TEL AVIV JOURNAL DECEMBER 14, 2011
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Newt Gingrich has dumbly stirred a ruckus in saying that the Arabs of Palestine are an “invented people.” It did not increase his chances of winning the Republican presidential nomination: How many Jews actually vote in Republican primaries? (And many Christian Zionists are already for him on altogether non-Zionist grounds.) But it should not have caused such a furor in the first place. After all, it took little time for him to explain that any solution to the near-hundred-year conflict between Jew and Arab would need be a territorial and juridical settlement between the state of Israel and the Palestinian movement, whether it be a true national movement or not.
It is odd that official Palestinians have gone hysterical over Gingrich’s remark. For one of the standing criticisms of Zionism by Arabs of every political tinge is that the Jewish people were not and are not a nation. More: They deny the very historicity of the Jews in Palestine and especially of their presence in Jerusalem (which, of course, renders nil the entire saga of early Christianity). Not until modern times—and largely among the arriviste Jews of nineteenth-century Germany and France—did anyone doubt Jewish peoplehood. In fact, this was what made the Jews so treacherous. Their enemies did not doubt for a moment their cross-country and transcontinental conspiratorial attachments.
Frankly, it is different with the Palestinians. And it is different for many of the peoples said to be represented in the United Nations. Bolivia admits in its official name to being “plurinational.” Many states in Africa, whose maps were callously drawn by the departing imperial powers, include so many different groups that the very notion of nation is elusive. As we see in the daily press, Pakistan is not close to being a nation. Egypt is a true and historic nation. Jordan is a monarchy which has some traits of a nation—but not many. No other Arab country can even make that claim, which is why Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq are so fragile.
PALESTINE’S DISTINCTION is that it never could boast a historic center. Not even Muslim-ruled Jerusalem, which the late Institute for Advanced Study Professor S.D. Goitein characterized as “mostly [living] the life of an out-of-the-way provincial town, delivered to the exactions of rapacious officials and notables, often also to tribulations at the hands of seditious fellahin or nomads.” This does not mean that Palestinians should be deprived of their own state. What it does suggest strongly is that the intensity of self-evident demand is overblown and misplaced. No, it is not obvious that the Cave of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs should be out of Jewish reach.
Still, the real issue is not holy sites. It is the security of Israel and the long-term safety of its people. After all, except for a few handfuls of violent Jewish obsessives (and that is what they are, but that is all there are), the lives of Palestinians are not endangered. What certainly should be on the agenda is their right to their own government and whatever freedoms they can win for themselves. Alas, this will not be an easy chore. Representative government and social democracy are not yet norms in the Arab world.
Barack Obama came into office with the cease-fire lines of 1967 as his set piece for diplomacy. But the “’67 lines” actually go back to 1949. A return to these lines would be premised on the notion that history stopped for 62 years. It hasn’t, and, the longer the Palestinians tarry, the more Israeli incursions will be made on what the Palestinians believe is Arab land. History does not stop forever and especially for the stronger party. This is not a sentimental view of how things work. But it is how things work.
Anyway, the conditions on the ground are different from what they have been. The Palestine envisioned by the president is, therefore, no longer tenable or supportable. One reason this is true is that the 1949 armistice agreements were between Israel and Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan (with Iraq included in one of the accords)—recognizing their interest in Palestine—so what is occurring in these countries now is germane for Israel. The truth is that many of these countries are in flames. You cannot isolate the situation in Israel from the fires burning around it.
The fire touched by the greatest mystery is the one in Egypt. And it is also the one that can burn wide and wildest. The structure of the asymmetrical peace between Israel and Egypt is no longer asymmetrical but actually tottering. Cairo’s military, which observed the treaty for decades, is now so weak that it has already surrendered its determination to shape the constitution that it had only last week proclaimed as its own prerogative. Whether the Muslim Brotherhood or the new Salafist party ultimately gains the upper hand, it is clear that the enlightened Tahrir Square liberals have kindled a flame they cannot control. (If you want to read a tout-va-bien article on developments in Egypt, go to Nicholas Kristof’s “Democracy in the Brotherhood’s Birthplace” in the December 11 New York Times.) The Sinai was already out of the control of the central government long before Hosni Mubarak was arrested, and it is policed against Hamas operatives and Bedouin smugglers by a weak and corrupt gendarmerie.
Of course, Gaza is its own non-sovereign sovereignty. From there come the only slightly irregular routine of rockets into southern Israel and then the inevitable retaliatory Israeli strikes, at which point Baroness Catherine Ashton gets perturbed and demands a cessation of fire. Hamas does not pretend to be seeking peace. But no one takes it at its word. This explains the long and tiresome years of Quartet diplomacy during which the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) has not been challenged for its supine yet unsuccessful seduction of Hamas and its comrades. Indeed, Hamas makes no bones about its intentions toward Israel. It surely is preparing for another war with the Jewish state. Its long-term goal is, after all, the extinction of Israel. This is an impossible aim. So it will settle for forcing the Jewish state again into the dock of U.N. justice, which is no justice at all.
In its relentlessly ineffective diplomacy, the Obama administration seems not to have noticed that, despite the bloody ways of Hamas, the Ramallah P.A. is intent on uniting with its brothers in Gaza. Even Salam Fayyad, the decent and talented prime minister in the West Bank, has announced that he will resign if that would facilitate the union of the two Palestinian juntas. Hamas has said there will be no union if Fayyad stays.
Israel’s northern borders have been in peril since the Lebanon war, more in peril now than before, because Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the fighting, also became the cover for Hezbollah to rearm. It is the pivotal force in the Beirut government, which means that, for the first time in history, the multi-sectarian and multiethnic country is being run by Shia. Of course, its fate is tied to what happens in Syria and with Iran. If the Assad dynasty falls, and with it Alawite rule, it will be succeeded by Sunni Muslim dominion. Thus, there will be in both Cairo and Damascus hegemony of the Brotherhood—or worse. This would surely thwart the Iranians. On the other hand, it might provoke them to accelerate their nuclear aspirations, which, as of now, we have curbed barely one whit. And not for want of capacity but for want of determination. This strategic jumble is an expression of Obama’s solipsistic take on diplomacy. He knows everything; he can convince anyone and everyone.
He has not grasped the essence of the diplomatic knot that is the question of Palestine, which is also the question of Israeli security. Israelis are correct to fear an uncontrolled Palestinian order that sits on top of their historic patrimony, abuts their living rooms, and openly threatens their strategic defenses. This is a conundrum that Israel has to confront. And it must confront the fact that it will always be vulnerable to siege. Leon Panetta’s impetuous demand that Israel rush to “the damned table” was also reckless. Israel has been willing to get to the damned table for years. Right now, it is the P.A. that refuses to sit with the Jews—as the Arabs have historically, since 1917, refused to sit with the Jews—until they have made major concessions in advance.
THERE IS CURRENTLY a lot of nonsense going around about Israel imperiling its own liberal society. Hillary Clinton, for instance, recently lectured Israelis on the quality of their democracy. There is a certain crude malice to these attacks. I have written recently in TNR Online about a certain orthodox and non-orthodox neo-fascism that has little tolerance for democratic process, and it is not the first time I’ve done that. But Clinton, who has courted the Assad regime (yes, the Assad regime!) as if it were a civilized government, has forfeited her standing to condemn Israel on egalitarian and constitutional grounds—on any grounds.
At about the same season, both the United States and Israel experienced some social turmoil. In the United States, it was around the president’s generally progressive economic policies and his equivocating and enigmatic campaign on their behalf. For all his talk, many Americans can’t really tell what he believes—and that is not their fault. At the tail end of this perplexity emerged Occupy Wall Street, a failed cause before it even started, made up of some sweet people and also some hard-line ideologues (many of whom have, let me say this clearly, an anti-Semitic bent). Nothing has happened except wild market fluctuations, in some large measure due to the congressional Republicans. In Israel, a small citizen movement created the successful “cottage cheese revolution,” which burgeoned into a large and overwhelmingly peaceful undertaking. It gained widespread attention starting with a July 14 protest on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv, 222 years to the day after the storming of the Bastille in Paris, two contradictory symbols.
How did Israeli democracy respond? Within three months of the report by the appointed Committee on Socio-Economic Change, the Knesset approved an increase of taxes on the high-income bracket from 44 percent to 48 percent. Taxpayers with incomes of one million New Israeli Shekels, about $270,000, will pay an additional surtax. Parents will receive new credits for each child under three. The tax on dividends, capital gains, and land appreciation rises from 20 percent to 25 percent. The rates for major shareholders will go from 25 percent to 30 percent. These are “progressive” tax rates, and they were progressive even before the increases. By the way, the Israeli economy has done quite well. It was recently applauded by the business oriented Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It turns out that Israel’s democracy, so disappointing to Hillary Clinton, is thriving.
Martin Peretz is editor-in-chief emeritus of The New Republic. This article appeared in the December 29, 2011, issue of the magazine.
83 comments
"At the tail end of this perplexity emerged Occupy Wall Street, a failed cause before it even started, made up of some sweet people and also some hard-line ideologues (many of whom have, let me say this clearly, an anti-Semitic bent)." Yesterday in Cambridge, some Lyndon LaRouche people were distributing pro-occupy Wall Street literature which had pictures of Obama wearing a Hitler mustache. They accused him of being pro Wall Street," as if Wall Street were Nazis. I have to see an condemnation by "occupy Wall Street" of the LaRouche people.
- arnon
December 15, 2011 at 9:28am
"Not until modern times—and largely among the arriviste Jews of nineteenth-century Germany and France—did anyone doubt Jewish peoplehood." It was Napoleon I who organized a Jewish "Sanhedrin"of French Jews and told them to declare that Judaism was merely a religion. This must have been one of the first Judenrate.
- arnon
December 15, 2011 at 9:33am
Well, this is lucid and reasonably argued for a change. And it's good to know that Marty has come off the old "What's a Palestinian?" bandwagon to admit that Israel should agree to a state for the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza regardless of whether or when they achieved "nationhood" or "peoplehood". On the other hand, what does this statement signify -- "History does not stop forever and especially for the stronger party. This is not a sentimental view of how things work. But it is how things work"?? It wasn't me, officer, it was historical agency? I had to act to protect myself, so I didn't just establish a military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza so they couldn't be used for foment terrorism and war against my people, I also had to settle tens of thousands of my citizens on them just to make sure? And keep their settlements there indefinitely, because the others are tarrying?
- wildboy
December 15, 2011 at 11:21am
"Well, this is lucid and reasonably argued for a change. And it's good to know that Marty has come off the old "What's a Palestinian?" bandwagon to admit that Israel should agree to a state for the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza regardless of whether or when they achieved "nationhood" or "peoplehood"." Marty Peretz has been supportive of a tow State solution for a long time, now. He has been rightly critical of Palestinian inability to stop their violence against Israel as well as against each other.
- arnon
December 15, 2011 at 11:37am
I suppose that, if the Arabs should prove stronger, whether diplomatically, by economic, financial, and oil leverage, by demography, or even with lots and lots of rockets, and thereby overcome Israel, Peretz is ready to say, "Oh well, history didn't stop forever, as with the founding of Israel, especially for the stronger." The colonization of the Palestinian Arabs in violation of international law and treaty to which Israel is a party is the shame of the Jewish people, so much so that it can only be justified by repellent rhetoric about the virtue of power and babble about the inevitability of history.
- roidubouloi
December 16, 2011 at 12:55am
Hamas does not pretend to be seeking peace. But no one takes it at its word. That is well put.
- jacko
December 16, 2011 at 6:19am
"If the Assad dynasty falls, and with it Alawite rule, it will be succeeded by Sunni Muslim dominion. Thus, there will be in both Cairo and Damascus hegemony of the Brotherhood—or worse. This would surely thwart the Iranians. On the other hand, it might provoke them to accelerate their nuclear aspirations, which, as of now, we have curbed barely one whit. And not for want of capacity but for want of determination." The Arab Spring, by increasng tensions in the region between Shia and Sunnis, reduces the likelihood of peace. As religious Sunnis take control of Egypt and Syria, should we not expect them to come to the aid of their Sunni brothers in Iraq? And should we not expect increased levels of violence between Sunnis and Shia in Iraq to draw the Iranians into the battle? If MP's point is that Israel cannot be blamed for the sorry state of affairs in the middle east, he is most certainly correct. Indeed, the Israeli posture toward the Palestinians may help avoid open warfare between the Sunnis and Shia by focusing both on their common antagonist. Is that what MP sees as Israel's role, to be the flypaper in the region to avoid Armageddon?
- rayward
December 16, 2011 at 7:27am
"by repellent rhetoric about the virtue of power " ?? Is this an indication that roi is yearning to go back to the days were powerlessness was the Jew's distinguishing lot in life? He appears to prefer, seriously, the diasporic Jew. Hannah Arendt was also sympathetic to this hankering for righteous powerlessness, up to a point, as she elaborated in her 1964 interview for German TV: "..one pays dearly for freedom. The specifically Jewish humanity signified by [Jewish] worldlessness was something very beautiful... it was something very beautiful , this sundering aside of all social connections, the complete open-mindedness and absence of prejudice that I experienced... Of course a great deal was lost with the passing of all that. One pays for liberation. I once said in my Lessing speech. . . Gaus : Hamburg in 1959 . . . Arendt: Yes, there I said that "this humanity... has never yet survived the hour of liberation, of freedom, by so much as minute" You see, that has also happened to us. Gaus: You wouldn't like to undo it? Arendt: No. I know that one has to pay a price for freedom. But I cannot say that I like to pay." Arendt is a courageous thinker who is not easily frightened by the cards dealt by reality. Surely it is not a desirable condition for Jews, or any human group for that matter, to live in a state of perpetual guardedness, on the cusp of existential disaster, the way Israelis are required to do. But, she says, this is the price payed for the loss of the condition of defenceless victimhood. In a way, once Israel has lost its victim status, it has also lost what Bertrand Russell called the fallacious claim to the superior virtue of the oppressed.
- noga1
December 16, 2011 at 7:55am
This is an exceptionally well written piece, even if it continues to be a bit over the top in its criticism of Obama and his SecState. Perhaps 2012 will bring us all more of this intelligent discourse from Marty, and less of the barely-coherent random neural firings we see far too often.
- Tristan
December 16, 2011 at 8:46am
Not a bit, noga. But I deplore Jews when possessed with power aping their former oppressors. If it all is simply a matter of who has the power and the expectation that they will use it oppressively -- as Peretz views the world -- then there really is nothing for any oppressed people to complain of, is there? Not the position that conforms at all to my understanding of Judaism. Israel has certainly not traded in "the fallacious claim to the superior virtue of the oppressed" as it claims the threat to it as the moral justification for whatever it wishes to do, whether or not even plausibly directed to the threat. And then here comes Peretz to urge on Israel's behalf the at least equally fallacious claim to the superior virtue of the oppressor. Both Peretz and Noga seek merely to distract from the reality that Israel is in flagrant violation of international law and the human rights of Palestinian Arabs, and there is no security justification whatsoever. Nor is there historical justification as Peretz would have it.
- roidubouloi
December 16, 2011 at 10:30am
Roid's comment made me think a very mischievous thing -- isn't the kind of might-makes-right thinking exemplified by Marty's statement exactly what Hitler thought both at the height of his curve and at the very end? That international relations are a Darwinian struggle between peoples and the fact of winning the struggle by destroying your opponent testimony in and of itself to the virtue of your cause? In Hitler's case, Germans were engaged in a Darwinian struggle with Asiatic Slavs and Jews and had to destroy them or be destroyed in turn. In the end, when Germany was collapsing from invasion east and west, Hitler decided that the Germans lost the struggle and that it was history's judgment on them as a weaker race, which meant that Germany and its citizens and people deserved destruction at the hands of the victors. I think that we are all capable of the occasionally morally bankrupt argument and justification for what we believe or hold dear to ourselves. I don't think that Marty really subscribes to the militaristic Social Darwinism that died and was buried with Hitler. But that comment of his treads in some pretty toxic waters.
- wildboy
December 16, 2011 at 10:31am
The U.S. needs to stay out of Middle Eastern affairs.We only care because of the oil.
- ljb6599
December 16, 2011 at 11:46am
"History does not stop forever and especially for the stronger party. This is not a sentimental view of how things work. But it is how things work." Peretz isn't saying that he approves of the way world politics works, he is merely stating this as a fact. A lawyerly view would challenge this fact, but lawyers are not equipped to deal with real politics (or natural law). Their world is one of procedure a lawyerly rules.
- arnon
December 16, 2011 at 12:20pm
wildboy "Roid's comment made me think a very mischievous thing -- isn't the kind of might-makes-right thinking exemplified by Marty's statement exactly what Hitler thought both at the height of his curve and at the very end?" Is it? Why reduce this to Hitler? Most world leader thought the same thing. Hitler wasn't evil because he though "might makes right." He was evil because of the way he used his might: "to kill women an children, whole populations, and to try and remake the world in his own image. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon all thought that might makes right, yet the right that they pursued was very different from the right that a Hitler, Stalin pursued. I suspect that it's also very different from the right that a Wildboy would pursue.
- arnon
December 16, 2011 at 12:27pm
sorry Arnon, you are missing the point: It hasn’t, and, the longer the Palestinians tarry, the more Israeli incursions will be made on what the Palestinians believe is Arab land. Why act as though Israeli incursions (Marty's own words) is something that can not be helped, like the weather? It is a choice and I think a disastrous one. Imagine if we colonized Iraq and then pushed the Iraqis into ever shrinking zones of habitation, how that would have worked out. For the record I have zero problem with a military occupation of the West Bank, and even Gaza, provided there are no settlements built until the day, if it ever comes, when the Palestinians wise up, put down their guns, and honestly negotiate. The Clinton/Barak framework for people, the boundaries they envisioned, is one Israel should unilaterally impose. If they don't, that what does the future hold? A permanent occupation with no hope for 2 states because settlers will make it impossible? Is that what you want?
- blackton
December 16, 2011 at 1:02pm
"Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon all thought that might makes right, yet the right that they pursued was very different from the right that a Hitler, Stalin pursued." We celebrate the first four on this list and revile the final two, but I'm quite sure if you were to querry those who were on the wrong side of history, Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and Napoleon would not come out looking much better than Hitler or Stalin.
- bunthorne
December 16, 2011 at 1:26pm
I was thinking about what Marty said as a general proposition and not as something that Israel should follow. For one thing I don't think that Israel is all that powerful in Middle East that it can impose its will indefinitely , for another I think it's in Israel's interest to evacuate settlers from most of the West Bank except those adjoining Jerusalem or are closest to the green line. I agree with your second point above as I have said on many occasions, blackton.
- arnon
December 16, 2011 at 1:55pm
bunthorne ""Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon all thought that might makes right, yet the right that they pursued was very different from the right that a Hitler, Stalin pursued." We celebrate the first four on this list and revile the final two, but I'm quite sure if you were to querry those who were on the wrong side of history, Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and Napoleon would not come out looking much better than Hitler or Stalin." I don't celebrate the first, I was just saying that reducing all world history to Hitler is ridiculous. Still from an objective point of view (numbers, peoples, mostly civilians, murdered) Hitler, Stalin were much worse than Alexander and Napoleon. The Latter two weren't racists nor were they after murdering whole peoples.
- arnon
December 16, 2011 at 1:59pm
I don't believe Peretz wrote this. Content aside, it borders on being literate. $10,000 to the person who uncovers the author! Mitt asked me to make that offer.
- barijoe
December 16, 2011 at 3:59pm
This is just to say what a pretty good piece this is by Peretz and so markedly improved over his last one. So those then calling for Peretz to flee this joint with extreme prejudice were, I thought and now think even more, premature in coming to their advice for him. (Also, this is just to say I'd like to be forgiven for eating the plums.)
- basman
December 16, 2011 at 4:01pm
So much depends on a read copy of TNR lying in the rain by a wheelbarrow.
- ironyroad
December 16, 2011 at 4:35pm
"So much depends on a read copy of TNR lying in the rain by a wheelbarrow." half erased and the print barely legible.
- arnon
December 16, 2011 at 4:44pm
So much depends on a read copy of TNR lying in the rain by a wheelbarrow, after being tossed aside by the emperor of ice cream, no doubt...
- willjames77
December 16, 2011 at 4:56pm
The white chickens have dropped some science on that copy.
- basman
December 16, 2011 at 4:59pm
Irony. That's good photography, I'd say. Arnon. Any room for bleeding ink?
- jacko
December 16, 2011 at 4:59pm
and some cigar ashes
- arnon
December 16, 2011 at 5:08pm
".... Any room for bleeding ink?" bleeding ink creates space.
- arnon
December 16, 2011 at 5:10pm
At least it is a mid-morning grey. Optimistic in its own way.
- jacko
December 16, 2011 at 5:23pm
Puzzles me that there's a general consensus that this piece by Marty is better written and more cogent than the last. I find it to be written in much the same style, i.e., meandering, multiple topics, shifting focus. We go from Newt telling the truth about Palestinian fictions, to Hillary's hypocrisy to the cottage cheese movement for social equality in Israel. And nobody is kvetching? It's okay by me since I don't read Marty looking for tightly crafted polemics. There are plenty of folks out there who do that quite well. I follow his comments in the spirit of a Sunday morning coffee conversation over the weekly newspaper: something catches his interest and he makes a comment, then, later, something else. The pauses are then deleted and it's published as a single post. I appreciate the comments because they reflect the interests and obsessions of a complex sensibility possessed by someone who cares deeply about Israel's welfare. Someone else might prefer the strident ideological rantings offered by the local commissars who profess to be even better friends of Israel than poor, deluded Marty. Hey, de gustibus non est disputandem, as my dear mother used to say.
- willjames77
December 16, 2011 at 5:25pm
"The U.S. needs to stay out of Middle Eastern affairs.We only care because of the oil." ljb6599, you should definitely cast a write-in vote for Ron Paul. He needs and deserves your vote!
- willjames77
December 16, 2011 at 5:30pm
Roi: "The colonization of the Palestinian Arabs in violation of international law and treaty to which Israel is a party is the shame of the Jewish people . . . ." Roi, this is what the anti-semites do: They conflate Israel with the Jews. This is not shame of the Jews, this is the shame of reckless Likudniks and their associates. Leave me and every other reasonable Jew and Israeli out of this.
- MOLLYSIMON
December 16, 2011 at 5:57pm
I sort of see your point, Molly, but if the United States does something shameful, I am shamed as an American even if I am not responsible and do what I can to disassociate myself from the shameful deed. Israel is the Jewish state in fact, the most important actor in the world community of Jews, although certainly not the only actor. If it does something shameful, it shames me as a member of that community. I don't think that this is quite analogous to the manner in which anti-Semites conflate all Jews and all Israelis.
- roidubouloi
December 16, 2011 at 6:18pm
I don't agree. That's like, when Bernie Madoff screwed all those people, I should be shamed because I, too, am Jewish. When somebody Christian does something, other Christians don't all default into the, I'm ashamed for Christians. I doubt anybody expects American muslims to feel this way. I'm Jewish, but I won't allow myself to be shamed by association. Jews have historically been all too willing to play this game. Do I feel a responsibility to Israel? Sure. But shame is about as useful as guilt.
- MOLLYSIMON
December 16, 2011 at 7:13pm
Speaking of making Jews and Israelis fee guilty, there is not end to such efforts: Norwegians on Ola Tunander Alec, December 16th 2011, 2:44 pm "Whilst there clearly are people who are receptive to the idea that Anders Brevik was recruited by Mossad to ‘discipline’ Norwegian society, the non morally failed rejection of Ola Tunander’s peddling of this in Nytt Norsk Tidsskrift (New Norway Journal) has been to unequivocally see it as a reworking of the calumny of a baleful, Wandering Jew wreaking havoc in foreign cities. One example of this comes from PhD candidate at the University of Oslo, Johannes Due Enstad who has published a denunciation of Tunander and the editorial department of the Nytt Norsk Tidsskrift in Aftenposten. Any Norwegian speakers able to offer a translation are welcome to do so. In the meantime, here are the hallucinogenic qualities of Google Translate....." Read all the silly but troubling details here: http://hurryupharry.org/2011/12/16/norwegians-on-ola-tunander/#more-63540 A couple of years ago I would have been shocked by academic journals printing antisemitic propaganda, but these days one just sighs and hopes that few people will take it (and academic journals) seriously.
- arnon
December 16, 2011 at 8:21pm
Who has more rights, who has a higher standard of living? The 20% of Israeli citizens who are Arab, or the Arabs in any Arab country? I defy roi or any other Israel hater to name a country that treats its national minorities better than does Israel. Why do so many leftists side with Islamic countries where women are treated as property, where homosexuality is punishable by death, where a small elite controls most of the wealth, where religious and ethnic minorities are persecuted. Most Arab countries are still living in the Dark Ages, morally and politically. On the other side we have Israel, a prosperous modern democracy. Yet many left-liberals side with the Arabs. It reminds me of the liberals who sided with the Soviet Union. And yet these Israel haters claim to be progressive. What a sick joke that is.
- bulbman1066
December 16, 2011 at 10:43pm
Quite irrelevant, bulbman. It is not "siding with Islamic countries" to note that Palestinians are human beings and have human rights. Nor does it reflect any kind of approval of them or their society. I don't approve of their societies. They are appalling. But that does not justify abusing them. Or to put it another way, even if Israel is in some ways or all ways a morally superior society, that affords no license to abuse the rights of others on the theory that the moral average is still superior to that of those being subjected to abused. There is no justification or acceptable rationalization, no matter how tortured the logic.
- roidubouloi
December 17, 2011 at 12:06am
Well, Molly, I think that if one is going to identify with the good in a group, it is both necessary and inevitable to share a sense of responsibility for the bad. I find it hard to believe that you feel no sense of personal shame if the US, as a society, condones racism, torture, or any other patent evil.
- roidubouloi
December 17, 2011 at 12:08am
I think there is a difference between certain phenomena: racism is one thing, and torture is another, and specific government policies that, while not directly injuring anyone, advantage some people over others represent yet another thing. One can condemn some phenomena while recognizing they exist; one can oppose others because they are institutional actions for which a choice was made. So there is a difference between a society that has a racist streak and a policy of torture. Government doesn't have to mandate racism and even in a racist society there are often laws that seek to constrain or ban it but they don't always take effect in people's minds. Humanity is like that, unfortunately, and condemning a society in which some people are racists (and others aren't) for being racist makes little sense. An elected government in a constitutional republic that orders torture, however, is making an executive decision for which it can be brought to account. But, as a general rule, you have to be a citizen of that country to join in the accountability process. Anyone can express their opinion, but it is the business of Israeli citizens to decide if their country's policies as regards, say, settlements on the West Bank are acceptable and also their business if they want to feel ashamed, jubilant, doubtful, or even confused. There are many Jewish Americans, for example, who are not citizens of Israel, and they cannot -- or at least should not -- be held responsible or congratulated or made to feel ashamed or otherwise for the policies of another country's government. As Molly suggests, it would be as if all Catholics were expected to feel ashamed of some action taken by Poland on the grounds that the majority of Polish citizens are Catholic and there is a strong Catholic ethos to the character of the state. In other words, nonsensical.
- ironyroad
December 17, 2011 at 1:07am
I had thought that there is such a thing as the Jewish people, a nation that transcends many borders. If, with the founding of Israel, we ceased to be such, now nothing more than particular national sub-populations who happen to have some shared history if you go back far enough, one wonders why Jews around the world expect each other to have particular concern for the welfare of Israel, as opposed to Vanuatu. Indeed, one wonders why there is a Law of Return. I thought it applied to me.
- roidubouloi
December 17, 2011 at 11:52am
The law of return was meant to be a corrective to the powerlessness of Jews prior to the establishment of Israel. It filled in the gap, the vacuum, that made Auschwitz possible. That is, the dependence of Jews on the good graces of non-Jews to offer them asylum when they were persecuted in their own homelands. The Law of return worked fine for Iraqi Jews who had to flee Iraq's wrath at Zionism. Not all of them landed in Israel but most of them did. And got to live another year, or a generation, or a century. Or a millenium. Same for Yemenite Jews. And other Jewish mass migrations. They did not have to beg and plead and transact their passage from fear of annihilation to security. They were not called upon to make deals with evil in order that a few might be salvaged. The drafters of the Law of Return did not have in mind the idea that this law would impose upon all world Jews the need for accountability for the State of Israel, which today is fashionably translated into being an ashamed Jew.* That interpretation is the work of cynical antisemites, like Walt and Measheimer, who wish to turn the Zionist project into a criminal ideology. ________ *Ashamed Jew: "Every other Wednesday, except for festivals and High Holy-days, an anti-Zionist group called ASHamed Jews meets in an upstairs room in the Groucho Club in Soho to dissociate itself from Israel, urge the boycotting of Israeli goods, and otherwise demonstrate a humanity in which they consider Jews who are not ASHamed to be deficient. ASHamed Jews came about as a consequence of the famous Jewish media philosopher Sam Finkler’s avowal of his own shame on Desert Island Discs. “My Jewishness has always been a source of pride and solace to me,” he told Radio Four’s listeners, not quite candidly, “but in the matter of the dispossession of the Palestinians I am, as a Jew, profoundly ashamed.” “Profoundly self-regarding,” you mean, was his wife’s response. But then she wasn’t Jewish and so couldn’t understand just how ashamed in his Jewishness an ashamed Jew could be." http://lastexiled.com/index.php/2010/10/13/the-ashamed-jews/
- noga1
December 17, 2011 at 12:15pm
Just because Jewish Israel offers greater civil liberties to its Arab population than any Arab country offers to its own citizens, that doesn't mean they couldn't do better. Because I can imagine a better world where every nation honors international law and agrees as to what the hell it is, I am a superior human being. The fact that no such nations exist does not matter to me at all. They ought to exist, and Israel ought to be an example of one of them. Because it isn't, I am ashamed to be a Jew. Kick me.
- willjames77
December 17, 2011 at 1:23pm
"I had thought that there is such a thing as the Jewish people, a nation that transcends many borders..." Of course there is. Still, it's possible that this two thousand year state of affairs may be coming to an end if we are to believe the demographers: Within a few generations most Jews living outside Israel will disappear since they are not reproducing themselves. I hope the demographers are wrong, though I fear they are right.
- arnon
December 17, 2011 at 1:26pm
"Because it isn't, I am ashamed to be a Jew. Kick me." William James You need to read "The Finkler Question" by Howard Jacobson. He writes (satirically) about a group of English Jews who call themselves "Ashamed Jews."
- arnon
December 17, 2011 at 1:30pm
I had started out to say one thing disagreeing with Roidubouloi here but mid formulation wound up changing course and agreeing with him. We, the Jews here, are Jews of differe stripe and belief, different political and philosophical outlook. But we are bound, are we not, to the centrality of Israel as a constituent of our Jewish identities, unless in individual instances some reject that centrality? We take succor in our conception of ourselves from Israel's achievements; we who were then alive and aware of these things felt the existential terror, terror at the recurrence of another holocaust like event, on the eve of the six day war. We are forged in a bond of universal community owing to what bound exhilic Jews over time and to what binds us now, in the movement of bond from bible to state. The holocaust is our more modern forefather in the evolution of our common bond. On these grounds we share as Jews in Israeli triumphs and failures. Our association with Israeli misadventure, such as that may be, is more complex than our association with the misadventure of the state of which we are citizens, which more direct association--I prefer that word to complicity--is complex enough in itself. But for these reasons, and others no doubt, Roidubouloi has a worthy point, which is quite the opposite of nonsensical.
- basman
December 17, 2011 at 1:41pm
""Because it isn't, I am ashamed to be a Jew. Kick me." William James You need to read "The Finkler Question" by Howard Jacobson. He writes (satirically) about a group of English Jews who call themselves "Ashamed Jews."" _______ willjames, just so as to whet your appetite for the book, you can find a titillating excerpt in the comment right above yours :)
- noga1
December 17, 2011 at 3:08pm
And Malahat, I think your post of 2:47 is brilliant. It is exactly as I feel. I'm proud of Israeli achievement because I'm proud of all Jewish achievement. But Arnon once pointed out that Jews will be equals when we're allowed to be good, bad, and indifferent--just like everybody else. We shouldn't have to suffer a double standard. And any acceptance of this double standard on the part of Jews means they agree they're part of the all-mighty "conspiracy." I don't think the Irish in Boston shuddered when Sinn Fein exploded a bomb. And certainly, nobody in the United States looked at them any more suspiciously. Certainly not in Boston, where the Irish have been celebrating themselves for decades. But the minute a Jew like Bernie Madoff comes on the scene, you know that his Jewishness is the first thing plenty out there are thinking about. The many Jews (of which I was once one) hysterically talking about this being "bad for the Jews." The anti-semites thinking, "Typical Jew." I refuse to play that game. I was on another web site once, when some moron said that some Jew who'd committed financial fraud wasn't helping their reputation. I told this person she was perpetuating that slander, and that I really, at this point, didn't give a fuck what anti-semites thought of me--so long as they don't impinge on my rights.
- MOLLYSIMON
December 17, 2011 at 3:23pm
good article. for the educated, it has touched a wide range of past events. for the uneducated, it is time to pick up some knowledge.
- sf4200
December 17, 2011 at 4:44pm
I am neither an Ashamed Jew nor ashamed to be a Jew. I am ashamed of certain behavior on the part of the State of Israel, as I would be by similar behavior on the part of the United States, although in neither case do I have any ability to control the outcome. I do feel a special sense of responsibility to criticize what I regard as seriously improper behavior in a manner that I would not if the deeds in question were committed by England or Russia. But then, I would feel more of a responsibility to criticize bad deeds by the western community than I would the bad deeds of some nation elsewhere, because that too is my community. If we do not have this responsibility toward the communities of which we are apart, how then do we criticize Germans who were not Nazis but had nothing to say about Nazism during its rise? Did they have a peculiar responsibility as fellow Germans even if they took no hand at all in the depredations of Nazism? I think so. I think the same moral responsibility applies to me, and I do feel ashamed when any of my communities behaves badly. I am not ashamed of myself, I am ashamed for my community.
- roidubouloi
December 17, 2011 at 6:45pm
The German philosopher Karl Jaspers wrote about German Guilt in a book titled "The Question of German Guilt." http://www.amazon.com/Question-German-Perspectives-Continental-Philosophy/dp/0823220699 In the book he argues that there were different types of guilt, one was juridical others were of the moral order. Jaspers felt that these two types of guilt were distinct and that most Germans who passively went along with the regimes criminal behavior were juridically guilty if they helped the regime commit crimes but were morally guilty if they didn't speak out. Nowhere does he speak of shame. Now, this is an extreme case since the Nazi regime was criminal. Unless one feels that Israel has a criminal regime the same standards would not apply. Nor would they apply to the US. Bringing up the German Nazi regime as a point of comparison obscures rather than clarifies. Jews and non-Jews who do so tend to do it for political rather than for moral or juridical reasons. It would be beneficial for Israel to withdraw the settlers from the West Bank and to withdraw the army only if and when the PA agrees to negotiate. I have said this before and continue to say it whenever and wherever people discuss these issues. Still, I recognize that some people who would also like to see a two State solution may be against this proposal for tactical reasons and while I would disagree with them I don't see them as people who have anything to be ashamed of and I certainly don't see them as morally guilty of anything. Those who would like to see Jewish rule over the whole of the ancient land of Israel I see as dangerous since they are endangering the lives of individual Israelis as well as weakening the Jewish State. One of the main strengths of Israel came from the unity of its citizens at home as well as the Jewish people in the Galut. Ben Gurion understood that such unity was crucial. I don't think the current government headed by Netanyahu does. It is ironic though that many Jews who are critical of the Israeli government for not being moderate enough tend to become extremely immoderate when they criticize it. It is my view that it's important to insist that Israel should allow for the eventual creation of an Arab State existing alongside Israel but at the same time to be very critical also of those Jews (and non Jews) who attack Israel as a "Nazi State" trough overt and cover comparisons. when it comes to shame, I am very ashamed of these immoderate Jewish critics. This isn't meant as an attack on anyone posting here, btw.
- arnon
December 17, 2011 at 7:31pm
Roi, I may be taking a more impassioned stance because I so revile the fact that Jews are always lumped together--as if we really are part of a vast conspiracy. As Malahat points out, it gets awfully difficult to argue with people who somehow think I'm responsible for settlements. Still, I don't think it's shame I feel as much as it is exasperation. Frustration.
- MOLLYSIMON
December 17, 2011 at 8:11pm
Arnon, I've often thought about German guilt, and I'm not sure I'd have acted differently if I'd been a German at the time. Here we're allowed to protest anything as loudly as we like. The Nazis made that impossible. Protesting might have meant execution. So I'd like to think I'd been a member of White Rose, but more likely I'd have stood by to protect my children. It's that simple. As a parent, I'd never put their lives at risk or risk the chance that they would be motherless. (By the way, I'm not sure I've had had the courage to protest in Tahrir square.) I think it's too easy to judge the Germans. None of us has ever been faced with that situation. I always find it difficult to judge if I'm not sure I'd have been any better. Does that make me morally or philosophically timid or lazy? That's not a facetious question. I'd really like to know. Interestingly, I've met several Germans over the years who've been very apologetic to me once they find out I'm a Jew. I think the Germans, the later generation of Germans, have done a lot to face their past.
- MOLLYSIMON
December 17, 2011 at 8:21pm
Of course, one doesn't know how one would act in a given dangerous situation. However, it seems to me that people usually don't plan to oppose a regime (some politically motivated people might but they are in the minority) It seems to me that people are thrown into a situation where they have to act or react. Jasper's wife was Jewish and he acted to protect her. That put him at odd with the Nazi government. (I know, as probably you do to, of many cases when the spouse of a Jew decided to get a divorce and left her/his mate to the fates. (The German director Fritz Lang comes to mind. His wife divorced him and he had to flee.) I think that a Jaspers has nothing to be guilty about, unlike the people who did divorce their Jewish spouses. In Nazi Germany just continuing to live day to day in a normal way was for some people an act of defiance.
- arnon
December 17, 2011 at 9:56pm
If we can assign culpability to silence when there is real personal risk, what do we say about silence when there is no risk? Israel has every right, including in law, to occupy the West Bank militarily until such time as the Palestinians are willing to make peace and accept measures to assure Israel's security. The settlements, the colonization of the Palestinians while subject to military occupation is not merely a strategic mistake, although it is that, it is a violation of their human rights, secured to them by the Fourth Geneva Convention. I am appalled that Jews of all people should do such a thing. I have expectations about Jewish behavior and I don't want it to become ordinary and as coarse as the behavior of nations in general.
- roidubouloi
December 17, 2011 at 10:43pm
Noga, I'm almost embarrassed to say that I didn't realize the Finkler quote was literary and tongue-in-cheek. I have read things that are so similar--but written utterly without irony--that I assumed I was reading a true confession. A tract I read recently by a woman Rabbi who participates in a Fast for Gaza(!) could be substituted for Finkler's self-flagellation and no one would be the wiser.
- willjames77
December 17, 2011 at 10:55pm
Yes, I think Jacobson managed to get the mindset of some Jews (in the British blogosphere they are referred to as "asajews" because you can always spot them right away, since they preface every vile anti-Zionist, anti-Israel statement they make by announcing that they speak "as a Jew", as if that confers upon what they have to say a greater moral authority). Jacobson simply took that, turned it up a notch and called a spade a spade. roi here is a good example, when he says things like "I am appalled that Jews of all people should do such a thing. I have expectations about Jewish behavior and I don't want it to become ordinary and as coarse as the behavior of nations in general". Jews are not allowed to be human beings like any other human beings in any other nation. They must be better human beings in order to deserve membership in the human race.
- noga1
December 17, 2011 at 11:14pm
"If we can assign culpability to silence when there is real personal risk, what do we say about silence when there is no risk?" Not culpability (that word has a legal connotation). Moral guilt which something quite different. Now since the the socio-political situation in the two countries under discussion represent radically different systems there is no way one can compare them. This is not to let the Israeli government under Netanyahu off the hook. Israel should remove settlement in 97, 98 percent of West Bank and formally annex the ones closest to the green line. It should as I said above maintain the military occupation till the PA agrees to negotiate. In Israel so many individuals have protested government policy that I don't think anyone there should be either ashamed or feel morally guilty about the occupation. It takes time to change governments.
- arnon
December 17, 2011 at 11:53pm
Jewish behavior, malahat? It is, indeed, a mysterious phrase. Hard to know whether it applies to Einstein, Begin, Yehudi Menuhin, Moshe Katsav, the Haredim, the Palmach, Bob Dylan or Sarah Silverman. One might almost say that the one thing they all have in common is that they remain undifferentiated in the mind of antisemites and ASAjews.
- willjames77
December 18, 2011 at 7:35am
Nailed it, 77
- noga1
December 18, 2011 at 9:11am
Do we not have a conception of ourselves as a people? Do not our myths, narratives, mores, stereotypes, cultural ways, sensibilities, legacies of historic experience and so on not add up to some perhaps, fractious, whole such that we can speak meaningfully about Jewish this or Jewish that? if not, what is our peoplehood? Iis there not a tension that cleaves to the particular and the individual yet also strains the other way to our identity, a meaningful one, as a group? While I don't hold for Jews acting better than comparative others and being held to higher standards than comparable others, I'd maintain we can make some sense of the idea of Jewish behavior and, say, in some non Israeli cultural contexts, Jewish literature.
- basman
December 18, 2011 at 1:12pm
Also, Malahat, I'm not sure what kind of cocktail parties you go to, and I know a few people who are anti Israel in that pristine WASP way some "progressive" WASPs have, but I have never once, ever, been perceived as standing proxy for Israel in virtue of my being Jewish. But doesn't marked Israeli behavior affect you emotionally and evaluatively more than that of other countries excluding Canada; and in fact don't you feel emboldened and proud when Harper is unequivocal about standing with Israel; don't you react to significant commentary about Israel in heightened ways--all these responses an incident of our umbilical connection to Israel? So I make no point about our shame or guilt as Jews, and maybe I'm off issue here, but I want to say that our connection to Israel is analogous to our connection to our own countries and that if a case could be made for our exhilic complicit silence as shaming us in the face of atrocious Israeli behavior, premised on the atrociousness of that behaviour, a characterization I reject, that case could be made as it couldn't be made about the atrocious behaviour, say, of Belgium.
- basman
December 18, 2011 at 1:39pm
Malahat let me try it this way: McWhorter has here argued, if I'm remembering correctly, that there is such a thing as black culture; and you agree in your last post there's such a thing as Jewish culture. I do believe that for McWhorter in saying there is such a thing as black culture, he's referring to more than a totality of artistic artifacts. He's referring to a discernible sensibility manifest in self conception and behaviour that engages the tension between the particular and the general. I'd say, I think, the same thing for people who conceive of themselves as Jews. There's a continuum, I'm wanting to say, between culture so understood and self-understanding and conduct.
- basman
December 18, 2011 at 1:48pm
So bringing this back to what I understood Roidubouloi to be arguing, while as noted I disagree that we need feel ashamed or guilty as Jews about Israeli action, I'd agree with him, if I understand him, that just as it's conceivable that Canada could do something so terrible that our silence in the face of it would mark us badly in virtue of us being Canadians, so too with Israel in virtue of us being Jews.
- basman
December 18, 2011 at 1:55pm
Malahat your experience is your experience obviously and there is a vulgar bigotry at work in what you describe. But it doesn't have to follow from that, does it, that we as Jews, for whom the existence of Israel is a pillar of our identity, don't stand in some kind of heightened association with Israel comparable to our connection with our own country? ( Excuse the awkward double negative please.)
- basman
December 18, 2011 at 2:02pm
McWhorter does argue that, basman, and I think you're right that he means something more than the totality of artistic achievements. "Culture" is a term with two distinctive meanings that nonetheless jostle and overlap each other. It is possible to say something like "American culture has often a hostile attitude to culture" and actually make sense because culture (1) means, as you say, "a discernible sensibility manifest in self-conception" while culture (2) means something closer to "works and institutions of culture." However, the relationship between a sense of cultural identity and notions of political responsibility is knotty, to say the least. McWhorter is very much against, if I've understood him, "black culture" being used as either an excuse or a tribal invocation. The existence of a black sensibility in America is not a replacement for citizenship, economic activity, political involvement, or other markers of identity in a society. In fact, such a sensibility can have a number of influences on citizenship etc, from the constructive to the morbid. Culture is imo not always an undisputed positive when it comes to politics. There is often something private, even exclusionary about culture (1) that works against the openness of democracy. That said, however, it's not always a negative, and societies can develop new forms of self-conception. It would be very interesting to discover, for example, whether Arab Israelis share something of an Israeli cultural identity -- indeed, there may well be after 60 years an Israeli cultural identity that differs from Jewish cultural identity (which, I'm guessing, was in any case not the same among Persian Jews as among Russian Jews, or among Russian as among French Jews). I remember a TV discussion a couple of years ago about a book about Israeli youth and the future of the country, in which there was mention of the young people who are the children of non-Jewish immigrants (e.g. Filipinos). It appears that many of them are quite optimistic and even patriotic about Israel, and want to serve in the IDF with more enthusiasm than many Jewish Israelis show.
- ironyroad
December 18, 2011 at 2:22pm
"It would be very interesting to discover, for example, whether Arab Israelis share something of an Israeli cultural identity -- indeed, there may well be after 60 years an Israeli cultural identity that differs from Jewish cultural identity " Yes, I think many Arab Israelis share something with Israeli cultural identity and that is the in-your-face attitude. You can feel it in Sayed Kashua's short satirical meditations about the life of an Arab in Israeli society. I have been reading his satirical column in Haaretz for some months now, following with great interest the way he retells his life experience as an Israeli-Arab in a predominantly Jewish Israeli society. He has an unparalleled talent for making a poignant comment on some of Israel's social scabs and warts when it comes to the treatment of members of the Arab minority in every day life. His irony is sharp and on-target. It is when he allows a flash of anger to peep through in sarcastic asides that he fails as a satirist. As long as he keeps the irony, he reaches readers and succeeds in making us laugh and cringe at the same time. In a recent piece he gave us two glimpses of the difficulties an Arab may encounter in Israel. The first is his procrastination in finding a name for his newborn son: "It's hard to find a fitting name for an Arab child. ... It has to be a name that does not rhyme with a swearword. That's next to impossible. Every Arab name rhymes with a curse word and even if it doesn't, it won't deter other kids from manufacturing curse words that do not necessarily rhyme. When all is said and done, it is the big bullies whose names do not rhyme with humiliating nicknames. We cannot take any chances with this baby, born premature and all. This baby boy will likely follow his siblings and join the integrated educational system so we must find a name that will not be too hard on his Jewish teachers and classmates. It's very annoying to have your name distorted and anyway, his last name will always be Sayed. Experience tells us that an Arab boy is better off with a universal sort of name, that is, a name that does not sound like a suspicious package, that won't get security guards rattled and will not cause any raised eyebrows when it is called out by the barrista at Cafe Aroma*. Those who go to school with my kids have got Arab names like Adam, Adi, Ram, Danny, Sammy, Nour and Ameer. I'm talking about the Muslim Arabs. The Christian Arabs can always go with George, Peter, Michel, Chris and Michael. Naturally, we do not wish to be seen as going out of our way to be accepted, integrated, assimilated into the Israeli mud slide. After all, we have our dignity. A meaningful Arab name is sure to have some impact on the formation of the boy's identity. But what? Should I call him Mustafa, Mahmoud, or Ibrahim? Won't it be an obstacle when he looks for a job, apply to university, or just walk on the beach with his friends? After wrestling with this issue to distraction I decided to drop the name-finding mission on my wife. Let her pick out a name and if he grows up to complain about it, I can always blame it on her." The second is an encounter with what seems to be a hotel that is not too keen on serving people "with accents". Kasua is trying to book a room for himself and his two kids for a weekend at Ma'agan Eden, a lovely resort his director recommended as eminently suitable for a short family getaway. The man in the Reservations Dept. tells him there are no available rooms for the dates he has in mind or for the entire month of August. "I don't know why, but I had an uneasy feeling about this. "Iris," I turned to the tough-minded producer "Can you please call this number and ask whether they have a vacancy for these dates"? "What?" cried the red-headed film-director with a cynical smile, "Because of the accent? Don't you think this is paranoid?" "I know I'm paranoid, " I said as the producer started dialing "Tell him one parent and two kids," I said and she nodded. Yes, they said in Reservations Dept., there are vacancies, yes, for one parent and two kids, yes, in August, exactly in those dates. She was even offered the possibility of choosing among a few types of rooms. "I don't believe it," said the red headed film-director, "I just don't believe it". 'That's enough" I scolded the agitated wimp who had started bawling. "Where do we live? Where do we live?" I re-dialed the number and got the same booking clerk. "Yes," he said, "but I told you a moment ago that we have nothing available." "All right," I retorted, "I know there are vacancies. Let me speak to your supervisor". "My name is Sayed Kashua and I am a journalist for Haaretz, " I informed the lady. I told her what had just taken place and asked for an explanation. "It's like the stock exchange," she said, "one moment there are vacancies and the next, they are all booked. We get guests from all sectors in Israeli society." "Great. So how is the stock exchange now? Any available rooms?" "Yes," she answered, "Now we have rooms. Do you wish to reserve a spot?" "Sure," I said and gave her my credit card number. "I don't believe it," the red-headed film director kept repeating, trembling and wiping his tears. The tough producer laughed in his face. "Hello," I told my wife on the phone " I just booked a vacation resort for the kids. Did you find a name?" "Still looking," she said, "Is it a good hotel?" 'Wonderful," I reassured her, "they do not let in people with an accent". __________ I can offer Mr. Kashua only cold comfort by telling him that where I live, people with accent are treated with hauteur and dismissiveness, only it is done so very politely, one cannot quite pick up a quarrel and get the satisfaction of rubbing their noses in being found out. I cannot count the number of times I was treated with patient contempt by some low-level clerk who was trying to explain to me that Noga is not my first name but my family name, and that I misspell what they consider as my first name. Or this: Two weeks after placing my daughter in a Montreal public school, she comes home telling me a joke: - Ima (Mummy), you know how they say that Jews are cheap? Before I could register my shock, she went on: - My friend today told me this joke. What is faster than lightning? - ?? - I looked at my daughter cluelessly -A Jew with a coupon! This in Canada, where multiculturalism was invented, and, sadly, this ingrained bigotry is what anyone can find in any "normal" society, like French-Canadian mothers refusing to place their children in daycares that have black kids. Wasn't it the Zionist dream, to make Israel a normal country? So there.
- noga1
December 18, 2011 at 2:40pm
Extremely thoughtful post irony and what you say in the first paragraph reflects exactly my long standing understanding of culture. And, too, you make a necessary distinction between the large sense of culture and our duties as individuals and citizens irrepective of our culture(s). McWhorter inveighs against cuture as rationalization including, perhaps most vocally, against a culture of victimhood. I'd say that culture in the large sense, necessarily at the heart of practical politics, coterminus with ideas of interests and constituencies, is one way of articulating why politics always is in some sense a mugs' game, a swirling, complicated dance between placation and (a stab at) principle. Finally, it's impossible for me to imagine the lack of cross-cultural pollination between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs, and it would be nice to think that in that mutual affecting might lie some seeds for the flowering of resolutionary impulses.
- basman
December 18, 2011 at 2:57pm
Malahat, while I'm not sure that "feeling responsible" captures the heart of the issue either in relation to Canada or to Israel, you're saying that while you might conceivably feel morally burdened by terrible Canadian action that you didn't stand against in some way, you wouldn't by terrible Israeli action that you didn't stand against in some way, the difference turning on citizenship. I guess I have a hard time seeing lack of citizenship as vitiating your heightened responsiveness to Isreali conduct at the level of standing against if appropriate, when, as you say, "Israel as the homeland for the Jewish people is central to my identity as a Jew." Perhaps this is beyond argument, a matter rather of different personal perspectives.
- basman
December 18, 2011 at 3:12pm
Noga, a riposte for your daughter to take back to school and use the next time she hears the coupon joke: "Do you know why God made Gentiles?" "No? Well, somebody had to pay full retail."
- willjames77
December 18, 2011 at 5:16pm
...No? Well, somebody had to pay full retail... Toronto Jewish litigators' first rule of conduct: "Think Yiddish, speak British."
- basman
December 18, 2011 at 5:28pm
Malahat there's perhaps more to be said on this, drawing ever finer and finer distinctions. But I say let this near dead horse have some peace already. Maybe over a beer we continue. I'll be in your town in a week.
- basman
December 18, 2011 at 5:30pm
Excellent synthesis, Dr. Peretz. The battle of the former Peretz mentees resumes. I am going to assume that David Remnick read this before he was taped for Fareed Zakaria's CNN "GPS" panel that aired today. His on-air rage about "invented palestinians" was three-dimensional. Remnick was far more enraged today than when he wrote his blogpost a week ago: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/12/newt-the-jews-and-an-invented-people.html I was about to send Remnick an email to please add a disclaimer next time he appears on an internationally braodcast news/talk show "as an American Jew", to add a disclaimer that notes that David Remnick does not speak for ALL American Jews, or ALL Jews. But, I shall just post it here, since it has some bearing to this comment thread. Or, perhaps Remnick got overruled in the editorial committee that, once again, published an outstandingly excellent and thought provoking short story by Nathan Englander: "What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank" by Nathan Englander in the December 12, 2011 issue of The New Yorker. Interesting that they put this story behind their paywall, and totally screw up the "ABSTRACT: Short story about two married Jewish couples who get high and argue about culture." Eons ago, I had a job writing abstracts, and this one does not come close to describing the key points of this story. So, I guess anyone without a subscription will have to pay for it online or read it at your library, because I read it on Thursday, and it is still changing my view of what it means to be Jewish and, sorry to give away a clue about the last part, what it means to be a Righteous Gentile, where all four of these two married couples have to answer if they would risk their lives to save a Jew. http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2011/12/12/111212fi_fiction_englander One can trace the migration of The New Yorker into the echo chamber of Upper West Side dinner party political correctness (Lincoln Square Synagogue's congregation never invited) on the fact that Englander's last appearance in The New Yorker was May 17, 2010 "Free Fruit for Young Widows", still available in it's entirety for free online at: http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/05/17/100517fi_fiction_englander?currentPage=all For anyone who wants a visceral understanding of the Right of Return and why Israel is the Jewish State of Israel.
- K2K
December 18, 2011 at 5:31pm
meant to say hello to the commentariat here. And really, really recommend the two stories by Nathan Englander cited in my 5:31 p.m. comment to all, but especially willjames77, malahat, and noga. I assume Dr. Peretz has already read both, and more. Happy Hanukkah to all, just in case I disappear again - first night is December 21, 2011. It is the only Jewish holiday that I always celebrate, because it commemorates the victoriuos Macabbean rebellion against the Hellenistic Greeks, and restored the Kingdom of Judea until the Roman pagans showed up. I was telling this to someone, whose alleged girlfriend is Jewish, at my leftwing rural transfer station this morning, and a completely assimilated trash-dumping stranger tried to correct me. He lost. Hanukkah commemorates a successful asymmetric insurgency, and is NOT the Jewish equivalent of Christmas. Amazing how Obama has made me back into a Jew who wants a gun :)
- K2K
December 18, 2011 at 5:45pm
Basman, Your are quite correct that there is such a thing as a collective Jewish identity and that it is more than a generic label to be applied to the conglomerate of individual Jews. However, I think malahat put his finger on it when he said that while there is Jewish literature and Jewish culture, they are not the same category as "Jewish behavior". It's mentally challenging to try to define the categorical differences, but it seems clear to me that they exist. Whereas it's meaningful to acknowledge that there are and have been many great Jewish violinists, can we meaningfully discuss violin behavior among Jews that have never played a violin and have no interest in playing one? Doesn't seem so. Anyway, you and malahat have raised some very interesting questions about the relationship between individual and collective Jewish identity that I'll be chewing on for some time to come....
- willjames77
December 18, 2011 at 6:02pm
K2K, just read Remnick's piece and I wasn't surprised to find the same trope that seems to pop up regularly whenever a conservative states the truth about anything: "He just said that to get votes. He's pandering to the right-wing, lunatic..." etc etc. Inconceivable that anyone could say anything out of conviction! It always has to be discounted as spin aimed at x, y and z. Meanwhile, Remnick carefully quotes selectively and misleadingly from his sources to spin his audience right where he wants them. Funny how he doesn't seem at all upset with the Palestinians' utter denial of Jewish continuity or with their wholesale efforts at identify theft. Joan Peters' book is admired by many historians and despised by others. Surprise, surprise, that her greatest detractors all seem to be virulently hostile to the Zionist enterprise. I had coffee with her and Mordechai Kedar last year around this time when I was at a conference in Jerusalem. Kedar admired her greatly, and he's about as sharp as they come. That's good enough for me.
- willjames77
December 18, 2011 at 6:36pm
Well, thanks, willjames but I doubt my daughter would know the first thing about full retail. I'm not sure I do. After explaining to her that it was an antisemitic joke I never referred to this ugly story again. You are right that there is, intuitively, a sort of collective Jewish identity, but it is nearly impossible to pin it down. Conversos carried with them a certain Jewish identity for centuries after having been cleaved from Jewish stock. Christopher Hitchens welcomed his (technically) Jewish identity even though he was brought up ignorant of any such associations. What is it about? What is this attraction and tenacity? I tend to attribute it to a religion that has a considerable intellectual component and an ethic that stand quite separately from magical thinking. Take away God and you still have Judaism. How so?
- noga1
December 18, 2011 at 6:37pm
Happy Hanuka to you too K2K. willjames, to you too, of course. My Hanuka song this year is an Argentine tango: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p5FBFdYufk&feature=related
- noga1
December 18, 2011 at 6:56pm
willjames: I tried to find Zakaria's GPS panel on the GOP contest today, where Remnick almost burst a blood vessel on same topic today, but no success finding the video. What was odd was that Peggy Noonan totally agreed with Remnick - perhaps because she can not stand Gingrich. Hope you read "What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank" by Nathan Englander in the December 12, 2011 issue of The New Yorker. I am going to re-read it again this week. But, I already realized that the only person I know who would truly be a Righteous Gentile already has two sons and a granddaughter who are Jewish. My friend married a Jew, and raised their sons as observant Jews. She sends me holiday greetings in Hebrew! I am again trying to figure out how to divest my real estate nightmares and find a way to make aliyah. I truly believe America is taking an ugly turn. Ok, see you all maybe tomorrow.
- K2K
December 18, 2011 at 8:03pm
That's a great piece Noga! (and the earlier excerpts are pretty funny too, as it happens) ____________________________________________________________________ "Hanukkah commemorates a successful asymmetric insurgency" Indeed, K2K, and curiously enough (or not) that is close to exactly what the president said during his brief remarks in the White House a week or so ago. Which I was, as it happens, somewhat relieved to discover.
- ironyroad
December 18, 2011 at 8:07pm
חג חנוכה שמח
- basman
December 18, 2011 at 10:40pm
77, I like that monicker for you, I'm with the man from the West, where it's the best, in wanting the benefit of your thoughts on the issues he and I enjoyably mooted some. Your thoughts are worth taking in.
- basman
December 18, 2011 at 10:43pm
When we're at our best, we're not a bad bunch. חנוכה שמח חברים וחברה
- willjames77
December 19, 2011 at 5:53am
Roi, your claim that Israel is engaging in systematic abuse of others' rights is a lie. Like all anti-Semites you a bald faced liar.
- bulbman1066
December 19, 2011 at 4:03pm
noga says: "roi here is a good example, when he says things like "I am appalled that Jews of all people should do such a thing. I have expectations about Jewish behavior and I don't want it to become ordinary and as coarse as the behavior of nations in general". Plainly noga, though an Israeli übeer-nationalist for whom categories of right and wrong do not even apply to Israel, the perpetual victim, has lost touch with Judaism completely. Have you never heard the phrase "light unto the nations." In my synagogue, we always recite a prayer for Israel to be a "light unto the nations. _________________ Malahat questions my use of the phrase "Jewish behavior." Of course there is such a thing if, as plainly intended in this context, the meaning is "the behavior of Jews." Does it imply that all Jews behave in the same (stereotypical) way? No. That is, not to someone who speaks English and is not trying to abuse its supple capabilities. Do I expect Jews to behave decently and with respect for law and the rights of others even though this is not common in the world? I do, because it is what we profess. I expect the same of Americans. Supposedly most Americans expect that of Americans. Is it meaningless or demeaning to talk of "American behavior." I cannot imagine why. I cannot help but wonder whether those who think we are not allowed any longer to use words such as "Jewish behavior" because those words have been misappropriated and abused by anti-Semites have not internalized anti-Semite. I don't allow anti-Semites to decide for me what words I am allowed to use or thoughts I am permitted to think. In any case, it is rather pointless to deny that shared culture does bring with it shared behavior. It is an obvious part of reality. Up above, Noga has no problem in identifying an "in your face" quality to Israeli behavior. Do we therefore suspect her of secretly hating Israelis? Does she offend by finding reality in a stereotype? _________________ Bulbman, the words "abuse" and "rights" have no meaning when coming out of your foul mouth. That you utter them is enough to twist them beyond recognition. Even to accuse you of being a liar would be to sully that word. You are just another ugly fascist.
- roidubouloi
December 20, 2011 at 11:47am