since.
Why is this relevant to the Israeli situation, and why is it the business of non-Jewish Americans? I’d argue that the idea of an ethnic or religious state is anathema to the idea of America, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, particularly its Bill of Rights amendments, but is otherwise surprisingly consistent with the accommodation in the historical America of the needs of immigrant populations. Somehow we’ve managed to square this circle — imperfectly, and as often as not with tragic results — but we’ve had more experience with it than any other nation-state to date.
The Israeli situation is unique for the historical reasons we all know about, and at this late date can probably recite in our sleep, but at least one thing is clear: if Israeli policies have made a two-state solution a practical and political impossibility, the days of the Jewish State are numbered. From where I stand, the clear implication is that instead of requiring American foreign policy to ape the Israeli model of an-eye-for-an-eye, we should encourage Israelis to look more closely at the American model of civil society. We paid, and are still paying a high price for it, but it may offer a better path than their current eternal war of attrition.
Aidian Holder 09.07.13 at 4:53 pm
if Israeli policies have made a two-state solution a practical and political impossibility, the days of the Jewish State are numbered.
Idk about this. There’s always ethnic cleansing, which a substantial portion of the Israeli polity explicitly endorses already. Given the right crisis, which may be a decade or more down the road, I could see it happening.
Hektor Bim 09.07.13 at 5:28 pm
Hidari,
Lots of Jews in Israel speak Arabic (or Persian or Kurdish) as a first language. And they have full citizenship rights. The Israeli state doesn’t care if you are of Arab cultural origin. It does care if you are Jewish or not.
Hektor Bim 09.07.13 at 5:35 pm
I also think it is important to distinguish between a nation and a state. All nations are ultimately inventions, so talking about the Jewish nation or people is just as legitimate as talking about the German people. If people feel they are a nation, then they are. All nations underwent a period of ethnogenesis, be they Jews or French or more recently Americans.
The question is about the correlation of nations with states. The only reason we have national states is that multinational states were unable to treat their constituent nations with a modicum of decency.
BT 09.07.13 at 5:38 pm
to Hektor:
I suggest that getting bogged down in the semantics of ‘racism’ is slightly missing the big picture. Israel is a racially/tribally/religiously defined society. There are in-people and out-people. That is the heart of the problem. And that is why when Israel likes to promote itself as a modern, western and progressive democracy it completely misses the mark.
As Timberman writes, they have more or less foreclosed the 2-state option, and, as a result are heading for a South African apartheid state model. The longer this goes on, the worse it will get.
bianca steele 09.07.13 at 5:58 pm
Hidari @ 20
Not to take away from your other points, but as I understand it (correct me if I’m wrong, please), Christian or Muslim Israelis may marry in religious ceremonies. The state does determine what is an acceptable version of Christianity and Islam (for those who are its citizens) as it does for Judaism, and as a state like England, Ireland, Spain, at one time in Germany and Austria, and so on, as in all states w here a Constitution prohibiting a law with respect to an institution of religion doesn’t exist. The incorporation of religious institutions into the state may be tighter in Israel than in Britain, and suggestions like William Timberman’s from those who prefer to see a looser such incorporation may not be well received.
Hektor Bim 09.07.13 at 6:29 pm
BT,
I’ll be slightly subversive here and say that every state has in-people and out-people. Some distinctions are tolerated more than others. People say “racism” because racism is BAD, but lots of people are more tolerant of sectarianism, which is less essentialist. You can convert to Judaism and become a full citizen.
The UK is also sectarian, most notably in Northern Ireland, but no Catholic msy be sovereign and Tony Blair felt unable to convert to Catholicism until he left office.
Hektor Bim 09.07.13 at 6:52 pm
BT,
I’ll agree with you that Israel isn’t progressive on religion, but neither are many other countries that people don’t question the right to exist of. So, yes, Israel isn’t liberal or particularly tolerant and does rule harshly over non-citizens, but if it ended the occupation tomorrow it would probably be a progressive and tolerant country in 5-10 years.
William Timberman 09.07.13 at 7:06 pm
bianca steele @ 27
No, the existing powers in Israel won’t like it any more than the Spanish Inquisition liked it, but if the heritage of the Enlightenment is to have any lasting value at all, that value surely lies in the proposition that a world community — the only genuine path to a lasting peace, after all — demands an end to all pretensions of a society founded on questionable divine revelations, or on equally questionable pretensions to the inherent superiority of a particular race, ethnicity, language, etc.
There’s no end of experts who assure us that this isn’t ever going to happen, of course, but they aren’t the master fortune-tellers that they think they are. Necessity, particularly desperate necessity, has its own logic, and so also does the future.
LFC 09.07.13 at 8:01 pm
Hidari @20: Jews were defined as a de facto ‘people’ by their persecutors over the centuries. I don’t think you can understand Zionism or the creation of Israel (by ‘understand’ I mean account for or explain them) without taking that history of persecution into account. The point seems obvious but your comment @20 manages to avoid it. I’m pretty much in agreement w Wm Timberman’s last paragraph @23.
bob mcmanus 09.07.13 at 8:04 pm
demands an end to all pretensions of a society founded…etc
And what will be the permissible foundations of our new global communities? I contend that there cannot be only one, unless our world community of “humans” names chipmunks as its other.
A global community of Elvis Impersonators or Breaking Bad fans? I doubt that these are great leaps forward in Enlightenment rationality, but they are certainly less threatening to the new structures of privilege and control.
inherent superiority of a particular race, ethnicity, language, etc.
A Marxist of course might say that 100-150 years ago nationalism and racism was good for bidness, but now is not so good for globalist bidness, and must be replaced by ascriptive identity self understood as a consumer preference.
CR picked his OP stance from a really big menu.
Watson Ladd 09.07.13 at 8:07 pm
So the commentators believe it is impossible to treat people of different ideas, religions, races, religions, and skin colors equally in the same nation? What sort of bullshit is this!
bob mcmanus 09.07.13 at 8:19 pm
I shouldn’t play here, because I have no strong feelings or clear opinions about I/P, not very interested, and my life seems full enough and fulfilling without them.
The I/P fan community, on all sides, and there are a lot of sub-communities, will think I am immoral and irresponsible, but I think they just add energy to the disputes that sustain and perpetuate them.
And they don’t watch enough Turkish and Romanian movies, or anime. If they would join me, we can make a better world.
William Timberman 09.07.13 at 8:30 pm
bob mcmanus @ 32
See, folks, there IS wisdom in the CT comments — and humor, too if a bit sardonic at times. (And no, I won’t bother adding any sappy bumper stickers like unity in diversity, even if something very like it is really what I had in mind. I’ve done the pollyanna enough for today, I suspect.)
LFC 09.07.13 at 8:30 pm
I’m not entirely clear on Corey’s position: he rejects ‘Zionism’, but what does that translate into exactly?
If Israel ended its occupation of the West Bank, recognized a viable Palestinian state as part of a comprehensive peace agreement, and gave Arab Israelis full and equal civic rights, it could still go on calling itself “a Jewish state” and I would have no huge problem w that. The problem, ISTM, is the direction in which the state’s *policies* have evolved, not so much the original ideological foundations of the state. As a commenter upthread suggested/hinted, there are (or were, at least) different varieties of Zionism (incl. left-wing Zionisms), and ISTM there is no straight or necessary line from the OP’s monolithic ‘Zionism’ to the current policies of the Israeli govt.
Jerry Vinokurov 09.07.13 at 8:48 pm
Corey, I’m sure you’ll get some flack for this, but this exactly expresses my feelings; thanks for this post. I was never religious (nor were my parents) but as Jewish immigrants from the former USSR, we were always told that Israel was there for us as a final refuge no matter what, and that unconditional support for Israel was what our heritage demanded of us. Over time, I began to see that unconditional support for any and all Israeli policies was unreconcilable with a commitment to respect for human and political rights. And I find this to be true among most of my liberal Jewish friends, who have also mostly come to reject the idea that any criticism of Israel must amount to anti-Semitism. Perhaps in another decade or two, we’ll finally be able to have a rational conversation on this topic as a country.
Hektor Bim 09.07.13 at 9:45 pm
LFC,
The devil is in the details there. What does “viable” and “full and equal civil rights”. I don’t think Catholics have full and equal civil rights in the UK, but a lot of people disagree with me. Whether black people in the US have full and equal civil rights is disputed and more people think they don’t today than last year.
Some people in Israel argue that Arab Israelis already have full and equal civil rights. They can vote, serve in the army and government and are represented in all walks of life. They even have a positive right the majority do not have, avoiding the draft. They also can’t live in certain towns and face differential treatment from the state as a whole.
What would satisfy you as full and equal civil rights?
Hector_St_Clare 09.07.13 at 9:46 pm
Re: It’s more liberal than Saudi Arabia, but both countries have groups they control with no political power. In the case of Israel it is the Palestinians. In the case of Saudi Arabia it is the Shiites and non-Muslims.
The difference is that Saudi Arabia doesn’t purport to be a decent, civilized country.
In any case, I don’t think people would be as irritated by the State of Israel’s religious ties to Judaism, if they weren’t holding several million people in Palestine, who used to be the most advanced culture in the Arab world, under conditions of poverty close to Sub-Saharan Africa. If Israel had been set up as a Jewish religious state in the middle of Wyoming, I personally wouldn’t care one way or another.
LFC 09.07.13 at 10:09 pm
H Bim@40
What would satisfy you as full and equal civil rights?
Removal of de jure discrimination, in housing for ex. I don’t know enough about the situation to be too much more specific.
Hidari 09.07.13 at 10:15 pm
‘Lots of Jews in Israel speak Arabic (or Persian or Kurdish) as a first language. And they have full citizenship rights. The Israeli state doesn’t care if you are of Arab cultural origin. It does care if you are Jewish or not.’
Fair enough, although the emphasis on Hebrew as THE official language of Israel (as opposed to Arabic, which is merely an official language, if you know what I mean, is not incidental).
But the point is, who is a Jew? According to the ever-reliable Wikipedia (so caveat lector)
‘As of 2010, anyone who immigrated to Israel after 1990 and wishes to marry or divorce via the Jewish tradition within the state limits must go through a “Judaism test” at a Rabbinical court. In this test, a person would need to prove their claim to be Jewish to an investigator beyond a reasonable doubt. They would need to present original documentation of their matriline up to their great-grandmother (4 generations) (or, in the case of Ethiopian Jews, 7 generations back.’
This is an incoherent mishmash of religion (rabbinical court, matriline) and 19th/early 20th century ‘racial science’. It’s like me arguing that because I could trace my ancestry back to prove that I am descended from 7 generations of Catholic (which I probably could) that, therefore, I am genetically or racially a Catholic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_is_a_Jew%3F
bianca steele 09.07.13 at 10:38 pm
LFC: different varieties of Zionism (incl. left-wing Zionisms)
It’s nice to think it could be possible, but what variety of Zionism could create a middle ground between the free in-migration of the pre-war period, which could only happen because of the small numbers involved, and mass re-settlement of refugees and later emigrants by choice in numbers that threaten to swamp the existing majority? If the latter is what’s being rejected altogether, I don’t see how it’s possible to get a Zionism that makes everyone happy. There’s Cultural Zionism, or there was once upon a time, but I’ve never understood what that was. I’m happy to declare chipmunks the other if it’ll restore my bulb garden but I don’t know what good that does.
LFC 09.07.13 at 10:46 pm
@Jerry Vinokurov
CR does not say just that he opposes unconditional support for Israeli govt policy; he says he opposes the State of Israel. But it’s not clear from the OP what that means.
I don’t know what it means to oppose a state (as contrasted w a particular set of policies). Personally I usu. don’t think in terms of supporting or opposing states but rather supporting or opposing particular govts and policies.
If someone is Jewish by the Israeli govt’s definition, he or she can (I presume) get citizenship more quickly (virtually automatically, I think) on immigrating to the country. That policy doesn’t really bother me. Keeping it and certain other things — e.g. Jewish religious holidays treated as official holidays — could allow Israel to retain its self-conception as a Jewish state even as it got rid of policies that are objectionable. Do secular Jews in Israel, or non-Jews, really care one way or the other, for ex., whether the govt shuts down on Rosh Hashanah? The U.S. govt shuts down on Christmas, doesn’t it, and that doesn’t offend most non-Christians afaict. In other words, keep some of the largely symbolic stuff that contributes to a natl identity and change the substantive stuff that is really causing the problems.
LFC 09.07.13 at 10:53 pm
@hidari
That 7 generations requirement, according to yr own quote, only applies to immigrants who want “to marry or divorce via the Jewish tradition w/in the state limits” and it’s not clear exactly what that means. My guess is it only applies if someone wants to be married by an Orthodox rabbi. I cd be wrong, but that’s my guess.
LFC 09.07.13 at 10:55 pm
Correction: Not 7 generations, four. Doesn’t affect the pt.
LFC 09.07.13 at 11:24 pm
@bianca steele
My pt was one can prob. make a reasonable (i.e., non-frivolous) argument that what Israel is today is not a necessary outcome of Zionism, b.c there was no single Zionism. There were different Zionisms w different visions. Would they all eventually have led to pretty much the same place, given the events of the last 50+ yrs? I don’t know.
Hidari 09.07.13 at 11:30 pm
@LFC
I think you are right. But it doesn’t alter my point (indeed it reinforces it), which is ‘what is a Jew?’. The ‘orthodox’ position is that it’s matrilineal: ‘my mother was a Jew’. And how do you know your mother was a Jew? ‘Well HER mother was a Jew’. And how do you know?….well…etc. etc. etc.
Ultimately it’s all just a tautology. Because ‘racial science’, however you dress it up, makes no sense.
Watson Ladd 09.07.13 at 11:50 pm
So the Arabs liked the Jews, until the Jews were too numerous, and swamped the majority? The hideous behaviors this kind of argument could justify in Arizona are I think well known to all of us.
The current residents of Israel aren’t leaving, nor should we expect them to, any more than the Russians in what used to be Poland will leave. The irredentism of Palestinian politics (with respect to pre-1967 borders) is as ridiculous as German claims to Kaliningrad. Given that irredentism, no Zionism today could ever make everyone happy.
bianca steele 09.08.13 at 12:13 am
@LFC
I don’t know either. At what point did it become inevitable that there would be no civil marriage, or that the only version of Judaism recognized officially would be Orthodoxy?
As for he documented four generations thing: That sounds dubious to me. I happen to be able to trace my ancestors back four generations on one side out of four, maybe three, but documented? My parents can’t do so at all. How many countries were keeping good records as early as the 1880s, when the oldest of my grandparents was born? But from what I’ve heard (and who knows? I’m not an expert on Israeli or Jewish law and maybe I heard a false rumor), there certainly are issues w/r/t conversions and marriages especially if they were done in the West and especially if they were done by non-Orthodox denominations. But that doesn’t affect me: it would take forced resettlement to get me to move to Israel, and by the time everybody who mattered was that much in favor of single-religion, single ethnic group states, things would be well and truly messed up to the point where that would likely be the least of my problems.
bianca steele 09.08.13 at 12:14 am
maybe two
LFC 09.08.13 at 12:15 am
b steele @44
what variety of Zionism could create a middle ground between the free in-migration of the pre-war period, which could only happen because of the small numbers involved, and mass re-settlement of refugees and later emigrants by choice in numbers that threaten to swamp the existing majority?
I’m not sure how to read this. Should “threaten” be “threatened”? If so, I suppose Watson’s reading of it @50 might be indicated, but I’m not sure that’s what bianca meant.
Eli Rabett 09.08.13 at 12:16 am
It is a complicated thing which starts by recognizing the historical mission of Zionism was to establish a state where Jews could be normal. Zionism was a secular movement, and indeed establishing the state of Israel was opposed by the most religious as blasphemy because that was a right of God.
So what is someone who accepts the Zionist vision to do when the government of Israel and, to be honest, the Jewish people of Israel, appear to have embarked on a course of action that in the long run will result in the destruction of their state (think Crusader cities) ? About all that one can say is that Israel is a normal state, and its fate will be determined by those who live there.
Not everything is fated to end well.
BT 09.08.13 at 12:26 am
To Watson:
And the Palestinians aren’t leaving, nor should we expect them to. Though I understand many Israelis think that they should all just move to Jordan.
If Israel is a democracy, and it retains the occupied territories, the Arabs will quickly form a majority in Israel and will then be able vote in ways that will really destroy the ‘Jewish state’. So it’s annihilation or Apartheid. Or a 2-state solution, which Israeli hawks and Settlers seem to have finally rendered more or less non-viable.
Some Jews are starting to see these kinds of issues in a more objective way, and are starting to trim their support for Israel. And they are starting to go public about it. That is really the point of the original post after all.
LFC 09.08.13 at 12:29 am
Zionism was a secular movement, and indeed establishing the state of Israel was opposed by the most religious as blasphemy because that was a right of God.
Yes. There are still, I believe, some orthodox Jews who are anti-Zionist on religious grounds; then of course there are other orthodox Jews who believe the state shd expand permanently to incorporate the putative Biblical borders.
re marriage: Wiki says the state recognizes civil etc marriages performed outside the country, fwiw.
bianca steele 09.08.13 at 1:36 am
@LFC, Watson Ladd
I meant that at the point Zionism was dreamed up, it seemed people thought something along the lines of, well, the borders are more or less open, the current empire tends to accept some Jewish immigration, why not more; the current empire tends to grant extra rights to Jews in Palestine that they wouldn’t grant elsewhere, why not formalize it? The kind of colonialism people like Said have pointed out that encompasses doesn’t seem to have occurred to them, and that was wrong even at the time. It’s not true that they were unaware they’d have conflicts with Palestinian Arabs.
Hector_St_Clare 09.08.13 at 1:41 am
Re: The irredentism of Palestinian politics (with respect to pre-1967 borders) is as ridiculous as German claims to Kaliningrad
Yes, except the Palestinians didn’t just enact a world war, or any of that other business for which Germany was suffering territorial concessions. Way to shamelessly drape yourself in World War II imagery though. As for the pieces of territory Israel occupied in 1967, they also have an Arab majority. Kaliningrad doesn’t.
Re: If Israel is a democracy, and it retains the occupied territories, the Arabs will quickly form a majority in Israel and will then be able vote in ways that will really destroy the ‘Jewish state’.
Is that true when you take into account that the ultra-orthodox are going to be the majority in Israeli by 2050, and they have super high birth rates?
BT 09.08.13 at 1:59 am
Re: Birth Rates
What a great question – I’ve read so many times that Israel has a ‘demographic problem’ vis a vis the Arabs, and I’ve also read about the all the orthodox now in Israel and how they are making things more ‘polarized’. Someone with more knowledge than I will need to answer your question!
I do know that the Arabs are also known to have very high birth rates, which has been part of the problem for the Israelis in the first place.
Tiny Hermaphrodite, Esq 09.08.13 at 2:23 am
Hey John Zurow, if you’re reading this: I’m totally disappointed in you. You broke my heart.
Hector_St_Clare 09.08.13 at 2:23 am
Israeli’s (Jewish) electorate is becoming more nationalistic, both because of the high Hasidic birth rates and because of the influx of nationalist Jews from the former Soviet Union starting in the mid-1990s. The Jewish population in the US is also becoming more and more Hasidicized, though they won’t be the majority for awhile.
MPAVictoria 09.08.13 at 2:29 am
The whole thing is a huge mess.
Meredith 09.08.13 at 5:00 am
“Jews without Israel” is almost part of the definition of being Jewish, is it not? The Promised Land not yet achieved, or a Jerusalem to be returned to next year…
But “Jews with Israel” also part of that definition. Jerusalem was achieved, was real, after all. (And is again.)
The tension between the nomadic shepherd and the settled agriculturalist/urbanite.
I agree that some new variation on these (supremely wise) old themes is playing out these days. Many younger Jews I know, more observant than their parents or grandparents, don’t talk about or even (it seems to me) think about Israel as much as their often less (if at all) observant parents and grandparents did.
BT 09.08.13 at 6:17 am
Are Jews in America becoming more Orthodox? I did not know that.
This is a little off-topic, but… Why are religious people seeming to become more extreme and violent at this time? I have a pet theory.
As world culture becomes more secular, and more and more semi-religious people drop away, you are left more and more with the hard core elements. There are fewer of them, but they are really on fire for the lord/allah/yahweh.
The fact that the world is generally turning away from religion makes them mad. Osama Bin Laden really was acting from this point of view; he looked out at the Arab world, and saw that western influence was corrupting his people and so on. He attacked America, but what he was really fighting was modernism.
These people are fighting against the whole world and a tidal wave of globalization and communications and media technology that does not support their world view. Because they feel the tide is running against them and that god is on their side, they are willing to do very despicable things.
Meredith 09.08.13 at 6:43 am
BT, not more Orthodox but more observant, more attuned to… something, which Corey’s post senses and queries, it seems to me. I speak as a sympathetic Christian observer, and participant, as I plan to support wholeheartedly the raising of Jewish grandchildren — not to mention those secular-Christian-Muslim ones. Well, one grandchild of any sort would be a good start! You see, I think we all share some curious compulsion to reproduce, a celebratory (and humble) Shanah Tovah!
Ronan(rf) 09.08.13 at 11:46 am
“I’m not entirely clear on Corey’s position: he rejects ‘Zionism’, but what does that translate into exactly?”
Im assuming he means that he rejects the ideological foundations of the nation and sees it as inherently illegitimate
“I don’t know what it means to oppose a state (as contrasted w a particular set of policies). ”
I dont know. It certainly has no practical implications that I can think of (opposing the legitimacy of Israel) and might seem odd to outsiders (which I am) but for those at the centre of these ‘debates’, or circumstances, I think it makes sense. Plenty of people see Israel as illegitimate and oppose it existentially. I think context is important, and if you grow up steeped in the sort of strong Zionist traditions Robin lays out then it makes sense (if thats his position, which it might well not be)
But I agree that if he opposses the policies of Israeli governments specifically, or branches of Zionism that emphasise reedeming the land rather than building a nation for the Jews, and still supports the concept of a national home for the Jewish people, then thats not really ‘leaving Zionism’.
Hektor Bim 09.08.13 at 12:01 pm
The comparison with Kaliningrad doesn’t work precisely because the Israelis weren’t as cruel as Stalin in 1948. They didn’t expel all the Palestinians the way Stalin expelled all the Germans and many of the other minorities.
As for what will happen next, people lack imagination. We could have one state that is overwhelmingly Jewish, one state that is overwhelmingly Arab, for example. ( Both of these would require terrible wars, but they are not impossible.)
The more likely situation is 2 states, each with large majorities of one side or the other and minorities of the other side (look up Tekoa).
As for demographics, the US Jewish population is becoming more Orthodox and more religious in general. It is also much less interested in assimiliation than it used to be. That’s driven by much higher birthrates among the Orthodox and decreased identification with Judaism by Reform and Conservatives.
Hasidic birthrates weren’t high relative to other Jews in Israel when the state was founded, but there was a big push to replace the devastation to the Hasidim in particular from the Holocaust. There is substantial support for Hasidim in the state budget of Israel now.
Arabs in Israel have traditionally had higher birthrates, but these are falling faster than Jewish ones recently and may soon equalize. Even the Bedouin have fewer children now, from 10 to 5. Christians and Druze have had about replacement level birthrates for years now, less than Jews.
Arab birthrates in the West Bank (3.4) are much lower than Jewish birthrates (5).
Don’t rely on demographics to solve the problem for you.
Ronan(rf) 09.08.13 at 12:11 pm
“Arab birthrates in the West Bank (3.4) are much lower than Jewish birthrates (5).”
Is that Arab birthrates in the West Bank compared to Jewish birthrates *in the West Bank*?That figure doesnt seem right for Jewish birthrates in Israel
Hektor Bim 09.08.13 at 12:28 pm
It’s for the West Bank only.
LFC 09.08.13 at 1:07 pm
BT @64
Are Jews in America becoming more Orthodox?
No, on the contrary, I doubt that American Jews in general are becoming more observant/religious/etc. I happened to see a recent NYT piece on how congregations (I think the ref was to Reform in particular) are trying to reverse the trend of people disconnecting from the synagogue betw their own adolescence and the time of their children’s bar/bat mitzvahs (didn’t read the piece, just glanced at; but that seemed to be the gist — there is an organized effort to change how the bar/bat mitzvah is seen — but again, i didn’t really read the article, just the headline and first paragraph).
Hector’s pt was a separate one: namely, those American Jews who are Orthodox/Hasidic, currently a minority of all American Jews, have much higher birth rates, therefore they may eventually become the majority (emphasis on “may eventually”).
lurker 09.08.13 at 1:07 pm
‘If you are Greek, it means that you have a Greek passport. It’s not my imagination. It’s an objective fact. You are a citizen of the Greek nation. ‘ (Hidari, 21)
People believed they were Greek before there was a Greek state capable of giving them passports. If they hadn’t, they would not have fought to create one. Beliefs are facts, too. Try dismissing religion just because gods do not exist and see where it gets you.
‘So describing Israel as the ‘Jewish State’ is like describing France as the ‘White State’ or Brazil as the ‘Hispanic State’.’ (Hidari, 21)
Not really. France is a French state. Algeria could not remain a part of France because the Algerians were not French and had no wish to become French. Palestinians do not wish to be Israelis, they want their own state, preferably without Israel as a neighbour.
‘First, modern genetics shows few things more clearly than that there are no races.’ (Hidari, 21)
And yet groups like Jews and Arabs manage to exist, most of them having no problem whatsoever figuring what they are. Race biology was a vain attempt to make a science out of ethnic groups. The groups do not need it.
‘Hebrew speaking Israelis have privileges that Arabic speaking Israelis do not’ (Hidari, 21)
The Hebrew speaking ones established the state as a Jewish national state and are loyal towards it, the Arabic speaking ones opposed its creation and cannot be expected to feel any loyalty towards it, no matter what their status. How could they be equals?
LFC 09.08.13 at 1:18 pm
Ronan @66
Rejecting the state’s legitimacy could be just a theoretical position, but to the extent it’s more than a theoretical position it puts one in some company that I’m not sure CR intends to put himself in. I suppose one (e.g., CR) could reject the state’s legitimacy in theory while (1) acknowledging that in practice it’s probably not going to disappear any time soon and (2) still favoring some kind of peace settlement.
steven johnson 09.08.13 at 1:22 pm
US Jewish support for Israel, like any US support for imperial projects, is factored by the perceptions of 1)victory and 2)cost. Or, to put it another way, losing in Lebanon and the costs of the alliance with Israel are currently depressing the coolness of Zionism. It was the high after the Six Days’ War that was the outlier. So, the first question is, is this a fundamental change, in a long-run sense, or will it be followed by a regression to the mean?
Also, is this politically relevant in either case? Christian Zionism exists regardless of the vicissitudes of Israel. The best look forward to the Jewish converts to Jesus, and the worst views US Jewry as mere laggards in leaving, not as Americans. But whatever the flavor of Christian Zionism, isn’t it the significant factor in the US religious ideology?
Hector_St_Clare 09.08.13 at 1:44 pm
Re: Arab birthrates in the West Bank (3.4) are much lower than Jewish birthrates (5).
Ah, that answers my question: I knew that the ultra-Orthodox were eventually set to take over *Israel* proper, but I wasn’t sure about the West Bank. So it looks like if they wait long enough, the ultra-Orthodox dudes can have a demographic edge in the whole thing (Israel + West Bank).
Re: As world culture becomes more secular, and more and more semi-religious people drop away, you are left more and more with the hard core elements. There are fewer of them, but they are really on fire for the lord/allah/yahweh.
That’s part of it (that once you no longer have social pressure to be religious, the only religious people who are left are the fervent believers). Birth rates is another aspect- in the United States, for example, secularists have about 1.5 children apiece, mainline Protestants and Catholics have about 2, and evangelicals about 2.5. Religiosity appears to be about 50% heritable (although your specific religion is of course not), so there is some reason to believe secularization might reverse itself or at least level off eventually.
Collin Street 09.08.13 at 2:12 pm
But israel is illegitimate in its current form. Alternate potential israels don’t have the current israel’s problems, but it’s often advanced that these israels are impossible acct people getting murdered in their beds, &c.
Not my belief, not my claim. But for the sake of argument we accept that… and it doesn’t fix the problems with the israel we actually have, does it? If the only possible israel is this one, then all possible israels — that is, the-israel-we-have — must be illegitimate. Like I said, not my claim.
vasvas 09.08.13 at 2:38 pm
“Believing that Israel should be a secular state with Jews as a majority is another view that would be consistent with what Corey wrote.”
Believing in the tooth fairy is another view consistent with what Corey wrote. Seriously though (please excuse the above snark), Israel as a “regular” state among 50 millions people wanting to destroy it and with a sizeable majority of internal refugees also wanting its destruction does not compute.
YankeeFrank 09.08.13 at 3:37 pm
The fact that my children with my Catholic wife would not be accepted by the state of Israel for citizenship despite me being as Jewish as Tevya, as they say, tells me all I need to know about where I stand. The nation of Israel isn’t going to disappear as far as I can see anytime soon. But if it doesn’t change its identity from a Jewish to a secular state its going to be winning less and less support over the coming decades. The days of AIPAC and its ilk are numbered, and without that support its quite possible that Israel as we know it will disappear 30 or 50 years from now. There is simply no basis in the modern world for a “liberal democracy” to rest on a religious foundation. Its contradictions will destroy it one way or another: either it will physically cease to exist, or as seems more likely today, it will degrade into a true theocratic state, with little democracy and no liberalism.
Mao Cheng Ji 09.08.13 at 4:05 pm
Whatever people might feel/believe about their and others’ race and ethnicity, Israel is nothing but the last European colonial project. The rest is bs that can be argued about endlessly, inducing various strong emotions in various people for no good reason whatsoever.
bianca steele 09.08.13 at 4:12 pm
What a surprise that MCJ has weighed in. According to Wikipedia, more than half of the Jews living in Israel have origins in majority-Muslim countries.
Mao Cheng Ji 09.08.13 at 4:25 pm
There is no ‘Jews’, Bianca. I thought we already established that. There is a heavily armed European/American colony, actively preventing certain developments in the region: its independence, cooperation, etc. Why do we need to talk about your grandmother’s religion? What could be sillier than that?
bianca steele 09.08.13 at 4:30 pm
I just love the part where the current incarnation of the Henri Vieuxtemps persona descends into nonsense.
Hidari 09.08.13 at 5:26 pm
“People believed they were Greek before there was a Greek state capable of giving them passports. ”
People who believed they were Greek believed that because they spoke Greek (as a first language).
“And yet groups like Jews and Arabs manage to exist, most of them having no problem whatsoever figuring what they are. ”
Actually as I have discussed, contemporary Israel has a huge amount of difficulty deciding ‘who is a Jew’, mainly because it’s not clear whether ‘Jew’ is meant to be a racial or religious category, or both, or neither. The idea of the ‘Jewish people’ was invented to deal with this problem, but, as I have pointed out, this idea makes no sense.
Arabs are different. It’s a linguistic category. If you speak Arabic as your first language, you’re an Arab.
“The Hebrew speaking ones established the state as a Jewish national state and are loyal towards it”.
No. The people who invaded Palestine spoke German, French, Russian or (mainly) Yiddish. They learned Hebrew after they arrived as a self-conscious attempt to link their own fate to the (almost wholly mythical) histories of the various kingdoms described in the ‘Old Testament’.
It’s as if the Germans had invaded the UK, then self-consciously taught themselves to speak Anglo-Saxon and then argued, on the basis of the Arthurian myths and the Anglo-Saxon chronicles, that they (i.e. the invaders) were the ‘real’ Britons (proved by the fact that they now spoke Anglo-Saxon), that they had lived in ‘exile’ for a thousand years, and that the people who actually lived there were the interlopers.
It is up for the reader to decide whether, in the long term, this would be a viable political project, or whether it would not.
LFC 09.08.13 at 5:56 pm
I just love the part where the current incarnation of the Henri Vieuxtemps persona descends into nonsense.
Yes.
LFC 09.08.13 at 5:57 pm
“nonsense” might be too mild a word, actually, but i suppose it’ll do
Watson Ladd 09.08.13 at 6:02 pm
Hidari, Copts and Assyrians speak Arabic as a first language also. But what shame, to judge whether a people should live in one land or another on the basis of language! Certainly now there are Israelis. To what land should they be deported, in favor of those whose blood and soil are more palatable to the commentariat? Once again, we see the real objection: rootlessness, cospolitianism, entitles one to nothing. But blood and soil, no matter how grave the genocide or lengthy the wars that lead to it, (Do Bavarians speak German?) lets one reside in peace. Oddly, the Frisians do not treat the Dutch the same way now, despite years of war long ago. And we’ve mostly forgiven the Spanish, aside from football games.
Also, if we are addressing the British Isles, imagine treating Galic speakers as the real Scots. Of course, in the Balkans we don’t need to imagine the consequences of such fascism
As for knowledge of Hebrew, you might be interested in knowing what it is we speak at schul. Hint: it’s not Yiddish. Also, the second temple begins the exile
Ronan(rf) 09.08.13 at 6:06 pm
” The idea of the ‘Jewish people’ was invented to deal with this problem, but, as I have pointed out, this idea makes no sense. ”
I’m not sure what you’re arguing though. All national identities are constructed to a large extent, although some take more effort than other, and all have had to decide who to include or exclude from that identity. I dont understand what pointing this out, only in relation to Israel, is meant to say? There *is* an Israeli national identity now, with people who identify as Israeli, so whats the point?
“Arabs are different. It’s a linguistic category. If you speak Arabic as your first language, you’re an Arab. ”
But you’re also Lebanese, or Palestinian, or Syrian, all national identities that had to be developed. So wheres the difference?
Are you arguing that an Israeli identity doesnt exist or that they had no right to Palestine? I’d agree with you on the second but think the first is wrong. I agree that the way the Israeli identity emerged is unusual, but its not unique in that. What about Pakistan, afaict a nation built initially primarily on the fact that it was Muslim
Ronan(rf) 09.08.13 at 7:03 pm
If you’re argument is specifically with the ‘Jewish nature’ of Israel, then I agree that is problematic but will be something (probably, if they get the time) that will eventually fade away. But this was the justification that brought Israel into existence and cant be wished away, and the more tensions increase in the region the more that aspect of the Israeli identity will trump others
And sure its more difficult to be ‘not a Jew’ in Israel, but there are a lot of cleavages between Jews (whether you came from Ethiopia, whether you came from Iraq, whether you came from Europe) that ‘matter’, in reality, as in every other country
Hal 09.08.13 at 7:12 pm
Vasvas @ 76,
A couple of corrections… “50 millions†should be more like 350 million and if by “internal refugees†you mean the Palestinians (i.e. not the 1.5 million Israeli Arabs), they are almost all in areas A and B of the Oslo Accords and therefore under the Palestinian Authority. It is Area C (few Palestinians, four hundred thousand settlers) that is under Israeli control.
Collin Street @75,
“Illegitimateâ€, eh?
It seems evident to me (Canadian, gay, leftwing, atheist of Irish Catholic descent) that despite a lot of concern trolling in this thread, Israel is (largely) a great success story and will be around a lot longer, even in its current state, than almost every one of its neighbours save Egypt. According to one survey (I’ve lost the link) it is one of the “happiest†countries on earth, and that includes its 20% Arab and Druze populations. It is by far the most democratic (and gay-tolerant) country for thousands of kilometres around. And its intellectual, artistic, scientific and technological successes are remarkable, no, quite astounding considering how small it is and how beleaguered.
That said, it is long since time that an independent Palestine were established (one hopes not by Hamas) so that there would be one less injustice and sore spot on the globe and despots in the Middle East would have one less excuse for their despotism.
But, after all is said, it still puzzles me why the I/P issue consumes so much ink when, say, the Kurdish issue is so rarely raised. The excuse used to be that Israel was in a strategic location (I guess it still is), but after what we have been seeing in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria (not to mention the daily massacres and low-level civil wars of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan etc.), the argument that solving the Israel “problem†(a “final solution�) will bring peace to the Middle East, seems a bit weak. And the only explanation that I can come up with is that Israel involves Jews. With all, the positive or negative, that that entails.
In sum, if I had a vote in Israel, I’d use it to, say, curtail the religious influence, strengthen the Histadrut, do more to integrate its Ethiopian and Arab populations, curb the West Bank settlements, provide better services for the Bedouins, and, of course, help the Palestinians establish a stable state. Etc. But I have even less of a say in Israel than in Ireland (where I have an automatic right to citizenship) and so generally avoid (ha!) concern trolling in threads like these.
chris 09.08.13 at 7:57 pm
If Israel had been set up as a Jewish religious state in the middle of Wyoming, I personally wouldn’t care one way or another.
Of course, a religious enclave in Wyoming would be much like a religious enclave in Utah: still subject to the First and Fourteenth Amendments, which would go a long way (though arguably not far enough) to protect the rights of individuals of other religions who happen to live there. (In theory, nonreligious people too, but that isn’t always observed.)
Israel, like Utah, is basically run by members of a religion that is a minority everywhere else; unlike Utah, it isn’t subject to federal ties to other states with other demographics, nor is it bound by a constitution that compels it to respect the rights of all its citizens regardless of whether they are part of the religious majority or not.
I’m not even asking it to allow full, equal citizenship to Arab Israelis, since that would require Israel no longer being a Jewish state.
Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it. There are a lot of people who have trouble with a state that doesn’t allow full, equal citizenship to some of the people living there. And some of those people happen to be Jews themselves, which makes them a bit conflicted about the idea of a state that, to put it bluntly, discriminates in favor of Jews.
Personally, I have to salute the integrity of people who are opposed to discrimination even when their own people would be the ones that benefit from it. (Although I suppose some people would regard it as refusing to take their own side in the argument, or even some kind of treason. I consider it placing principle above self-interest.)
LFC 09.08.13 at 8:26 pm
I’m not even asking it to allow full, equal citizenship to Arab Israelis, since that would require Israel no longer being a Jewish state.
I’m not at all sure that is correct, for reasons mentioned @45.
Mao Cheng Ji 09.08.13 at 8:40 pm
It’s not merely an issue of equal citizenship. It’s also – and crucially – the issue of who gets citizenship. Bianca Steele (I presume) can walk off a plane and become citizen in 15 minutes, while millions of the natives will not be able to get even a tourist visa.
And so too in regards to the earlier discussion about excluded groups and so on: it’s not just that groups are excluded – excluded officially, unlike the US and UK – it’s that specifically the native population is excluded. That’s colonialism.
Christopher Phelps 09.08.13 at 8:51 pm
Thank you to Corey Robin for a post that I think captures very well how vexed and confusing the Israel question was in the 1980s, in addition to showing moral wisdom.
Norwegian Guy 09.08.13 at 8:53 pm
One of the most problematic aspects that I don’t think has been mentioned yet is the Israeli Law of Return, especially compared to the treatment of the Palestinian refugees. How do you justify that for instance Corey Robin can move to Israel if he wants to, while people who actually grew up in the land are not allowed to return. The Law of Return also requires that the state of Israel must be able to define who is Jewish, and who is not, based on some ethnic or religious criteria.
“People who believed they were Greek believed that because they spoke Greek (as a first language).”
If I recall correctly, the definition of who is Greek or not has often been based on religion, for instance during the population expulsions in the early 1920s. There is still a minority of Greek-speaking Muslims in Turkey, and of Turkish-speaking Christians in Greece.
Meredith 09.08.13 at 9:09 pm
“If I recall correctly, the definition of who is Greek or not has often been based on religion…”
Yes.
Many Greeks, even if they aren’t really at all religious personally, identify the Greek Orthodox church with Greek-ness (in part because of the church’s role in expelling the Ottoman Turks, the church’s continued hold in Istanbul/”Constantinople”). Other Greeks are very anti-clerical, of course…. (Two Greek friends of mine are on either side of this divide — each quietly scorns the other’s position.) The Albanian-Greek issues have exposed the degree to which Greek national identity is wrapped up with both language and religious identity.
Such issues are not simple anywhere.
Kaveh 09.08.13 at 9:12 pm
Corey, thanks for this post, it was thoughtful and encouraging to read. One major benefit of this conversation is that it can get people to appreciate the importance of Jewish perspectives and attitudes in American political life, and maybe, by extension, get beyond talking about US ‘national interests’ and politics in terms of a sort of white male general will, which is itself divided only according to economic interests or views on a few defined issues, and beside which all other political voices are marginally relevant. (I thought the idea of ‘white southerner’ as an ethnicity was helpful in this way.)
Zionism has ramifications way beyond the borders of Israel + occupied Palestine, and has even been an integral part of US neo-imperialism in the last 20 years (I am rephrasing Walt and Mearsheimer’s argument here–of course many people, such as Rashid Khalidi, disagree, arguing that support for Israel is never allowed to compromise ‘US strategic interests’). And I think the failure to see all of that, to dismiss the Israeli-Palestinian issue as a marginal issue only of interest to “the I/P fan community” (as bob mcmanus @36 put it–I don’t mean to ascribe this view to bob, though) is representative of a very parochial view of national politics that doesn’t have much room for issues that don’t mainly involve white men. I have seen this on liberal/Democratic discussion forums like Daily Kos where so many people say (now!) that they are against the Iraq War, but have no interest in how people are fooled into supporting such a war, and in fact a lot of them, and their party, probably did support the war when it counted. Zionism has been an integral part of the context in which the invasion of Iraq was marketed and justified, even for non-Jews, and we can’t have an honest and thorough conversation about that and the GWOT and US imperialism if we refuse to talk about such a major dimension of American cultural attitudes and allegiances.
BT 09.09.13 at 12:33 am
Norwegian Guy really nailed it on the law of return.
There is just no way to get the reality of Israel to square with the marketing and PR of Israel’s supporters. At this moment, Israel is a tribal-theocratic society that is slowly becoming an apartheid state. It does not have much in common with the spirit or legal structure of the United States.
And as the original poster pointed out, more Jews in America are starting to come around to this viewpoint.
ChrisB 09.09.13 at 12:54 am
Yes, Israel is different. For one thing, it’s the only nation there is that doesn’t have an attached nationality. Israelis carry an identity card with a space marked Nationality’. If you’re a naturalised ex-Egyptian, you write ‘Egyptian’, and so on. If you were born there you fill it in as ‘Jew’, ‘Arab’, ‘Druse’, ‘Samaritan’ and so on. I now read in Ha’aretz that when some citizens recently went to court to argue that they should be able to write ‘Israeli’, the Israeli Government argued that this “undermines the very principles under which the State of Israel was createdâ€.
The state claims that
ChrisB 09.09.13 at 12:58 am
Bugger. Quote swallowed: I really shouldn’t try HTML. Should be
Yes, Israel is different. For one thing, it’s the only nation there is that doesn’t have an attached nationality. Israelis carry an identity card with a space marked Nationality’. If you’re a naturalised ex-Egyptian, you write ‘Egyptian’, and so on. If you were born there you fill it in as ‘Jew’, ‘Arab’, ‘Druse’, ‘Samaritan’ and so on. I now read in Ha’aretz that when some citizens recently went to court to argue that they should be able to write ‘Israeli’, the Israeli Government argued that this “undermines the very principles under which the State of Israel was createdâ€.
The state claims that
“the dictionary definition of a nationality is `a nation, a people; a large group of people of a joint origin, common destiny and history and usually a shared spoken language’ and thus registering as ‘Israeli’ would not reflect the person’s “national and ethnic identity”.
Professor Uzi Ornan, one of the petitioners, says. “The state is afraid that if it agrees to register an Israeli nationality, it will create a de facto separation between Jews abroad and Jews living in Israel as part of an Israeli nationality.â€
Israel is not an ‘normal’ state like other states. People of Irish descent living in America do have preferential access to Irish citizenship, but there is nonetheless an Irish nationality that they do not share.
Hector_St_Clare 09.09.13 at 3:14 am
Re: “If I recall correctly, the definition of who is Greek or not has often been based on religion…â€
If I recall correctly, actually, some of the founding doccuments of Greek nationalism (possibly the first constitution, but I’m not sure) explicitly defined Greeks as ‘Greek speaking Christians’ or something like that. There were a lot of Greek-speaking Christians left in Turkey right up until the 1920s, when they had a large scale population exchange. The Greek constitution does continue to maintain Orthodox Christianity as the official religion, even today.
Hector_St_Clare 09.09.13 at 3:20 am
Re: Of course, a religious enclave in Wyoming would be much like a religious enclave in Utah: still subject to the First and Fourteenth Amendments, which would go a long way (though arguably not far enough) to protect the rights of individuals of other religions who happen to live there. (In theory, nonreligious people too, but that isn’t always observed.)
No, I meant that in an ideal world Israel would have been set up as an independent country on land ceded by some other country, preferably sparsely populated land. (Since the Germans were the most, uh, directly responsible for the situation in 1945, there would have been a pretty good case for establishing the Jewish state in Kaliningrad or Bavaria or something. Or maybe in some sparsely populated part of Russia or, yes, the United States).
The biggest problem with the state of Israel as it exists, is that it was built on land where there were already a lot of people living (and because of high birth rates, even more people today who claim an ancestral connexion), and that those people feel particularly strongly about their territory for a combination of religious and nationalist reasons. (Jerusalem is sacred to Muslims, in a way that Kaliningrad isn’t to Germans).
Hector_St_Clare 09.09.13 at 3:30 am
Re: It seems evident to me (Canadian, gay, leftwing, atheist of Irish Catholic descent) that despite a lot of concern trolling in this thread, Israel is (largely) a great success story
The people who were responsible for making Israel a success story were (largely) the secular, socialistic Jews of European and Russian ancestry who built the modern state and its institutions. They are a smaller percentage of the population every year. Israel is increasingly going to be dominated by Hasidic folks who don’t participate in modern education, depend on state subsidies, read scripture rather than work, and throw tomatoes at women who walk on their streets without sufficiently covering up (and have eight kids apiece). I don’t know if that meets your definition of success, but it isn’t mine. The demographic writing is on the wall.
Re: and will be around a lot longer, even in its current state, than almost every one of its neighbours save Egypt.
I’m confident Iran will be around fifty or a hundred years from now, though it isn’t technically a ‘neighbor’. I’m pretty sure some kind of Lebanese state will exist, if as nothing else than a refuge state for Syrian Shia Muslims and Christians. Syria might get partitioned, so I’ll give you that.
Re: According to one survey (I’ve lost the link) it is one of the “happiest†countries on earth, and that includes its 20% Arab and Druze populations.
Happiness research is cool and all, but these sorts of surveys usually turn up absurd results (like the purported claim that Nigerians are very happy with their lives), so they should be taken with a grain of salt.
Re: It is by far the most democratic (and gay-tolerant) country for thousands of kilometres around. And its intellectual, artistic, scientific and technological successes are remarkable, no, quite astounding considering how small it is and how beleaguered.
I suspect it’s going to get less gay-tolerant and scientifically advanced as the Haredim come to dominate.
Jerry Vinokurov 09.09.13 at 5:13 am
I don’t think “Jews” are nearly as diffuse a category as Hidari says. I mean, my parents’ Soviet Passport said “Jew” on it, right there. It was marked on your passport in Point #5 (apologies for the Russian-language link, but you can get a serviceable translation via Google). Before that, Jews were prohibited in settling in most parts of the country and were confined to the Pale; the soldiers of Catherine the Great didn’t have our advanced genetics, but somehow I don’t think that really impeded them from figuring out who was a Jew and who wasn’t, unless that person was working hard to conceal their ethnicity.
It’s true that “race” isn’t really a useful ontological category, but it’s also true that ethnicity is a thing. And it’s by no means necessary for people to speak the same language in order for them to share an ethnic background; the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe were not necessarily the most unified cultural community, but they were one, no less than Armenians living in the United States or Pakistani immigrants in the UK. Yes, there’s the religious factor, but those factors are present in other ethnic communities as well (e.g. Greeks, Italians, etc.). Just because I’m an atheist doesn’t make any less of a Jew, and I find it a little weird to have people telling me that my ethnic category doesn’t exist.
Historically, Judaism reproduced itself biologically because it couldn’t reproduce itself evangelically. Not only is converting to Judaism hard, but there’s absolutely no material incentive to do so; indeed, all the incentive is to convert away from Judaism, and unsurprisingly history is full of examples of people doing exactly that. So I don’t think it’s terribly surprising that Jews from a particular area should share various ethnic, and even genetic traits; race may not be an ontological reality, but Tay-Sachs disease is.
In response to LFC @45:
It actually matters quite a bit. I visited Israel for the first time last year, and I was shocked when I went to Haifa and found out that one of their sources of pride is that their public transit doesn’t shut down on Shabbat. There are whole districts where the Hasidim rule completely; just try and be a woman walking down those streets with uncovered arms. In addition, the Law of Return raises the problems that Norwegian Guy points out above; namely, that I, a relatively well-to-do American, could obtain citizenship in a country to which I have minimal, if any connection, but Palestinians evicted from their homeland 70 years ago can never get any of it back.
When your model of gender relations is too regressive for Hector, you know you’ve got something special going. And by special I mean turrrble.
Hector_St_Clare 09.09.13 at 6:29 am
Re: Historically, Judaism reproduced itself biologically because it couldn’t reproduce itself evangelically.
I’ve been told that Judaism was an evangelical religion at a couple time points, in the early Roman Empire and again in medieval Khazaria. For the most part you’re right though.
Re: race may not be an ontological reality, but Tay-Sachs disease is.
Which underlies the fact that Ashkenazi Jews, at least, are genuinely a genetically distinct population, at least with respect to some traits of interest. Tay-Sachs, obviously, and (without getting into that can of worms) arguably IQ and others. Whether you believe that ‘race’ is an ontological reality or not is somewhat dependent on what you define as ‘race’, and what you mean by an ‘ontological reality’, but it’s pretty clear that, for example, Ashkenazi Jews are a somewhat cohesive population held together by common descent, the same way that many other ethnic groups are.
Mao Cheng Ji 09.09.13 at 9:12 am
What the hell does Tay–Sachs have to do with any of this? And the tsar’s soldiers didn’t need any genetics, because back then the word described your religion and nothing else. And probably most of those defined as Jews by the Nuremberg/Return (or rabbinic) laws would have something else in their passports. None of 102 contradicts anything Hidari said.
Ronan(rf) 09.09.13 at 10:54 am
Hector
Isnt this argument, ‘Israel is increasingly going to be dominated by Hasidic folks’, a little over the top? They are what, at most 10% of the population (probably less) and as you imply their high birth rates are dependant on generous welfare provisions and specific state subsidies which arent sustainable. Afaict theres also a *lot* of division within this community, and not all (by any means) get heavily involved in politics
They will have more ‘influence’ (I guess) as a community, but they arent going to dominate Israel.
Collin Street 09.09.13 at 1:33 pm
Something that I think gets brushed over here is that the US itself was an apartheid state from, say, 1890 to 1969, give-or-take. That’s actually longer than South Africa was.
lurker 09.09.13 at 1:56 pm
‘People who believed they were Greek believed that because they spoke Greek’ (Hidari, 82)
To be Greek you had to speak Greek and be Orthodox, or just be Orthodox and not speak a Slavic language (the Serbians and Bulgarians had their own autocephalous churches claiming the Slavs for those nations).
‘contemporary Israel has a huge amount of difficulty deciding ‘who is a Jew’’
Do they have trouble distinguishing between Jews and Arabs? That would be a real problem.
‘It’s as if the Germans had invaded the UK’
They had no need to do that, they already had a Germany (only not as big as they wanted). The (Zionist) Jews had to establish a state where they could, or not at all. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea, but the state is there and does not seem about to voluntarily dissolve itself.
engels 09.09.13 at 2:10 pm
Israel… does not have much in common with the spirit or legal structure of the United States
Native Americans might see certain parallels…
LFC 09.09.13 at 3:08 pm
J. Vinokurov @102
I take the point re what you said about my comment @45.
In addition to what J. Vinokurov said about Hidari’s position, it may be worth noting that Jews as a more-or-less discrete group were defined (in part) by a centuries-long marginalized/pariah status in many places, a status usually imposed on them by those in power. Restrictions were placed on where they could live and what occupations they could pursue. A medieval European monarch might tolerate their presence, thus restricted, in his kingdom or might to decide to expel them altogether, as for instance the Capetian (French) king Philip Augustus did at one point, iirc (not taking the time to look up the details).
The ‘inventions’ (to use Hidari’s word) of late 19th cent. Zionists cd be seen as partly a response to a long history of marginalization and persecution. And a sensitivity on the part of some to that very history might also explain why some (not all) early Zionists wanted a binational state in which Jews and Palestinians wd live together on equal footing.
Btw, re Sands’ ‘Invention of the Jewish People’, cited by Hidari upthread, it was reviewed a few yrs ago by D. Nirenberg in Dissent [gated]:
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/anti-zionist-demography
(As I recall, I only glanced at the review so I’m not nec. endorsing it.)
Trader Joe 09.09.13 at 3:34 pm
There would still be Jews if there was no Israel as there were Jews for centuries before there was an Israel. Religion is defined by people, not place.
Jerusalem would remain the center of the Jewish world as a physical anchor point even if a Jewish government didn’t preside over it – as was the case for centuries – just as it remains a holy place for Christains and Muslims though they don’t govern it.
What I’ve taken or inferred from the many useful comments is that religion lives in its people, and though those people may have strong ties to place – it is the religion which defines them not the place. Israeli leadership errs in not appreciating this although perhaps centuries of being “homeless†creates an understandable over emhasis on maintaining a home.
Jerry Vinokurov 09.09.13 at 4:13 pm
The Dissent article is paywalled.
Anyway, my point, in case it’s not obvious, is that calling “race” imaginary is a little like calling religion imaginary. It may be true in a certain particular sense, but it doesn’t help you understand anything at all about, say, the dynamics of racial relations, or the history of ethnic conflict. Israel’s use of “Jewish identity” is, as Hidari points out, hugely problematic; it’s a slippery concept that can be massaged to either mean a certain “racial” category or a religious one at will, as the state demands. That doesn’t mean that, e.g. European Jews don’t share a particular ethnic identity. That identity is partially grounded in religion and partially grounded in a certain amount of biological isolation.
I have not read Sand’s book, but based on some googling and reading some interviews with him, it doesn’t seem to me that anything he’s saying contradicts this. The existence of some unified kingdom of Israel in a bygone era is entirely irrelevant to the question of whether the Jews of Europe constituted a distinct ethnic community, which they clearly did. Some further research also suggests that Jews worldwide do in fact share a distinct set of genetic markers. I don’t know how that squares with Sand’s work or whether he addresses this research at all (some of which is newer than his book), but again, this whole issue is a lot more complicated than “race is a fiction.” The astute observer will also note that Jews exhibit genetic commonalities with other ethnic groups, which should be totally unsurprising.
This doesn’t justify the Law of Return, nor ought it be used as normative justification for any particular policy at all. It’s just to say that “it’s all tautology” doesn’t really capture the complexity of ethnic identity, nor does it accurately reflect the actual state of biological science. That statement is as true of the Finns as it is of the Jews.
Ronan(rf) 09.09.13 at 4:58 pm
I havent read Sand’s book yet but IIRC it came in for a lot of criticism for getting the specifics wrong (or at least simplifying the specifics too much) and not adding anything new, while also not dealing sufficiently with the literature that predated it about how European Jews built an ethnic (or whatever) identity.
He’s writing a trilogy of these ‘ The Invention of…..’ and they seem to be semi polemics rather than careful historical studies (but are meant to be interesting none the less)
(ps the genetics stuff was one of the areas he got most pushback on. Not neccessarily for ‘getting it wrong’ but for misinterpreting/overplaying the arguments)
Mao Cheng Ji 09.09.13 at 5:23 pm
Jeez. What the hell does any of this have to do with biological science and genetic markers?
Jerry Vinokurov 09.09.13 at 5:26 pm
Are you capable of interpolating meaning in natural language? Or are you some kind of weird automaton? If this conversation is too complex for you, you don’t have to participate, you know.
Hidari 09.09.13 at 5:44 pm
If anyone cares the Sand book is actually available online here:
http://www.rafapal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Shlomo-Sand-The-Invention-of-the-Jewish-People-2009.pdf
It’s well worth a read, and has stuff that is directly relevant to some of the points I made above.
Mao Cheng Ji 09.09.13 at 5:47 pm
Well, in this case: sorry, it doesn’t compute. What’s the significance of genetic markers in this context, and what insights does the biological science bring into this discussion? I’m confused. Are you saying that ethnic identities are objective biological characteristics?
BT 09.09.13 at 6:11 pm
The fact the other nations (like America v Native Americans v Slavery) are not perfect is no sort of rationale for the State of Israel.
When Israel fights a bloody civil war in an effort to solve some of the inherent contradictions at the core of their state, then the may find themselves in a position similar to the the United States, if you’d like to make the example. Not perfect, but trying.
There treatment of the Native Americans is purely evil, shameful and immoral, there is nothing good to point at at all. But to set the bar for Israel as low as that, to imply that the Palestinians are being treated as the Native Americans were, so it’s OK, is to admit that Israel is at a retarded level of social development that is more appropriate to the 1700’s or 1800’s, and that the whole thing is heading for an eventual genocide for the indigenous peoples.
Jerry Vinokurov 09.09.13 at 6:21 pm
Mao, I started typing out a comment to explain what I was on about, but it got way too long and I have some work that needs done (as we say in Pittsburgh) so for now I’m just going to thank Hidari for posting a link to the book and try to formalize my thoughts in a coherent way later.
Mao Cheng Ji 09.09.13 at 6:52 pm
Okay Jerry, no sweat. In any case, to me, as a matter of politics, someone with the Greek passport is Greek, and only the people with Greek passports are Greek. The rest, whatever one’s self-identification is, however complicated the patterns of groups with this or that self-identification are, it’s all their personal business, and it should stay personal. And the only reason to bring it into politics is to incite some kind of slaughter.
Hector_St_Clare 09.09.13 at 6:53 pm
Race clearly isn’t imaginary, I’m not sure what that even means. a doctor can look at my racial identity and make some off the cuff remarks about my diabetes risks, for example. of course, im also not sure the relevance of whether race is real or not, to a debate about Israeli policies.
Hector_St_Clare 09.09.13 at 6:57 pm
Mao Cheng Ji reminds me a little of the old Yglesuas commenter who called himself Abb1.
engels 09.10.13 at 3:23 pm
as a matter of politics, someone with the Greek passport is Greek… The rest… it’s all their personal business… And the only reason to bring it into politics is to incite some kind of slaughter.
Right.
ajay 09.10.13 at 3:54 pm
Boy, if I was looking for an example of a nationality where the boundaries are really clear, and there’s no ambiguity over who has it and who hasn’t, it’s just a question of checking passports, “Greek” really isn’t the one I’d pick.
ajay 09.10.13 at 3:57 pm
Happiness research is cool and all, but these sorts of surveys usually turn up absurd results (like the purported claim that Nigerians are very happy with their lives),
Not sure why that is prima facie absurd. I haven’t met many Nigerians, and none in their native country, but they haven’t seemed to be an unusually depressed people.
Mao Cheng Ji 09.10.13 at 4:12 pm
I’ve been to poor countries where people seem much happier than in rich ones. Rat race is a joykill.
Donald Johnson 09.10.13 at 4:28 pm
“But, after all is said, it still puzzles me why the I/P issue consumes so much ink when, say, the Kurdish issue is so rarely raised. ‘
In the US it’s because Israel is so widely praised by politicians and others that when one finds out some of the ugly truth there’s a tendency towards backlash. In what used to be called the Third World I suspect Israel is seen as the last vestige of European colonialism, so it gets the same sort of reaction as apartheid South Africa (they used to complain that Idi Amin killed more people than they did, but they got more attention).
But sure, on a purely objective level Israel is just another country in the Middle East with a lousy human rights record, (currently a much lower kill rate than two of its neighbors) though with some unique features.
David A. Guberman 09.10.13 at 4:56 pm
CR writes of his “opposition to Israel” without explicitly specifying whether he means opposition to the legitimacy of Israel’s founding, opposition to Israel’s continued existence (in anything recognizable to most current Israelis as “Israel”), or something else. FWIW, I infer from his article that CR stands in opposition to Israel’s continued existence, but it is much less clear how far he would go personally or what measures he would support others taking to end Israel’s existence.
One difficulty with this kind of opposition to Israel, as Noam Chomsky, for example, , is that “there is virtually no possibility of organizing public opinion in the US, or anywhere else, in favor of a settlement that entails elimination of Israel in favor of a Palestinian state with a Jewish minority — quite a small and scattered minority if refugees return. This is entirely fanciful. And as I mentioned, it would of course be opposed by virtually all Israelis. In this case they would be very likely to resort to their ‘ultimate weapon’ — which they possess — to prevent what they would plausibly regard as their destruction.” In contrast, as Chomsky argued in a piece entitled Advocacy and Realism (to which I am unable to link), achieving “a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus, and reversing the escalating cycle of hostility, hatred, violence, repression, and dispossession,” eventually may lead to bi-national, federal, or single state developments. But none of these are choices Israeli Jews will make voluntarily in the foreseeable future.
So far as I can tell, Chomsky’s observations remain true today. In effect, “opposition to Israel” either must be symbolic–like, perhaps, like my refusal to buy products emanating from Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories–or part of a campaign that requires war, after which it is impossible to imagine the victors creating the kind of humane, nondiscriminatory, unitary polity to which people like CR presumably aspire.
Put otherwise, an “opposition to Israel” grounded in positive aspirations for the everyday lives of Palestinians in a possible proximate future pragmatically should lead to making common cause for the time being with advocates of a two-states peace settlement, which will be hard enough to achieve. Perhaps after such a peace settlement is realized, such oppositionists will be better able to persuade Israelis and Palestinians to join together peacefully in some other arrangement.
JW Mason 09.10.13 at 5:14 pm
Mao Cheng Ji reminds me a little of the old Yglesuas commenter who called himself Abb1.
It’s the same guy. In between he was Henri Vieuxtemps and Data Tutashkhia. Whatever else you say about him, he does have an ear for pseudonyms.
David A. Guberman 09.10.13 at 5:15 pm
#41
HSC writes of Palestinians once having been “the most advanced culture in the Arab world” but now being held “under conditions of poverty close to Sub-Saharan Africa”.
1. I don’t know what HSC means by “advanced culture,” but I suggest that throughout the 20th century, at least, Palestinian culture was no more “advanced” than Egyptian, Iraqi, Lebanese, or Syrian culture. AFAIK, Mandatory Palestine and its preceding Ottoman Empire constituents was something of a cultural backwater within the Arab world. (If I’m mistaken, I’ll be glad to be enlightened.) Further, although statistics regarding education, health, and so forth in no way justify Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, they do show substantial improvement over the periods of Jordanian and Egyptian rule. Take life expectancy, for example. According to theglobaleconomy.com, in 1967, life expectancy in Jordan (of which the West Bank was a part) was 58.78 years; in 2011 it was 72.83 years, substantially the same as that in Egypt and Jordan for the same year. Also in 2011, the survival rate of women in the West Bank and Gaza to age 65 was 84.77%, above Jordan’s 82.35% and Egypt’s 81.15%.
2. FWIW, comparative data, for example at theglobaleconomy.com, show per capita GDP for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip roughly equal to Egypt’s and substantially greater than, for example, the Central African Republic, Chad, or Niger.
Norwegian Guy 09.10.13 at 5:26 pm
I suppose Greek nationality should be fairly easy to determine, just look for citizenship of the Hellenic Republic. Greek ethnicity, on the other hand, will exclude some Greek citizens and include even more non-citizens, and be much more ambiguous.
Mao Cheng Ji 09.10.13 at 6:53 pm
It seems to me that Noam Chomsky and Davis A. Guberman are unjustifiably pessimistic. The fall of South African aparteid is exactly the sort of development that Chomsky for some reason dismisses as “entirely fanciful”.
David A. Guberman 09.10.13 at 7:25 pm
#131
MCJ writes: “The fall of South African aparteid is exactly the sort of development that Chomsky for some reason dismisses as “entirely fancifulâ€.
In 1996, the year of the first census conducted by democratic South Africa, 77% of the population were African, 9% were coloured, 3% were Asian, and 11% were white.
In Israel, as of March 31, 2012, 75.4% of the population were Jews, 20.6% were Arabs, and 4% were “others” (family members of Jewish immigrants who are not registered at the Ministry of Interior as Jews, non-Arab Christians, non-Arab Muslims and residents who do not have an ethnic or religious classification).
What plausible narrative is there to persuade us that the current State of Israel is likely to go the way of the former Republic of South Africa?
David A. Guberman 09.10.13 at 7:26 pm
#132
Correction: The Israeli population data are from March 31, 2013, not 2012.
Mao Cheng Ji 09.10.13 at 7:45 pm
I don’t get the question, David. Why does it seem obvious to you that convincing (via economic and cultural boycott) the SA ruling elite (who have also been Africans, btw, for a few hundred years, even if white) was so much easier than convincing the Israeli elite would be? It rather simple: when the standard of living for the privileged falls, they emigrate. The regime loses support and collapses.
Hector_St_Clare 09.10.13 at 10:39 pm
Re: Not sure why that is prima facie absurd. I haven’t met many Nigerians, and none in their native country, but they haven’t seemed to be an unusually depressed people.
It’s possible they are responding cultural norms that tell them it’s bad to be unhappy, or to answer a question in such a way that suggests that they’re unhappy. I think if you looked at some other non-self-reported social indicators- prenatal stress experienced by babies, for example- you might find that Nigerians aren’t actually living blissful lives at all, but in fact very difficult ones.
It’s also possible that Nigerians think they’re happy because they lack a standard of comparison, and don’t realise there are other countries of the world where people don’t routinely suffer from malnutrition, infectious disease, etc.. The average Nigerian self-reports as much happier than the average Russian, for example, but would any of us really rather be transformed into an average citizen of Kano, versus an average citizen of Omsk?
Hal 09.10.13 at 11:25 pm
Here…
http://unsdsn.org/files/2013/09/WorldHappinessReport2013_online.pdf
Kaveh 09.11.13 at 12:25 am
Hal @88 it still puzzles me why the I/P issue consumes so much ink when, say, the Kurdish issue is so rarely raised.
Because the US-Israel relationship and the demands that puts on US policy is one of the major factors, along with access to oil, shaping US policy in the Middle East. No Israeli-Palestinian conflict, no (or drastically different) neoconservative movement, a major source of pro-war-with-Iran propaganda disappears, a major motive for supporting the Egyptian military disappears… I think this is known and acted on in these discussions more than is acknowledged. Even if ‘supporting Israel’ is not the driving force behind all these US policies (I’m sure it’s not the one big thing behind any of them), it’s damn good cover that keeps a lot of powerful/influential people from questioning them.
they are almost all in areas A and B of the Oslo Accords and therefore under the Palestinian Authority. It is Area C (few Palestinians, four hundred thousand settlers) that is under Israeli control.
I assume you’re aware of the check points regulating travel in and out of cities, the theft of land and water, and other humiliations Palestinians in those places are subject to. What point are you making by saying that Palestinians in Areas A & B as “under the Palestinian Authority”?
David Gruberman @129 2. FWIW, comparative data, for example at theglobaleconomy.com, show per capita GDP for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip roughly equal to Egypt’s and substantially greater than, for example, the Central African Republic, Chad, or Niger.
Why is Gaza’s GDP being substantially higher than Chad’s important (I assume you are, likewise, aware of the overall conditions in Gaza)?
Kaveh 09.11.13 at 12:39 am
Mao @134 Forcing a broad analogy between S Africa and Israel is not helpful. Israel’s apartheid policies are highly comparable to those of S Africa. Their demographic situations are not at all similar, including especially the historical relationship of most Israeli Jews to their current country of citizenship, and to neighboring countries. Most/many Israeli Jews are not part of the ruling elite.
Hector @135 I think it’s very simple, happiness is not the same thing as overall well-being. If you’re very badly-off (not just in monetary terms) by global standards but better off than your parents, and you have good reason to think your kids will better off than you, one could reasonably be very happy about that. And, if people who are being subjected to severe harm by an outside force are, nonetheless, relatively happy, “I guess that severe harm is really acceptable as part of the larger order” is not a reasonable response. We don’t say “Saudi women are perfectly fine b/c S.A. has a high GDP,” or “blacks in the Jim Crow South were relatively well off compared to blacks in Africa or Haiti”. But the claims that Palestinians enjoy a relatively high standard of living are doing the exact same thing–trying to distract from a manifest, severe injustice that shapes almost every aspect of affected people’s lives.
Mao Cheng Ji 09.11.13 at 1:18 am
“Their demographic situations are not at all similar”
I didn’t say anything about any “demographic situation”, whatever that means. I don’t find it particularly relevant, and as it was stated several times above, it’s largely meaningless.
Take, for example, David’s statement above: “in Israel, as of March 31, 2012, 75.4% of the population were Jews”. That’s, without a doubt, the calculation arrived at by the Nuremberg Laws/the Law of Return definition: at least one grandparent (more or less). Surely a sizable minority of these people are not self-identified Jews, and a lot of them are not accepted as Jews by many important Israeli institutions. Most of the rest of them, as it was noted above, are not Ashkenazim, and thus do not belong to the top layer of the racial hierarchy. So, yes, more layers in the hierarchy than SA, more elaborate system of privilege, but the real elite of probably about the same size. And certainly with a weaker connection to the region than the Afrikaners. They are Americans and Europeans.
David A. Guberman 09.11.13 at 1:18 pm
#137
Kaveh asks about the relevance of comparing GDP per capita in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to that in Chad (and, he might have added since I gave those data as well, in the Central African Republic and Niger).
Personally, I don’t see much relevance to the comparison. For sure, I do not believe that the Israeli occupation of these territories is justified by improvements in Palestinian living conditions, health statistics, educational institutions, etc. (On the one hand, they simply don’t justify the occupation. On the other hand, who can tell what the Palestinians would have achieved on their own?) But, as Kaveh fails to note, I was commenting on HSC @41, who wrote that Palestinians in these territories are being held “under conditions of poverty close to Sub-Saharan Africaâ€.
Hal 09.11.13 at 2:44 pm
Kaveh @ 137,
Yes, travel from one area of the West Bank to another is sometimes difficult, but things weren’t always like this. I lectured briefly at Birzeit in 1998, before the second Intifada, when the borders were fairly open. Israelis attended my seminar and my Palestinian colleagues and I travelled to Jerusalem for a follow-up conference. We were travelling in a car with Palestinian licence plates and were stopped only once, perfunctorily, before entering Jerusalem. Last year I lectured in Haifa and took the occasion to re-visit Birzeit. Three tedious checkpoints, two Israeli and one Palestinian, the last one, with much phone consultation (perhaps due to the fact that my host in Ramallah is known to have spoken out on gay issues) taking almost an hour. On the Israeli side they justify this oppressive security (even arriving by plane to Tel Aviv) by pointing to the near elimination of bombings and I must admit that I found things a lot worse going by car from Georgia to my partner’s hometown in southern Russia; it took us nearly a full day to travel under 300 kilometres.
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