1. Jews have lived continuously in Palestine, in varying numbers, since before the destruction of the second temple. To say that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” implies that the actions of the Israeli government warrant the expulsion of Jews who have lived in what is now the state of Israel for generations, even centuries.
2. I can’t believe I even have to take the time to write this, but not all Jews who immigrated to Israel came from Germany and Poland – or even from Eastern Europe, or even from Europe at all. About half of Israel’s Jewish population is made up of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. From the late 19th century to the mid-20th, between 800,000 and 1,000,000 Jews left or were expelled from Middle Eastern and North African countries, and most of them went to Israel.
3. This should be made apparent by item #2 and some knowledge of the Holocaust (including the Zionist movement’s part in strong-arming Holocaust survivors into immigrating to Israel), but not all Jewish immigration to Israel has been fully voluntary. Without even getting into the issue of Jewish descendants of immigrants, it’s pretty hilarious to suggest that a Jew who was forced to leave their country of origin should just pack up and go back.
What we need to talk about when we talk about Palestine is the ethnic cleansing that started with the first actions of political Zionists and Christian Restorationists and continues as I type this sentence. Sweeping, ignorant, and offensive proclamations that Jews should go back where they came from (an idea that, by the way, helped catalyze the Zionist movement in the first place) will not secure freedom for a single Palestinian.
Weirdly, a lot of the men are defending this:
http://charliedavis.blogspot.com/2010/06/americas-top-criminal-barack-obama-or.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FalseDichotomyByCharlesDavis+%28false+dichotomy+by+charles+davis%29
http://the-crows-eye.blogspot.com/2010/06/oh-noes.html
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/06/an-unqualified-defense-of-helen-thomas.html
I agree settlers should get the hell out of Palestine, but I’m in favor of a united country of Israelis and Palestinians.
It should also be noted that, at the time of the early Jewish settlements in what is now Israel and Palestine, there was no Palestinian nation. Most people livin there identified as Syrian, and the whole area was part of the Ottoman empire. European nationalism, particularly German cultural nationalism inspired zionists who wanted to create a modern Jewish nation state in the levante with German as national language (Theodore Herzl). The Briith supported Jewish settlements under their reign in the area until 1947. A lot of the Arab elites made a big buck in the 20s and 30s selling their land to Jewish landtaking organizations, hoping to first sell, then politically throw the Jews out again and getting the land back. At this point, there was still no Palestinian nation or nationalism, legally the area belonged to Jordan. A Palestinian nation wasn’t even directly born out of the refugee dilemma following the 1948/49 war when hundreds of thousands of people left (the elites) and fled (everyone else) their homes. It took until the early 60s, until Jasser Arafat’s Fatah took over the PLO, for the first concept of a Palestinian nation to appear. Now that doesn’t solve the refugee problem, and it most certainly doesn’t solve the Israel’s logical dilemma of being both an ethnic control state and a modern democracy in which a rising part of the population doesn’t belong to the ruling ethnicity. Israel’s right to exist, and the Jewish right to live in their home country certainly aren’t up for debate. But for whatever it’s worth – this is a valuable crisis for Israel, because, more than before, it will be forced to reconsider what it actually is, what Zionism means in the 21st century. And, quite frankly, whether a two-state-solution is really the most appropriate way to go about the problems facing the area. If you get rid of ethnicity as defining element of the state, you can just have a real democracy of all people in the area. Sure, Jews could become a minority at some point, but in that case this is exactly the structure we saw in 1985 with the Anglo-Irish treaty and then in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement. No longer land for peace, but safeguards for participation. Seems a better deal for moderates on both sides. If they only had something to say outside of a Geneva UN building.
Not really weird, Jenny. A lot of people are on the other side of the war from Israel. Many people will claim to be neutral critics of all wrongdoing in the region, and many of those people are actually telling the truth, but not all of them are. Some people want the Palestinians to win and throw the Jews back into the sea.
Thank you, Julie. Hyperbole and misinformation won’t help support the Palestinian fight against oppression any more than it will keep Israelis safe.
Helen Thomas months from her 90th birthday. It’s sad to say this, but at her age there is a good chance that her mind isn’t what it used to be – dementia can creep in very slowly. I would not be surprised if that’s where this comment came from.
Such a shame that such an illustrious career had to end like this.
Would the world be a better place if the European Jewish refugees went to New York instead of the Middle East? Absolutely. But they didn’t, they’re there now, and wanting them to leave is as ludicrous as expecting Americans to leave the USA back to the First Nations.
You know what? I do know about what happened in the Holocaust. Why? Not only were my ‘queer family’ targeted, and my ‘feminist family’ targeted, but my actual biological family were too. My grandfather’s entire village was slaughtered, the women were forced to walk to Ravensbruck camp in Germany where they were then shot. But because my family, and 4 million others, weren’t Jewish, nobody cares. People are interested in my family history until they realise I’m not a Jew. A ger even told me that my Papa’s baby boy, brains dashed out by a German soldier, deserved to die because he was “Polish filth” and that I should mourn the fallen Jews and not my own family, because the 6 million had ‘saved’ me from being born in Poland. So yes, I know the Holocaust too well, through his tears and his blue number.
Please, don’t long-disntace diagnose people. And also, please don’t use ableism and ageism as a way to criticise people. Or to fake-justify them.
People say these things all the time without any form of dementia or other illness as the reason for saying it. Just because she is old does not mean she is no longer responsible for her words, nor does it mean we can dismiss them as just something that was said by an old women who probably has dementia.
Erased, I’m so sorry.
I don’t believe Julie’s point was that only Jews were victims or that only Jewish victims matter. People who forget that plenty of other ethnic groups were deemed ‘unfit’ need a history lesson and a poke with a cluestick.
1.True, Jews have lived in Palestine in “varying numbers”. In the 1922 the League of Nations granted Great Britain Mandate over Palestine. At this time there were approximately 11% of jews in palestine. This is where the problems began, the League of Nations was the failed predecessor of the UN. Both assumed legitimate authority to make decisions for the people of palestine, due to the fact that there was not legitimate representation for them. Basically saying, since Palestine cants speak up for itself, we are going to. When Thomas says “Get the hell out of there” She is not implying that “the actions of the Israeli government warrant expulsion” she is saying that the state if Israel does not have a legitimacy in its existence. THIS IS NOT ANTI-SEMETIC! It is a historical, and political statement!
2.I can totally believe that im writing this, because its true. Yes, between 800,000 and 1,000,000
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_Arab_and_Muslim)
lands left or were expelled from middle eastern countries, but you forgot to insert the accurate time period. It started in the 19th century but, ACCELERATED after the 1948 Israeli-Arab war. Well gee what happened in 1948? The creation of an Israeli state by the U.N. Literally the day after the Israeli state was illegitimately created protests and violence began, and has ceased to stop. Paradoxically the creation of a Israeli state created a whole new generation and wave of anti-semitism, which in turn led the the expulsion of Jews from middle eastern countries.
3. The fact is that the Palestinian people are being “occupied” as Helen Thomas asserted. You cant just come into a country and take land (even though biblically is promised) and say this is now the state of Israel, “respect my authoritah”. Your right Julie, this is a Political Zionist and Christian Restorationist argument. This is the sole reason why in the first place the U.K and the U.S. through the U.N. wanted to create this country. They are, and have been trying to fulfill the prophecy of the second coming of Christ. Thats what this is all about! These hardcore, conservative, Christians that at that time, (and still pretty much) is what made up the ruling class of U.S. and U.K. If they truly cared about the well-being Jewish people, then they would have accepted them into their countries when Hitler first tried to expel them. Only after the international community rejected the jewish refugees, did Hitler carry the horrific atrocities of the “Final Solution” that was the Holocaust.
So where does all of this leave us now? Well should Israel government “get the hell out of there”? No, of course not that is not rational. But what would help is the understanding by the Israeli government, and the international community as to why the Palestinians might be legitimately, a little upset. They ARE being occupied. This is not an opinion, but a fact. A little bit of deflating ego’s is in order. YES THE HOLOCAUST WAS HORRIFIC, WE ALL AGREE! Yes, the Jews needed a place of safe haven DURING the nazi regime, but not really afterwards.
If one really watched the video of when Helen Thomas made those remarks, you would see that it seems as though she was in transit, and was unexpectedly and abruptly asked the question concerning Israel and Palestine. Her response, was not a well though out and properly articulated answer, that one would assume would be in a news column. She was asked by a street reporter, and gave a street answer. It was not in the form of an official Hearst paper column. Even if it was, she is an OPINION COLUMNIST! Which brings us back to the original point…she should have in no way been forced to retire, or in other words fired!
Information gathered from wikipedia, which all of my (and really any) professors in college constantly reminded me was not an accredited academic source. I aint in college no more. =)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel
On reflection, I’m going to move my comment to an open thread lest it become a de-rail.
“It’s an appalling double standard. I don’t want Helen Thomas defining the Israel/Palestine debate, but I do want equal treatment for other high-profile people who put out vomitously offensive sentiments.”
Ditto.
Erased–I’m sorry you’ve been erased, but that doesn’t justify people being dicks to Jews with a holocaust history either, neh?
Accursed run-on HTML. Let’s see if this works.
Anthony, if the UN didn’t have legitimacy to create the state of Israel in 1947, then nobody has legitimacy to create states, and we fall back on the law of war. Which Israel won. So, legitimacy either way.
Hope that fixes the HTML.
Anthony @9, why are you trying to massage her remarks?
It’s interesting to me that every person I’ve seen defend her comments has felt the need to explain what she “really” meant, or what she “obviously” was referring to, but they all have different interpretations.
Her comments were offensive not because of what they say or don’t about the legitimacy of the state of Israel, but because Israeli Jews are “from” Israel, same as Americans, wherever their ancestors came from, are “from” the United States.
Anthony-
Does the US have legitimacy in its existence? How about Canada? Do people in the US need to go back to Europe, or wherever they came from? Or just Jews?
That’s the anti-Semitism.
One of the minor issues with Palestinian nationalist movements within the PLO is their exposure to FLN-led Algeria and neo-Destour Tunisia in the period 1965-1985, from the 1st conferences of the Borguiba/Boumedienne era to the bombing of Tunis by the IAF. The early PLO Charter really DOES show that they consider Eretz Israeli-born Jews post-Balfour to be pieds-noirs, foreigners with no claim to being Palestinians in a future Palestinian state. to be returned to their motherland (Auschwitz). It is true that we are speaking of a tiny number of activists, capable of being counted on the fingers of one hand, but Palestinian and Israeli activists with experience of countries where the parties of the Socialist Left were much more mixed (Arab/Jewish, primarily, but also Arab/Christian) such as Iraq, Morocco, and Egypt have a much broader view of one-state possibilities than the PLO elements given refuge by the Maghribi states which triumphantly divested themselves of their indigenous Jewish populations in toto in the period 1956-67. With the rise of political Islam, this may be moot anyway, but there is a definite pan-Arab 60s vibe to the “back to Poland, back to Germany” claim, even as Arab nationalism it is anachronistic.
One thing that bothers me a lot about the Israeli-Palestine conflict and that most people seem to forget is that Palestines are not allowed to become legal citizens/immigrants to Arab/Muslim countries. In fact neighbouring countries like Egypt usually keep their borders closed to Palestinian refugees (I’ve read more than one account that this is essentially caused by xenophobia & nationalism, and the perception of Palestinians as stateless and therefore pitiable but not worthy of respect)
Another example I’ve heard of middle-eastern xenophobia against Palestinians is the argument that, with the number of Jews that were being expelled from Arab-Muslim countries, losing theirs land, home, possessions/etc. and being accepted into Israel, if each government really cared about Palestinians they could have given the lands and property they expropriated from Jews to displaced/fleeing Palestinians.
Despite being displaced into a foreign country and creating a huge diaspora it would have helped Palestinian refugees get out of poverty and oppression. I don’t know if that’s a good idea or not, all I know is the Arab governments never even considered this.
If palestinians in the Gaza strip for example are overpopulated and squeezed in there with little supplies and limited control of where they can go, isn’t Egypt’s closed border policy and refusal to support Palestinians in any real tangible way (other than talk) partially to blame?
If the goal is to relieve Palestinian suffering than why won’t neighbouring States allow Palestinians to immigrate on their (mostly under-populated) borders and provide some kind of relief?
This has always struck me as odd. Muslim-arab leaders supporting Palestinians when they’re fighting against Israeli-related injustices, but seemingly ignoring them when they’re not…
It’s always easier to demand that a problem be fixed than to take action to fix it yourself. Also, Israel serves as a distraction from problems within Arab nations.
“Muslim-Arabs” are not a single unified mass politic. Hamas is part of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, which is opposed by the current Egyptian government (and vice versa). So although it’s scummy that Egypt is part of an anti-Hamas blockade, it’s not surprising. Hamas is Egypt’s enemy, politically.
Egypt is also worried about the effects that increased radicalization in Gaza could have on Egypt (including terrorist attacks on Egypt).
Finally, there has been a huge amount of pressure from the US and Israel on Egypt to support the blockade.
I think Anthony is absolutely right that it is highly probative that the expulsion of Middle Eastern Jews accelerated in the immediate aftermath of the establishment of the state of Israel (it is also probative, of course, that it did not start then). However, it leads to the exact opposite conclusion than the one he draws. If the actions of other people in one’s group, somewhere else in the world, leads to prejudice, denigration, oppression, or violence against one in one’s own country, that’s prima facia evidence that perhaps one wasn’t a full and equal member of that society to begin with. If Jews were considered equal members of society in the Middle East prior to the establishment of Israel, then that state’s establishment, even if vitriocally opposed, should have led to precisely no action against the local Jewish population, because they would be seen as Egyptian or Iraqi or Syrian Jews, not just some undifferentiated mass of Otherized Jews. But they weren’t seen that way. And I do not begrudge anyone for not wantign to be a part of a society where the behavior of others is considered sufficient to render one’s own life forfeit.
I’m a quarter Russian, and yet, when Russia and Georgia went to war, I felt no indications that my Russian heritage rendered me vulnerable to retaliation, because my Russian background in no way impacts or diminishes my status as a member of the American community (it’s possible that persons more outwardly Russian than I did suffer, but I didn’t hear of any random acts of violence or protests in Brighton Beach). It’s only my Judaism that renders me so vulnerable, and that’s a sign of inequality.
And this phenomenom still occurs. In Egypt, the government has consistently linked protection of the state’s small Jewish community, and recognition of its centuries-old Jewish heritage, to its dailystance on Israel. Were Jews in Egypt recognized as equals, their rights and privileges in Egyptian society would not be variant based on the behavior of other Jews elsewhere. One can make similar observations about the treatment of Muslims in the United States after 9/11.
chingona @14: as well as the not-so-subtle insinuation made in saying that Jews should “go back” to Poland or Germany.
@ mythago. Of course. I’m giving the Thomas the benefit of the doubt that she didn’t actually mean go back AND DIE IN GAS CHAMBERS111!!!!111! but it certainly reflects a callous indifference to the lives of Jewish people. Plenty of people who did try to “go home” after surviving the Holocaust were killed for daring to show up in their home towns, thinking they might pick up their lives again.
At the very, very best, it’s a “let them eat cake” kind of comment.
I’ve commented before that the lack of attention from progressives of the US’s colonial history really baffles me. It comes out in strange places – including here:
In New Zealand, anyone on the progressive left is used to the idea that colonisation makes the New Zealand state illegitimate and the rhetorical device of telling white people to go home.
I think generally telling settler colonialists to go home is a legitimate rhetorical strategy (while it is never going to work as an actual solution and is more problematic in Israel than other colonial settler states). I think what made Helen Thomas’s comment not OK, is that she is erasing the experiences of everyone who doesn’t come from Europe, and that the two places she selected to tell people to return to are the two that would most make people feel like she didn’t give a shit about their safety.
Often in an American dominated discourse about palestine, people act as if the idea that settler colonialist states are illegitimate, racist, and that people should go home is completely ludicrous. I’ve seen it happen several times when someone respons to people make claims about Israel as a settler state, “would you say that about the US” – as if that idea is ridiculous, and sometimes the other person says ‘of course’ (it happened at the beginning of this thread on feministe.
I’m wondering (and this is pure speculation) if there’s a connection between the way the US’s history of colonialism is ignored, and the way Israel and Palestine are discussed. Not necessarily that it would change what people think – but hte shape of the discourse. Because people are so un-used to talking about the US as a colonial settler state, talking about Israel as a colonial settler state is singling it out. When people are ignoring the stolen nature of the land they’re standing on, it is a problem if they’re pointing somewhere else and going “stolen land! Stolen Land!”. I guess I’d suggest as a solution more discussion of the history of colonisation in America.
Well, and I think I’ve said this before, but the problem I have when people (especially white people) say that “of course” the United States is illegitimate is that absolutely nothing will ever come of that stance. Nothing bad is going to happen to white people. We won’t ever be made to pay for what was done to take possession of the land. It just always comes off as really cheap and easy.
I’m curious what you mean by a “legitimate rhetorical strategy” in a context where nothing will ever actually come of it and where it’s even physically impossible for people to return to where they’re “from” because each individual descends from people from multiple countries of origin.
I’m guessing you mean something more than “emotionally justified” when you say “legitimate” but I’m not sure what that would be.
ETA: I think one of the other points of confusion is what exactly is meant when someone says a state is “illegitimate” and what actions or consequences would come from an agreement that a state is “illegitimate.”
But doesn’t it seem cheap because American colonisation isn’t discussed in any other context? If colonisation, de-colonisation and self-determination of indigenous people were occasionally talked about it wouldn’t seem like a meaningless statement
For example, what made me think of this was was people asking the question as if to answer ‘yes’ would be ludicrous. That to me seems like a really strange limitation of the acceptable discourse (you would never get a similar question and answer session in New Zealand, because the yes would be expected).
As for the legitimate rhetorical strategy, Shosie asked: “Do people in the US need to go back to Europe, or wherever they came from?” And I wouldn’t answer ‘yes’ to that – for a number of reasons. But do I think it’s legitimate for native Americans to say “Go Home” in many different ways? For sure. Just like I’m used enough to hearing that message that Shosie’s question shocked me.
Again my response to ‘go home’ has been developed in a New Zealand context. a large chunk of people can’t ‘go home’ – they’re not legally allowed back to live wherever their ancestors came from (I could, but I’m not going to). But when it’s said in various ways I don’t think an appropriate response from Pakeha to talk about their ability to emigrate, but to listen to the message which is trying to be communicated. And in my experience it does communicate something important.
I agree that arguments about the legitimacy of states are ludicrous. I was responding to Shosie’s statement not making a claim of my own. I think making claims about Israel being a racist state or an illegitimate state come from a very specific world view that I don’t share. By definition – having and enforcing borders – states are racist – and I am anti-nationalist and anti-state power.
I wasn’t supporting Anthony’s position – you can just take people’s land and say ‘respect my author-i-tah’ – that’s what colonisation is all about, and it wasn’t invented in the 1940s.
What I was interested in is the way that people in American dominated discourses about Palestine/Israel respond to discussions of Israel as a settler colonising state seems to be based on an environment where a settler colonising state is never discussed in any other context. Wow that was a confused sentence – I hope you understand what I mean.
But doesn’t it seem cheap because American colonisation isn’t discussed in any other context? If colonisation, de-colonisation and self-determination of indigenous people were occasionally talked about it wouldn’t seem like a meaningless statement
Possibly, but it also seems cheap because of the very extreme power differential that continues to exist. It would help if indigenous rights were more prominent on the agenda, but it still wouldn’t make the situation one in which I really had a lot to lose.
Again my response to ‘go home’ has been developed in a New Zealand context. a large chunk of people can’t ‘go home’ – they’re not legally allowed back to live wherever their ancestors came from (I could, but I’m not going to). But when it’s said in various ways I don’t think an appropriate response from Pakeha to talk about their ability to emigrate, but to listen to the message which is trying to be communicated. And in my experience it does communicate something important.
I think the context for the discussion is really different when you’re talking about yourself – that is, both parties are living in the same country and are themselves the ones with something at stake in the discussion – and when you’re talking about other people.
In American discourse around I/P, it’s typically white Americans saying that Israeli Jews should “go home” (or some variation thereof – my favorite is when I’ve heard people say Israeli Jews should be resettled in the United States – we’ve done such a good job stealing land that we have enough to give other people to stop them from stealing land for themselves). It’s a lot harder to think that person has something really important to communicate, as opposed to just not having thought things through very much. So a question like Shoshie’s (as I read it, in an American context) is not so much predicated on the whole idea being ludicrous as it is intended to probe the other person to see if they’ve really thought this out.
I don’t disagree, though, that Americans don’t think of the United States as a colonialist, settler project. Our self-image as a “nation of immigrants” and a “melting pot” leave us pretty wedded to the idea that where you’re born is where you’re “from.” When people on the left think of “go home” rhetoric, I think the first thing that comes to mind for most of us is the anti-immigrant right.
Other people explained my (admittedly, curt) comment much better than I did.
It always amazes me that people are totally willing to talk about “illegitimacy,” whatever that means, of other colonial states if it means that they can talk about how illegitimate Israel is. But, at least in the US, I never hear discussions of the illegitimacy of our own country or Canada or New Zeland. Israel gets dragged to the forefront. It’s only Israelis among the land-thieves who are being told to “go home.” And, while no one REALLY seems to think that white US citizens should really go back to Europe, it seems like a substantial number of people really do think that Israelis should just get off that land (not the territories, the established borders of Israel).
Someone on Feministe said that there’s totally a place for discussion of nation building and the problems that come with it. But if we’re going to talk about stolen land, why are we just focusing on Israel? And if we’re focusing on the mess that came from the establishment of Israel, why aren’t we also talking about Britain and Egypt and Jordan, who all had a hand in this mess? Hell, let’s talk about the UN, which was totally on board with making a Jewish state, if only because they SO didn’t want a whole bunch of icky Jewish refugees. And you know what? I really don’t think Europe and the States and a whole bunch of Middle Eastern countries would really appreciate a mass dispersal of Jews from whence they came. But those people totally all support the Palestinians NOW, when it’s no skin off their nose.
There’s a lot of Jew-blaming involved in discussions of the Israel/Palestinian situation, and it’s sometimes difficult to separate out the valid criticism, especially when people express valid criticism in anti-Semitic language. Really, I think that a lot of people who have no problem with Helen Thomas’ comment haven’t thought a whole lot about Jewish history or International Jewish experiences. And those people need to check their privilege before they try to speak authoritatively on whether a statement is legitimately offensive to Jews or just a political criticism.
If Israel and the United States are illegitimate states because colonizing settlers came to live there and ended up taking over violently, then most of the states of the world, with the exception of a few Polynesian island groupings, are illegitimate. It’s not a “cheap” rhetorical ploy; it’s a nonsensical one, that pretends history started in 1947 or 1776 or 1492.
The history of the world is bloody. Every inch of land on Earth is stolen. Heck, even the Polynesians “stole” it from the animals and birds that were living there unmolested by humans before the Polynesians came paddling along.
I am reminded of the old chestnut: what’s the difference between an environmentalist and a developer? A developer is a man who wants to build a house where the woods used to be. An environmentalist is a man who already has a house where the woods used to be.
Maia @23: Germany and Poland weren’t “selected” because Jews feel unsafe there. They were “selected” because those were places were Jews were exterminated by the millions. It’s a not very subtle reference to the “Hitler should have finished you off” argument.
Your analogy makes no sense because Helen Thomas is not a “native” telling the invaders to get out of her home and go back to theirs (even in a rhetorical sense, generations removed). She was born and raised in the United States. Her parents were immigrants from Lebanon, not displaced Palestinians fleeing from the creation of Israel. She has no more moral authority to tell Israelis to “go home” than I have to tell Robert to “go home”.
(Robert – the developer is the guy who wants to cut down the woods to build a subdivision, where all the streets will be named after trees.)
The colonial critique of Israel is a legacy of Socialist Left critique, both Middle Eastern (Iraqi, Egyptian, Algerian Communist parties, Henri Alleg, Henri Curiel, Edmond el-Maleh) and not (Maxime Rodinson). Of the Palestinian documents that consider Israel as a secular colonialist phenomenon, the PLO Charter posits the assimilation of Palestinian Jews “prior to the Zionist invasion” as Palestinians. No one knows whether that means Jews born pre-Balfour, pre-Mandate, or pre-May 15, 1948, or their descendants. Nor has the PA provided citizenship to more than a handful of Jews, and it is generally not considered a sovereign power. In contrast, the State of Israel has reunited Palestinian families on a limited scale and ignored the illegal entry of others on a larger scale, such that possibly 100,000-150,000 post-1948 DPs became Israeli citizens by a claim (if it were made explicitly) of birthright citizenship or marriage or blood relation to a citizen. So “go home” has meant that Israel has been equipped, at least discursively, prior to the 2003 amendment to the citizenship law, to provide citizenship to returning Arabs and Jews, while remaining the state of citizenship of Israeli Jews in the OPTs. Many Israeli Jews are interested in EU citizenship, very few have acquired it as Poland, Germany, Hungary, Czech and Slovakia offer, and most Israeli/EU dual nationals are European-born.
Some of you may remember the series I wrote last year called What We Talk About (and Don’t Talk About) When We Talk About (and Don’t Talk About) antisemitism and Israel. I wrote it after the Israeli invasion of Gaza, but I think a lot of what I said–as well as the discussion that took place on my blog–is relevant now as well. (I posted the series on Alas as well, and the conversation here was interesting too.)
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Shoshie:
That’s your experience of discussions of colonialism. It’s an experience in the US – and at a guess it’s in areas without a significant indigenous population, and probably not the radical left.
The thing is that your experience of discussions of colonialism isn’t the only one. To suggest that it is is to limit the acceptable discourse in lots of ways (including US-centric ways, and minimising indigenous experiences). Like I said you haven’t experienced discussions of the legitimacy of the NZ state due to it’s colonial origins, but if you were on the NZ left you would have.
mythago – it wasn’t my analogy it was Shoshie’s. I was talking about the problems with using that analogy to shut down discussion, not inventing it whole cloth.
Also, You may think you know Helen Thomas’s intentions, but I do not. Her comments were unclear; even the ‘they’ that she is talking about has to be deduced from context. That’s why I deliberately talked about the effect of her comments, rather than her intentions. Her intentions are innaccessible to you, they also don’t matter.
I’m sorry Julie – I think my train of thought was much more of a tangent when I realised when I started writing it. I had quite a lot of different thoughts interacting, and I didn’t really how much this wasn’t about what you were taking about until it became a conversation. Let me know if you want it taken to an open thread.
Maia @34: Intentions? We’re talking about what she actually said. If a white person in America shouts “Go back home and pick cotton” at Obama, I guess one could argue we don’t know the white person’s intentions and perhaps they really weren’t referring to the long history of slavery, but were simply saying that Obama is really dumb and fit only for basic agricultural labor, but to make that argument one would either have to be absolutely ignorant of the history of slavery in the US, or disingenuous. In either case, the person’s intentions only “matter” when somebody is trying to defend their comments by inventing benign motivations.
Likewise, when Helen Thomas says that Jews should get out of Palestine and go ‘home’ to Germany and Poland, if we are going to assume that she couldn’t possibly have been making reference to the anti-Semitic trope of ‘Hitler should have finished the job’, then we have to assume she is so profoundly ignorant that she had absolutely no idea that these countries were ground zero for the massacre of millions of Jews. Similarly, it doesn’t matter what her intentions were unless one is attempting to defend or soften the impact of her comments by attributing benign motivations to her.
Some EU states (Germany until recently, Poland, Czech, Hungary, Slovakia, Greece) really will give citizenship to foreign-born Jews who can prove at least one grandparent was a national, under the general scheme of their WW2 refugee ethnic nationals laws. Greece, interestingly, lists religion on the ID card, since the population overwhelmingly rejected the removal of the listing “Greek Orthodox” on the card for the overwhelming majority of citizens. Somehow, I don’t think “become EU citizens” was Thomas’s intent. Also, Israel IS the state of citizenship of the mass of Mizrahi Jews in Israel, and one would want to avoid a situation in which non-Western Jews became stateless as Mozabite Jews did on Algerian independence. Either someone is going to make Holy Land-born Jews Palestinians, which the PLO Charter hems and haws on, or they’re going to remain Israelis, or be ethnically cleansed.
I should say that I don’t think the Jewish hostility towards “send them home” rhetoric directed towards Jews (in Israel or otherwise — after all, as folks on this blog are aware, Jews outside of Israel can and have been told such things as “Die, bitch, go back to Israel”, indicating that the rhetorical trope is somewhat indifferent as to whether Israel should be considered the occupation Jews should be expelled from, or the “home” they should be expelled to) is really predicated on how prevalent “analogous” discourse towards Americans or New Zealanders or Australians is in coffee shops or radical forums or dorm room bull sessions or academic conferences or popular minority resistance cultures.
That, to my mind, is overly abstract. It is, to borrow from Bonhoffer, “cheap grace” — even if it were a commonly recited philosophical argument that, say, (White? Non-native?) Americans should return to “where they came from” (or that such a statement is legitimate), it would be of minimal import given the widespread recognition that such a proposal has precisely zero chance of being actualized.
Rather, as has been expressed upthread, the strong reaction by Jews against the “go back where you came from” rhetoric is based not on its cohesion (or lack thereof) to some abstract principle, but due to its status as a credible threat, backed by a related credible threat of extreme, potentially genocidal violence, which has considerably more than a zero percent chance of being actualized, and which in fact is directly causing oppressive threat and violence right now. Consequently, persons indulging in that rhetoric, or apologizing for it, or seeking to divert the debate into questions of abstract philosophical principle, are demonstrating themselves to be (at best ) unaware and/or indifferent to the concrete position Jews live in the world today, with the concrete consequences such ideas bring alongside them.
When I hear Helen Thomas say Jews should get the hell out of Israel, I can’t help but hear the implied threat: “And if you don’t ….”, because unlike my status as an American (no matter how common or uncommon similar rhetoric geared towards Americans might become), that threat is quite real and salient. I also can’t help but hear it alongside the chants of the York University students who said that Jews should, in essence, get the hell out of Canada (with the mob providing a considerably-less-than-implied “And if you don’t….”). And when I hear folks try and divert the discussion away from the concrete experience and threat of violence these words impress upon the Jewish people, I become yet more convinced of the necessity of that which they are decrying.
I’m not sure I agree that you’re summing up the thoughts of Jews in general here. For myself, I think Thomas’ statement was disgusting, but I don’t think they represented or implied a credible threat.
I was referring to, inter alia Chingona @22, 24. and 26.
And I do think the threat is “credible”, not in the sense that I expect Helen Thomas to pick up an M-16, but in the sense that there is a non-trivial chance that Jews could be expelled from Israel (or the various other places where folks want to expel them from), and that such expulsion would likely be accompanied by violence, and a non-trivial chance that persons in Thomas’ camp (or sympathetic thereto) will not stand with us in such a situation.
Indeed, one of the reasons that I think passions run so high on this issue is that it is a very rare situation where folks believe such a proposal (“send the colonizer back”) is a credible outcome. We may not be able to get the Anglos out of New York, or the Chinese out of Tibet, or the Whites out of South Africa, but it seems within the realm of possibility that we could get the Jews out of Palestine. We may not be able to end the Chinese or Iranian or Algerian or Brazilian or German nation-state, but the Jewish nation-state may actually be dismantable. The Jews feel the same way, but it fills them with dread rather than excitement. Both of these — thrill and fear — are powerful emotions. And they are so powerful because folks realize they’re playing the game for real here .
In any event, this explanation seems significantly more plausible about why so many Jews are so fearful of folks yelling at them to “get the hell out of [PLACE]” — an actual expectation of violence, pain, and death that in their experience accompanies such exhortations. This is only amplified, of course, when half the crowd is saying “Get the hell out of X, go to Y” and the other half is saying “Get the hell out of Y, go to X.”
Well, I do think the chance of that happening is trivial. Israel’s military abilities far outstrips that of Palestine, and in fact that of all its neighbors, and all its neighbors combined. Nor is it plausible that the US would fail to take Israel’s side in such a scenario. And let’s not forget that Israel has nukes (because any hypothetical invaders of Israel-in-general would certainly keep that in mind themselves).
I think it’s the memory of the Holocaust, and also of pogroms, which justifiably make “get out of X” comments seem especially hard when said to Jews.
That may be right (as you know, I am less confident in this as an infinite, invulnerable hedge than you are), although for the purpose of this discussion (why the bulk of Jews react the way they do to this line of argument), it matters less what you or I personally think, or even what is “objectively” plausible, than what the bulk of folks believe (subjectively) to be true or plausible. And I think it is definitely true that many Jews do have these fears, about Israel, and sometimes about where they live now (if not Israelis themselves). And I also think the rhetoric coming out of the destroy (and I mean destroy) Israel crowd also seems to indicate that they do not think they are pursuing a pipe dream.
That being said, I also think that the specific history of Jews, namely our experience on the receiving end of various expulsions, genocides, pogroms, and the like, is obviously important — but I would group that in with my belief that the critical issue here is concrete Jewish experience and fears, rather than the relative presence or absence in various fora of some broad normative claim that it is okay to send “the colonizers” (or their descendents) “back where they came from”.
I definitely agree that “many Jews do have these fears,” but I don’t know if “the bulk of Jews” do.
Regarding your second paragraph, agreed.
ETA: This is a minor point, but I don’t have to believe that Israel’s obvious military superiority is “an infinite, invulnerable hedge” to find the existential threat to Israel non-credible; I just have to believe that it makes the odds of complete and utter conquest of Israel extremely low.
Extremely low is not the same as “infinitely” low.
One of the things Israeli security wargamers do is look at the concrete scenario in which a civil war in an Arab country (Lebanon) was brought to a conclusion by a general peace, the Ta’if Accord, and one in which a grudging modus vivendi has obtained, Iraqi Kurdistan, and look for military, political, and discursive similarities and differences with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, w/respect to Israeli-citizen Palestinians and West Bank Palestinians, in a one- or two-state scenario. Certainly no Palestinian discourse about one-state citizenship by a real political actor has ever included Jews in any meaningful way, unless one regards the PLO Charter as a blueprint. Within the context of Iraq, non-Jewish Kurds have a legitimacy to a national claim and citizenship that Jewish Kurds were never allowed, either in the context of Iraq or Israel, while Jewish Lebanese were the only community exiled in toto long before Ta’if. Only Morocco has a continuing discourse of Jewish belonging, as “servants of the King.” So the “Jews out of al-Maghreb, and as-Sharq” has been done, to be followed by “Jews out of Falastin.”
In short, even when Arab-majority societies included a minority with a national claim in a peace settlement, those minorities were ones with a long-recognized discursive claim to either their own nationalism or national belonging, while the Jews, who were never allowed Zionism or national belonging, joined the powerless Diasporas of Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians as victims of massacre, expulsion, and exile and little else.
Well, yes, especially when those comments explicitly and deliberately invoke the Holocaust and pogroms by suggesting that the places Jews should “get back” to are Germany and Poland.
Whether or not the “get out of X” threat is hugely credible – less so in the US, probably – it is far more credible a threat than, say, a Native American telling a white person “go back to England”.