Israelis and American Jews to re-think their politics

...Oddly, this new realism has not translated into a serious challenge to Likud policies...

...Creating a new Jewish political discourse is a complex and difficult task...

...The failure of the Camp David and Taba negotiations, together with the intense violence of the Palestinian uprising, shattered these DISSENT / Summer 2004 3 5 POLITICS ABROAD notions and traumatized Israelis...

...First, diaspora Jews must respond to the dangers that confront them as a mobilized political constituency...

...Given the increasing sympathy for these sentiments among both Muslim immigrants and their European host societies, and the convenient use of anti-Semitism as a distraction from local racism, it is reasonable to expect Europe to become a relatively hostile environment for organized Jewish life...

...In large measure Jewish survival was due to the creativity and determination of the new political movements...

...Mainstream Arab media belch out anti-Jewish propaganda on talk shows and in "historical" documentaries, such as the popular A Horseless Rider, a series on Egyptian television based upon The Protocols of the Elders of Zion...

...It is now urgent that this task be taken up in earnest...

...These views have come into clear focus through the unreserved enthusiasm with which many conservative Christians greeted Mel Gibson's cinematic rendering of a traditional Medieval Passion play...

...He has been active in social democratic and labor organizations in Israel, Canada, and Britain...

...The Intifada has finally exposed the folly of the occupation to most Israelis...

...A significant portion of the European left serves as willing impresarios for this campaign, insisting that it is simply a species of anti-Zionism...

...The right launched a campaign against him that featured systematic character assassination and incitement to violence...

...The new movements created a range of strategies for coping with an increasingly precarious world...

...But the ease with which "Zionism" and "the Zionist lobby" are now invoked in ever widening circles as proxy terms for Jews and Israelis is as pernicious as the use of shopworn code words like "mixed schools" and "high-crime areas" by racists who promote antiblack bigotry...

...The settlers and their political sponsors have held Israel hostage since the early 1970s...

...Europe and Radical Islam Radical Islamic movements drive the political agenda across large sections of the Muslim world...

...The current wave of intolerance inspired by Bush's attack on democratic institutions could easily prove toxic to Jews, and, in the case of the Christian right, it has already done so...

...This frenzy provided the context in which a radical religious nationalist assassi36 n DISSENT / Summer 2004 nated Rabin in November 1995...

...They successfully used Palestinian terrorism to anaesthetize the Israeli electorate and marginalize opposition to their continued entrenchment of the occupation...

...They airbrush out the bigotry and xenophobia that permeate the Republican coalition, and they ignore the acutely anti-Jewish core of the religious literalism of the evangelical right...

...At the same time, shamelessly currying favor with bigots is as ruinous as it is distasteful...

...It is, of course, essential to insist on the distinction between forceful criticism of the Israeli government and hatred of Israel as a country...

...When Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia's modernizing then prime minister, spoke of "Jews controlling the world by proxy" in his address to the Organization of the Islamic Conference in October 2003, his speech received a standing ovation from the delegates, POLITICS ABROAD and his remarks were defended by the governments of most Arab and Islamic countries...

...Going cap in hand to plead for understanding from groups and people who either promote this poison or deny its significance is as pointless as it is demeaning...

...Second, the violence of the Intifada has pushed Israel into political paralysis and economic decline...

...Finally, the upheaval following September 11, 2001, and President Bush's extreme responses to the 34 • DISSENT / Summer 2004 attacks on the United States have polarized American society in ways that pose serious difficulties for the American Jewish community...

...This process entails a reinvention of political traditions forged by Jews when they first made their way in the country at the turn of the last century...

...Europe provides the nexus at which the anti-Jewish obsessions of radical Islamists and traditional European anti-Semitism merge into "progressive" political views that seamlessly blend reasonable concern for the Palestinians as a dispossessed people with rejection of Jews as a legitimate collectivity...

...It threatens Israeli democracy, disfigures Israeli society, and endangers its very existence...

...Instead of using this unique moment to redefine the national agenda, Shimon Peres, Rabin's successor, opted to paper over the deep internal conflicts that the assassination exposed and sued for a reconciliation with the right that looked uncomfortably like appeasement...

...Jewish neoconservatives have long sought to persuade American Jews to support the hard Republican right by pointing to the pro-Israel stance of its Christian component...

...Instead, Israelis have retreated into the shelter of their private lives with a sense of helplessness...

...First, there is a rapid increase in virulent anti-Semitism among radical Islamic political groups...

...It requires at least four major elements...

...It was through these approaches that Jews dealt with the impending catastrophe of the Holocaust, mass immigration to North America, and the creation of Israel...

...In the past several years, events—especially those surrounding the al-Aqsa Intifada, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the American interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq—have combined to call these assumptions into question...

...The fabrications of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are combined with a view of Jews as the prime manipulators of a malicious American empire bent on world domination...

...His war on terrorism has provided cover for an extremist economic policy of tax cuts that primarily benefit the corporate plutocracy sponsoring his political machine...

...European governments and the administration of the European Union tend to play down these patterns or simply deny their existence...

...Elements of a New Jewish Politics During the Oslo process, it appeared that Israel and the Jewish Diaspora were comfortably evolving toward a relation of friendly association between two distinct entities...

...Although the IsraeliPalestinian conflict provides the catalyst for these attitudes, the problem extends far beyond overheated responses to the Middle East...

...It now finds ready acceptance in large swaths of what passes for the left in Europe...

...The speed with which the current attitudes have emerged publicly within mainstream opinion since 2000 indicates that they have been incubating for some time...

...Most American Jews clearly recognize themselves as members of an ethnic minority whose well-being depends on robust cultural pluralism and social egalitarianism...

...In their original form, they called for full withdrawal to the 1967 borders and the construction of a security fence to protect Israel from terrorism and save it from the self-destruction caused by occupation of the Palestinians...

...There is an obvious parallel between Sharon's use of Palestinian violence to pursue his annexationist program and Bush's exploitation of a genuine terrorist threat to implement a farreaching right-wing agenda...

...It is used to deny the significance of a rising tide of bigotry and violence directed at local Jewish communities...

...Throughout the second half of the twentieth century two major issues appeared to have been settled...

...Many have internalized a toxic mix of elements drawn from Medieval European antiSemitic iconography and neo-Nazi conspiracy theory...

...But this helplessness is the result of decades of evasion in which the far right was permitted to define the strategic choices of the country...

...A large proportion of them come from Muslim lands...

...The current wave of anti-Jewish propaganda from radical Islamic sources is markedly different from most previous anti-Zionist campaigns in the Arab world and in the West...

...Although it is reasonable to assume that an improvement in the Middle East will reduce overt hostility to Jews in Europe, it is a mistake to think that the pattern of recent years will disappear...

...In fact, these proposals are a perversion of ideas advanced initially by the Israeli left...

...Consequently, there are substantial groups of embittered Muslim youth who have not been integrated into their host societies...

...In contrast to North America, European countries have had considerable difficulty in absorbing immigrants...

...Three main issues have come into view since September 2000...

...In Israel, too, Jewish political imagiDISSENT / Summer 2004 n 37 POLITICS ABROAD nation went into hibernation...

...As the irrationality of the right's program became increasingly obvious, Sharon sought to deflect criticism (as well as the embarrassment of corruption scandals) by a series of cynical maneuvers...

...The issues that these movements address are genuine enough, but the programs they promote are frequently bathed in a reactionary populism that has become a new "socialism of fools," as August Bebel, the nineteenth-century social democrat, described anti-Semitism...

...The widespread racism and exclusion encountered by immigrants extends to their second and third generations...

...As Europe's population ages, it needs increasing numbers of immigrant workers to sustain its economic viability...

...Old alliances with organized labor and with other minority groups must be resuscitated...

...They have been used as the basis for military adventurism and an assault on civil liberties...

...Past experience demonstrates that even the most accomplished court performer will, in the end, be destroyed by dancing to the song of those who would set the standard of what it is to be an acceptable Jew...

...Diaspora communities must speak directly to the Israeli electorate out of common concerns and commitments...

...SHALOM LAPPIN is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at King's College London and is an active supporter of Peace Now in Israel...

...This trend has now been replaced by a strong sense that Israel and the Diaspora share central elements of a common destiny, whether or not they choose to do so...

...Large-scale violence is not a likely prospect, given the powerful constraints against disorder and the entrenched commitment to civil society that characterize most European countries...

...However, the Bush administration's campaign of foreign intervention and domestic antiterror initiatives go well beyond the problem of combating terrorists...

...These attitudes take shape against a backdrop of wrenching global changes and political turmoil...

...Although it appeared to them that the Palestinian leadership had wanted a pragmatic agreement to end the occupation, most Israelis now doubt that the majority of Palestinians are prepared to accept Israel's legitimacy...

...In short, American Jews are faced with a grave foreign threat from a nascent anti-Jewish fascism on one hand and a right-wing political alliance that undermines pluralist democracy at home on the other...

...The prospect of a cantonized Palestinian "state" is presented as an initiative for "separation" from the Palestinians...

...By contrast, a minority of Jewish intellectuals and public figures are, with increasing desperation, attempting to ward off the tide of mounting hostility through appeasement and self-denial...

...The fact that Islamic terrorists identify Jews as prime targets provides strong motivation for supporting Bush's campaign, given that opposing Bush POLITICS ABROAD places Jews in the company of the most virulently anti-Jewish groups operating abroad, as well as that of European "peace" activists who demonstrate a penchant for appeasing antiSemitism and hatred of Israel...

...The problem is particularly acute in France, with a North African population of five million, but it exists throughout the European Union...

...War on Terrorism September 11, 2001, demonstrated that radical Islamic movements pose a genuine threat to American security...

...The success of liberal democracy, the end of communism, and the signing of the Oslo Accords seemed to secure these assumptions...

...The transformation of the American political scene places the American Jewish community in a difficult situation...

...While Labor initially limited and justified them on security grounds, it quickly found itself indulging a settler lobby and a sizeable electoral constituency residing in the occupied territories...

...The gravity of the current challenges renders these patterns obsolete...

...Jewish responses to these events have generally been of two types...

...The neoconservatives consistently misrepresent the right as culturally open and committed to equality of opportunity...

...It doesn't treat the Israeli-Arab dispute as a political or historical problem, but as a front in a cosmic battle between religious and civilizational forces...

...Demographic trends are likely to reinforce the current patterns...

...These communities provide fertile recruiting ground for Islamic radicals, for whom anti-Semitism has become an integral part of their agenda...

...These movements sought to fashion responses to the problems engulfing their world...

...SHARON AND the right have skilfully exploited the deep shock created by these events...

...It seemed that peace with the Palestinians and the normalization of Israeli society were within reach...

...Getting Israel out of the occupied territories must be a collective Jewish priority everywhere...

...The future of the Jews as a people depends upon it...

...Finally, support for liberal and democratic alternatives to the conservative onslaught in America is a central Jewish concern...

...Jewish interests remain inextricably bound up with a progressive, liberal United States...

...The coalition of Islamic militants and (parts of) the radical left that are agents of the new anti-Semitism are also active constituencies within the European anti-globalization movement, as well as loud voices within the European movement against the war in Iraq...

...The occupation is not simply a domestic Israeli issue...

...Third, diaspora Jews can no longer sit on the sidelines while a right-wing government runs Israel into the ground...

...Israel and the Occupation When the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, Israel appeared to have achieved the regional acceptance that it sought since its creation...

...Anti-Jewish sentiment and delegitimization of Israel have now seeped into mainstream political discourse in Western Europe...

...There is an urgent need for a new Jewish political discourse...

...This mythology now enjoys religious sanction...

...Although there is as yet no basis for talk about a new "Jewish Problem," it is possible to identify a number of unsettling Jewish Questions on the horizon...

...Yitzhak Rabin was the only Israeli leader to stand up to the settler lobby by freezing settlement construction...

...The creation of Israel secured Jewish political independence, and its legitimacy was not open to serious challenge in the West...

...38 n DISSENT / Summer 2004...

...The implications of Rabin's murder for Israeli democracy have never been properly addressed...

...Retreating into belligerent nationalism threatens the security of Israel and the wellbeing of Jews in the Diaspora...

...These included Zionism in its diverse forms, Jewish socialism, the Jewish labor movement, and diaspora autonomism...

...Critics warned of dire political and demographic consequences, but vigorous opposition to the occupation was limited to a few small parties on the left and to extraparliamentary peace groups...

...They now see that it threatens the viability of their country...

...After Peres's brief tenure in power both Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak continued settlement expansion...

...Initially, the religious right expressed remorse and disbelief that such an action could be committed in its name...

...In recent years this view has migrated from the far left and far right peripheries into the mainstream...

...Politics must be taken out of the hands of advocacy organizations and made the concern of the entire community...

...It threatens the basic fabric of pluralism and liberal democracy within which the Jewish community has flourished...

...Many in the official leadership have rallied to Sharon and to Bush, despite their own doubts about the wisdom of both leaders...

...Fortunately, the majority of Jewish voters have resisted the neoconservatives and sustained their broadly liberal allegiances...

...SECOND, THE time is long past for responding to the new anti-Semitism through begging and impotent expressions of outrage...

...The new anti-Semitism has again forced Jews onto the world stage as a collectivity, to the chagrin of Jewish anti-Zionists and to the delight of extreme Zionists who reject the Diaspora...

...They rejected the politics of notables (shtadlanut), in which a few wealthy Jewish leaders managed the interface between their communities and non-Jewish authorities...

...Israeli withdrawal from Gaza has been packaged together with increased settlement and annexation of large tracts of the West Bank...

...Both Labor and Likud governments promoted settlements after 1967...

...For the most part, moderates within the Islamic and Arab world have not publicly resisted the anti-Semitism of the radicals but collaborated with it...

...Largely absent in this situation is serious political discussion among Jews (including Israelis) of how to confront the disturbing challenges that they face...

...In the post-war era, diaspora Jews returned to a modern version of government by notables under the sponsorship of Jewish advocacy organizations...

...Bush's unilateralism has estranged most of America's allies...

...Radical Islamic organizations have actively promoted an anti-Jewish agenda on European university campuses and among Muslim immigrants for more than a decade...

...Both responses are misguided...

...A militant popular campaign, activating all parts of the community, is required to confront anti-Jewish racism in all its ugliness...

...The continued vitality of Jewish life in the United States, as well as abroad, requires a tolerant and egalitarian America...

...The crisis in Israeli politics long predates the collapse of Oslo and its attendant violence...

...Dormant traditions of vigorous democratic political discussion must be revived in public forums and in the Jewish press...

...This is aggravated by the Intifada, but its roots predate it by at least a decade, if not longer...

...Criticism of Israel's lamentable policies in the occupied territories quickly escalates into the rabid demonization of the country as the focus of an international Zionist-American campaign for regional and global hegemony...

...The revulsion generated by the Holocaust rendered anti-Semitism untenable in mainstream political culture in most countries...

...THE END OF the nineteenth century brought a democratization of Jewish politics in Eastern Europe with the emergence of popular Jewish political movements...

...Jews are placed at the center of an international plot to control world financial institutions and governments...

...Unfortunately, Bush's political coalition includes some of the most unsavory elements of American political life...

...They have argued that conservative opposition to governmentsponsored social programs and affirmative action enhances the sort of meritocracy which Jews rely on for success...

...There is a widely held view in Europe that if and when a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is achieved, the current wave of anti-Semitism in Europe and (even in the Islamic world) will subside...

...This requires the creation of a large constituency within these communities that defines an end to the occupation as an overriding Jewish interest...

...However, if current trends persist, and there are good reasons to think that they will, Europe will not be a particularly comfortable place for vibrant, nonapologetic, and self-assertive Jewish communities...

...The Sharon government has singularly failed to provide minimally rational leadership throughout one of the most severe crises in the country's history...

...It is time to discard the delusions of Jewish neoconservatives who promote a dalliance with the radical right and to organize widespread Jewish support for those political forces that seek to restore America's best democratic traditions...