Short answer: because I can’t think of anything to say.
A few days ago, I came across this video on Jewschool:
There’s a midrash on the Jacob story that Avraham Burg mentions in his new book. According to the story, Jacob was “anxious and distressed” as he went to fight his brother Esau. He was anxious, the Talmud explains, because he knew he might die – but he was distressed because he knew he might kill.
Even if the attack on Gaza were 100% justified – even if there was absolutely no other action Israel could have taken – don’t these people care about how un-Jewish it is to celebrate killing people? Even if you believe this had to be done, what about it makes you want to dance a horah? Even if you believe that every single Palestinian who has died deserved to die, why would the task of ending someone’s life make you happy?
I meant to write about that video days ago, but I was distracted by the slew of anti-Semitic comments on, ironically, two parts of an essay about anti-Semitism. If we can wrap our heads around the idea that one can do something racist without hating POC, then surely we can fathom that, say, denying the existence of Gentile privilege is anti-Semitic even if some of one’s best friends are Jewish. I want Gaza to be centered in anti-racist, anti-capitalist work right now simply because at the moment, their situation is one of the most desperate and time-sensitive. But I can’t stand it when non-Arab, non-Jewish Americans shriek that even mentioning global violence against Jews is somehow hurting Gazans, and then develop a martyr complex when a Jew angrily points out that decrying Jewish liberation work is anti-Semitic. (I also can’t stand it when the rhetoric in a “discussion” becomes so angry and inflammatory that anti-Zionist Jews are accused of being self-hating and are basically forced to leave. Fuck. That. Shit.)
If you seriously can’t believe that we can work on dismantling anti-Semitism without advocating the deaths of Palestinians, then I doubt I can work with you. If you’re itching to leave a comment along the lines of, “Jewish liberation?! That means ZIONISM,* right!? You must be a Zionist, right!? Because only Zionists care about Jewish liberation!!” then for God’s sake, read a book or two before you accuse me of being a racist anti-Palestine warmongerer because I don’t like it when flaming cars are driven into synogogues.
(On the anti-Semitic attacks in Europe – you wouldn’t believe the number of people I’ve seen saying, “Well, those Israelis have to learn somehow.” If you can’t figure out the distinction between a European Jew and an Israeli, and if you can’t figure out that violence against any ol’ Jewish person probably isn’t stemming from a sincere desire to help Palestinians, then I say it again: I doubt I can work with you.)
I think Mandolin’s post is right on.
I saw Waltz With Bashir the other night. I’d planned on writing a very nice, eloquent review of it, but really it would have all boiled down to this: it helped me stay human. Please see this movie and stay human. Now if only Palestinian filmmakers could enjoy international exposure.
By the way, how do I personally feel about Zionism? Do I identify as a Zionist, an anti-Zionist, a non-Zionist, or a post-Zionist? I honestly don’t know. If we accept that Zionism has come to mean a Jewish state in Palestine, then I’m anti-Zionist. If we were to consider a Zionism that meant a Jewish state anywhere, then, depending on how much violence or alienation I was personally experiencing, I would be either a Zionist or a non-Zionist (someone who supports a Jewish state but doesn’t plan on moving there). But I feel like the whole question of whether there should be a Jewish state is moot; the fact is, there is one, and it’s not going anywhere. So does that make me a post-Zionist? Not quite; that term means something slightly different. What about the question of keeping Israel Jewish? What will happen when/if Arab births outnumber Jewish births, and the ratio begins to change? More ethnic cleansing is unacceptable (even having to write that seems to diminish its truth) – but if Israelis let their national character change, do they risk violence against Jews? Why is addressing root causes always out of the question?
Why do I feel like any time I write something that’s not explicitly condemning the actions of Jews, readers are combing over my sentences, looking for anti-Palestinian oppression? Why can’t anyone accept that it’s harmful when so many liberal and radical Jews feel like our Jewish identities have to revolve around feeling ashamed of Israel? I’ve literally seen people – Jews! – claiming that Zionism is the sum total of Jewish identity. That doesn’t make any sense! Maybe sometimes I want to read my great-grandmother’s letters or take my Yiddish classes without thinking about Israel!
I wanted this post to be about Gaza, but the truth is, I don’t know anything about Gaza. I’m sitting here in California with palm trees swaying outside my spacious apartment and I have no fucking clue.
I think I’m going to start using my other blog, in part, to rediscover and examine Yiddish culture. Partly it’s because I suck at timely commentary. Partly it’s because a Youtube search reveals a wealth of Yiddish theater, music, and dance. Partly it’s because the introspective styles of writers like BFP, Joan Kelly, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, and Little Light have taught me more about activist work than even the best political commentary. Maybe, by developing a firmer idea of where I came from, I can stop defining myself against the people celebrating the deaths of Gazans. Maybe if we remember how vibrant Jewish cultures can be, we can funnel our energy into art and writing and dance instead of wars. Maybe we can do the same for American cultures, maybe even for white cultures. Please, please, please, someone tell me you’re with me on this.
(Cross-posted at Modern Mitzvot.)
__
* I’m not even getting into the problem with the “Zionism=murderous bloodthirsty racism” mentality… maybe in another post. I know I can’t hope for people to just look it up themselves, or ever believe that early twentieth century European Jews could possibly have sensible reasons for wanting a state. I know it’s too troublesome and complicated to accept that, while the decision to “buy” Palestinian land was obviously racist and unjust, the desire to escape violence by forming autonomous territory was understandable.
Well said! There is also a midrash that when the Israelites crossed the red sea, escaping the Egyptian army, and started celebrating their deaths by drowning, God said, why are you singing? Those are my children too. I would only add that Yiddish is not synonymous with Jewish (though it’s ‘yiddish’ for ‘jewish’). Jewish history and culture is much broader than that, including Sephardic history, Asian history, etc.
Lilian – absolutely. I’m focusing on Yiddish because that’s my own personal heritage, but if any Jews with different backgrounds wanted to contribute something…? :)
And I’d forgotten about the Red Sea midrash! That’s an important one.
Julie,
Very well said! There’s also the custom at Pesach of spilling a little wine as the ten plagues are recited so that we don’t drink a full cup of wine, because we shouldn’t drink a full cup of wine when our liberation required the killing of so many people.
If we accept that Zionism has come to mean a Jewish state in Palestine, then I’m anti-Zionist. If we were to consider a Zionism that meant a Jewish state anywhere, then, depending on how much violence or alienation I was personally experiencing, I would be either a Zionist or a non-Zionist (someone who supports a Jewish state but doesn’t plan on moving there).
First, AFAIK, being a Zionist doesn’t require wanting to move to Israel. Zionism is simply the belief that there should be a Jewish state and the political movement centered around that belief.
Personally, I’m a Zionist. Not sure where I would have fallen in the debate about where that Jewish state should be, but I feel that debate is long over. I don’t see where else there could be a Jewish state at this point. And I certainly don’t agree with those who suggest that Israel should be wiped out.
As far as demographic issues go, I’ll grant those are tricky. I will say, though, that Israel abandoning the principles of democracy won’t do good things for the country’s effectiveness as a haven for Jews.
I., too, find it hard to talk about Gaza right now — all of this blood on US-Israeli hands…
And wow, that is quite a (brilliant, in my mind) video — “we have to kill their children to defend our children.”
The hideousness, for me, is the way in which the horrifying violence of the state of Israel actually furthers anti-Semitism more than anything else I can think of. In order, allegedly, to create a safe state for Jews.
But it is somewhat shocking when I hear smart, radical, politicized people suddenly making weird comments equating all Jews, or all Israeli Jews, or all observant Jews, with, well, the people who drop bombs on schools. The history of anti-Semitism is deep, and the state of Israel is making it deeper.
And thank you thank you thank you for the sweet compliment…
Love —
mattilda
Nice post, Julie.
Being neither Jewish nor Palestinian, I’m standing at something of a distance from this thing. I really don’t think I should have to get tangled up with all this anti-Semitism stuff. A (relatively) powerful Western state, funded by me by the way, is attacking a civilian population, with the expected mass destruction and death.
If this kind of behavior is not OK for us (as in, the attack on Iraq) does it suddenly become OK if you’re Jewish? Or if you’re Tutsi? Or if you’re Irish Catholic? Or if you’re one or another faction (I can’t keep them straight) in Ethiopia? Or is all your behavior suddenly NOT OK just because you’re Jewish? Or are all these questions totally irrelevant (my opinion)?
These people on the video are displaying nothing more sophisticated than tribalism. The questions about which tribe couldn’t matter less, at least to me, at least not to the issues of whether this is OK or not. Behavior which in itself is immoral is not magically moral if you belong to a particular tribe, and vice versa.
Anyway, thanks for the thoughtful discussion. I am unhappy that our government is, in effect, funding and equipping this thing. I think we need to have a word with our Israeli allies.
I think that the “supporting Israel, but somewhere else” thing is a bit of a canard. In practice it would mean either 1) somewhere that nobody lives, can live, or wants to live, which pretty much guarantees it will be somewhere that no Jews can or want to live; or 2) it will be somewhere that people already live, in which case it will be similar to what we have now, with the added aspect of moving an entire country and its population.
In a theoretical sense the question “should Israel have been established as it was?” is certainly an interesting one, but the question “should the state of Israel and its residents pack up and be relocated somewhere else?” seems a bit ridiculous.
So functionally speaking, I see “I would support a jewish state but not where it is now” to be the same thing as “I don’t support a jewish state at all.” Which is a perfectly valid opinion, of course, but better to be clear about it.
Thanks for writing this. It sums up a lot of what I’m feeling. I, too, saw that video over at Jewschool and felt disgusted and grateful to the interviewer for holding up this mirror, as ugly as the image was. But then to read the comments on YouTube (and yes, I know, YouTube comments are the worst) and every other one was “Hitler was right” and “Hitler should have finished the job” and “The Jews are a poison everywhere they go and need to be eradicated” just made me want to curl up in a corner. That’s the reward a Jew gets for confronting other Jews with their racism. He gets told he belongs in a gas chamber.
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As an Israeli Jew who has lived among Israeli Palestinians in Israel and Diaspora Palestinians abroad, I find the “State of Israel, but somewhere else” disputes to be heart-warmingly anachronistic, a concern of organizations like the Bund which are moot even on their (now almost Judenrein) home turf of Eastern Europe. We are now on our 4th generation of Hebrew-speaking Palestinians of Israeli citizenship and of Palestinian refugees, with the ossification of boundaries meaning that the issue of communal life within the State of Israel is a separate one from the resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict, except for those extremists who are utterly sincere about having it all, and the other people nowhere.
The immediate cause of the Gaza crisis was a mutually-reinforcing succession of escalations brought about by Hamas’s and Israel’s decision to increase the pressure on the other party in an attempt to find a level of coercion at which it would be the dominant party in the dispute. Displays of callous Diaspora-community racism on both sides notwithstanding, the weapons are sophisticated weapons of war deployed by a national-security-state apparatus, on the Gazan-Palestinian-Hamas side as well as the IDF/Israeli side, according to the “rules of the game” that both sides have puzzled out, and coming to an end by the cessation of action by the State and its enemy proto-state actors. Concentration of the means of violence in the hands of a few and dispersion of any points of leverage for mass civil action against the violence are a hallmark of the situation, and this has been the case since 2001, Israeli anti-intervention protests and isolated incidents of rocket refusal by Palestinian landowners notwithstanding.
In short, the people you are blaming for their attitudes above are already at a remove from the situation and the deaths and the violence are not primarily a result of those attitudes.
After more than 60 years of Israel’s actual existence in more-or-less the same place on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, the question of whether it “should” exist becomes theoretical or abstractly philosophical, not political. The practical questions have to do with where Israel’s borders should be, and what national policies should be towards neighboring countries and ethnic minorities inside their borders.
(In 1989, when I saw the video from Tiananmen Square, I didn’t think China had no right to exist (nor that the country should be driven into the sea, or made to form a government in exile on some nearby island, or some [really big] piece of land someplace nobody else was using.) I thought the Chinese army was doing something wrong. I thought the Chinese government had frighteningly bad policies, and should be pressured into changing them. )
I want Israel to exist. As a practical matter, it does exist. Whenever a nation ceases to exist, the transition is a disaster. (Haven’t you noticed?) As a moral matter, part of its reason for existing is to offer Jews a place of refuge. That starts to feel important when religious bigots and anti-immigration activists are shouting about “Go back where you came from!” When Israel itself foments religious bigotry, turning into an international bully, producing generation after generation of people who are trapped in poverty and oppression…to my mind, that undercuts the moral advantage substantially. And it’s just *stupid* for a country to set such harsh constraints on so many people within their borders–limiting their ability to move about, earn money, buy food or property, get an education–for so long that children grow up under those conditions. If they were not enemies to start with, treating them that way for a few decades is very likely to turn them into enemies. It’s asking for trouble.
I don’t know if Israel can make peace with the Palestinians, after so many years of abuse. I think it’s possible to make peace while Israel continues to exist, but the abuse has to stop. It seems like a long time since I’ve heard serious consideration in Israel of that kind of policy change, but I think it’s important not to lose track of the distinction between”Israel existing” and “Israel oppressing Palestinians.”
I think I will be using this comparison in the future. I’m a non-Jew living in Israel, so even though I think I’m pretty moderate on this issue, it appears to many that I’ve taken a side. I feel a responsibility as a Middle East scholar to be vocal about my opinions on Israel, Palestine, Gaza and the conflict, but I also feel averse, because I feel like no one really hears what I say, they just wait for something in what I say to affirm what they think I’m going to say to attack it.
I guess I sometimes just feel like… do you want to have a monologue or a dialogue?
That’s a great way of putting it.
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