The dreams of a non-Zionist for Israel
Goodheart, Eugene
IN HIS ESSAY " 'Progressive' Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism" (first released by the American Jewish Committee in 2006 and reported to a wide readership in the New York Times in 2007),...
...Bernard Avishai provides an appealing prospect of a possible outcome...
...Khoury points to the American role in the conflict in Northern Ireland as a model to follow in the Middle East...
...Words only begin the process...
...If the demographics shift in favor of the Arabs, what assurance would the Jewish population have that the resentments that have festered for decades would have been overcome...
...Rosenfeld simply dismisses Judt's proposal as "obsolescent...
...Arrangements in a democracy are not fixed in perpetuity...
...To the ques70 n DISSENT / Summer 2007 tion of whether the idea of a multi-ethnic democracy is a desirable ideal for every society, my answer is, Yes...
...ISRAEL IS AND will continue to be subject to pressures not only from its minorities, but from a small portion of Israeli Jews who will demand full equality for all its citizens...
...The surviving remnant was too often refused sanctuary even in the countries that liberated it...
...Given the hatreds and the hostilities of the present moment, a demand that Israel alone transform itself immediately into a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society on the model, for instance, of American democracy, would make the society even more vulnerable to the prevailing ethnic and religious conflicts...
...The advantage of the Diaspora is that, fortunately, it does not save genocidal anti-Semites the trouble of achieving their aim...
...He refuses to take anti-Semitism seriously, urging his readers to have fun with it...
...But that hasn't happened yet...
...Should the United States withdraw all support from them, leaving them vulnerable to radical Islam...
...In the meantime, Israel needs to be vigilant about its own tendency to respond disproportionately to Palestinian provocations: it is not enough for Israel to say in its own defense that it does not intend to kill civilians, whereas its enemies target them...
...On the one hand, defenders of Israel, particularly in the political class in the United States, don't want to hear any serious criticism of Israel, while within Israel itself there is a ferment of criticism and self-criticism— a healthy reflection of its democratic character...
...Palestinian mistrust of Israeli behavior is not to be discounted, given the settlement policy that has prevailed for many years and the terrible hardships Palestinians have suffered...
...What about her neighbors, the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Jordanians...
...While promising no harm to non-Zionists, "there would be no normalization of relations with them, hence the coldness of this cohabitation...
...On his own terms, is Israel the most egregious deviant from the norms of justice...
...neither those without property nor women had the vote...
...ERE IS WHERE my personal history matters...
...THE IMMEDIATE problem for both Israelis and Palestinians is the achievement of a Palestinian state existing alongside Israel...
...Anti-Semitism enters the picture with "the singling out of the Jewish state, and the Jewish state alone, as a political entity unworthy of a secure and sovereign existence...
...Some wise commentator on the conflict between Israel and terrorist groups has said that crises of the sort that Israel faces can only be managed, not eliminated...
...What is clear, however, is the unwillingness of Hezbollah "to bind itself to any a priori positions," for instance, one that agrees to the permanent existence of the State of Israel...
...Defenders of Israel claim that its negative treatment in the media is excessive, given the genocidal conflicts that are occurring in the rest of the world...
...What he fails to take into account is that however invidious current Israeli ethnic and religious arrangements may be in relation to its Arab citizens, it is a democracy and compares favorably, to say the least, with the benighted, anachronistic Islamic nations in Israel's neighborhood, of which he has little to say...
...He responded by citing with approval the statement of a Hamas official with whom he spoke: "How can we recognize the existence of a State that occupies our territory...
...Rosenfeld doesn't directly charge her with anti-Semitism, but he implies it because she would seem to fit the definition he has provided...
...When Muslim grievances against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory spill over into anti-Semitism (as in the instance of Hezbollah), it is ignored or even tolerated by critics of Israel, who do not want to be diverted from the sufferings of the Palestinians—even though expressions of anti-Muslim bigotry in the wake of the terrorist actions of radical Islam are roundly and justifiably condemned by the same people...
...Settled by European Jews, Israel is already a secular democracy informed by Enlightenment values...
...To the question of whether it is a realistic and productive possibility for Israel at the present time, my answer is, No...
...I hear ominous overtones of Iraq in Judt's "brave" and "relentless...
...There is no sign that Hezbollah, for instance, is prepared to make the renunciation...
...Israel exists, and whatever misgivings one might have about the establishment of a Jewish state in a region hostile to its very existence, its destruction would be a historic catastrophe of monumental proportions, comparable to the Holocaust...
...By agnostic, Glass means that he is indifferent, and the extensive comments on the Internet about our exchange, mostly favoring Glass, simply saw the question of Hezbollah's anti-Semitism as a distraction from the issue of Israel's crimes against the Palestinians...
...To every future possibility there is a different detailed answer, and as possibilities are numerous, so is the number of possible answers to this question...
...Perhaps he wants to withhold aid, which would undermine its existence...
...At the present time, the elimination or ghettoization of the seven million Jews who inhabit Israel is a fantasy, but who knows whether that fantasy NOTEBOOK could become reality...
...Without the threat of terrorism, advocates of equality should have an easier time in making their case...
...It is useless for Hizbullah to bind itself to any a priori positions that would later be subject to inquisition...
...Whether or not it is obsolescent deserves to be debated, but not in the context of anti-Semitism...
...What then should we make of Judt's view of Israel as an "anachronism...
...There is, to be sure, a tendency among radical critics of Israel's legitimacy to be indifferent to open expressions of anti-Semitism— as if sensitivity to it is a paranoid inflation of a phenomenon that belongs to a prehistoric past...
...Perhaps, one hopes against hope, in some indefinite future a good faith change will occur in the rejectionist camp...
...IN HIS ESSAY " 'Progressive' Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism" (first released by the American Jewish Committee in 2006 and reported to a wide readership in the New York Times in 2007), Alvin H. Rosenfeld takes to task liberal Jewish intellectuals whose anti-Zionist hostility to the very existence of the State of Israel amounts, in his view, to a new kind of anti-Semitism...
...Particularly offensive in the critiques written by radical opponents of Israel is the identification between Israel's behavior toward the Palestinians and Nazi behavior toward the Jews...
...They are products of evolution...
...EUGENE GOODHEART is Edytha Macy Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Brandeis University...
...Presumably Mahmoud Abbas, who leads Fatah, a weak and corrupt organization that not only lacks popular support from the Palestinian people but is also engaged in sectarian strife with Hamas...
...no resolution of the quarrel could possibly be achieved if one side says to the other: in my eyes you do not exist...
...Both Israel and the US look forward to an answer in order for their plans and programmes to be drawn accordingly...
...For that evolution to occur, however, democracy would have to come to the rest of the region as well...
...Exercised without sufficient restraint, however, it produces an image of Israel as a rogue state...
...With whom would Israel sit down...
...I prefer to avoid suspicions about the motivation of participants in this argument and to concentrate instead on whether a view is harmful to Israel, the Jews, and the Palestinians...
...One is agnostic about matters that can't be proved or disproved, such as the DISSENT / Summer 2007 n 69 NOTEBOOK existence of God...
...As I write this, prominent Israeli Arabs are calling for "consensual democracy for both Arabs and Jews," as we might expect, "prompting consternation and debate across the country," according to a report in the New York Times of February 8, 2007...
...There is also a tendency to hold Israel, with its commitment to democracy, to higher standards of behavior than other countries in the region (and elsewhere...
...All attempts to separate people on the basis of race or creed or nationality were anathema to my cosmopolitan creed of human fraternity...
...We might begin with the strategic importance of the Middle East for both America and Europe, coupled with Israel's alliance with the United DISSENT / Summer 2007 n 7 5 NOTEBOOK States and the belief of Israel's critics that it is part of the American effort to achieve "imperial" domination of the Middle East and its oil resources...
...Critics of Israel's behavior toward the Palestinians both outside and inside its own territory must never forget this fact...
...Only the exhaustion of the perpetrators of terrorism and political negotiations can achieve success, a lesson that the United States has not yet learned in its policies in the Middle East...
...What assurance would there be that a resolution at the negotiating table would last...
...Hamas has spoken of a long-term truce if Israel returned to the 1967 borders, granted the Palestinians the right to return, and ceded East Jerusalem as the capital of the new Palestinian state...
...To speak of Israel as an anachronism then, as does Judt, is in the present historical context irresponsible...
...Sixty years after its establishment, Israel is much farther along in its development as a democracy than the United States was in its sixtieth year...
...Israel needs time to breathe and evolve...
...Not if one takes seriously their declared uncompromising position...
...And if it did, could it be trusted...
...The end of terror would surely serve to encourage opposition within Israel...
...Democracies do not come full-blown from Zeus's or, for that matter, Madison's head...
...Early Zionists such as Martin Buber envisaged a binational state of Jews and Arabs, which, in the light of hostility to the idea from both Jews and Arabs, had to be abandoned...
...Still, after the Holocaust, whatever reservations I had were trumped by the knowledge that the remnant of European Jewry needed a safe haven...
...Rosenfeld does not provide context, so we cannot judge from his account precisely what Rose is saying about Zionism when she uses these words...
...The invidious assumption is that as a civilized nation we should know better than those engaged in killing each other...
...They are right to criticize the neglect of the current administration in undertaking the role of mediator...
...76 n DISSENT / Summer 2007...
...It is astonishing that a person of Carter's sophistication and experience in negotiation would not see such a statement as disingenuous...
...Avishai acknowledges that what he proposes may be "a pipe dream...
...Let us say that Israel was prepared immediately to sit down with the Palestinians to negotiate a final settlement of the boundaries between the two states...
...What is required at the very least is a firm commitment to relinquishing most, if not all, of the settlements on the West Bank as an outcome of negotiations...
...Yet I think that anti-Semitism is not always relevant to the case that he is making...
...To be a non- or anti-Zionist is to go beyond criticism of Israeli policies that are harmful to Palestinians...
...Indeed, I suspect that its very survival over the long term will depend upon such an evolution...
...On the other hand, critics of Israel, mostly though not exclusively European, tend to obsess about Israel's violence toward the Palestinians, challenge its very existence, and pay little attention to the destructive policies and behavior of its adversaries...
...Some way must be found for both sides to undertake simultaneous moves toward peace...
...What Rosenfeld's definition does not seem to address is the possibility of being a non-Zionist or even anti-Zionist without incurring the charge of being anti-Semitic...
...74 n DISSENT / Summer 2007 The elusiveness of the prose reflects its untrustworthiness...
...Israel's military superiority is essential to its continued existence...
...DISSENT / Summer 2007 n 73 NOTEBOOK THEN THERE IS the matter of trust...
...Ex-President Jimmy Carter, in an interview on the occasion of the publication of his book Palestine: Peace or Apartheid, was asked about Hamas's refusal to recognize the existence of Israel and to enter into negotiations...
...presidents were elected by a congressional oligarchy...
...In an article for Harper's magazine in January 2005, he envisages not a binational state, but a Hebrew republic in which all its citizens would enjoy "complete equality of social and political rights...
...And he provides numerous examples of vehement hostility to the State of Israel, for example, by Jacqueline Rose of the University of London: "Her lexicon of descriptive terms for Zionism and its errant ways is overwhelmingly negative: 'agony,' 'anguished,' 'belligerent,' `bloody,"brutat,' 'cataclysmic,' 'corrupt,' 'cruel,' 'dangerous,' deadly,' etc...
...The conventional wisdom is that the outlines of an acceptable agreement already exist...
...Rosenfeld has performed a service in documenting egregious instances of anti-Israeli hostility...
...No lasting peace is possible unless terrorist groups renounce their uncompromising dedication to the destruction of Israel...
...Descending, as she does, from a Holocaust survivor, Rose sees herself "reviv[ing] the story of internal Jewish dissent...
...The substitution of "Hebrew" for "Jewish" acknowledges the cultural reality of Israel, while at the same time extending all the rights and privileges of citizenship to non-Jews...
...The lesson of the Second World War was that no country in which the Jews were in the minority (and they were a small minority everywhere) could guarantee their safety and survival...
...Our support for Israel intensified during the time of its wars for survival in 1948 and 1967...
...Supporters of the Palestinian cause, such as Rami Khoury or Rashid Khalidi, who advocate a two-state solution, speak of the need for the United States to take a neutral and balanced mediating role in addressing the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians...
...All that the Palestinians have to do is to call Israel's bluff, if it is a bluff, and stop the terrorism...
...There is nothing in this wish that is anti-Semitic, however one might want to quarrel with it...
...Rosenfeld provides chapter and verse of other, even more vehement, challengers to Israel's right to exist...
...Not an easy answer...
...What is the case, however, is that Israel's destiny is largely in the hands of its own people...
...Michael Newman, a professor of philosophy at Trent University in the United Kingdom, of German Jewish extraction, accuses not only Israelis for their crimes against the Palestinians but Jews in general, "most of whom support a state that supports war crimes...
...reconciliation] is inapplicable to Jews and exclusive to Christians" [Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, Hizbu'llah: Politics and Religion (Pluto Press, 2002...
...Israel, through all its changes, would continue its ex72 n DISSENT / Summer 2007 istence...
...Anti-Semitism exists and it matters...
...Could they evolve to a willingness to accept its existence...
...it is to wish for an eventual evolution of Israel into a binational or, better, a multi-ethnic society on the ideal model of American democracy...
...We have only to turn to Iraq to see what might occur in a suddenly transformed or undone Israel...
...Why shouldn't such criticism be tolerated outside of Israel...
...I was not alone among my comrades in revising my view of the establishment of the State of Israel...
...AFINAL WORD about the incessant attention the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has received...
...This represents a kind of philoSemitism that can easily be turned to its opposite, since the expectation that Israel will not misbehave, as other advanced and enlightened countries misbehave, is bound to be disappointed...
...I choose the compound "multi-ethnic," because "binational" excludes Armenian Christians and others, who, if one were consistent, should be included...
...What is required is something close to the mediating spirit conducive to peace: an avoidance of an obsessive one-sidedness, which fails to hear and respond to the legitimate claims of the other side...
...I don't feel sufficiently confident in the realism of Avishai's proposal, but it should be part of the debate...
...But after years of bitter struggle, mistrust on both sides about the good faith of the other will take a long time to overcome...
...He is untroubled by anti-Semitic violence: "Who cares...
...The preconditions for any negotiations require that each side be able to control its rejectionist bloc...
...Moreover, it bears repeating, Hamas speaks of a long-term truce, never of a permanent peace, between two legitimate states...
...It may not be fortuitous that the call comes at a moment when, for the first DISSENT / Summer 2007 n 71 NOTEBOOK time, an Arab has been given a cabinet position in the government...
...It is an irony of history that Israel has turned out not to be a safe haven, surrounded as it is by hostile states and terrorist groups bent on its destruction...
...He has no quarrel with criticism of Israel's policies and actions...
...nor is it to be dismissed as "a red herring" where it exists...
...One need only to consider the analogy of two people who have quarreled...
...There are differences in degree of willingness and unwillingness in the Israeli political elite, and the relative strength of the contending groups is in flux...
...It knows, too, that orders are not always followed and that under stress of military encounters, civilians will be targeted...
...But there are also those who might embrace genuine equality between Jews and Arabs in a future free from the threat of terrorism...
...Or to take another instance: when Shias and Sunnis slaughter one another in Iraq, the blame lies more with the Americans who have foolishly and unforgivably blown off the lid that contained sectarian violence than with the actual sectarian agents of the slaughter...
...The obsession with Israel is fueled by anti-Americanism...
...For all the political differences within Israel on the question of what should or should not be compromised, there is a general support for a two-state solution...
...The charge of anti-Semitism is a serious matter, not to be lightly bandied about...
...How many radical critics of Israel's very existence, one wonders, were driven to their position by their revulsion toward its settlement policy...
...The indulgence of a double standard does an injustice to the moral capacities of Muslims...
...In my exchange with Charles Glass over his article on Hezbollah in the London Review of Books, in which evidence of the movement's anti-Semitism was adduced, he blithely speaks of being agnostic about whether its leader is an anti-Semite...
...She is not alone in "questioning" (her word, though the more accurate word would be "denying") the legitimacy of the State of Israel...
...As a critic of neoconservative hubris, he should be wary of radical transformations imposed from the outside...
...But these are issues to be negotiated and not preconditions for negotiation...
...Dahlia Khalil Saqi, 2005...
...As a democracy, Israel possesses what its neighbors do not, a capacity for progress...
...The problem of the settlements is formidable and of Israel's own creation...
...There is, nevertheless, still the question of what such mediation might accomplish...
...It is clear, however, not only from Rosenfeld's report, but also from an independent reading of her words, that Rose finds Israel and its Zionist rationale anathema to her view of a just society...
...Why should so much space be given to Israel, when there are wars causing much greater human destruction in Africa and Asia...
...it views the whole of Israel as occupied territory...
...What does he mean by relentless leadership...
...it is more fundamentally to have misgivings about the second-class status of Arabs in Israeli society...
...The possible result of a negotiation can never be the condition for starting it...
...Certainly he does not mean invading Israel...
...When a reply of any sort serves to fulfill an Israeli need, then it is better left unsaid...
...It is, of course, impossible to predict what a more ecumenical Israel would look like in the future...
...Was the Hamas leader referring to the settlements or to the whole of Israel...
...The Jewish tradition with its theme of the Chosen People bears some responsibility for this expectation, though the biblical narrative realistically shows how consistently the Jews have strayed from the narrow path, as have all other peoples...
...Does this constitute anti-Semitism...
...Assuming that an agreement acceptable to both the Israelis and the Palestinians (that is, Abbas and his followers) is achieved, what would guarantee its successful implementation, given the internecine conflict on the Palestinian side...
...Commando raids perhaps, limited to targets chosen on the basis of reliable intelligence...
...In the meantime, it is difficult to see how negotiations can be fruitful with those on the Palestinian side who advocate a two-state solution, if at the end they cannot convert, contain, or eliminate the rejectionist camp...
...they are not held to the same standards, because they are thought not capable of meeting them...
...But he seems to want just such a transformation: "A bi-national state in the Middle East would require a brave and relentlessly engaged American leadership...
...Newman is simply a fool...
...The February 10, 2007, issue of the New York Times, reporting on the agreement between Fatah and Hamas, quotes a Hamas spokesperson: "We will never recognize Israel...
...the Palestinian need is even greater, for Palestinians do not as yet possess the institutions and infrastructure that will provide them with the conditions for a decent life...
...There is something abortive in Judt's argument...
...Add to this the complexities and interplay amongst various developments on the Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese fronts, and Israel's possible actions in the region...
...The America of the Founding Fathers was hardly a democracy in the modern sense of the term...
...To regard any shedding of Jewish blood as a world-shattering calamity .. . is racism, pure and simple, the valuing of one's race over all others...
...Daniel Barenboim, a critic of his native country and a friend of the Palestinian cause, complains that there is no opposition in Israel at the present time...
...UCH AN expectation leads to a double standard, betraying the insidious condescension of (some) Western intellectuals to what are euphemistically called the developing nations...
...Jews would have to be fully accepted in neighboring Muslim-dominated countries...
...It knows from long experience that the effect of its superior military arsenal is that the civilian casualties it inflicts will be great no matter how scrupulous it is in trying to avoid them...
...Regime change engineered by outsiders is doomed to failure and tragedy...
...I never loved the idea of a Jewish state...
...It is clear from the reaction to this call that only a small segment of Israeli society is prepared to entertain it...
...What is clear, however, from scholarship sympathetic to the movement, is that Hezbollah would show no mercy to Zionist Jews...
...I do not like what I hear about the militarization of Israeli society, nor do I find acceptable the second-class citizenship of its nonJewish population...
...There are, to be sure, Zionists, both secular and religious, who would resist any threat to Jewish dominance as destructive of Israel...
...Hizbullah insists on not providing an answer to this question, for the issues are intertwined, and developments bring forth much change and many surprises...
...Many secular Jews in the Diaspora who are proud of their heritage have not found Zionism a congenial movement...
...He is the author of many books of literary and cultural criticism as well as a memoir, Confessions of a Secular Jew...
...There was an opposition, and even now there are voices opposing the government (Amos Oz and David Grossman, among others), but there is some truth in what Barenboim says...
...There is no reason why a truly multi-ethnic society is not possible in Israel's future—unless, that is, the state is continuously threatened with extinction...
...Criticism need not be mechanically balanced, as if every fault found on one side needs to be accompanied by a fault found on the other side...
...The reason, or at least one major reason, is that terrorism against a state tends to unify it, fostering an intransigent defensiveness...
...There is nothing called Israel, neither in reality or in imagination...
...Democracy in America evolved through the resolution of internal tensions and conflicts over time...
...And he takes on the charge of antiSemitism: "if saying these things is antiSemitic, then it can be reasonable to be antiSemitic...
...There are, to be sure, rejectionists on the Israeli side, but they do not control the government...
...If to the settlements, then Hamas could recognize the existence of Israel minus the settlements and East Jerusalem—but it doesn't, in fact, do that...
...So what to do...
...There is no simple answer to the question...
...The diplomatic psychology of "you go first" is an insuperable obstacle to successful negotiation...
...But who knows what the future holds...
...As for the Israeli side, it is hard for an ordinary non-Israeli like me, relying on news reports and analyses, to determine the extent of the willingness of Israeli officials to negotiate a peace that would entail significant yielding of territory to the Palestinians...
...Negotiations cannot begin if one side refuses to acknowledge the existence of the other...
...When you set yourself an impossible task, frustration with failure tends to lead to greater and greater violence...
...Calling Israel an anachronism and advocating at this moment in history a one-state solution only contributes to a sense of threat and guarantees the hardening of positions, particularly on the Israeli side...
...His assumption is that Hamas, Hezbollah, and other rejectionist groups are comparable to Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army in their willingness and capacity to evolve into negotiating partners...
...My own quarrel with Judt takes place on common ground, a commitment I share with him to multi-ethnic democracy wherever it is possible...
...Charles Glass, defender of Hezbollah, has challenged the authenticity of this quotation...
...The Jewish origins of the State of Israel would be retained in the following proposal: "Israel would have to replace the Law of Return, but it could still have laws that prefer immigrants who are . . . victims of anti-Semitism...
...Jews (Zionists, anti-Zionists, and non-Zionists) have in their long history quarreled among themselves about where their interests lie...
...The rejectionist groups persist in their ambition to eliminate the State of Israel...
...This is not to say that attempts at negotiation should not be made, but NOTEBOOK realism requires us to evaluate the prospects for a successful outcome given the present circumstances...
...In the instance of the recent Israeli incursion in Lebanon, the Israeli government had foolishly set NOTEBOOK itself an impossible task: the elimination by military means of a movement that is powerful, elusive, and popular in a large section of the Lebanese population...
...It is, I believe, a dangerous view in the form in which it is presented, but not because it proceeds from anti-Semitic motives...
...For negotiations to begin with a prospect of success, a move to end terrorism and accept the existence of Israel must come from those groups on the Palestinian side that now refuse to accept Israel's continued existence and have the power to subvert any agreement...
...The realism and even the justice of any of the elements of this proposal could be debated...
...We have already witnessed the awful consequences of trying to impose governance from the outside...
...He has not deserved the vitriol that greeted the publicity about his essay...
...No constitution, however enlightened, can establish by its words alone the political reality of a democracy...
...then the need for preparedness becomes paramount over the provision of any untimely statements (Hizbullah: The Story Within, trans...
...If Israel is to realize its democratic aspirations in the fullest sense, it will have to evolve into a society in which every ethnic group is accepted and integrated into the society...
...The historian Tony Judt has recently revived the idea, arguing that the Jewish state is an "anachronism...
...A large portion of its population was enslaved...
...Does a principled cosmopolitan and secular discomfort with the idea of a Jewish state populated by non-Jews as well as Jews constitute antiSemitism...
...From the other side, Israel must be prepared to make the kind of land concession that would bring peace...
...But the real problem lies not with the amount of attention given to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but with the kind and quality of attention...
...Here is what the deputy secretary general of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, has to say about the strategy the movement employs in negotiations: Diplomats and journalists have frequently posed the question: what would become of Hizbullah if Lebanese land was completely liberated, and all captives and detainees were finally freed...
...Nothing better exemplifies this irony than a statement attributed to Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah: "If they [the Jews] all gather in Israel it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide...
Vol. 54 • July 2007 • No. 3
