More on Israel’s democracy/Jewishness conundrum, and my own
On an NPR talk show this morning about the usefulness of tomorrow’s Barack Obama-Mahmoud Abbas meeting, Juan Cole was skeptical about progress toward a Palestinian state. One caller went on at length calling Cole an anti-Semite for departing from what seemed to her Israel’s obviously justified position about, well, just about everything.
Then my email brought a report of today’s vote in the Knesset, which “would mandate year jail term for anyone who speaks against Israel’s status as a Jewish state.” The bill was approved by a majority but is not yet final. However, regardless of whether this particular bill passes (and regardless of whether Israel jails any of its citizens who commemorate the Nakba, the Palestinian Catastrophe of dispersal and repression beginning in 1948, as another bill would mandate), the contradictions between Israel’s Jewish and democratic self-image are becoming more apparent. As Chaim Oron, chair of the left-wing Zionist party Meretz, noted, “Have you lost your confidence in the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state? This crazy government – what exactly are you doing? Thought Police? Have you lost it?”
As I’ve explored elsewhere, Zionists on the left are the most pained by exposing their country’s primacy of tribalism over universalism. Unwilling to join those right-wingers who insist “democracy is not a Jewish value,” I wonder what they will do once the illusion of Israel’s democracy becomes impossible to sustain.
I’ve thought often about the process of shedding my own left Zionist identity, which framed my teenage years and early twenties. Elsewhere I’ve written a bit about absorbing the left-humanist-Zionist values that made me aware and proud of my Jewishness while also making me uncomfortable — with Israel’s close ties with South Africa, with its rationale for keeping Arab citizens in second-class status, with its 1967 occupation. Motivated by a matrix of political impulses and personal ties, I held together my own conflicting reactions, thinking with unjustified optimism that things would work out.
As I look back at those seven or eight years, its seems clear that the internal contradictions were too stark to ignore but too painful to acknowledge. Even after leaving Israel in 1973, no longer thinking myself as a Zionist, persistent emotional responses and my continuing family and other personal ties led me to focus on other causes. Some of this eventually helped me think my way through Zionism, especially anarchism’s critique of statist and religious identity and critical psychology’s challenge to ideologically convenient assumptions. My return to Israel and the West Bank during three trips since 2004 helped me explore these implications on the ground.
The difficulty of my own efforts to sort things out makes me empathize today with left Zionists who cling to the notion that Israel’s dual Jewish-democratic identity is not simply a charade. If I had stayed in Israel maybe I’d be one of them still, along with my few remaining American friends who stayed in Israel after I left 36 years ago. But I like to think I’d have moved already to Israel’s non-Zionist left, joining Israeli Jews who have been able to set aside any inner conflict to work for universal democratic principles. They’re the ones who will end up in jail if the latest Knesset bill becomes law.
Technorati Tags: anarchism, democracy, critical psychology, Israel, Jewish State
May 31st, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Good man, Dennis.
August 6th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Thank you for this. You are not alone. You and other readers may be interested in “A Jeremiad” (Open letter to Dov Yermiya by Uri Avnery, who himself is 85 years old, a former Knesset member (Israeli Parliament), veteran of the 1948 war, and founder of Gush Shalom, or Peace Block. Excerpt from some of Dov’s words which Avnery quotes:
“Therefore I, a 95 year old Sabra (native born Israeli Jew), who has
plowed its fields, planted trees, built a house and fathered sons,
grandsons and great-grandsons, and also shed his blood in the battle
for the founding of the State of Israel..Declare herewith that I
renounce my belief in the Zionism which has failed, that I shall not
be loyal to the Jewish fascist state and its mad visions, that I shall
not sing anymore its nationalist anthem, that I shall stand at
attention only on the days of mourning for those fallen on both sides
in the wars, and that I look with a broken heart at an Israel that is
committing suicide..thus, for 42 years, Israel turned what should have
been Palestine into a giant detention camp, and is holding a whole
people captive under an oppressive and cruel regime, with the sole aim
of taking away their country..The IDF eagerly suppresses their efforts
at rebellion, with the active assistance of the settlement thugs, by
the brutal means of a sophisticated Apartheid and a choking blockade,
inhuman harassment of the sick and of women in labor, the destruction
of their economy and the theft of their best land and water.”
Full piece at
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1249169057/