Dennis Fox’s Weblog

An opinion piece the other day by former Spanish prime minister José María Aznar, originally in the London Times and being distributed everywhere, offers strong support for what he calls Israel’s role as a democratic bulwark of European culture and criticism of Muslim expansion. The Times is not accessible without registration, so here’s “If Israel goes down, we all go down” at the World Jewish Congress.

The piece arrived in an email in response to something I’d written criticizing a more vicious anti-Muslim screed that’s gone around the Internet for more than a year. This was on a private list of a couple of dozen people, some of whom I know from my teenage and young-adult Zionist days, which I’ve written about elsewhere. When I criticize some of the material that goes out, I routinely get at least a couple of appreciative emails from others on the list, a couple of whom have also objected at times. But clearly not everyone objects. In this case, someone else referred to Aznar’s piece as a “voice of reason.”

What follows is a slightly modified version of the email I sent back to the list after reading Aznar’s piece.

——-

Voices of reason often come from all sides. It’s easy to be reasonable, or at least to sound reasonable, when presenting just one side of an issue, as the Spanish ex-prime minister does. That’s the kind of thing that bothers me about much of the material passed around the Internet, including some of what (the original sender) has distributed. One-sided arguments can make perfect sense either to those who already accept the underlying assumptions or who know so little about the issue that anything that sounds reasonable seems persuasive.

One-sided arguments make much less sense to those who know there’s more than one side, whether they endorse a different side’s story or just understand the nature of competing narratives. Every side generally has its own mix of rationality and fantasy, moderates and extremists. I’m not suggesting that every narrative is equally accurate or justified, which is where I part company from those who think more dialogue and face-to-face interaction will fix things (I do think they might be worth doing anyway; I just don’t think they’ll lead to a just outcome). What I am suggesting, though, is that advocates who present one-sided arguments supporting Israel are comforting only themselves and persuading only the ignorant.

Aznar’s take on Israel’s role as a bulwark of Western culture and its defense of Israel’s democratic nature falls into this category. It ignores much of the relevant history, including work by Israeli historians and others calling into question much of what I, along with many people on this list, learned in Young Judaea 40 or 45 years ago. The story we got back then was also one-sided, though not always absolutely so; I’ve written elsewhere about Gidon Elad’s emphasis, while a shaliach [essentially, an educator] in New York in the mid-1960s, on how wrong Israel had gone in dealing with Arab countries and its own Arab citizens. Gidon’s hope was that an influx of Western Jews would help Israel live up to its publicly proclaimed humanistic, democratic ideals, and that Israel would become part of the Middle East rather than continue to think of itself as part of Europe.

When I saw Gidon’s widow a few years ago she told me she was glad he was no longer alive to see what Israel had become.

In 2006 I taught a short seminar on Psychology, Law, and Justice at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva. My students – Israeli Jews – had no trouble pointing out Israel’s failings as a democracy. Claims that Israel was “the only democracy in the Middle East” rang hollow to them; they knew the democracy claim was more propagandistic than accurate. It bothered them. They just didn’t know what to do about it.

On the other hand, as a cousin who spent six years in Israeli military intelligence once remarked using a phrase I’ve since heard over and over again, democracy is not a Jewish value. In a world where all that matters is tribe, conquest and resistance are both perfectly normal. Jabotinsky understood that very clearly. Maybe so did Ben Gurion. At least it’s honest, more honest I think than efforts to portray Israel as perpetually the innocent victim.

I’m not going to defend Islamist fundamentalism or any other fundamentalism, including that of my Haredi [ultra-Orthodox)relatives and those on both sides who know that God’s plan for them is more important than any plan he might have for anyone else. But using the rise of fundamentalism as the latest reason to support Israel is a red herring. Israel’s problems in the region arose well before this fundamentalism spread so far, with Israeli actions no doubt contributing to that spread. As for fear of Muslim immigrants invading Europe and North America, I suspect there would have been less of this if Western powers hadn’t done so much during and since colonialism to prop up tyrannical regimes complicit with Western corporate profit at the expense of ordinary people. That Muslims around the world want their interests heard, including their opposition to Israeli actions, is not that different from people all over the world who support their place of origin, using inevitably subjective criteria – including American Jews who mostly still internalize a pro-Israel worldview by ignoring any evidence to the contrary.

Part of my apparently naive attraction to Israel during my time in Young Judaea was the promise of it becoming a light unto the nations –  not becoming like every other state, but putting in place a better society, humanistic and open and egalitarian; Israeli would demonstrate in practice how a just society develops and grows. Being Europe’s first line of defense, as Aznar claims, was not part of the plan. It was, though, part of Napolon’s plan, when in 1798 or so he proposed a Jewish state in Palestine as a bulwark of European colonialism, a historical event prominent in pro-Palestinian narratives that shows up not at all in Israel’s.

As I’ve explored this terrain over the past few years, I’ve been attacked by both sides for not being sufficiently one-sided. That does not comfort me, or make me think I must be right if both sides reject me, since I don’t often think being in the middle is the best place to be. I would instead say my commitment is to try to figure out where justice lies, regardless of which side is in the wrong.

Trying to sort out what seem to me the most reasonable general or universal standards more often than not does lead to a critical view of Israeli policy and goals. That’s been the hardest for me to get past, and is one of the reasons I waited decades to focus on this conflict. Defenses of Israel often come down to beginning with the conclusion that what counts most is what’s best for Israel. The same could be said of some defenses of Palestinians, but that’s not my concern here. For me the goal is to look at justice and fairness and history, and apply the same principles I’d use elsewhere. I don’t believe this is singling out Israel with a special rulebook, as R suggests, so much as applying a more general rulebook to Israel as I would to other states that claim to be democratic and peaceful and just. When I do that, I’m rarely happy about the outcome.

——
So far I’ve received two responses to this. One, to the list, said only “At the risk of throwing everyone into a frenzy I’d just like to see Israel survive,” which I think reflects what I was concerned about, that he bottom line is what’s best for Israel, not what justice requires.

The second response was just to me, thanking me.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Jewish State, justice, Palestine, Aznar

Since Israel has confiscated footage shot by journalists on board the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, the Israeli version of events is the primary one hitting the mainstream media. But even if everything Israel says is true – which I have no reason to believe – it’s hard to figure out why Israeli decision makers decided to attack the ships in international water, in the middle of the night, apparently lobbing smoke bombs and tear gas before descending from helicopters. In any case, the main issue is not who shot first but when Israel will reverse course.

Today in Boston there was a demonstration outside the Israeli consulate. Some demonstrators staged a die-in in the street, and the police, unusually, let the event continue without interference. Someone several stories up in the Park Plaza Hotel (where the consulate is located) threw water out a window onto the group in the street, after which the cops kept looking up to see what else might happen. Nothing did.

Some photos:

Technorati Tags: Boston, Gaza, Israel, Palestine, protest

This Haaretz article is one of many current explorations of Israel’s persistent efforts to head off US criticism of its planned Jerusalem settlement construction, so-called “neighborhoods” across the Green Line:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is criss-crossing the Washington power grid in a bid to explain Israel’s position on plans to construct 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem. Netanyahu had a meeting scheduled with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) a day after holding talks with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. He plans to meet later Tuesday at the White House with President Barack Obama.The diplomatic effort comes after Netanyahu on Monday told thousands of participants at AIPAC’s annual conference that Jerusalem is not a settlement.

The prime minister met Monday Clinton in an attempt to put an end to the crisis that began when the report broke of plans to build 1,600 new units in Ramat Shlomo in East Jerusalem two weeks ago during the visit to Israel of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. Before Netanyahu left for Washington he asked Housing Minister Ariel Atias not to participate in the dedication ceremony for a new neighborhood in Pisgat Ze’ev in East Jerusalem. Netanyahu made the request in light of the recent tensions between Israel and the United States over construction in East Jerusalem. Atias canceled his participation and the festive ceremony, which could have overshadowed Netanyahu’s Washington visit.

One point not made often enough in the commentary I’ve seen is that references to Ramat Shlomo and, in this article, Pisgat Ze’ev, being in East Jerusalem are accurate politically but less so geographically. Both settlements are north of historic Jerusalem rather than to the East; the curving Green Line marking the 1948 border kept West Jerusalem under Israeli control but the south, east, and north in Jordanian hands. This might be a small point, but it helps clarify Jerusalem’s Jewish expansion in all directions as part of Israel’s long-time practice of creating facts on the ground. As I’ve noted here before, this effort has always been open, proudly advocated as the only way to make sure there would never be a viable Palestinian state. Increasingly it looks like Israel has succeeded.

I didn’t visit Ramat Shlomo during my three visits in the past few years, but I did see Pisgat Ze’ev on my 2008 walk from Ramallah to Jerusalem. This “neighborhood” is plunked down on scenic hillsides, surrounded by other new settlements far from what most people think of as Jerusalem – East Pisgat Ze’ev, North, and South.

(More photos here)

When Netanyahu says almost half of Jerusalem’s Jewish residents now live in East Jerusalem, these are some of the neighborhoods he’s talking about, massive housing developments with thousands of people a short commute from downtown on the almost-complete light-rail system but a world apart from what arguably is the actual city.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Jerusalem, Jewish Settlement, Palestine, Pisgat Ze’ev, Ramat Shlomo, Zionism

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

I just got back from a memorial for Hilda Silverman, a Boston-area activist who died a year ago at 69. I knew Hilda as a mainstay of the local Jewish peace community, relentlessly working to change inaccurate perceptions about causes and consequences, determined to challenge even those she worked with to not lose sight of justice. The last significant conversation we had was more than two years ago when we stopped for pizza on our way from a demonstration at Brandeis University, defending Jimmy Carter’s book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, to a fund-raiser for ICAHD, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. I might not have made it to the fund-raiser if Hilda hadn’t asked for a ride. It was cold, and I was tired. She seemed tireless, and our conversation, along with the  pizza, warmed me up.

A short video at the memorial showed clips of an interview with Hilda talking about trying to reconcile her lifelong identification with the Jewish people’s millennia of suffering and victimhood with her clear understanding that “the price was too high” for displaced Palestinians. The Boston Globe’s obituary included this:

“I am a Jew with a profound consciousness of Jewish victimization through history,” she wrote in a 2002 opinion article for the Philadelphia Inquirer. “But, for me, victim and victimizer, oppressor and oppressed are not mutually exclusive categories.” She denounced some of Israel’s actions toward Palestinians, then stood firm as many Jews labeled such criticism as a betrayal.

Sandy Tolan, the memorial event’s featured speaker, pointed out that Hilda’s empathy for those on both sides and her deep understanding of the conflict’s complexities did not stop her. He related Hilda’s political understanding and efforts to his book, The Lemon Tree, and went on to talk about the dim prospects for a two-state solution, acknowledging that Hilda herself had tired of that particular topic. Tolan ended by advocating a search for something other than a one-state/two-state choice, whether dual state or binational or confederation or something as yet unthought of. He knows, as Hilda knew, that Israeli settlement policy had rendered impossible a viable Palestinian state on what’s left of Palestinian territory. And that Hilda would keep looking for peace with justice.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Jewish State, Palestine, Reconciliation, two-state solution, Sandy Tolan

1. An article about today’s election on the Jerusalem Post website:

In Meretz, veteran politicians hoped [to...] re-energize the party. With a predicted four seats in the Knesset according to the exit polls, [Haim] Oron … pledged that Meretz would “return to be a central factor in the establishment of a Zionist, social-democratic left-wing, dovish and humanistic State of Israel. This space was left vacant in these elections.”

2. From the blog South Jerusalem run by Gershom Gorenberg (an American-born Israeli journalist who I heard speak in Boston the other night) and Haim Watzman:

South Jerusalem is…. The only place in the world where you can be a left-wing, skeptical Orthodox Zionist Jew and feel like you are part of a mass movement.

3. From the controversial Israeli historian Benny Morris’s book Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999, which I recently started chipping away at, here writing about the early 1920s:

Zionist spokesmen argued, as after previous rounds of violence, that the May rioting had been the work of a few agitators, not a true reflection of majority Arab opinion. The reason: If the violence was widely supported, there was no hope for Zionism. It had to be explained as the work of a small group of criminals, with the Jews — whose “interests were identical” with those of the Arabs — striving for “peace with the Arab nation.” This of course ran contrary to the truth, and contrary to the findings of the British commission of inquiry…. The violence, it concluded, was rooted in political and economic reasons arising from Jewish immigration and Zionist aims and was not caused by envious effendis, as the Jews claimed….

Zionist officials, though they maintained the fiction in public, were well aware of the truth. As Thon put it…. “This may be fine as a tactic, but, between ourselves, we should realize that we have to reckon with an Arab national movement….”

Comment: After Gorenberg’s talk the other night, I asked him the question I hadn’t been able to give after his talk. He had hinted that Israeli democracy needed improvement, even calling on Diaspora Jews to remind Israel that democracy requires equal rights for minorities rather than simply imposing majority rule. I wanted to know if he thought the second-class status of Israel’s Palestinian citizens was really a fixable problem, akin to that of racial minorities in the US where the law in theory even when not in fact holds all citizens to be equal, or whether in Israel the refusal to become “a state of all its citizens” demonstrated a structural distinction that meant second-class status for non-Jews must be eternal. He said it was a good question, but unfortunately the crowd at the literature table left room only for small talk.

Benny Morris, despite his meandering from army refusenik to right-wing apologist, and despite his reliance on Israeli sources and perspectives, at least provides useful evidence that from its very inception in the late 1890s Zionist organizers made public comments far removed from their actual goals and expectations. It’s sobering reading for those who still cling to popular pro-Israel defenses, and especially useful I think because it comes from a now-right-wing Israeli academic. For me, it’s one more reminder that Meretz’s Haim Oron and South Jerusalem’s Gershom Gorenberg remain mired in a past that never had a chance of moving forward.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Benny Morris, Gershom Gorenberg

It never occurred to me when I became a teenage Zionist in the mid-1960s that the Jewish state would someday defend its interests – and by extension mine, or so I was taught at the time – by becoming the biggest bully on the block. By the late 1960s, when I envisioned living in Israel for the rest of my life, I still thought a binational state of equals would have been preferable to a Jewish-defined state. The left-humanist Israelis who were most influential in my political and moral development hoped that American Jews like me who immigrated to Israel would help set things back on the right track.

Within just a few years it was clear to me that the right track had been dismantled. There was no going back. In hindsight, Israel’s internal contradictions were already fatal even before my Zionist immersion — the pulls between democracy and Jewish identity, the inability to sort out what  “Jewish state” might actually mean, the blindness to the common danger that victimization might lead to victimizing others. All of these tensions escalated beyond repair once Israel became an occupying power, a transition that inevitably destroyed any pretense that Israel would someday become a light unto the nations or even, in Zionism’s alternative, more realistic vision, a nation just like every other.

What nags at me as I read today’s reports, as I read the horrendous stories of children killed, bodies destroyed, hopes betrayed, as endless emails arrive with one or another petition, one or another appeal, is Israel’s rationale for its actions and its methods. Aside from the ever-present electoral calculations, it’s mind-boggling that Israel optimized its destructiveness to teach Hamas a lesson, to regain its deterrent capability, to make it clear to all Palestinians – to all Arabs, all Muslims, everyone – that Israel is a crazed beast willing to destroy everything and everyone. Acknowledging this goal — boasting of it smugly — clarifies that Israel will forever refuse to imagine life as an equal.

Maximizing destruction, justifying phosphorous bombs and other horrendous weapons on legal technicalities, counting every adult male a terrorist, rejecting any responsibility for hundreds of dead children who were in the wrong place at the wrong time — all this and more may damper Palestinian resistance for a time, but Israeli planners know that resistance will someday escalate once again, and the Israeli bully will have another tantrum.

Israeli professor Neve Gordon notes in How to sell ‘ethical warfare’ that

Ultimately, the moral claims the Israeli government uses to support its actions during this war are empty. They actually reveal Israel’s unwillingness to confront the original source of the current violence, which is not Hamas, but rather the occupation of the Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem. My student, R, and the other Israeli protesters seem to have understood this truism; in order to stop them from voicing it, Israel has stomped on their civil liberties by arresting them.

I’ve noted before that most of my Israeli friends and colleagues are much more opposed to Israeli policy than Israelis as a whole. This includes native-born Israelis such as Gordon, but also immigrants, including friends from my 1960s Zionism years. Had I remained in Israel, I imagine I too would be as demoralized as some of them, after putting down roots in a country that bears so little resemblance to what we imagined together four decades ago. The attack on Gaza can only add to their dismay about what went wrong, as it does to mine.

Technorati Tags: Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Zionism

Last week I posed five questions related to how different ways for framing Israel’s assault on Gaza affect our perceptions  of what is going on. A useful piece by the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions offers its own take on reframing the issues. Here’s the introduction, but see the details on the ICAHD site:

Israel’s core messages, listed below, argue for the justice of its cause in Gaza, cast Israel as the victim and ensure that its war is seen not in terms of occupation but of the broader Western struggle against terror. The critical reframing we offer, that of Israelis committed to human rights, international law and a just peace as the only way out of this interminable and bloody conflict, argues that security cannot be achieved unilaterally while one side oppresses the other and that Israel’s attack on Gaza is merely another attempt to render its Occupation permanent by destroying any source of effective resistance. It argues that Israel could have avoided all attacks upon it over the last twenty years, and the rise of Hamas, if it had genuinely negotiated a two-state solution with the Palestinian leadership. Israel, the strong party and the Occupying Power, is not the victim. Indeed, its attack on Gaza is a form of State Terrorism.

Israeli dissidents, such as ICAHD’s Jeff Halper, are a key resource in opposing the official story that all Israelis are united in wanting Gaza demolished. I’ve posted previously to pieces by Julia Chaitin and of course to continuing anti-Occupation work by Anarchists Against the Wall and other Israeli groups now working to end the siege and assault on Gaza. Israeli protests against the current assault don’t get much press, but they happen nonetheless.

There’s also a steady stream of columns in Israeli newspapers, and in other forums by Israeli journalists and others, sharply critical of Israeli policy. Amira Hass, for example, begins her column in Ha’aretz today with this:

History did not begin with the Qassam rockets. But for us, the Israelis, history always begins when the Palestinians hurt us, and then the pain is completely decontextualized. We think that if we cause the Palestinians much greater pain, they will finally learn their lesson. Some term this “achievement.”

Nevertheless, the “lesson” remains abstract for most Israelis. The Israeli media prescribes a strict low-information, low-truth diet for its consumers, one rich in generals and their ilk.

She ends with this:

In 1993, Israel had a one-time golden opportunity to prove to the world that what people say about us is untrue – that it is not by nature a colonialist state. That the expulsion of a nation from its land, the expulsion of people from their houses and the robbery of Palestinian land for the sake of settling Jews are not the basis and essence of its existence.

In the 1990s, Israel had a chance to prove that 1948 is not its paradigm. But it missed this opportunity. Instead, it merely perfected its techniques for robbing land and expelling people from their houses, and forced the Palestinians into isolated enclaves. And now, during these dark days, Israel is proving that 1948 never ended.

Also in Ha’aretz a few days ago, Gideon Levy, writing “with sorrow and deep shame,” bluntly addressed the prospect of Israel being charged with war crimes:

The questions that will beg to be asked, as cautiously as possible, are who is guilty and who is responsible. The world’s exaggerated willingness to forgive Israel is liable to crack this time. The pilots and gunners, the tank crewmen and infantry soldiers, the generals and thousands who embarked on this war with their fair share of zeal will learn the extent of the evil and indiscriminate nature of their military strikes. They perhaps will not pay any price. They went to battle, but others sent them.

The public, moral and judicial test will be applied to the three Israeli statesmen who sent the Israel Defense Forces to war against a helpless population, one that did not even have a place to take refuge, in maybe the only war in history against a strip of land enclosed by a fence. Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni will stand at the forefront of the guilty. Two of them are candidates for prime minister, the third is a candidate for criminal indictment. It is inconceivable that they not be held to account for the bloodshed….

…
The first echoes can already be heard. This past weekend, the UN and the Human Rights Commission in Geneva have demanded an investigation into war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Israel. In a world in which Bosnian leaders and their counterparts from Rwanda have already been put on trial, a similar demand is likely to arise for the fomenters of this war.

This morning an email came from a friend in Israel, a member of Psychoactive, a group of Israeli psychologist/activists focused now on Israeli-Palestinian interactions. He asked if I’d help distribute accounts of conversations with Palestinian “friends and colleagues who live in Gaza and try to save their own lives while listening to the troubles of others.” Once he sends these I’ll post them on the RadPsyNet website and link to them here.

I know that polls show the large majority of Israeli Jews supported at least the initial assault on Hamas and maybe even what Amira Hass calls the “rampage” on Gaza as a whole. It’s important not to lose sight of those Israelis who steadily work to reframe the issues.

Technorati Tags: Anarchists Against the Wall, Gaza, Israel, Palestine, war crime, Psychoactive