David at The Debate Link has responded to my post on Chomsky and Holocaust Denial. Although David is a nice guy and one of my favorite bloggers, I think his response misses the target, both factually and persuasively.
Since my response is a bit long, I will split it into two parts. But before I get started, it’s important that I describe what I mean when I write “anti-Semitism.” As I use the term, anti-Semitism refers to:
1. Animus against Jews and Judaism.
2. Belief in degrading stereotypes about Jews and Judaism.
3. Support for rules, laws or principles that discriminate against Jews (i.e., “country-club anti-Semitism”).
There’s a overlapping-yet-distinct concept, which I’ll call “gentile-centrism.” Gentile-centrism refers to worldviews and institutions which assume that everyone is a gentile, thus marginalizing or making invisible non-gentiles, including Jews. So, for example, if a school gives everyone Christmas and Easter off but schedules final exams on the first two days of Passover, that’s gentile-centrism.
Definitions done, let’s respond to David.
Part 1. Chomsky, Chomsky, Chomsky.
David admits that Chomsky is no Holocaust revisionist, but writes:
I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the holocaust. Nor would there be anti-Semitic implications, per se, in the claim that the holocaust (whether one believes it took place or not) is being exploited, viciously so, by apologists for Israeli repression and violence.
That’s a shocking quote – indeed, years from now someone might point out I “defended” this quote to prove I’m an anti-Semite. (Wouldn’t be the first time; I’ve been compared to a Nazi for some of my cartoons which criticize Israel). Nonetheless:
1) David implies that this quote came after Chomsky said “we lose our humanity if we are even willing to enter the arena of debate with those who seek to deny or underplay Nazi crimes.” Actually, the “I see no anti-Semitic implications….” quote came about a decade before the quote about the Holocaust.
2) Chomsky’s point (as he has explained it) was, as a matter of strict logic, Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism are distinct. So, for example, “if a person ignorant of modern history were told of the Holocaust and refused to believe that humans are capable of such monstrous acts, we would not conclude that he is an anti-Semite.” That seems like rather cold logic to me – but Chomsky, a professor at M.I.T., is known for cold logic.
3) David’s quote comes from private correspondence to a Chomsky critic, published without Chomsky’s permission. This is usually considered an unfair practice, for good reason. When writing in private, most people don’t write as carefully or defensively as they do when writing for publication, because of time constraints and because of the good-faith assumption that the quote will never have to be understood apart from full context.
This is typical of how criticism of Chomsky works. Every word Chomsky says or writes – and Chomsky is ridiculously prolific – is fine-combed for evidence of anti-Semitism and (when they can’t find that) for evidence of having failed to criticize anti-Semitism. When a quote that makes Chomsky look bad is found – even from a dubious source, like an out-of-context snippet from decades-old private correspondence – it is republished thousands of times. If one conference speaker out of hundreds of conferences Chomsky has spoken at is an anti-Semite, that is taken as proof of Chomsky’s guilt. Every word that indicates the opposite – no matter how much more fair or clear – is dismissed, as David himself dismisses what Chomsky has actually said about Holocaust denial.
This is actually quite similar to how Al Gore was smeared as a pathological liar and race-baiter, or how Catherine MacKinnon has been smeared as a man-hater. No one who says and writes billions of words in public can possibly match a standard that says “if you ever say something that can be twisted when quoted out of context, that proves you’re a bigot.”
David, however, advocates an even harsher standard for Chomsky, writing “To be fair, the evidence seems mixed–but really, is this an issue where there should even be mixed signals?” So if a fine-tooth comb search of a lifetime of work comes up with two or three instances of “mixed signals” (such as defending the free-speech rights of an anti-Semite) , according to David, that’s proof that Chomsky allies himself with Holocaust deniers.
To answer David, yes, we should require more than “mixed signals” before we slander someone with this most serious of accusations. Ticking-bomb scenarios aside, there is no reasonable standard that says “the more serious the accusation, the less important it is to find clear evidence.” We do not, for instance, require less evidence to find someone guilty of murder than of jaywalking, on the grounds that murder is so important an issue that even mixed evidence should be enough.
Why has Chomsky been the subject of so much venom? I suspect it’s partly because Chomsky is a Jew who criticizes Israel. David, explaining why he objects to blacks calling other blacks “race traitor,” once wrote:
Similarly, the attempt to paint Chomsky as an ally of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial is an attempt by pro-Israel Jews to make Jewish critics of Israel into non-Jews. As David went on, in that earlier post:
So for blacks to call other blacks “race traitors,” based on political disagreements, is an unfair and terrible thing. But when Jews say (or at least, strongly imply) that other Jews support Holocaust-denial and anti-Semitism, based on a political disagreement about Israel, that’s okay?
David denies he’s trying to expel Chomsky and other Jewish critics of Israel from the Jewish community – but when the exact same techniques are used in the black community, he labels that “stripping them of their blackness.” Yet there is no logical distinction between the two acts.
Part 2. Anti-Semitism in the U.S. Today.
In the post David is replying to, I wrote (emphasis added):
Here is David’s response (emphasis added):
David has made an interesting rhetorical move here. I mentioned Pappe to show that supporting a boycott is not by definition “anti-Semitic or supporting Holocaust denial.” David says I must be wrong, because Pappe is not (in David’s opinion) “pro-Israel” and “pro-Jew.” See how David changed the target? David’s slip – whether David intended it or not – implies that to not be anti-Semitic, one must be pro-Israel; and that not being pro-Israel is the equivalent of being anti-Jew and a Holocaust denier.
My point stands untouched by David’s response. Pappe does not display animus against Jews; nor has Pappe, a Israeli Jewish historian, ever denied the Holocaust. David didn’t even attempt to show any anti-Jewish animus or denial of the Holocaust on Pappe’s part. Indeed, David cannot show any, because none exists.
Faced with an inability to support his argument with logic or evidence, David sidestepped the issue: Pappe is not “pro-Jew” and “pro-Israel,” because Pappe favors a binational solution for Israel and Palestine.
(What is a “binational solution,” you ask? From Wikipedia: “Proponents of a binational solution to the conflict advocate a common state in historic Palestine shared between Jewish and Arab populations. All of the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be annexed to Israel, with their Palestinian Arab inhabitants given citizenship and an equal status to the Jewish and Arab citizens of present-day Israel. The new state would have a secular character rather than being dominated by Judaism or Islam.”)
A lot of people – including Chomsky, incidentally – have argued that a two-state solution (meaning two separate states, Israel and Palestine) is better than a binational solution, and that the dream of a binational state simply won’t work. Regardless, it doesn’t logically follow that believing Jews and Arabs can share a state in peace and harmony – which is what Professor Pappe advocates – means being “anti-Jew.”
Nor does suggesting that Israel should stop being “a Jewish state” make a speaker anti-Jewish. (I don’t think that any state should have an official religion, nor give special legal rights to any group based solely on race, ethnicity, religion, or cultural background [*]; does that make me anti-Islamic and anti-Christian, as well as anti-Jew?)
David’s argument conflates disagreement about Israel with anti-Semitism; he is, to coin a phrase, “defining anti-Semitism down in order to make it a political tool.” If David and others succeed in this task, the effect will be to make it impossible to take “anti-Semitism” seriously; once anti-Semitism just means criticism of the Israeli government, rather than animus against Jews, then what on Earth is wrong with being anti-Semitic?
David continues:
David’s formulation makes sense only if one assumes that society has been static for the last 60 years. But society is not static; David ignores how the growing revulsion and disgust at the Holocaust, in the decades following the Holocaust, led to a widespread rejection of anti-Semitism among many Americans. The fact that the Holocaust happened 60 years ago does not, in and of itself, prove anything one way or the other about US society today.
Is there pervasive and structural anti-Semitism in our society, like there is with racism? Only in the broadest sense: that is, racism exists, and anti-Semitism too exists. But it doesn’t mean that the two are at all the same. The reason progressives of my generation are, by and large, less concerned with U.S anti-Semitism than with racism is because U.S. anti-Semitism is a comparitively minor problem.
Which isn’t to say that anti-Semitism doesn’t exist, or doesn’t matter. I see implicit anti-Semitism (or at least, gentile-centrism) in a lot of anti-New York rhetoric; in the absence of Jewish characters on big and small screen, and in the prejudice against Jewish characters who look and sound like my relatives (which is to say, who are identifiably Jewish); in the way that Jews, although considered suitable for many powerful positions, are – it goes without saying – not viable candidates for President; in the flat-nose blond-hair pale-complexion standard of beauty that still has too much currency in our society; in the mindless belief that Hanukkah is “the Jewish Christmas”; in a dominant religion that says all Jews will burn in Hell, and that’s justice; and so on.
But let’s face it, the harms anti-Semitism has done to my generation of American Jews are generally small. I’ve run into a few anti-Semites (defined as expressing animus towards Jews, or endorsing anti-Semitic myths) in my life, mostly online. I’ve pined for the lack of recognizable Jews on TV and in movies. I have facial features (hook nose, full lips) which, even if I were “acceptably” thin, would prevent me from being considered very handsome. That’s about it.
Let’s contrast that with earlier generations. My father told me that as a kid he was beaten by gangs who were angry to have a Jew in their school. My grandfather was expelled from college for being a communist at a time when “communism” and “Jewish” were considered synonymous. And my grandparent’s generation faced the Holocaust – let’s not forget that even in the US, there were plenty of mainstream, ordinary Americans who thought Hitler had a point about “the Jewish problem.”
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that U.S. anti-Semitism is vastly reduced from what it was.
David wrote that “anti-Semitism is the central issue in the Israel/Palestine debate”[**] – that is, the central reason Western academics criticize Israel is anti-Semitism. David is assuming what is at issue. Putting the particular example of Chomsky aside, at the core of our disagreement is the question of whether or not anti-Semitism is the prime reason lefty academics criticise Israel; David doesn’t prove anything merely by stating his conclusion.
Unfortunately, David doesn’t say much to support his idea that anti-Semitism is central to Western academic criticism of Israel. The only real argument I could make out in his post was a reference to the old “only an anti-Semite would focus criticism on Israel” chestnut, which I think I adequately responded to in this post from 2002.
It’s also worth noting that if you define anti-Semitism to mean animus against Jews and belief in anti-Jewish stereotypes, the least anti-Semitic place in America is a college campus. I wonder how David reconciles that fact with his belief that anti-Semitism runs wild among Western academics who criticize Israel?
* * *
[*] Does that mean I oppose affirmative action? No. Affirmative action is not motivated by racism per se, but by the desire to remove the effects of historic and ongoing racism; just as a surgeon cutting open a stabbing victim is distinct from the criminal who stabbed the victim, affirmative action is distinct from racism.
[**] In a later post, David allowed that Palestinians “on the ground” might consider some other issue – presumably, the human rights of Palestinians – central. David neglects to explain why it’s inconceivable that academics in the U.S. might consider the human rights of Palestinians central, as well.
Pingback: feminist blogs
Excellent post, Amp. If I understand you, then the belief of some Christian groups that there has to be an Israel in order for the Second Coming to occur (after which all the Jews living there will go straight to Hell) is not anti-Semitic but rather gentile-centric. I had wondered what to call it….
So you support removing Christmas and Easter as federal holidays, right? Because that is certainly giving Christians a right (they don’t need to use their vacation or take unpaid leave for their religious holidays) that people of other religions don’t have.
And I think you’ve been lucky in your experiences of anti-Semitism; though it is not *as much* a problem as racism, in part this is because most Jews can “pass” as Christians, what with increasing secularisation.
I think, though I can’t prove this, that there is *more* criticism of Israel, overall, than other regimes which act as badly or worse, in the Middle East and elsewhere (not just among lefty academics). And though each individual researcher might have entirely unbiased reasons for choosing Israel to focus on, the aggregate of it suggests a base level anti-Semitism. (“Jews should act better than anyone else” is not an unbiased remark.)
Lee says:
I disagree. “When we say you’re all going to do die to make room for us, it’s not because we hate you, it’s because we love ourselves.” Bullshit.
Amp, these issues are hugely complex. I do agree with you that, while people supporting binationalism are anti-Zionist and anti-Israel (not that it isn’t a solution, though it’s definitely not the one I’d choose), they’re not really anti-Semitic, unless of course, you assume that all Jews would be murdered should they find themselves in the minority.
I completely agree that you can criticize Israel without being anti-Semitic or even anti-Israel. On the other hand, much of the way that I engage critically with the racism and misogyny that I can’t quite get out is to think about what intentions and motivations I ascribe to the person/people I’m thinking about. Do some people who criticize Israel see Israelis as being motivated by greed and racism? I don’t know the answer to that question, but dismissing it entirely would be unfortunate. Do a lot of Americans see the invasion of Iraq as fundamentally racist in that it places very little value on Arab life? I think so, but then again, that’s much more blatant. And the “threat” posed to the US by terrorism hardly warrants the benefit of the doubt.
I think that part of the issue with Palestine/Israel is that there are so many stories that it’s hard to know what to believe. What one believes comes through one’s filters and bias.
As for divestment, sure it’s fair to say, “I don’t want my money involved in this.” And Israel and the US do have a very strong relationship as far as the governments go. Ideally, I’d like all governments that the US supports to be pressured to stop whatever abuses they’re guilty of (frickin’ Plan Colombia, anyone????)
On the other hand, divestment is really really unlikely to work with Israel. First off, it’s important to note that there are dynamics in which support for divestment *does* stem from anti-Semitism or manifest in anti-Semitic ways. Unfortunately, I don’t have very good examples for this, but it happened in the town I live in (as I was moving here, so I’m not that familiar with it).
Second, aside from the question of anti-Semitism, divestment is highly ineffective. Yes, making it not worth it for the Israeli government to try to hold on to the territories makes it less likely they’ll try to do so. However, in some ways, the financial aspect of this is the easiest to address and the least effective. The Israeli survivalist tendency is to entrench, not to retreat. Divestment makes Israelis feel more attacked. Will having fewer tanks, helicopter gunships, and Caterpillars make it harder to continue the occupation? Sure. But call me silly, but I think making it easier to make peace should be a priority over making it harder to make war. Yes, I theory you can do both at once. But leading reconciliation trips, for example, is a much more effective form of investment rather than divestment.
What makes many of these arguments “anti-Semetic” is the entirely predictable outcome of them — merging Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews into a single nation will result in the eradication of Israeli Jews and the loss of a nation which is “home” (potentially …) to all Jews.
I think, though I can’t prove this, that there is *more* criticism of Israel, overall, than other regimes which act as badly or worse, in the Middle East and elsewhere (not just among lefty academics). And though each individual researcher might have entirely unbiased reasons for choosing Israel to focus on, the aggregate of it suggests a base level anti-Semitism.
You know, I’ve always kind of seen this as the result of racism, but not in the way that you’re suggesting. In America, over the past 50 years I think Jews have moved from being considered a non-white race or ethnicity to being considered by many–if not most–as fully white now. So I think a lot of Americans also view Israel as a “white” country (in the same way that most European countries are considered “white”, no matter what the proportion of other races actually is). Any country that is considered a “white” country is held to a much higher standard, in my opinion because of racist ideas about the inherently savage nature of non-white people that even leftist, liberal people buy into.
So, when we see news about another genocide in Africa: par for the course.
When we see news about an Israeli soldier accidently or intentionally shooting a child: horrified, I would argue in much the same way that we would be horrified by a child being shot by an American cop. The problem isn’t necessarily that the standards for Israel are too high, but that our standards for all the surrounding Arab countries are too low. Israel is considered part of the civilized, Western nations in a way that many other countries are simply not.
Matan, huh? I was not talking about exterminating the Jews to make room for anybody else, I was talking about how some groups of Christians are staunch supporters of Israel because they believe that the End of the World As We Know It will not happen unless there is a Jewish state of Israel in existence. But many of these same groups also believe that the Jews (and anybody else who does not believe in Jesus as their Savior) will go straight to Hell at that point in time. And according to Amp’s post, if I understand him correctly, this is a gentile-centric view of things, not an anti-Semitic view of things. Were you referring to my comment or his as bullshit?
AB, I think that you’re partly right about Israel being seen as more Western and civilized than the rest of the Middle East. But I’m not sure that it’s because Jews in general are now viewed as white so much as they have become “the other white” – not really white, but close enough for government work. Which might be why we don’t see very many obviously Jewish characters on TV or in the movies (unless they are in New York or Florida). I don’t know how we should count portrayals of Hasidic Jews, because to me that appears to be a tactic for the director to include Jews in a very visually obvious way. (And is it gentile-centric to have the only Jewish characters in a TV show always be Hasidic Jews?)
OK, fine. Maybe you didn’t directly say that this view involves wishing all Jews exterminated to make room for a Christian Kingdom. But look, having people encourage you to set things up such that, when they finally get their way, your soul is going to spend the rest of existence in damnation is just a touch hateful.
As I read it, what Amp was saying about being gentile-centric is just not focusing on Jews or ignoring them or unthinkingly setting things up in ways that neglect their needs. Having Christmas be a national holiday, but not Yom Kippur, is gentile-centric. No, I don’t necessarily think it’s that important to change it, but it does make it a pain in the ass to get time off from work for the times I care about. As I understand what Amp’s saying(and IMO this is the only in which which it be justified) gentile-centrism is inwardly-directed. Once you have people getting brimstoned for disagreeing with you, I think you’ve shown your true colors.
Is that really so hard to see?
Lee, I agree that there’s still a bit of cultural confusion about the “whiteness” of Jews, and in my opinion it’s largely generational. I do think that it’s headed in the direction of Jews eventually being considered as unambiguously white in America–in the same way that the Irish and the Italians were once not-white but became white. (And I would say that becoming white doesn’t necessarily mean that stereotypes go away–drunk Irish? mob-member Italians, anyone?–but that they stop being seen as “racial” slurs, and more as insults to one’s heritage or religion, which I do think is a bit different.)
AB writes:
Or ethnicity.
And this is all for European-descended (Ashkenazi) Jews. Jews from Arab countries (Mizrahim) have a whole different blend of racism to deal with, both within and without Israel.
*Disclaimer*: Not a subject I’m really familiar with.
So I have two questions. I’m not sure that gentile-centric is the phrase I’d use to describe having Christmas as a National Holiday. I’d distinguish between assuming everyone is a Christian and assuming that no-one’s Jewish, if that makes any sense. To me describing Christmas as a National Holiday as Gentile-centric implies that everyone who isn’t Christian is Jewish, which is problematic.
Why is this anti-semitic? Many religions don’t have states, nations, or homes.
I will grant you that Israelis are considered “white enough”, though not fully real (=white and Christian, read narrowly). But I don’t think it’s enough to explain why it gets that much more press than so many other countries; part of this, I argue, is due to a low-level anti-semitism in much of western culture. (I think that the US and anglophone Canada have the least of it, with the possible exception of Australia and NZ, because I don’t know enough about Jews there. But it certainly exists, and if you don’t notice it in your day-to-day life, then you’re lucky, and probably living in a very liberal area going to very liberal schools.)
Having Christmas and Easter as national holidays are showing a distinct preference for Christians (read as the widest possible reading of Christian).If you prefer the term Christian-centric instead of gentile-centric, the point is the same. (There are a number of good discussions about what this means from December.)
Jews will be unambiguously white when they don’t ask to wear funny little hats (worse yet, those big furry hats and big black coats all the time), or have days off in September or October for those holidays with weird names, or note that they don’t really show up in popular culture . . .
Great post, Amp, but I have a question: Why do you want to make a distinction between anti-Semitism and “gentile-centrism?” I realize you back away from this distinction a little bit towards the end of your post, but I want to explore it a little further.
I think I understand the two phenomenon you want to separate, with anti-Semitism being more conscious and active a thing and gentile-centrism being something that can arise out of an innocent ignorance simpy because one has never met a Jew, and if we were talking about a culture in which no Jews lived and in which no information about Jews–positive, negative, anti-Semitic or otherwise–ever reached the inhabitants, I would agree with you that, say, the invisibility of Jews in that culture was the result of something other than anti-Semitism. But Jews do live in the United States; we have been living here for a long time; and there is simply no excuse for anyone anywhere in this country to be as naively ignorant as people from the culture I just imagined.
To be more specific, while the invisibility of Jews on TV, let’s say, should clearly not be talked about as if it were the same thing as the kind of racial violence and discrimination that Blacks and Latinos experience, isn’t it fair to say that the Jewish invisibility we’re talking about is nonetheless rooted in the more overt anti-Semitism that you rightly point out is not the kind of problem it was fifty and sixty years ago. (Though I also have to say that I have been beaten up and my family harassed because we were pretty much the only Jews, and since I went to yeshiva, we were the most visible Jews in an otherwise all-Christian town.) In other words, unless you want to argue that what you are calling gentile-centrism is an entirely distinct phenomenon, that the difference between that and anti-Semitism is one of kind, not degree, why make the distinction at all? Indeed, one could argue that to make the distinction is to lose the connection of gentile-centrism to anti-Semitism and thus dehistoricize the phenomenon in a way that can only be harmful.
(A related question that I do not mean as a baiting one: Do you make the same kind of distinction when you talk about racism and sexism? In other words, would you say that the invisibility of Blacks in certain kinds of advertisements that was prevalent when I was a kid resulted from white ethnocentrism, and that this was a separate phenomenon from the racism that was all around me?)
Two other things.
1. You wrote:
The term in the Jewish community that is analogous to “race traitor” is “self-hating Jew,” which, as you rightly pointo it, is a kind of non- or anti-Jew. If you want to read a marvelous history of where this term comes from and how it has been used by Jews and Christians alike to pathologize Jews, try Sander Gilman’s Jewish Self-Hatred.
2. wolfa wrote:
For a long time, I don’t know if this is true any longer, Egypt was second only to Israel in the amount of foreign aid it received from the US, and the human rights record of Egyptian governments for the past 60 years or so has certainly not been stellar. Yet I never remember Egypt being held up along with Israel or by itself for criticism by the left the way Israel was and continues to be. While I have no proof that this was consciously anti-Semitic, as opposed to an honest attempt to prioritize the issues the left should have been dealing with, it certainly looked like Israel–and, by extension, any Jew who believed in Israel’s right to exist–was being held to a double standard.
Personally, I think all nationalism’s are ultimately more destructive than constructive, and I don’t think Jewish nationalism is any different. Indeed, if you go back and read what the Zionists were writing in the nineteenth century, you will find many of tropes that were used by the Nazis–the notion of the folk, the connection to the land, the purity of youth and the need to separate from older, self-hating or at least self-destructive ways of being Jewish. Now, please, I am not saying that Zionism is the same as Nazism. Let me say that again: I am not claiming that Zionism is the same thing as Nazism, if by that statement is meant an equivalence between the Final Solution and any program that Zionists have put forward for establishing and maintaining a Jewish State. But to deny that both are forms of nationalism and that the impulses that drove both groups towards those nationalisms are very similar is to deny history.
Chomsky is a self-hating Jew. He is way too friendly with the American Neo-Nazi movement for my taste. Secondly he has equated Israel and America to being equally as evil as HITLER. That is absurd. Hitler is up there with Joseph Stalin for the most evil people of the 20th century (and maybe in history).
He completely discredited himself with his Leftisit dogman.
Hey, folks, sorry I haven’t been very responsive – I’ve been doing a lot of things today (work, babysitting, sleeping) that keep me offline. And I’ve only got a few minutes now. So, briefly:
Lee, I’ve gotta agree with Matrin on the Jews in Hell issue. As I interpret it, the belief that all Jews go to hell is indeed anti-Semitic, and not merely gentile-centric. Believing all Jews justly burn in Hell is a form of “Support for rules, laws or principles that discriminate against Jews.” It’s a kind of anti-Semitism which is so commonplace that it’s invisible, but it’s anti-Semitic nontheless.
In my opinion, anyhow.
* * *
Wolfa, I don’t support removing Christmas and Easter as federal holidays. Given that a huge proportion of the folks in this country celebrate Christmas and/or Easter, making those nationwide holidays is a perfectly reasonable accomidation, in my view.
* * *
Reddecca wrote:
That’s not how I mean the term “gentile-centric,” for what it’s worth. I think of it as a term that refers to the exclusion of not only Jews, but also athiests, Islamics, Buddists, etc., from the assumed norms.
* * *
Richard, as always, thank you for your very thoughtful comments. I’ve got to leave in a minute, so I can’t answer all you wrote, and there are some folks here I haven’t answered at all.
But the reason I distinguish anti-Semitism from gentile-centrism is that anti-Semitism (as I use the word) is a kind of bigotry directed against Jews in particular. Gentile-centrism, in contrast, is father-ranging, because it’s a kind of bigotry against everyone who isn’t a Christian.
Gotta run! Sorry to everyone I didn’t reply to!
Amp, you wrote:
Fair enough, and in a way I like this because it gets at the way what I would prefer to call Christian ethnocentrism–just because it sounds better–is as pervasive as the racial privileging of whiteness. I also know you have more to say so please understand that I don’t mean this question as a criticism of something you wrote quickly, but I still wonder about the historicity of anti-Semitism, and I will be curious to see how this gets played out in your response: Anti-Semitism has a very specific history in Christian Europe, and this history was continued here in the States when the Jews came over. Check out Dinnerstein’s Anti-Semitism in America for a good overview of this. So even though, as I said above, I like what you mean by gentile-centrism, I still wonder about whether or not that dehistoricizes things that are clearly linked historically to European Christian anti-Semitism.
And now I will shut up and wait for you to respond more fully when you have the time :) I am off to be with my sick son at home.
Pingback: The Debate Link
Amp, then you do think that the state should give special rights to Christians — federal holidays for their religious holidays — that they do not give to anyone else. Whatever your reasoning is, this is a special right that is given only to Christians, which you support. As such, I don’t see how you can say “But it’s wrong for Israel to give special rights to Jews, because all special rights are wrong” without being hugely hypocritical. (It’s convenient that Jews have a country where they are in the large majority and can have their holidays off, too!)
Amp said:
Ouch. Not about the agreement thing, about the name thing. It’s an Israeli name, by the way. It’s not common; you wouldn’t have seen it before. But I’ve commented loads of times, especially in this thread.
Yes, I realize I’m being grouchy, but it’s a sore point for me, because non-English names get shit on in this country.
I know that wasn’t how you intended Gentile-centricism, but it just has those implications for me. It’s not that I don’t think it’s useful in certain circumstances, but I’d want a more robust term.
It’s not a particularly useful comparison, but inside New Zealand I use Pakeha (which is Maori for European) all the time, and use Palangi occasionally (Pacific Island for the same – although I most use that when I’m referring to myself, or someone else, as a stupid Palangi). But I’d never use either of those terms outside of these circles. I’d probably still call myself Pakeha, even if I wasn’t in New Zealand, but I certainly wouldn’t call anyone else Pakeha, because they’re not. To me, calling Christians gentiles has the same implications.
And I’ve thread drifted – I feel a need to get on topic. I’m always intimidated by writing about Israel, because I feel I’m never quite on top of the facts. So failing useful thoughts of my own I’ll recommend this Naomi Klein article. I read it a while ago, but I think it really does a good job of drawing some of the connections. She doesn’t appear to have said (here, but she may have said it elsewhere) what I wanted to quote, which is saying that there are two reasons to equate Israel with Judaism, either because your a zionist, or because you’re an anti-semite. But I think that’s an important point.
from reddecca’s last comment:
A very important point, though I think you also have to add that equating Israel with Judaism is not the same thing as claiming the existence of Israel as a Jewish state as part of a Jewish identity, because Jewish identity–which will always may entail a specific, or at least ideosyncratic stance towards Judaism–is not the same thing as Judaism.
On the Jews-burning-in-Hell issue:
Catholics do not believe that Jews go to Hell. The basic Catholic position is that all individuals of good faith who strive to do God’s will and act ethically can achieve salvation; Christian, Jew, or pagan. It’s a lot easier to do that if you’re following Jesus, but it’s not impossible to get to Albuquerque via a different route. In addition to that, the Jews have a special status, because the promises which God made to the Jews are not breakable or broken.
It’s a bit more complicated for the Protestants, who have generally held a more Christ-and-Christ-only view of salvation. But even there, the post-millenial dispensationalists who are being held up as avatars of Christianity (they’re the folks who think that Israel has to exist as a precondition for the Second Coming) believe that 144,000 living Jews will be taken directly to Heaven, in addition to all the good Christians who’ve been saved. (Someone has to run the delis and accounting firms in heaven.)
It should be acknowledged that these are relatively recent historical developments. It took a long time for the church to become reconciled to the fact that not everybody was going to get on the Jesus train, and longer still to recognize that this may well be what God had in mind.
Hugo might have better information than I on what the more donut-and-social-club Protestants think. Probably something vague and involving a lot of handwaving. ;)
BTW, Matan, don’t take it personally. Amp is lucky to spell his own name right. Smart, yes. Orthographically talented, not so much.
wolfa: Amp, then you do think that the state should give special rights to Christians … federal holidays for their religious holidays … that they do not give to anyone else. Whatever your reasoning is, this is a special right that is given only to Christians, which you support. As such, I don’t see how you can say “But it’s wrong for Israel to give special rights to Jews, because all special rights are wrong” without being hugely hypocritical.
I don’t pretend to represent Ampersand, but I agree with his position so I’ll offer my response anyway. My take on why Christmas and Easter (and, for that matter, Sundays) should remain federal days off runs something like this:
1) Given that a politifcal community is likely to have a number of religious and cultural traditions, one of which is a (sizeable) majority….
2) It is philosophically attractive but politically and sociologically highly naive (as well as impractical) to expect the government of that society to successfully acheive true and complete neutrality with respect to different traditions in all possible areas.
3) Therefore, the interests of justice for minority cultures and religions are best served not by engaging in the fruitless struggle for an implausible neutrality (which may have the unfortunate side effect of producing a backlash against that minority group), but rather by insisting on some sort of “reasonable accomodation” standard for their own group.
4) So, for example, the public university I teach at takes Christmas off, as does just about every school in the country, public or private. And, when a Muslim or Jew lets the instructor know they’ll need a scheduled class day off for their own religious holidays, we excuse the absense, reschedule exams, and make other accomodations as appropriate. Me, and most of my colleagues, do it willingly and cheerfully, as we recognize the fundamental justice of the request. Is it perfect? No, probably not, but given the social context it’s about as strong of a solution as one could reasonably expect.
(If anyone wants to see this argument made formally and at some length and more articulately, they should look up Will Kymlicka, a Canadian philosopher whom I’m liberally cribbing from here).
I also don’t think that having a federal holiday coincide with a religious holiday constitutes a “special right” or a right of any sort. It’s a “special convenient privilege” perhaps but it’s not a right under the bill of rights or any coherent theory of human rights I’ve ever seen. Everything we get from a government by virtue of a particular group membership isn’t by definition a right. I would never say that Christians (and Jews) get a special right to subsidized (through tax exemption) buildings to hang out with like-minded folk. This may seem like a semantic point but I think the concept of “rights” is a powerful one and we need to use it very carefully. We don’t care for it when the other side throws around the concept of “special rights” casually and imprecisely. (I also, for the record, don’t think the use of Jewish symbolism in Israel constitutes “special rights” for Jews, although I think Israel (like all de facto multicultural states) should practice some sort of reasonable accomodation standard for its religious and cultural minorities. I don’t know enough about Israel to know how much or how satisfactorally they do this.
First, I want to say that I DO NOT subscribe to the belief that requires a Jewish state of Israel to exist in order for the Second Coming to occur. But thanks to Matan’s and Richard’s comments, I now understand that the thought process I used to arrive at calling it gentile-centric was, well, gentile-centric. So now I think I understand why this belief is actually a closet anti-Semitic one.
I think having Christmas as a federal holiday is something that needs to be re-examined. (As far as I know, Easter is not a federal holiday, but maybe I’m not paying attention.) It made sense from a “nearly everybody is taking the day off anyway” point of view back when a huge majority of the population celebrated Christmas as a religious holiday, but now that we’re a much more varied society in terms of religion, I don’t think it makes sense. It does make sense to me to have some kind of break at the end of December, because of all of the year-end stuff, and probably breaks around the first week in April and the first week in October also seem reasonable to me, mainly to attempt an even distribution of days off. But nowadays it seems weird to have all federal holidays except one be secular.
Pingback: It’s All Connected… » Israel and Anti-Semitism: Another Go Round - 1
djw writes:
This worked well when I was in school, too. I have yet to hear of an employer that will just give you time off for a holiday without having to use your allotment. To a certain extent, this is fair to people who don’t find religion important. I wouldn’t necessarily really mind working on Christmas so that I could use the day sometime else, but the office is shut down.
To be fair, most holidays from work are secular–Thanksgiving, MLK, Pres, Memorial, etc.
I am not necessarily arguing for having Christmas and Easter be non-statutory holidays: I do see the *convenience* of it. But it is done now out of convenience — lots of Christians, lots of history, it would be hard to change it. And if you want to call it a privilege, I am not hung up on any particular terminology.
But it *is* the case that non-Christians have to take either their vacation or unpaid leave for their holidays, while Christians, generally, do not. If I have 10 days off, i have to decide between (a) losing 2 days’ pay for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, (b) not going to shul and (c) not taking 2 weeks vacation but 2 weeks less 2 days. (If you celebrate 2 days of Rosh Hashana, then just call it 3). My general argument is that there should be 2 floating stats, which people can take whenever they want (per the usual agreement by the employer). Other options are that you can request to work on Christmas for a day off for a different religious holiday — there are lots of ways to work it.
There is absolutely no reason for (most) exams to be scheduled on the major holy days of any major religion in your area. (Yes, there are sometimes exceptions. But if you have a 2 or 3 day a week class, then you can damn well reschedule the test to a day that’s not the holiday — if it turns out there is no one in your class impacted, then all’s safe.) Many schools here do not allow tests during these days, which seems reasonable. It is equally offensive to have to use all your excused absences for religious holy days. (I can argue this at much greater length, but not in the comments of a post about Chomsky.)
All of this adds up to a privilege you are giving to one religion, and if you accept that — and I agree there are good reasons to do it, though overall I do not think they are good enough — then you cannot say “but it’s bad in Israel” without being a hypocrite. (I am indeed willing to renegotiate the meaning of “weekend” along these same lines.)
(As far as I know, Easter is not a federal holiday, but maybe I’m not paying attention.)
Easter is not generally a specific holiday. Easter is always on a Sunday, which is already a holiday.
There’s a whole ‘nother can of worms; the official recognition of Christmas is just one day, but the weekend represents 104 days a year of Christians and Jews ramming their sabbath preferences down the throats of the oppressed agnostics, atheists, and Seventh Day Adventists.
Bastards.
Robert, I don’t think what you posted there is the RC position on the Jews, is it? Seems to me the RCs, similar to the Eastern Orthodox church, Episcopalians/Anglicans and others (including the Amish and conservative Mennonites, interestingly) is more something like that nobody knows who is going to get into heaven. The Orthodox and Plain People, so-called, view it as hubris (and distinctly Protestant) to suggest that anybody knows who is going to heaven. My experience is that this latter is closer to the RC position.
Also, I don’t think too many fundie groups believe that the salvation of the Jews is going to be limited to 144,000. I think the majority of Christian dispensationalists believe that “all Israel will be saved,” based on the NT verse to that effect, and also based on that verse that says “When a nation is saved in a day,” referring there to the Jews. As to the amillennialists/Reformed crowd, they aren’t expecting any rapture and concomitant cosmic sturm and drang, but again, their view is nobody but God knows who is “predestined” to be saved, which allows for the possibility that Jews might be included.
Which is all to say I think what you posted there is too reductionist. :P
Heart
Now that I’m thinking about it, the only major fundie group I know (not talking about cults) that teaches that the Jews (along with everybody else outside their group) are going to hell are fundamentalist Baptists like Jerry Falwell and the Bob Jones types of fundies. For them, anybody that doesn’t “get saved” by walking the aisle or making some other sort of “personal confession” and dies before the Tribulation is going straight to hell, including Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, all of the Plain People, charismatics, the “High Church” so called (mainline Christian denominations), etc. However, even they believe that Jews living after the Great Tribulation will be saved.
Heart
Robert’s point highlights how neutrality is an unrealistic goal for us to want states to pursue.
wolfa, I’d agree that your employer should distinguish between religious holidays and vacation days. Some do, some don’t, and I wish they all did. My students don’t have to use some of an allotment of “exused absenses” because all students start with zero exused absenses. They are granted only when the context makes granting them appropriate. I don’t check the dates for Jewish holy days when making my syllabus because there very few religiously observant Jews in my courses. If there were more, I’d probably check for conveniences sake. I think the difference between privileges and rights is much more than semantic, but we don’t disagree that much on substance and we’re wondering off topic so I’ll save it for another day.
Yes, but most nations do have states.
“Jews” aren’t just members of a religion. Some Jews don’t even practice Judaism. Some people who (think they) practice Judaism aren’t Jews.
So, it isn’t as simple as “Jews don’t deserve a state because Baptists don’t have one.” The Kingdom of Judah / Judea, which is where much of modern Israel is today, was home to a great many Jews before the Romans set about wholesale slaughter.
Think of it like this — before various First Peoples were run out of their lands by evil colonizers, they lived on their native lands. Now that we’re more civilized, those native lands are being given back to them. Same deal.
I read David Schraub’s reply to Amp, which is interesting, and posted about it on my blog here. This is a huge topic and there is way too much to say about it. I will be posting more there as time allows.
Also, FurryCatHerder wrote:
Well, yes and no. Leaving aside the question of whether those lands are actually being given back–last I looked, for example, no one has been ceding parts of Long Island, where I work, back to the tribes who were native to this place–I am not so sure this has happened, when it does happen, in cases where the people who were run out of their lands have been scattered across the face of the earth–though I am willing to be proven wrong about this.
Also, while it is true, as you say, that the notion of the Jewish people–as a nation or an ethnicity–represents something quite different than, say, Baptists, I am also not sure that most Jews, like me, let’s say, who were born and raised in the United States, who live relatively comfortable lives here, whose roots are here, who have families here, and so on–I’m not so sure that people like me experience ourselves as displaced, as refugees, or whatever, in the way that, say, many Native Americans do here, and so I am not sure that making a claim for Israel based on returning the people who were native to the land to the land is something that is in touch with the reality of Jews’ lives, even if it is in some way factually and logically accurate.
Please note: What I just said should not be read to imply that there is anything wrong with the most comfortable and privileged Jew living in the United States believing that Israel should exist as a Jewish State, even if he or she would never move there in a million years. I am only suggesting that the “First People” argument is not, for me anyway, convincing and, frankly, I think it piggybacks on someone else’s suffering in a way that is distasteful.
Amp, going back to the original post, it seems that Chomsky said something different than you are parsing. Perhaps that is a result of the context of the quote, but there is a big difference between “I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the holocaust” and “It’s possible to imagine circumstances where someone who is not anti-Semitic would have trouble believing the Holocaust occurred–for example, a person who refused to believed humans are capable of such monstrous acts”. Given Chomsky’s precision with language, I find it hard to chalk the distinction up to sloppiness.
I also am not as willing as you to give a pass to somebody who denies the Holocaust out of ‘noble’ motives such as a refusal to believe in such human evil. First, because “Holocaust denial” is not the same as doubt; the former implies a wholesale rejection of the enormity of evidence that the Holocaust occurred, everything from physical evidence to the testimony of survivors and perpetrators.
Second, because to refuse this evidence with the counterargument ‘humans could not perpetrate such evil’ is to buy into the argument that humans are evil–that they would concoct such an enormous, far-reaching myth for some selfish purpose. That’s a rather bizarre view.
I offer no opinion here as to whether Chomsky is an anti-Semite. He does, however, seem to be baiting his pro-Israel opponents and then playing the wide-eyed innocent: my gosh, how COULD you take me out of context so!
I offer no opinion here as to whether Chomsky is an anti-Semite. He does, however, seem to be baiting his pro-Israel opponents and then playing the wide-eyed innocent: my gosh, how COULD you take me out of context so!
He does the same thing about having interviews and articles posted in Hustler. Oh! I didn’t know it published violent, misogynist pornography! :/
Heart
Unfortunately, this topic IS too large to really grapple with effectively in the space of a blog post, so I almost want to apologize for my efforts to try. Often times, I write blog posts which could charitably be described as “rambling.” It is far less often that I realize that a post is rambling WHILE I’M WRITING it, and still post it anyway. But alas, that is what my latest reply post was (see the trackback above).
All of which is to say, interesting posts, interesting comment threads, no way in hell this is going to be resolved in this forum.
Yes, but most nations do have states.
No. There are about 200 states, many of which aren’t a specific national home to any particular nation. Meanwhile, the number of nations without states is well into the hundreds. Wikipedia has a list here, which is incomplete. Nations with their own state are the exception.
Please excuse me if I’m being ignorant or remembering wrong, but didn’t the Israelites get into the area by driving out the Caananites, who originally lived there?
That would be beside the point anyway, as I too find this argument distateful, a little creepy, and very nationalistic.
I identify myself as an American, and do feel tied to the land here in New Mexico where I grew up. But if the Tanoan Native Americans wanted me off their land and to go back where I came from, where would I go? My mother is the child of Italian and Spanish immigrants. My father is the child of two Afro-Cuban immigrants, one of which is half Chinese. My husband is Irish and German. I am currently carrying his child. Where would our child go?
Maybe its because I’m a raving athiest without a real ethnic identity (at least as American society wants to call it) but I really don’t understand why people who move into the area from an American or European city feel they deserve to live in a place more than people who have been tending a particular olive grove for centuries. I also can’t understand why the people who were already there just won’t let the newcomers move in next door. Personally, I have a hard time understanding why everybody just can’t live together in peace and quiet.
I don’t know. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is seriously frustrating to me.
didn’t the Israelites get into the area by driving out the Caananites, who originally lived there?
Yes.
With the possible exception of a few Pacific islands, which were settled by their original discoverers*, every square inch of land on Earth is inhabited by someone whose forebearers killed or drove out the previous occupants, who in turn kicked someone else out, and so on back down the line.
* Except maybe not. There may have been protohuman populations (hobbits, anyone?) killed off by the human discoverers in those cases, too.
The Israelites were a group of Canaanites.
You have to understand that for most Jews, it’s not so much about God Gave Us This Land is that we want one freakin’ safe space where we aren’t depending on the temporary and capricious goodwill of the non-Jewish ruler.
FurryCatHerder makes a perfectly valid point. When people talk about Israel as a Jewish state they’re talking about Jewishness in terms of ethnicity – ‘the Jewish people’ – rather than religion. So comparisons with Baptists don’t cut it.
Do I do think Richard and djw are on to something. There are plenty of ethnicities who don’t have states – Basques, Gypsies, Aboriginies, Kurds, and so on. So doesn’t that just shift the claim to “Jews don’t deserve a state because being an ethnic group doesn’t entitle you to a state.”?
This is why I’m wary of the idea of Israel as the ‘”home” (potentially …) to all Jews.’ as opposed to it being merely the home of the current inhabitants of the state.
think of all the jewish lawyers. the successful jewish businesspeople. the teachers. the well-respected in the community. now count the number of jews who are governors or U.S. senators. way too few. i can imagine an american black person mounting a serious and credible bid for president (some people practically begged colin powell to run, and there’s an awful lot of buzz over obama). but, joe lieberman notwithstanding (if gore had won and died, lieberman would not have been an elected president), i find it almost impossible to imagine the U.S. electing a jewish president anytime soon. he or she would be immediately suspected of being too cozy with israel or just suspected of…something…. a jew would have more chance than an atheist, but that’s not saying much.
so, here’s polymath’s (somewhat-tangential-to-the-discussion) law of why there’s more anti-semitism in this country than we realize:
with very high probability, there will be a black person elected president before there is a jewish one.
that kind of thing is a real danger of gentile-centrism: it makes people imagine that a president has to be a “regular” person, which must mean that he or she must believe that jesus is his or her personal and spiritual savior. or, at the very least, the president mush worship regularly in a church that maintains that belief.
Then why choose such a hotly contended piece of land rich with religious history?
Hmmm…didn’t really mean that line to be ‘bolded.’ Makes it seem more strident than I meant it too. Does it do that if there’s only one sentence in the post?
Then why choose such a hotly contended piece of land rich with religious history?
Eh…why not? No matter where the Jews ended up, they’d be involved in fights for their survival.
Might as well go for the ancestral homeland, if you’re going to have to fight anyway. And if you’re going to have to pick an ethnic group to piss off, it might as well be the Arabs, the military equivalent of the ’68 Mets.
Damn. The Mets were 73-89 in 1968. Shoulda said ’62, when they were 40-120.
I dunno. I’m not convinced. I’ve always felt it’s a little disingenous (okay, I think I spelled that wrong) when people try to separate the “this is the land god gave us” argument from others concerning Israel. It just *happens* to be the particular land god gave them. You can’t say religion has nothing to do with this conflict. It is the “Holy Land’ after all.
Then again, as I type that I think maybe it doesn’t. I’m sure if it were a secular conflict it would hold the potential to grow just as bloody. It’s a depressing fact of human nature that people who eat their bread butter side up will always hate the people who eat their bread butter side down. It’s just that religion seems to somehow help that process along, if you look at history.
There’s been a continous Jewish presence in the land currently known as Israel for thousands of years. Around half of Jewish Israelis are not of European origin but are middle easterners, most of whom were expelled from their ‘home’ states for being Jewish. Most Jews of European origin are of relatively recent European origin and they or their ancestors faced discrimination in Europe up through the last century *for* being outsiders and non-Europeans.
There’s no way this could have been prettier. Uglier, maybe.
You can’t say religion has nothing to do with this conflict.
Which is why I didn’t. What I said was that it’s not simply a matter of “God gave us this land”, full stop.
Then why choose such a hotly contended piece of land rich with religious history?
Isn’t that the same mentality that was used to assign undesirable pieces of land for Indian reservations?
Polymath wrote:
Actually, about 10% of the Senate is Jewish (not counting John Kerry, whose grandfather’s born name was Kohn), which seems like a lot considering that only about 2% of Americans are Jewish. There are only two Jewish governors (Linda Lingle of Hawaii and Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania), although again – considering how few Jews there are in the country as a whole – I’m not sure how many Jewish governors we should expect.
Of course, as your post points out, there are many Jews among the occupational and intellectual classes we draw our Governors and Senators from – probably well over 2% – so maybe that 2% number isn’t a fair basis for comparison.
I do think that Americans have a curious double-standard, in which we’re very willing to elect Jews to the legislature, but we’re not nearly as willing to elect them to the executive. How much of this is due to anti-Semitism among the voters? I’m not sure. It could also be the perception of party hacks and bosses that “voters won’t vote for Jews” that is keeping Jews out of executive-level races.
I’m not at all sure we’ll see a black president before a Jewish president. That sort of thing isn’t testible until it happens one way or the other. It encourages me that no one in 2004 seemed to think that having Jewish ancestors (Kerry) or a Jewish spouse (Dean) was a negative. But of course, there’s a big difference between a Jewish relative of a candidate, and a Jewish candidate.
I’m sorry if what I said came off that way. That’s not what I meant. And hardly a fair comparison I think.
This is why I find this topic so frustrating. Its hard to express any opinion without really stepping on toes. I think I’ll stay out of this thread from here.
mythago wrote:
This is a crucial point and it is important to understand that, whatever your individual feelings may be about the existence of the current state of Israel as a Jewish state, given the realities of Jewish history, it is entirely reasonable Jews to respond in the way that mythago articulates. More to the point, it is important to realize that denying the reasonableness of this reponse is a denial of historical fact and of the specific historical and collective experience of the Jewish people. That being said, I am not sure it is a sufficiently strong enough argument for the Jewish right to a state of our own.
My own choice, for example, is to see the US as my home and I would like to think that I would fight to the death anyone who wanted to do here what the Nazis did in Germany, which is, of course, only the most extreme example of how any country could be made inhospitable to the Jews. Of course, that’s what I like to think; reality might very well prove me wrong.
I am not sure it is a sufficiently strong enough argument for the Jewish right to a state of our own.
Richard, are there any strong arguments for a people to have a “right” to a state? And by “right” I mean a right in a realistic sense, one which translates into physical success.
Perhaps it’s my empiricism showing, but I see only three material factors: desire, will and strength. If a particular people has a sufficient quantity of all three, they have a state; if not, they don’t. The various rights and wrongs of history don’t seem to much enter into it.
Richard,
Who has the right to a state though? What nation ever in history *got* a state or *continued having* a state due to ‘right’?
The closest sensible sentiment is that people have a right to self determination, but even that doesn’t get you very far. How should that be expressed? What compromises are preferable? What compromises are necessary? What violence is admirable in pursuit of that right? What violence is permissable? What violence is tolerable? What results make that violence worthwhile?
Personally I am a Zionist. But to be honest if I really truly believed that the Jewish people could live peacefully, freely, and self-govern ourselves in the context of a bi-national state (which is really a misnomer since it would presumable also fully include and enfranchise the Druze nation, as well as peoples from whatever religious and ethnic backgrounds felt a connection to the land of Israel, which… is pretty much everybody) would be conducive to that, I might support it.
But I don’t see that happening, at least not in the near future, and I have no clue about how to get there. My hunch is that for that to be viable, there would need to be a free and democratic Palestinian state first. Which gets us back to the problem that I have no idea how to make that viable, what the Israelis or the Palestinians or the US or the Arab states or the rest of the world has to do or not do to make that come about. Well, I have some ideas but… not so much faith in any of them right now.
I am pretty sure that taking away statehood from Jewish (and non-Jewish Israelis) at a time when the Palestinians are widely supporting a Muslim fundamentalist party with the explicit goal of wiping out the Jewish people from the middle east will not lead to freedom and democracy for anyone…
And hardly a fair comparison I think.
Why not? You’ve said that you think Jews shouldn’t have picked the-land-formerly-known-as-Canaan because it’s “hotly contested”. Where, then, should we send the Jews? We don’t want to displace anyone and we don’t want land that people find valuable and will ‘contest’. So, where is it? Northern Saskatchewan? Antarctica? The Mojave desert?
As far as “rich with religious history” goes–guess whose religion? Or are you saying that a long history of Judaism and a Jewish presence is an argument against a Jewish state there?
Look, I’m not feeling stepped-on, but I’m not going to tippy-toe around ludicrous arguments just because it’s about Israel.
I’m not going to tippy-toe around ludicrous arguments just because it’s about Israel
As an historical aside, it should be noted that there was some feeling in the early days of the Zionist movement(s) that someplace isolated and unvalued by strong polities would make a good Jewish state. (Madagascar was floated as a possible site, as I recall, because none of the real powers cared about it.)
However, there was little emotional resonance for such a solution, not so much among Zionist Jews (most of whom would have been glad to take anything they could get), but among their key allies – liberal, Christian Britons, who wanted to restore Israel to what they saw as her rightful place among the nations.
(I’m using “Zionist” here in its most broad sense of “Jews who generally thought there ought to be a Jewish homeland somewhere”.)
Just an interesting example of how idiosyncratic religious and emotional feeling can have very large consequences on the international stage.
Perhaps you’ve forgotten that the religious history of that land is Jewish religious history?
FurryCatHerder are you saying that it’s anti-semitic not to believe that Jews should have a homeland? Or that it’s anti-semitic not to support Israel, in its current form, being that homeland?
It probably doesn’t matter for me, because I think nationalism is incredibly dangerous, and I’m generally anti-states.
Mythago I think what you’re saying is really important – and that was one of the things I liked best about Naomi Klein’s article, is that she explored the implications of this. Unfortunately, looking from a purely practical point of view, Israel isn’t currently that safe-space (particularly not with its dependance on US aid), and no amount of bombs or walls will make it so.
because I think nationalism is incredibly dangerous
What safer alternative do you propose? That emotional space in people has to be filled with something.
Really? Then why did nationalism, as an ideology, only come about a few hundred years ago?
Because that’s when nationalism evolved. The emotional space it filled has needed to be filled from the beginning; it was filled by family/clan or tribalism for a long time. (Still is, in places that haven’t yet reached nationalism.)
You can fill that space with family/clan identity. You can fill it with tribalism. You can fill it with nationalism. You can fill it with ideological groupings (communism/nazism/etc.)
What do you recommend we fill that space with, that’s less dangerous than nationalism? Nationalism seems to me like the best choice from a bad list.
Robert, what are you defining as that space? The sense of belonging? The sense of mutual support? For one thing, most modern Westerners have a sense of family, a sense of tribalism, and a sense of nationalism, and probably an ideology to boot. Do you think that that emotional space inherently requires the creation of an outgroup, or does it only require an in-group? At the moment, the space that you are referring to is undefined or only trivially defined (as that portion of the emotional space that nationalism occupies which must be filled, and was similarly filled by family/clan, tribe, or ideological group), so meaningful discussion of it is pretty much impossible.
Israel is not “safe space” in the sense of being free of enemies. It’s “safe” in that it’s a Jewish state, not a “Christian and we’ll put up with you Christ-killers most of the time” state.
liberal, Christian Britons
Hm. I wonder if the British Israelites got involved in this?
NOT going to mention the Templars. Nope. Not.
Charles –
I’m referring to the need to belong to an entity larger than oneself, in the broad sense, both for protection (“my gang will take care of me”) and for bonding. It requires a distinction between in and out groups.
It’s certainly the case that you can have multiple roles that fill the need – but if you are already getting as much as you can get out of (say) your family, then the disappearance of nationalism is going to leave you with something unfulfilled.
The problem is, it’s not solely and exclusively Jewish history.
NOT going to mention the Templars. Nope. Not.
Too late!
Robert and Tara–
Perhaps my use of the term “right” was imprecise, though I have heard plenty of Jews argue that we have the right to a state because we have, in one way or another, been oppressed in every country we have lived in, and since no one else seems to want us or to be able to live with us.
All I meant was that the “all we want is a place to escape the capriciousness of the goyim who hate us” argument for the necessity of Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, while entirely reasonable from an emotional point of view, does not justify the displacement of another people in order to create that state. And I do not want to get into a historical argument here about whether the Jews did or did not behave ethically when they began to settle Palestine, or whether the Arabs welcomed them or not, or tried to sabotage the settlements from the very beginning or not. The fact is that the Jewish settlement of Palestine, with the intent of establishing a Jewish homeland, could not help but result in a radical change in the relationship not only between the Jews and the Arabs, but also between the Arabs and the land.
It is true that there has been a continuous Jewish presence in that part of the world for thousands of years; that Jewish presence, however, did not constitute a Jewish state; and I am not aware that the Jews who lived there were agitating for the formation of such a state. There may have been such agitation, and if so I will have to rethink this position; I just don’t know about it. At least some Zionists recognized early on that the establishment of the Jewish homeland would necessitate taking land away from the Arabs who lived there, and they did, as Robert put it have the “desire, will and strength.” The fact that they had these things, however, did not mean they were right in doing what they did.
It’s worth reading, in this regard, Vladimir Jabotinsky’s The Iron Wall, which is remarkably prescient, given the wall that is now being built in Israel.
Man. I must have reincarnated from that Jabotinsky guy. He talks a lot of sense.
The problem is, it’s not solely and exclusively Jewish history.
Nobody suggested otherwise. It’s just very weird to talk about a ‘contested’ and ‘religious’ history as a bad reason for Jews to live there, completely avoiding the fact that the secular and religious history in that region is heavily related to Judaism.
All I meant was that the “all we want is a place to escape the capriciousness of the goyim who hate us” argument for the necessity of Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, while entirely reasonable from an emotional point of view, does not justify the displacement of another people in order to create that state.
I didn’t intend to present that sentiment as a final argument–we need safety, get out of our way, resident Arabs!–but as an explanation for why Jews feel the need for a Jewish state, period, and in response to the idea that anti-Semitism in America is dead so why can’t Jews just be happy here? (I also don’t think your paraphrasing is quite accurate. It’s not ‘escaping the goyim’ , it’s ‘living in a nation where we, not the goyim, are in charge.)
Whether or not there should have been a Jewish state in Canaan and who did what to whom, there is a Jewish state there now. To argue that state’s policies need serious overhaul is one thing; to argue that state should dissolve and either move somewhere else far away, or cease to exist, is far from merely being a “critic of Israel”.
I know I said I’d stay out of it, but I just wanted to clarify. I hope you don’t think that’s what I said. I (thought I) made it pretty clear I was reacting to the idea that native lands should be retuned to ‘First Peoples’ since it seems to disregard what happens to the ‘second’ or ‘third’ peoples.
I think you’ve assumed I was saying it was a ‘bad reason’. I never said this was a reason Jews shouldn’t have picked Israel. What I was trying to say was this *was* the reason Jews picked Israel. If they were *only* seeking a safe haven from opression, then, as Robert notes here:
…a choice like that would have been made.
Jeeze. I never thought I’d feel like a troll on a blog I read so often.
Jeeze. I never thought I’d feel like a troll on a blog I read so often.
Jew-hating troll Israel-basher!
Just kidding. You haven’t said anything I would raise an eyebrow at, even if I would disagree, and I’m pretty touchy about Israel.
The Palestinians were not a ‘real power’ in ’48. The ‘real powers’ agreed to Israel being a Jewish state. Now, half a century later, it’s still not the ‘real powers’ who are fighting. Why would it have been different in Madagascar?
Also, I completely fail to see why the lack of Jewish efforts to secure a homeland/state in Israel before the 19th century is an argument *against* a Jewish state. All that’s really saying is that if you successfully oppress people long enough and hard enough so that they stop fighting for their state back and hopefully even forget they had one in the first place, then you don’t have to feel guilty about undermining their successful efforts when they finally can make them.
Since the Madagascar plan was brought up, for historical purposes The Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Siberia should be mentioned. Stalin designated this prime chunk of Siberian real estate as a Jewish homeland in 1934. The Soviets engaged in some of their trademark propaganda on behalf of this region, including blanketing with airplane dropped leaflets in Jewish neighborhoods and a propaganda feature length film about a Jewish family escaping the American great depression and discovering paradise in Siberia. Several thousand Jews, mostly Russian, did move there, streets were renamed after prominent Jews in the capitol, a Yiddish newspaper was founded, etc.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the purges of the late 30’s took their toll on leadership, and the whole thing never really took off. I, for one, don’t particularly blame the Zionists for not a) trusting Stalin unconditionally, and b) enthusiastically moving to Siberia. The 2002 census in Russia showed over 2000 Jews (just over 1% of the population) living in the region.
There was a documentary about it a few years ago, but I’m told it wasn’t very good.
It always seems that discussions about Israel, especially discussions between and among Jews, get bogged down in the problem of what stated or unstated assumptions people are starting from. So I would like to state some of mine, at least as I define them now.
1. The State of Israel exists. This is a fact that cannot be changed, nor does Israel’s national existence need any justification at this point other than the fact that it is a fact. This is true not because of anything having to do with Jewish anything, but because there are now at least two generations of people living within the borders of that nation who were born there after 1948, for whom Israel is there national home, whether they are Jewish or not. (I don’t mean to imply that “two generations” is some sort of magical number; I just mean to state the obvious that the independent state of Israel–as opposed to the land where that state exists–now has a significant native population.)
To suggest that Israel, because of its policies, or because of its origins, should somehow cease to exist as an independent state is therefore not only impractical and unjust; it is also almost certainly anti-Semitic, unless one is also calling for a similar dissolution of, say, the United States, which is also a country built on colonial roots and the disenfranchisement of the native population. (I am not interested in arguing whether the Israeli occupation is justified or not; nor am I suggesting that the Israelis want to wipe out the Palestinians as the US government seemed at one time to want to do to the Native American population, but there are parallels between the formation of the US and the formation of Israel, and if you are going to call for the dissolution of Israel on those grounds, then you really should be calling for the dissolution of the US as well.)
2. Because Israel exists as an indpendent state, it has the right to defend itself, especially now that Hamas, a group that is sworn to eliminate Israel has made such a strong showing in the Palestinian elections. Expecting Israel to do anything right now that would make itself vulnerable to this goal that members of Hamas in the Palestinian government have insisted remains in force is both naive and stupid.
3. The State of Israel exists as a Jewish state, both in terms of its majority population and certain aspects of its government. More to the point, for Israelis, Jewish and not, this is as much a part of Israel’s culture as, say, the separation of church and state is here in the US. Whether or not Israel should continue to be a Jewish state in this way, however, and/or what precisely it means for Israel to be a Jewish state, is also a legitimate issue for debate for two reasons:
a. It places non-Jewish Israelis in a permanently less privileged position in their country of citizenship. This would be true even if there is no difference now between how Jewish and non-Jewish Israeli citizens are treated under the law, which, as I understand it, is not the case: those laws can change and to the degree that Israel is a Jewish state, non-Jewish Israelis are vulnerable to some future government that might deem it necessary to institute forms of discrimination against them because they are not Jewish. And, I would add, the fact that we, and by “we” here I mean Jews, might consider this extremely unlikely and therefore not a high priority issue is indicative of precisely the kind of privilege I am talking about. This is a debate that should take place, it seems to me, in Israel, between and among Israelis.
b. If the existence of Israel as a Jewish state means that it is also, or that I should see it as, “my” state, either because Israel claims me as among its own–as Ariel Sharon did and other Israelis have done explicitly–or because the Jewish community insists that laying claim to Israel as my homeland (or any of the variations on that theme one can imagine) is foundational to a valid Jewish identity, then the question of precisely what it means for Israel to be a Jewish state has, to the degree that I identify myself as a Jew, been made central to who I am. If I choose not to lay claim to Israel as my homeland, or if I do not see Israel’s existence as the fulfillment of my personal version, because I do not have one, of what others portray as the universal or near-universal aspiration of the Jewish nation for a state, have I denied some essential Jewishness that I was born with? Have I betrayed my people? Anyone here who is Jewish and has been through any sort of Jewish education, formal or informal, knows both the questions and the standard answers. (Interestingly, they are similar to the questions that are asked of, or the charges made against, those who intermarry, and as a Jew married to a Muslim raising a son without any religious affiliation, these are questions I have been confronted with quite often.)
It is obvious, I suppose, but nonetheless important to stress that this second area of debate encompasses a much larger population than the first one I defined. Indeed, I find myself having very different conversations with Israeli Jews about the situation of Israel and the Palestinians, and about the nature of Israel and as Jewish state than I do with Jews who live elsewhere in the world. For Israeli Jews, Israel is their home, not in some metaphorical sense of that word, not as a bottom-line place of refuge or safety in an anti-Semitic world, not as some place where, thank god!, Jews and not goyim are in charge, but their home, the place where they were born and raised, or the place they chosen to claim as if they had been born and raised there, and because it is their home, because it is the place where they live and work, have children and so on, the issues that arise there are ultimately their’s to work out on their own terms. I, of course, have my opinions, and I share them, but I would never presume that their interest as Jews in what happens in and to Israel coincide with mine as a Jew because Israel is not my home, nor do I have any plan to make it my home.
On the other hand, when I talk to Jews who live outside of Israel, for whom Israel is not home and who seem to have no plans to make Israel their home, but who define their interests in Israel as if it were their home, I don’t feel the same constraints. To these Jews, I am very willing to say, for example, that I don’t think Israel should be a Jewish state, if by Jewish state we mean a state that claims me or that I am supposed to claim as part of some essential Jewishness that exists within me. And with these Jews I am willing to debate the issues at stake in the history of Zionism or of Israel’s formation or whatever because, with these Jews, it always seems that the stakes come down not to home, but to identity.
There is a lot more to say, I suppose, but I guess I will stop there.
If they were *only* seeking a safe haven from opression
I think it’s a mistake to assume there is a single reason and that all Jews consider that to be the primary reason.
I can’t speak for other people, but I know that I myself hold Israel to a higher standard than I hold many other nations that are deserving of criticism (like, say, Iran, China, or Cuba), and it has nothing to do with the fact that it is a Jewish state. The reasons Ampersand gave in his previous post for his focus on Israel are good, and I agree with them, but the reason that I hold Israel to a higher standard is that it’s a democracy, and I will always hold democracies to a higher standard than fascist theocracies, communist dictatorships, or countries ruled by warlords. That’s not to say that I’m not equally, or even more disgusted with the actions of those types of states. It just means that I firmly believe that human rights should be one of the primary focuses of democratic states; that, in fact, the valuing of basic human rights is at the heart of what makes democratic states preferable to pretty much any other kind. So, when the actions of democratic states violate basic human rights, I’m going to spend more time criticizing those actions, while with non-democratic states, I will focus more on the fact that they are not democratic states, and that the world would be a better place if they were.
Pingback: Israel and Anti-Semitism: Another Go Round – 1 – Richard Jeffrey Newman