In a previous post, I asked “Alas” readers about the translation controversy regarding Chavez and antisemitism. In the comments, Elana, who is a professional Spanish translator, said the real issue is “do references to ‘Christ killers’ and ‘gold and silver’ have the same connotations in their culture as they do in ours?”
Since then, I’ve come across an article which convincingly suggests that “Christ-killers” does not have the same antisemitic connotation in Venezuela. The article was originally printed in the Forward, an American Jewish magazine that I think is generally credible.
Here are the most relevant bits (emphasis added by me):
The Venezuelan Jewish community leadership and several major American Jewish groups are accusing the Simon Wiesenthal Center of rushing to judgment by charging Venezuela’s leftist president, Hugo Chavez, with making antisemitic remarks.
Officials of the leading organization of Venezuelan Jewry were preparing a letter this week to the center, complaining that it had misinterpreted Chavez’s words and had failed to consult with them before attacking the Venezuelan president. […]
Both the AJCommittee and the American Jewish Congress seconded the Venezuelan community’s view that Chavez’s comments were not aimed at Jews. All three groups said he was aiming his barbs at the white oligarchy that has dominated the region since the colonial era, pointing to his reference to Bolivar as the clearest evidence of his intent.
One official noted that Latin America’s so-called Liberation Theology has long depicted Jesus as a socialist and consequently speaks of gentile business elites as “Christ-killers.”
So it appears that the strong case for Chavez being an antisemite is based at least in part upon an unfair translation.
There are also translation controversies regarding antisemitism and the statements of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran; the arguments and counter-arguments are described in this Wikipedia article. To me, criticism of Ahmadinejad for antisemitism seems – if not absolutely certain – on much firmer ground than similar criticism of Chavez. On the other hand, like Y-Love at Jewschool, I do see Ahmadinejad’s explicit separation of “zionism” and “Jews” as a potentially positive step.
So why am I bringing Ahmadinejad up? Because Chavez has praised Ahmadinejad publicly (that’s the two of them pictured together on the right). (It’s notable that Venezuelan Jewish leaders have expressed “outrage” at the friendly relations with Ahmadinejad).
People have argued over if Ahmadinejad’s statements are anti-semitic – did he really call for Israel to be wiped off the map, or did he just call for the current Israeli government to be replaced? There is, however, no doubt at all that Iran’s policies are deeply anti-woman. In a woman’s enews article, Jennifer Fasulo points out that “moments like this show just how little women’s lives matter in the world of nationalist politics.”
There is no excuse for declaring solidarity with a theocratic regime that treats women like sub-humans. By embracing Ahmadinejad, Chavez is adding steam to the growing and dangerous alliance between left-wing and right-wing anti-imperialism.
In this equation, the only thing that matters is opposition to U.S. military power. Women’s rights, worker’s rights, student’s rights–the things that are supposed to matter to socialists, progressives and people of conscience–be damned.
Chavez appears not to have noticed that the current government of Iran has turned Iran into a country where gender apartheid and hatred of women are enshrined in law.
Regime of Violent RepressionThis is a country where women are stoned to death for the “crime” of adultery, buried up to their necks and pelted in the face and head with stones until they die, where women have no right to divorce or child custody, are legally forced to veil under threat of physical beating or imprisonment, can’t travel without the permission of a husband or father, where their testimony in a court of law is considered half that of a man, and where political dissent of any kind, for women and men, is punishable by imprisonment, often torture and death.
This is the government that Chavez compares to his own as a “heroic nation,” one which he even deems “revolutionary.” […]
For 27 years women have resisted and defied the [Iranian] regime’s persecution of them, often at great risk to their lives. Along with an inspiring women’s movement, there are strong, secular workers and student movements, all of them opposing not only the Islamic Republic, but also U.S. threats of military attacks and sanctions on Iran.
How can Chavez–a declared socialist and defender of the downtrodden–align himself with the leader of such a reactionary regime, rather than the inspiring socialist and feminist movements which are fighting against it?
Fasulo’s entire article is well worth reading.
[Crossposted at Creative Destruction. At the time I’m posting this, comments at “Alas” are borked, but the comments at Creative Destruction are still working.]
Pingback: Pacific Views
Good post. I’ll be checking this blog more.
But Chavez isn’t the only leftist guilty here. Many supported Hezbollah or the so-called “Iraq resistance”. Ding a lings like Michael Moore, Tariq Ali, Arundhati Roy, George Galloway not to mention various leftist groupsuscles need to be taken to task for the cozing up to religious based fascism.
I hope I see more here.
“People have argued over if Ahmadinejad’s statements are anti-semitic – did he really call for Israel to be wiped off the map, or did he just call for the current Israeli government to be replaced? ”
Why argue? Why not ask the fella?
Moreover, it’s pretty obvious to me that if Mr. A had wanted to clarify his statement so that it was NOT genocidal then he has had months to do so. And hasn’t.
His silence is eloquent proof to me of his vicious intention.
Seattle Male, Ahmadinejad’s government, through its ambassador, has said that Iran wants the zionist government to fall, not the massacre of the Israeli people.
The problem isn’t that no one has asked; it’s that – like with any government official – it’s sometimes hard to be sure they’re being truthful.
Uh…so you think that Ambassador’s words are reassuring? That is indeed funny in a bizarre and twisted way. So he doesn’t want to kill all the Jews in Israel, just destroy the Israeli state. That is cute.
And it seems to me that Mr. A is not a potted plant and is fully aware of the concern his words have raised. If his intentions were peaceful he would have come forth on his own many months ago to clarify his words. He doesn’t need someone else to speak for him.
So he doesn’t want to kill all the Jews in Israel, just destroy the Israeli state. That is cute.
In precisely the same way that it’s ‘cute’ for our president to claim that he doesn’t have a beef with Islam, he just wants to overthrow the governments of Iraq and Iran. Right.
Look, I think that it’s likely that Ahmadinejad is an antisemite . . . at the same time I’m getting pretty fucking tired of people pretending that opposition to the policies (and yes, existence) of Isreal equals antisemitism. Israel is a political entity. Political entities are not free from criticism or opposition.
It’s no more racist for him to oppose the continued existence of Israel than it was for us to oppose the continued existence of the U.S.S.R, say.
Now, sure, when you get into the issues of Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial & etc., sure, I don’t think it’s unfair to call him an antisemite, but that’s another issue.
He doesn’t need someone else to speak for him.
Dude. Seriously. Do you know how many people speak every day for every single head of state nationwide? Press secretaries, ambassadors, and cabinet officials clarify their remarks, spin administration policy, and hammer points home. Like I’ve said, I’ve got no love for Ahmadinejad, but this criticism strikes me as weak.
He doesn’t need someone else to speak for him? Sure, but neither does anyone else, right?
The really interesting question to me now is the pyschology of people e.g. Achilles and Patroclus. Put A aside as he is obviously a jerk.
Why do such people (A&P) find it essential to defend A? They really seem to have a stake in it. What do they get out of it? Is it some feeling of moral superiority because they don’t goalong with conventional views?
And why, even more generally, is criticism of a foreign idiot leader so often met with the refrain that we have our own idiot as a President? So what? They are both fools.
•••
Btw, my point was not that “spokespeople” are some sort of bad thing but only that A has had plenty of chance to clarify his intent and has not done so. Looking to someone else to explain what A meant is odd in this circumstance.
And you may be getting “pretty fucking tired “of hearing that “opposition to….(and yes, existence) of Israel equals antisemitism.” But too fucking bad. It is antisemitic. And I am getting pretty fucking tired of hearing such lame attempt to have it both ways — i.e. be the victim who cannot speak freely about Israel and also be the bigot who can casually agree that there should be no Israel.
(And just for the record, there is absolutely no problem with criticism of Israeli policies — go read the Israeli press as there is a great deal of it there.)
People have argued over if Ahmadinejad’s statements are anti-semitic – did he really call for Israel to be wiped off the map, or did he just call for the current Israeli government to be replaced?
IIRC, he has stated that the (from his viewpoint) so-called Holocaust would be the fault of the European powers and not the Middle East, so why should the Middle East suffer thereby. Neatly equating the presence of Jews with suffering, BTW. On which basis, he has said that all the Jews should be deported “back” to Europe. After all, everyone knows that Jews don’t belong in the Middle East, it by divine right is to be reserved solely for Moslems.
Remember folks; this guy really isn’t in charge. Despite his title, he’s really a figurehead. The people who are actually in charge in Iran is the theocratic group that decides who gets to run for office and who doesn’t, and can (and does) veto without recourse by the legislature or the people any law that they feel is not in accord with Islam. And these people don’t talk to the newspapers, don’t go on TV, don’t give speeches at the U.N. and don’t engage in diplomacy. What they do is to take the money that we give them for their oil and use it to fund what seems like pretty much anyone who wants to kill non-Moslems.
In this equation, the only thing that matters is opposition to U.S. military power. Women’s rights, worker’s rights, student’s rights–the things that are supposed to matter to socialists, progressives and people of conscience–be damned.
There seem to be a lot of people who are of the persuasion generally described as “on the Left” that want the present U.S. administration to fail in all its aims with very little concern (or even intelligent evaluation) of the consequences. Their hate for President Bush and what they think he represents seems to have shut off the blood supply to the rational parts of their brains.
Note carefully I don’t say that opposition to Bush’s policies automatically equates to hate, or treason, or unreasonableness or irrationality. There’s much that can be rationally opposed. There’s much I oppose. But there are a lot of leftist whores out there; they’ll sleep with anybody to obtain their aims and consequences otherwise be damned.
Pingback: Alas, a blog » Blog Archive » Counterpoint: Women’s Freedom In Iran
But there are a lot of leftist whores out there; they’ll sleep with anybody to obtain their aims and consequences otherwise be damned.
Very interesting analogy to use on a feminist blog, no? A traditional insult against women (whore) combined with another traditional insult against women (willing to sleep with anybody). Since you brought it up, who, may I ask, is “the whore”? Because the way the phrase is used in this instance (a woman who sleeps with “anybody” to achieve a particular aim), brings to mind the lack of power women have traditionally held, and that the only way for a woman in an uber-patriarchal society to gain any particular aim, is by appealing to the interests of a man—and about the only currency a woman in an uber-patriarchal society has is her actual body (since she isn’t allowed ownership of any other means to power).
In other words, it seems that you’re acknowledging that Chavez is looking for friends anywhere he can find them, given the power of his opposition, and acknowledging his relative lack of power to demand any kind of concession from these “friends”. That indeed, Chavez is not in any position to criticize the politics of a potential ally; that he, like “the whore”, has a limited course of action.
Seattle male has a point:
If opposition to the existence of Israel means opposition to the existence of a Jewish nation state—in other words, if opposition to the existence of Israel is essentially a declaration that Jewish nationalism is invalid as a stance a Jewish person might take in the world as to her or his identity—and, especially for those Jews born in or naturalized citizens of Israel— then unless that declaration is expanded to include all forms of nationalism, the declaration is anti-Semitic; and this is where Ahmadinejad’s statements (or anybody’s statements) about wanting to eliminate the zionist regime becomes problematic. Because it is not the case that they want to see a particular government unseated and a new government elected. Given the rhetoric they have used till now, even the most progressive Israeli government would be invalid in their eyes because any Israeli government that claims to represent a Jewish state would be Zionist and therefore invalid.
Granted, opposing Jewish nationalism in the one-sided way that I have described above, even to the point of advocating for the elimination of the Jewish state, is not the same thing as calling for the extermination of the Jewish people, or even the Jews living in Israel today (though I would argue that the history of anti-Semitism makes it hard, if one is a Jew, not to hear the echoes of genocide and genocidal intentions in that opposition). Still, it is a mistake to see opposition to the existence of the Jewish state as equivalent to opposition to Israeli policies. The latter is not inherently anti-Semitic; the former, unless it exists in the context of a much broader and inclusive critique of nationalism, very clearly is.
I think it’s reasonably clear that the existance of Israel has caused suffering for a considerable number of people who were already living there (and their descendents) RonF.
Richard – I’m not sure I understand the distinction you’re making. Are you saying that if any group desires, or has, a nation state, then you are anti that group if you disagree with them? Do you see nation-states as a right? To what extent do you think it’s reasonable to critique the location of a nation state (is it anti-semitic to criticise the borders of Israel? Is it anti-semitic to say: “there were peoeple living there already, it was not reasonable to create Israel there.”)?
I, and most people I know who object to the existenece of Israel, also don’t believe in nationalism or nation states, but you appear to believe nation states are a right, which is not an argument I had heard before.
Maia–
I do not think that second-guessing the creation of Israel as a state—as you put it: “there were people living there already….”—is anti-Semitic. I actually believe that myself. I also think it is reasonable and not anti-Semitic to be critical of claims made by Israel about Israel’s borders, especially because those borders are at stake in any and all negotiations about the occupied territories. My point is that making a special case of Jewish nationalism is the problem, and the rhetoric, for example, which labels Zionism a movement of world domination—and Ahmadinejad employs this rhetoric—is not a rhetoric that is about a critique of nationalism in which Israel/Zionism is a specific case. Rather, it is a rhetoric with a long and well-documented anti-Semitic pedigree.
I am not a Jewish nationalist; I am made very uncomfortable by things such as the law of return in Israel, by the power the religious establishment holds in the government, by the fact that the Israeli government would presume to claim me—as Ariel Sharon and others have done before him—as a constituent simply because I am Jewish. (It would be very odd, for example, to consider a parallel case, for China suddenly to claim Chinese-Americans as constituents in the same way.)
At the same time, however, I am also aware that there are at least two generations of Israeli Jews for whom Israel is their native country, that for those Jews, Jewish nationalism means something very different than it does for me or for any other Jew living outside the state of Israel, that being a citizen of the Jewish state is a part of their identity in the same way that being a citizen of the United States is part of mine, and yes, I think they have a right to that identity in the same way that I have a right to mine, with all of its contradictions and inconsistencies. (There are, after all, strong parallels between the way the US was “settled” by European Christians and the way what is now Israel was originally “settled” by European Jews.) If someone makes the argument that Zionism and manifest destiny have strong parallels; that Zionism and the Japanese nationalism that motivated that country’s behavior in World War II have strong parallels; that Zionism and Arab nationalism (and even Palestinian nationalism) have strong parallels—and, for example, if you then go ahead to argue, in the case of Palestinian nationalism, for example, that the best thing would be to create a new, a fully secular democratic state where there is now Israel and the occupied territories, of which all people living there would be full citizens–that critique of Zionism is not anti-Semitic. If, however, Palestinian nationalism is left uncritiqued, then it seems to me one is making a special case of Jewish nationalism and not critiquing nationalism as a whole. (It would be quite interesting to compare Zionism and what feels to me like the Islamic nationalism promulgated by groups like Hamas.)
I don’t know if that last paragraph makes sense; my son has been coming in to interrupt me as I write, but I am going to let it stand (with the caveat that it probably needs clarifying) since there is stuff in there that, if this discussion continues, is worth working through.
Also, I have linked on my blog to what I think is a really important piece of writing that deals with some of this. It really is worth reading.
One more thing: It is important to note that there were Zionists who themselves questioned whether it was right to create the state of Israel where it is now, precisely because there were already people living there. Unfortunately, the book in which I have a source for this information is in storage.
I think I understand the distinction that you are making. But there is an analysis (which I subscribe to, to some extent) that distinguishes between colonialist/imperialist nationalism and national liberation movements. I don’t necessarily agree with either sort of nationalism, but they’re working towards very different goals and I think it is reasonable (in fact necessary) to analyse them differently.
For example, I don’t think making a distinction between the difference between Indonesian nationalism, and Achenese or Timor Leste nationalism is anti-Indonesian (or more accurately anti-Sumatra) .
Like you I live in a colonised country – but New Zealand was colonised much more recently than America. Both currently, and historically, I believe that Maori nationalism is very different from the British nationalism of old or current New Zealand nationalism.
Maia:
I have heard this before, but it nonetheless has always seemed to me—and I have not made a careful study, so this is based more on intuition than anything else—that the latter form of nationalism inevitably contains the seeds of the former, mostly because I have not heard of a nationalist movement, of either kind that you mention, that does not in some way have at its core an extreme and radical Othering of whomever it is that the movement opposes. The switch from the latter to the former kind of nationalism is, arguably, what happened to Jewish nationalism over time, if you include in Zionism not merely the western European Zionists, who were of course, shaped by western European imperialist thinking even as they saw themselves as trying to liberate Jews from a social structure not entirely unlike the one that African Americans found themselves in the US before the civil rights era, but also the eastern European Zionists, who were shaped much more by socialism, Marxism and the like, and at least some of whose ambitions, and attitudes towards the people already living in Palestine, were very, very different from those that ultimately won out.
Agreed. However, the distinction you make between “British nationalism of old” and “current New Zealand nationalism” is one that is worth exploring; it is, I imagine, not only kin to the kind of difference I see between the Jewish nationalism of those Jews who live outside of Israel and those who were born/naturalized there, but also between the nationalism of the generation of Jews who originally colonized/settled in the land, a generation that is dying out, and the nationalism of those who were born there. Obviously, this “received nationalism” (if I can coin a term) can be just as racist, xenophobic, etc. as the other kind, but does it necessarily have to be? I may be playing fast and loose here with the boundary between nationalism and cultural identity, but if the distinction holds, then I think this is a worthwhile question.
I would not deny that there are differences, important differences, in degree between the two kinds of nationalisms you talk about, and I would agree that, right now, no matter how validly anyone might be able to analyze Palestinian nationalism in a way that places it in the same category as Jewish nationalism, what matters, both on the ground in the Middle East and in the world at large, is that Israel needs to be the one to do first what needs to be done to arrive at a just peace, etc. Nonetheless, this does not mean it is not necessary to remain vigilant against the ways in which opposition to Zionism and Israel often masks, consciously and not, anti-Semitism. (I am not saying you suggested this vigilance is not necessary; it’s just the logical, if predictable conclusion to what I have been saying.)
I’m not convinced about that (although I haven’t made a careful study of it either). Do slaves ‘other’ slave holders when they rise in rebellion? When people are using a single identity in a struggle for self-determination do they necessarily ‘other’ the people they are struggling against? do they have the power to do that? To what extent does it matter if they do?
I don’t think it is, for a variety of reasons. It took between 3 and 6 generations for New Zealanders of British origin to to identify as New Zealanders, rather than as part of Britain. For those first generations New Zealanders identified very much as colonisers and imperialists. Even now New Zealand nationalism is very much bound up with its colonialist past (in a way America’s isn’t, since it found an imperialist future).
I think I’d agree with you more if you were making a point about sense of home/sense of place rather than nationalism. I don’t think people have a ‘right’ to a nationalism, but can acknowledge that people’s sense of home is important (if extremely problematic when more than one person has a sense of home at the very same spot).
Incidentally, do you deliberately use the term jewish nationalism rather than Israeli nationalism? I generally believe it is really important to make the distinction between the two, because the only interests served by conflating them are Zionist or anti-semitic. I know you’re not either, and I suspect you have a point in using Jewish rather than Israeli – could you unpack that for me?
Maia:
Good questions. There is passage in one of Nadine Gordimer’s novels–the name of which I have forgotten–in which a white woman who is radically opposed to apartheid becomes the lover of, I believe, a member of the ANC. At some point in the novel, he is talking to her about the fact that, when the revolution comes, and he is talking about a violent revolution of Blacks against apartheid, she, because she is white, despite the fact that she has stood throughout her life in opposition to apartheid, might very well become a target of the revolution precisely because she is white. (I might have gotten some of the details wrong here, but I am nearly certain the overall point is accurate.) That kind of othering—targeting all whites in a white supremacist culture; targeting all Jews because Israel names itself a Jewish state and because a large majority of Jews throughout the world support the existence of Israel as a Jewish state; and so on—is it seems to me deeply implicated in all national liberation movements that I know of (though I too have not made a careful study of this). Granted, the anger/rage motivating this kind of othering is understandable and perhaps even necessary (though I would point out that this does not mean it will not make use of racist, sexist or other stereotypes when it is expressed): the need of the colonized to purge the colonizers in every aspect. My point is that this need contains within it the seeds of the kind of nationalism we both agree is “bad” and that this potential “badness” should not be ignored.
(I also need to clarify something: I have just reread my comment #13 and I realize it sounds like I mean that one must always critique Palestinian nationalism in parallel with a critique of Jewish nationalism in order for the critique of Jewish nationalism to be valid and that is not something I believe.)
It would be interesting to see how true this is for Israelis; it certainly is not true for the Israelis I have known. One important difference is that the Jews who originally colonized/settled in Palestine were in fact not colonizing in the name of some European nation to which they owed a primary loyalty. They were, rather, colonizing precisely because they felt there was no European nation to which they belonged, which would have them citizens while allowing them to be who they were. In other words, they were not English Jews or Russian Jews or whichever Jews “settling” Palestine in order to broaden the empire of the country they came from. They were, they truly believed they were, Jews who were coming home. This is a point that I think often gets lost in discussions like this: However shaped Zionism was by Western European imperialism, the Jews who conceived it as a political movement saw it more as a necessary movement of their own national liberation than anything else. (It really is important the remember that the Jews of Europe until well into the 19th century had almost no civil rights.) I would not argue that this fact justifies anything in terms of Israel’s formation or current existence, but I would argue that it distinguishes Zionism from, say, the British colonialism that resulted in the colonizing of New Zealand and that any critique of Zionism, to be fair and valid, needs to take this difference into account.
Zionism is, means, Jewish nationalism: the belief that all Jews belong to a single nation, have—or ought to have—a single national identity, and that the land which is the rightful home of the Jewish people, all of us, wherever we live in the world, is the land of Israel. It is a nationalism to which many Jews all over the world subscribe despite the fact that they do not and never will live in Israel. It was a large part of the Jewish education I recieved when I was a kid, and it remains a central tenet of much of the Jewish community in the United States. To the degree that Israel insists on its identity as a Jewish state, to the degree it continues to maintain the law of return, granting any Jew who wishes to settle there full citizenship, to the degree that the Jewish religion continues to be a major force at work in the Israeli government, it is Jewish nationalism that defines much of Israel’s stance in the world.
This obviously does not mean that Israel does not also pursue national and nationalist interests that are specific to its location, its economy, its demographics, etc., but I have, frankly, never heard the term Israeli nationalism, and so I wonder what you mean by it, how you would distinguish it from Jewish nationalism and how you distinguish each of them from the “Zionist interests” you mention in the paragraph I quoted above.
Richard – I did read your comment to mean it was only valid to criticise jewish nationalism if you also criticised palestinian nationalism – but I’m finding this discussion really interesting, so it was probably a useful miscommunication.
In response to the example you gave about the ANC, the question I’d ask is what responsibility to people have not to ‘other’ their oppressors. When I start walking quicker on a dark night because there’s a man behind me, then I’m ‘othering’ him. I’m not convinced that’s worse than the alternative.
Obviously there’s a practical difference if you’re resisting people who live in the same space (which Israel/Palestine and South Africa are both examples of) or if you’re resisting people who have only come to fight you (Indonesians in Acheh, Americans in a whole bunch of places). In the first case a form of resistance that results in ‘othering’ is more likely to do damage both to the group that is ‘othered’ and people doing the ‘othering’.
But I would challenge the idea that it’s the resistance that creates the ‘othering’ in the first place. I would argue that it’s the repression that creates the ‘othering’ – resistance just happens in a context where ‘othering’ has taken place.
I think you missed my point (probably because I didn’t articulate it clearly enough), about the New Zealand comparison. In New Zealand it took 3-4 (which is what I meant sorry – not 3-6) generations for nationalism to change from an active colonising nationalism, to a settled colonising nationalism. That’s because it took those 3-4 generations to fight for the land win, and begin the process of owning the country. Part of this change was marked, in New Zealand, by changing people’s ideas of what nationalism meant from being ‘british’ and taming the land and people for Britain, and being New Zealand, and living here. I think it’s clear that Israel hasn’t got to the the second stage yet, whatever the nationalism is called.
I both agree and disagree with the distinction you are making between the colonisation of Israel . I certainly think that if you ignore jewish history, and treat the holocaust as this weird event that just happened, they you’re never going to understand the . But on the other hand I generally do my political analysis from the point of view who don’t have power, and then I don’t usually think it matters what drives those with power. Certainly if you were criticising Zionism in the 1930s, or zionists today who had problems with Israel, then those other issues would be an important consideration.
The reason I find the term jewish nationalism strange, is because I don’t think you can really have nationalism without a nation state. Without that anything that looks like nationalism is either a liberation struggle or a delusion. Israel is the nation state in this case.
Like I said among the people I work on these issues with huge amount of effort is put into making the distinction between Jewish and Israeli (and between Israeli citizins and the Israeli government). Anti-semitics like to blur the distinction between the two, and lay all the crimes of Israel at the feet of ‘the jews’, obviously we need to make sure we don’t feed that ideology. At the same time a lot of Israel’s support comes from the fact that any attack on Israel can be painted as an attack on jewish people as a whole. So those who support Israel (who are usually called zionists, but I’d happily substitute another term), find the blurring of the two terms useful.
Maia,
Some thoughts in response to what you’ve written:
1. A distinction between Jewish and Israeli, yes, aboslutely! I can’t tell you how many times I have had people assume that my family is Israeli because I am Jewish or that all Jews come from Israel. What you wrote in the your previous post, #17, was Jewish nationalism versus Israeli nationalism and then made Zionism a third term, and that was what confused me.
2. I agree with you that the Othering which oppressed people do is a result of oppression; it is a response to oppression; but that does not remove from the oppressed the responsibility for performing the othering in the first place. Not othering does not mean forgiving the oppressor, ignoring the oppressor; it does not even mean that when you rebel you need to rebel “surgically” (to borrow a term from my country’s insidious military jargon) so that you only kill those of the oppressor class who do not actively oppose the oppression—none of that, however, removes from the oppressed responsibility for the fact that they have performed the Othering, that it exists within them and that it is their job—I would argue that it is the work of true liberation—to confront it and make it go away, though that is far too facile a term. Were I a Palestinian living cheek by jowl with the Israelis, I would most likely say that I what I have just written is a lot of bullshit, abstract, theoretical bullshit. Because what would matter then is the daily inhumanity and the life and death moments of oppression, and also the work of rebellion and liberation. What I am talking about here is not something someone in that position can necessarily afford to think about; but I am not in that position, and so I can.
3. I did not miss your point about British versus New Zealand nationalism. I’m just not sure that the analogy is accurate in terms of Israelis, unless you mean that they see themselves as Jews who are taming the land for world Jewry, etc. But I am not convinced that Israelis, or even the Israeli government, sees things that way, except when it is rhetorically and politically useful to trot those ideas out.
4. About Jewish history, Zionism and Jewish nationalism:
a. One of the major tenets of Zionism is that the Jews did indeed have a nation, but the majority of us were kicked out of it and those who continued to live there, and there has been a continuous Jewish presence on that land for centuries and centuries, were essentially living under an occupying government.
b. When I talk about Zionism and Jewish history and the fact that the original Zionists saw their movement as one of national liberation, I am talking about far more than the Holocaust, and I think it is important not to place too much emphasis on the Holocaust, because while it is true that the holocaust triggered the formation of Israel in 1948, what triggered Zionism was the long-standing deep-seated oppression of Jews all over Europe—and it is worth learning something of that history, not, again, because it excuses anything of what the Zionists or, now, the Israelis did or do, but because to look at Zionism without understanding these things is to look at it ahistorically, and it is therefore essentially to presume to take away from Jews the right to define their own identity and to claim their own history.
c. I think you are right that any political analysis should start from the perspective of those who are relatively powerless, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is certainly such a case, but there is a difference between focusing that analysis on the Israeli government and the ways in which it is Zionist in the interests of Palestinian liberation and allowing that focus to broaden, ahistorically, into a critique of Zionism as a movement and as a part of Jewish identity.
d. Finally, as I said, I am not a Jewish nationalist, but if I look at Jewish history and the ways in which almost every country Jews have lived in has, both in times of crisis and times of calm, treated them as fifth column, refused to believe that it is possible for a Jew to be “truly” American or French or Russian or whatever (and I could list on and on the ways in which Jews were treated in this way for centuries, in Europe, in the US and elsewhere; it is better now, but that improvement is very recent), it is very hard not to sympathize with the notion that the Jews ought to have a country to call their own. You yourself said it: oppression creates the othering that exists within the oppressed. The fact that Israel has become an oppressor does not change Jewish history. This does not mean that Israel should be treated as anything other than an oppressor, but it does mean that when people presume to make generalizations about what it means to be Zionist, about what Zionism is, about the relationship between Jews outside of Israel and Israel itself, etc. and so on, that Jewish history needs to be taken into account. To do otherwise is to make that history invisible, which is itself anti-Semitic (and just to be clear: I am not accusing you of this).
Okay, I need to end here. This is a good discussion. I am enjoying it.
To Maia and Richard,
I am also really enjoying your discussion. It is both thoughtful and though provoking – thanks!
My thoughts on this tend to focus on the idea of self-rule, as opposed to nationalism. I do think that there is a right to self-rule that is distinct from a right to a nation, but often what people need (correctly or incorrectly) to feel self-ruled is a nation. That’s pretty much how I understand the fact that people who live under dictatorship still prefer a dictator ‘of their own,’ or for example that the Quebec sovereigntist movement is alive and well and distinct from the movement that ‘just’ seeks greater and greater automony within Canada. To be honest, as long as ‘nations’ are the primary way in which communities regulate/are regulated and have status in the international field, it’s hard to argue that people who want a nation are wrong to conflate nation-hood and self-rule.
And yet, I do think that self-rule in Israel is really what most Jews, and possibly even most Israelis, want. It’s what I want, anyway. For the moment, I am not confident that it is possible except in the framework of a Jewish nation. The dream of a single democratic and free state in the land currently occupied by, say, Jordan and Israel, and hey, while we’re at it, why not relevant parts of Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, also, seems pretty utopian. (Why would the borders of this dream state be limited to the current borders of Israel, anyway?)
Anyway, respond or not, I definitely don’t want to disrupt your very interesting and useful conversation!!
A clarification to #2 in my previous post: The last part of this sentence:
should read:
Very interesting analogy to use on a feminist blog, no? A traditional insult against women (whore) combined with another traditional insult against women (willing to sleep with anybody).
My understanding of the word “whore” is that it’s a slang term for a prostitute, and applies to anyone in that profession regardless of their gender.
Since you brought it up, who, may I ask, is “the whore”?
Someone who betrays the principles they profess (equal opportunity for women, etc.) to gain a specific end by supporting and seeking the support of someone who opposes those principles (e.g., the undeniably anti-feminist Iranian regime). Again, regardless of their gender.
Because the way the phrase is used in this instance (a woman who sleeps with “anybody” to achieve a particular aim),
That in fact is not the way I used that phrase; I did not specify gender.
In other words, it seems that you’re acknowledging that Chavez is looking for friends anywhere he can find them, given the power of his opposition, and acknowledging his relative lack of power to demand any kind of concession from these “friends”. That indeed, Chavez is not in any position to criticize the politics of a potential ally; that he, like “the whore”, has a limited course of action.
Actually, I wasn’t thinking so much of Chavez as a “leftist”; it might be more accurate to describe him as a dictator who finds socialism a handy vehicle to obtain and maintain power. Based on the friends he selects, I can’t be sure that he’s got any particular moral principles at all.
I think it’s reasonably clear that the existance of Israel has caused suffering for a considerable number of people who were already living there (and their descendents) RonF.
Perhaps. Of course, when the shoe was on the other foot in the Middle East prior to the existence of the State of Israel, the non-Jewish inhabitants found it expedient to make the Jewish inhabitants suffer.
I don’t presume to be an expert on Jewish and Middle Eastern history. But I think it’s quite skillful of the various opponents of Israel to manage to frame the whole debate on Israel as a question of Jews oppressing Moslems starting with the existence of Israel, without any recognition or discussion of Moslems oppressing Jews either since that time or in the decades and centuries prior to Israel’s existence.
I wish I had more time to respond to this statement by RonF, but I can’t let it pass without at least saying something:
Not only is this is a gross misrepresentation of the position of people who oppose Israeli policies & behavior regarding the Palestinians, it falls into the trap of assuming that all Palestinians are Muslim. The debate is not about whether Jews are oppressing Muslims, but about whether the creation and of the state of Israel disenfranchised, and, in the form of current Israeli practice and policy, continues to disenfranchise and oppress the people of another nation, i.e., the Palestinians.
the people of another nation, i.e., the Palestinians
What nation are the Palestinians a people of?
… it might be more accurate to describe him as a dictator…
Chavez is a dictator? I thought he was elected and then briefly deposed in a US sponsored coup d’etat. Am I mistaken?
I refer you to Answers.com.
Wow, disappear for a weekend and everything changes.
Richard and Maia, thanks very much for this interesting discussion. What you’re discussing right now is more or less what I was getting at when I wrote:
My point wasn’t that there are no antisemitic reasons to oppose the existence and policies of Isreal, just that there are some non-antisemitic reasons to do so, and the claim that Isreal ought not exist (or ought not exist where it is now) isn’t, in itself, an antisemitic one.
Personally, nationalism squicks me, but I think Isreal ought to stay right where it is, albeit as an actual democracy.
The Palestinian one, Robert, which they have as much, if not more of a right to claim, if only because they actually lived on the land that the Jews from Europe came and turned into Israel, as the Jews worldwide have a right to claim membership in a Jewish nation.
A&P (sorry it makes you sound like a grocery store), you wrote
I do not understand what you mean by this–and I think it is your wording that confuses me, not necessarily your meaning. Sounds like you are justifying, or at least accepting as valid, anti-Semitic reasons to oppose the existence and policies of Israel.
Almost certainly it’s my wording, yes. Sorry about that.
Ahh, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, sorry.
What I’m saying is:
1) There are reasons to oppose the existence and policies of Israel that are antisemitic reasons.
2) There are reasons to oppose the existence and policies of Israel that are NOT antisemitic reasons.
3) Because of 1 and 2, if someone opposes the existence and policies of Israel, we can’t say with any degree of accuracy (based on that alone) whether or not they’re antisemitic.
I got the impression that Seattle Male was saying that anyone who opposes the existence of Israel is therefore an antisemite, and I was disagreeing with that.
The Palestinian one…
You know, it’s funny. I’ve never seen anything written down about the nation of Palestine. Maybe you can enlighten me.
When was Palestine a nation? Who founded it? Where were its borders? What was the form of its government, and how did it interact with the outside world?
Of course, these questions have no answer, because Palestine was never a nation; merely a label for a colonial territory occupied by a variety of populations – including Jews, for what it’s worth.
Shoot, sorry, my first time using blockquotes!! This is what I meant:
To me this obfuscates the fact that much of the Arab population of Israel immgrated there at about the same time as much of the Jewish population did, as British colonialism was creating a differently structured economy.
I think it also conflates ‘nationhood,’ ‘identity,’ and ‘national identity’ with questions of territoriality and connection to land in a not helpful way.
Exactly what Tara said.
There was no ethnically distinct, linguistically homogenous, religiously unified or otherwise obviously-this-is-a-people grouping with a strong recent claim to the land where Israel is located. (There is such a group now, unified by their feeling of grievance against Israel and their appalling treatment at the hands of the surrounding Arab nations – but that group has no particularly strong claim to Israeli land, either.)
Instead, you had a chaotic colonial zone with a hundred factions and two dozen peoples. Any country arising from such a soup was bound to tick off somebody or another.
Robert:
I’m not going to argue this with you because it would require me to reconstruct convincing arguments that I have heard in response to this claim–which I once accepted as pretty much an irrefutable fact–and I am right now unable to do so. We’ll have to agree to disagree, at least for now.
Tara: you are referring to a history I don’t know much about, i.e. the Arab immigration into Israel. I’d be interested to hear more. I suppose, however, that my point was this: Israel was created because Jews from Europe went to then-Palestine with the express purpose of creating it; their ambitions were originally for quite a bit more land than they got in the 1948 partition. Israel was not created (at least as far as I know; there may be more history of which I am unaware) because the Jews who were living there already, pre-Zionist settlement were agitating politically or otherwise for the creation of a Jewish state. And if those European Jews could, based on a Jewish nationalism that was by no means universally supported among Jews, create a nation on land to which they immigrated, there is no reason to deny to the Palestinians the “right” to assert a nationalism for themselves on land where they had lived, for while what you say about Arab immigration into Israel might be true, there were also plenty of Palestinians who were, legally and illegally, peacefully and violently, dispossessed of land that had been theirs for centuries.
As for your point about my conflating “‘nationhood,’ ‘identity,’ and ‘national identity’ with questions of territoriality and connection to land in a not helpful way,” I think nationalism does that by default. Zionist rhetoric from the 19th century is full of that kind of conflation, and the rhetoric of Nazi Germany took it to its most logical extreme. I suppose that what I originally wrote sounded like I was validating the conflation, and that was not my intention.
Richard,
I don’t really catch the importance of immigrating with the intent to create a state, in this particular case. Either the mindset of the ‘founders’ is important (as opposed to the effects, actions, etc) to how we understand and approve/disapprove of the state or it’s not.
If it is, though, then I think to be fair one would have to include the information that most Zionists and proto-Ziionists (whether they were advocating a Jewish *state* or a Jewish *homeland*) understand their immigration and the founding of Israel as a return to a home/nation from which they had been exiled.
This feeling was (and is for Zionists today), I believe, intense and real, as real as the feelings of people of Arab Palestinian heritage, now generations removed from their exile, whose demand for “the right of return” is a major issue in peace negotiations.
I’m finding it hard to distinguish the two returns, to say that one is (neo) colonialism and one isn’t. Was/is the mindset of Zionists just wrong? Were we morally obliged, somewhere along the way, to give up the aspiration of returning to Israel, or to give up the aspiration of self-rule? How many generations will it be, then, before the Palestinians in exile are morally obliged to give up their demand of return?
Is it the fact that the skin color of the Jews changed in the mean time, and the cultural development was divergent? Should we have had to pass some kind of test of cultural authenticity, like the Canadian government demands of first nations before giving them rights to their traditional lands?
Would the establishment of Jewish self-rule in Israel have been less objectionable if it were headed by middle eastern Jews, or even ‘Palestinian’ Jews, if it had all the same consequences on the non-Jewish Palestinian population?
Sorry, I’m trying not to be purposely unclear about my own stance – I am not opposed to Palestinian nationalism. I do think Palestinians have the right to self-rule and to feel self-ruled, including a nation.
Chavez is a dictator? I thought he was elected and then briefly deposed in a US sponsored coup d’etat. Am I mistaken?
I believe you are correct. But more than one dictator has obtained their initial power though an election, only to adopt extra-legal methods of gaining, exercising and keeping power. We’ll have the definitive answer sometime in 2007, when we’ll see if he’ll give up power.
Richard:
… whether the creation and of the state of Israel disenfranchised, and, in the form of current Israeli practice and policy, continues to disenfranchise and oppress the people of another nation, i.e., the Palestinians.
I’ll leave to others their well-argued position that there is not and never has been a nation (as opposed to a region) called “Palestine”. But you might want to look into Tara’s points further. One thing you might want to research is what happened when Jews tried to move to what is now Israel and buy property. It quickly became illegal and fatal for a Moslem to sell property to a Jew – and I’m talking decades before Israel was established. Sounds like oppression to me. And, as has been stated, when one group makes another group “the other”, you’re sometimes going to get violent results.
Tara–
I am unclear as to what, precisely, you are arguing with me about. You refer a couple of times to “two returns.” Which is the second one?
Your other questions raise many important points, some of which require more time to respond to than I have here. So let me just say this: I have already made the point that it is important to understand that those Jews who settled in Israel felt themselves to be returning to a homeland (I don’t remember which comment it was in, though), and that it was largely in response to the oppression Jews suffered in Europe, and that I think this is a crucial point to acknowledge in any understanding of Zionism and the formation of the State of Israel. I do think that Zionism was shaped in unfortunate ways by 19th century European imperialism and that this shaping made Zionism into something other than a movement towards national liberation, self-rule or what have you.
Unfortunately, I don’t have time to write more. My son is calling me. I will try to come back to this later.
A link to something that might interest people regarding this discussion. It’s a talk by Vladimir Jabotinsky called The Iron Wall (We and the Arabs). He did not and does not speak for all people who identify as Zionist, but the problem he lays out (as I remember it; I have not read the talk in a long time) is a problem that continues to haunt the region. It is the most nakedly honest statement of the problems inherent in the Zionist agenda in terms of relations between the Jews who saw themselves as returning to their homeland and the Arabs who were living there that I have read.
How interesting!
I think it was this particular article I read in a mini course on Zionism at the National Havurah Institute, and it strongly affected how I feel and think about Zionism and is pretty much always in the back of my mind when I discuss it.
Apparently it can lead to different places!
The two returns I was talking about were first the return of the Jewish refugees to Israel and second the return of the Palestian refugees to Israel.
When did the question of the return of the Palestinian refugees to Israel come into the discussion we were having? (It is late and I am tired and I may just have missed it.)
Tara, would you be willing to say more about how the Jabotinsky article affected you? Also, you might be interested in reading this post on my blog; it sort of outlines my positions in ways that I haven’t done here because of where this particular conversation started.
Richard, the link isn’t working. Could you try posting it again, please?
Here ’tis.
Many Jewish and pro-Israeli gropus should be aware that in Hispanic culture people tend to speak in biblical terms. Terms like “Judas” to identify betrayals, “like the pharisees” [“como los fariseos”, Spanish],”thief in the night” [“como ladron en la noche”] and others. They are not anti-semitic and should be understood as such.
Yup. I wasn’t even aware how much my own Spanish drew on Catholicism until I started reading Ladino. And I’m an atheist, with certainly no intention of using language that would imply any sort of allegiance to one religion or intolerance of another.