[wvns] Shoot and cry: Liberal Zionism's dilemma
Shoot and cry: Liberal Zionism's dilemma
Ben White
The Electronic Intifada
Sep 20, 2007
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article8992.shtml
Howard Jacobson (photo)
Howard Jacobson is one of the most high-profile Jewish authors in
Britain, having written numerous critically-acclaimed and successful
comic novels. He also writes a weekly column in the liberal-leaning
The Independent and in recent times has used it to vociferously attack
the growing boycott of Israel. His column on 1 September, "There seems
to be a pecking order among the dispossessed, and Jews come last," was
a fine example of the twin track approach of the liberal Zionist,
combining moral remorse with unhampered support for ethnic cleansing.[1]
Soft-pedaling Israeli colonialism is nothing new -- as Israeli
historian Ilan Pappe has noted, in 1948 a number of Zionist
politicians condemned some isolated incidents among the widespread
atrocities being perpetrated against the Palestinians. This, according
to Pappe, was an attempt "by 'sensitive' Jewish politicians and
soldiers to absolve their consciences," an "Israeli ethos that can
best be described as 'shoot and cry.'"[2] Jacobson's angst drew such a
response in the letters' page that the writer felt compelled to pen
another, rambling defense of his defense of Zionism, "When I argue on
the side of Zionism, it is because it seems intellectually right to do
so."[3]
Most of Jacobson's original piece is an attack on either John Pilger
or Robert Fisk, wrapped in his musings on how the Jewish exile is
afforded little sympathy when compared to other people groups (the
Palestinians included). But the article is also a classic example of
how Zionism appropriates the rich, varied religious-cultural
significance of Jewish identity (and in particular, Jewish exile) for
a narrow, colonial purpose. For Jacobson, "the lost respect and
homelessness" experienced by the Jewish people through history "found
expression in Zionism." Twice, Jewish "yearning" is equated with the
modern day state of Israel, even though this Zionist-driven
equivalence has always been fiercely contested among Jewish communities.
Many Reform and Orthodox Jews opposed the Zionist project from the
start, and although the combined effect of the Zionists' best efforts
to conflate Judaism with Zionism together with the devastating impact
of the Holocaust soon reversed the balance, significant numbers
continue their resistance today:
The Jewish tradition had formulated the strategy of return to the
promised land through the agency of spiritual effort, in order to do
so in peace. Many threads of tradition warn against any worldly
effort, which might delay redemption and bring down unprecedented
calamity upon the Jews. The military conquest of the Holy Land and the
ingathering of the Jews there constitutes, from this perspective, an
act of blasphemy, a usurpation of the divine prerogative, which
undermines the Covenant of the children of Israel with God.[4]
Needless to say, that is simply one example -- many nonreligious Jews
would also reject the conflation of their own complex sense of
identity with the destiny of a colonial settler-state.
Effacing these differences and claiming to speak for all Jews, as
Jacobson does in his commentaries, has always been a core part of
Zionism. This illogical equivalence, which ironically is the same
accusation leveled against alleged or real anti-Semites, forms the
basis for Jacobson's meanderings. With typical clarity, Joseph Massad
highlighted the three assumptions underlying this move:
(i) Modern European Jews are the direct descendants of the ancient
Hebrews; (ii) The ancient Hebrews had exclusive rights to Palestine in
which they lived alone; and (iii) European Jews have the right to
claim the homeland of their alleged ancestors 2,000 years later.[5]
Jacobson repeated these foundational ideas in his second column (which
were sometimes taken at face value even by his critics), as he wrote
about how unjust it was to "express sorrow" for the Jewish "exile" but
deny these feelings when "they return." In his essay, Massad goes on
to cite Israeli historian Benjamin Beit- Hallahmi, who described how
the "Zionist settlers claimed they were not moving to a new country,
but simply coming home after an extended stay abroad." While "theirs
was an act of repatriation" then, "the apparent natives were actually
the real foreigners."
Jacobson's tactic is simple. If one puts the millennia-old Jewish
diaspora on a par with the Palestinian refugees, then the likes of
Fisk do indeed look unfair in their solidarity with the Palestinians
compared to the lack of "understanding" for the Jewish (read Zionist)
success in "returning to the 'land for ever denied'":
"If it is terrible to lose your home today, then it was terrible to
lose your home yesterday."
But of course, there is no comparison. Responding to the controversy
over the inclusion of the Nakba in government-approved Israeli
textbooks, Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman defended the
ethnic cleansing of 1948, saying "we did what we had to." Lieberman
was born in Moldova in 1958 and only moved to Israel in 1978; Jewish
militias were clearing out Palestinian villages to make way for the
Jewish "return" ten years before Lieberman was even alive. Compare
that with the experience of one from thousands of Palestinian families
who have witnessed their home demolished:
Armed Israeli security forces woke them up at 5:00 a.m. Jessica said
she was given five minutes to get out. Her daughter screamed and her
husband was arrested as clearers stuffed some of their possessions
into plastic bags before the bulldozers pulverized the two-bedroom
house and vegetable patch into rubble.[6]
That was in August, in Occupied East Jerusalem (and sadly, the story's
surfacing owes much to the fact that the wife is British). In an
unbroken line of demolition, massacre and uprooting, the "returning"
Jews have come as dispossessors, the Palestinians rendered an
inconvenience.
But Jacobson is a liberal Zionist, not a Likudnik, a Sharon or a
Netanyahu. He thus finds himself in a fix -- how to render the horrors
of colonialism more palatable? This is done in two ways (aside from
appealing to the standard Zionist frameworks already discussed):
firstly, Jacobson sows a seed of doubt that all this talk of "ethnic
cleansing" is even true -- "Jews are now held to be dispossessors
themselves" (my emphasis). At the risk of repetition, it is worth
noting that once again, Jacobson talks of "Jews," a mirror-claim of
the anti-Semites who see world Jewry as one and the same as the
Zionist colonizers.
In his follow-up column, he positively layers on the ambiguities,
diverting the reader's gaze from the columns of Palestinians forced
from their homes in 1948, or the farmers robbed of their land in 2007,
to a less queasy exchange of claim and counter-claim. It is impossible
to "understand" a situation, Jacobson urges, if you "refuse to see its
contradictions and intractabilities." Apparently, you don't aid peace
by denying the "competing claims" of a "complex situation." It is the
naggingly familiar liberal lullaby of the "circle of violence" and
"two sides," which sends us to sleep while Palestine shrinks.
The second approach, and one beloved by Zionist liberals from Tel Aviv
to London, is to move from the material horror of Palestine's
colonization to the vaporous world of existential rumination and
"feelings." Jacobson states for the record that he is "one of those
who believe that Jewish experience of exile obliges Israel actively to
comprehend the sorrows of Palestinian exile." That, of course, is as
far as it goes. It's similar to one of the correspondents who wrote to
the paper in Jacobson's defense, who acknowledges that the
Palestinians might "feel" badly treated, as if all that was needed was
a good dose of navel-gazing therapy. Jacobson was even more
categorical in the second column. The dispossession of the
Palestinians is not a "moral" issue, he wrote, but rather an
unfortunate afterthought, a "tragic political consequence" of the
Jews' "return."
Jacobson's writings exemplify the dilemma of liberal Zionists, the
politicians, authors and journalists who often grace the pages of the
"center-left" press in the US and UK (as well as Israel). They
desperately wish to "acknowledge" and embrace the Palestinian
"feeling" of suffering and dispossession, yet at the same time, help
to solidify the Zionist mythology that was, and is, used to justify
the Palestinians' dispossession. Perhaps, however, it is not quite
strictly accurate to call it a "dilemma," since for the Zionist --
liberal or otherwise -- there is no doubt when it comes to the crunch
question of whether to support or oppose the ongoing colonization of
Palestine and the dispossession of its people.
Ben White is a freelance journalist specialising in Palestine/ Israel.
His website is at www.benwhite.org.uk and he can be contacted directly
at ben@benwhite.org.uk.
Notes
[1] "There seems to be a pecking order among the dispossessed, and
Jews come last," The Independent, 1 September 2007.
[2] Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oneworld
Publications (2006), p.110.
[3] "When I argue on the side of Zionism, it is because it seems
intellectually right to do so," The Independent, 15 September 2007.
[4] Yakov M. Rabkin, A Threat From Within: A Century of Jewish
Opposition to Zionism, Zed Books (2006), p.77.
[5] Joseph Massad, The Persistence of the Palestinian Question,
Routledge (2006), p.25.
[6] "Briton suffers with Arabs under Israel demolition law," Middle
East Times, 2 August 2007.
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