The Wandering Who: A Study of Jewish Identity Politics (11 page)

Chapter 12

Eretz Yisrael
vs.
Galut

For more than half a century, opponents of the Jewish State have identified Israel’s policies with Zionism. Yet they may have been wrong to do so. Zionism does indeed dictate the plunder of Palestine in the name of Jewish national aspiration and ‘home-coming’. Israel has been efficient in translating Zionist philosophy into brutal practice. However, Israelis – more precisely, the vast majority of Israeli-born secular Jews – are not motivated by Zionist ideology. Its spirit and symbols are virtually meaningless to them. Zionism is, for most of them, either an archaic notion or a foreign concept altogether. Most forms of ‘anti-Zionism’, then, have hardly any effect on Israel, Israeli politics or the Israelis themselves. Zionism is largely a Jewish Diaspora discourse.

Zionism vs. Israel

‘I am a human being, I am a Jew and I am an Israeli. Zionism was an instrument to move me from the Jewish state of being to the Israeli state of being. I think it was Ben-Gurion who said that the Zionist movement was the scaffolding to build the home, and that after the state’s establishment it should be dismantled.’
Avraham Burg
⁶²

If Zionism exists to maintain Jewish entitlement to a national home in Zion, Israeli-born Jews live this reality from the start. For them, Zionism is a remote chapter of history associated with an old photograph of a man with a big black beard (Herzl). For Israelis, Zionism is not a transformation waiting to happen, but a tedious and dated body of ideas with little relevance
whatsoever to their lives.

For the new Israelites, the
Galut
(Diaspora) has negative connotations. It is associated with ghettos, shame and persecution. However, this term is not used to refer to downtown Manhattan or London’s Soho; contemporary Israelis do not identify their emigration from Israel as a return to the
Galut
. Like other migrant populations, they are only in search of a better life somewhere else. For most Israelis, their country is far from being a heroic, glorious place – after more than sixty years with the same spouse, they no longer appreciate her beauty.

Israeli-born secular Jews, the products of the Zionist transformation, are now so used to their existence in the region that they have lost their Jewish survival instincts. Instead they have adopted a hedonistic interpretation of Western enlightened individualism, which banishes the last remnants of tribal collectivism. This condition may explain why Israel was defeated in the 2006 Lebanon war. The new Israelis don’t see any reason to sacrifice themselves on a collective Jewish altar. They are far more interested in exploring the pragmatic aspects of ‘the good life’. Perhaps it is for this reason that the Israeli military didn’t manage to subdue Hamas in Operation Cast Lead. In order to do so, Israeli generals would need to implement courageous ground tactics. They realise that carpet-bombing Gaza and dropping white phosphorus on UN shelters are likely to fail to produce the ‘necessary results’, yet there is nothing else they can do. Hedonistic societies do not produce Spartan warriors, and without real warriors at your disposal you’re better off fighting from afar. Needless to say, the Palestinians, the Syrians, Hizbullah and the Iranians see it all. Day by day they analyse Israel’s cowardly tactics, and properly interpret Israeli reality. They know Israel’s days are numbered. Interestingly enough, the US military elite is also reviewing the situation – they have begun to grasp that Israel is no longer a strategic US asset.

On the face of it, Israelis do not seem that concerned with the
emerging inevitability of their fate, at least not openly. Young Israelis are concerned largely with personal survival. They are escapists, asking: ‘How the hell can I get out of here?’ As soon as they complete their compulsory military duty, they either rush to Ben-Gurion Airport or learn how to switch off all the news channels. Israelis are leaving their homeland in growing numbers. Those doomed to stay behind belong to an apathetic culture of indifference.

Beaufort

Beaufort
, an award-winning Israeli war film produced in 2007, is an astonishing exposure of Israeli fatigue and defeatism. It tells the story of an IDF special infantry unit, dug in at a Byzantine fortress atop a mountain in South Lebanon. The action takes place in 2000, days before the first Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. The unit is surrounded by Hizbullah fighters. Day and night they live in trenches, hide in concrete shelters and are subject to unending barrages of mortar rounds and missiles. Though they all dream about their lives after returning from the hell in which they are caught, they die one after another at the hands of an unseen enemy.

Israeli audiences loved
Beaufort
. I believe they saw in it an allegory of their own terminal state. As much as the Israeli soldiers in the film long to run away as far as they can, whether that means settling in New York or getting stoned in Goa, Israeli society is coming to terms with the country’s temporality and futile existence. Like the soldiers, Israelis want to become New Yorkers, Parisians, Londoners and Berliners (apparently even the number of Israelis queuing for Polish passports is increasing daily).
Beaufort
evokes a society under siege, the realisation that there may be no escape routes left, whether in physical terms or as a result of growing indifference. Time is running out.

Israel In The Eyes of The Diaspora

Although, like the soldiers in
Beaufort
, the people of Sderot or Ashkelon are happy to leave everything behind and run for their lives, for many Diaspora Jews Israel represents nothing less than a lucid model of glory. For them it is both ‘meaning’ as well as ‘meaning in the making’, the symbolic liberation and redemption of Jewish misery. Israel, to them, is everything the Diaspora Jew is not: it is full of
chutzpah
, forceful, militant, standing up for what it believes in. Accordingly, for a young Jew from Golders Green or Brooklyn, making
aliyah
⁶³
or joining what he or she mistakenly regards as the heroic Israeli army is far more glorious than joining Dad’s law or accounting firm or dental practice. Though the majority of young Diaspora Jews choose to get on with their lives in their native countries and avoid ‘taking advantage’ of the Zionist challenge to make
aliyah,
Zionism still provides them with a symbolic identifier.

Few Jewish parents would stop their son or daughter from joining the IDF. Why should they, after all? It’s a very safe army to be in; it avoids ground battle and kills from afar. Every Jewish father in the Diaspora must accept that it may be useful for his youngster to learn how to drive a tank, fly a helicopter or shoot an MK-47. Unlike the shockingly under-equipped Palestinian warriors who die stopping
Merkava
tanks with their bodies, Israeli soldiers barely ever risk their lives. Making heroic
aliyah
and joining the IDF seems to be a relatively safe adventure, at least for the time being.

Wandering Around

Zionism ‘invented’ the Jewish nation, ushering its national home, Israel, into a conflict that is now assuming global proportions and becoming a serious global threat. Yet, as I have noted, for the Israelis in the eye of the storm, ‘Zionism’ means very little. They enthusiastically join the IDF not because they are Zionists, but because they are Jews . The notion of the ‘wandering Jew’ thus
has a new meaning. The dialectic between the Diaspora and
Eretz Yisrael
consists of a flow and counter-flow of yearning, aspiration and migration. Diaspora Jews are inspired by the Zionist fantasy of Israel; Israeli Jews, on the other hand, are determined to escape their increasingly besieged lives. The Diaspora is heading toward Israel at the same time as desperate Israeli Jews aspire toward getting out. There is, then, a dialectic tension between Diaspora Jewish identity and Israeli-ness, which is largely related to the Zionist project. Zionism and Israel are two diverse poles that together inform contemporary Jewish experience.

Love Yourself as Much as You Hate Everyone Else

Unlike the Western Diaspora secular Jew, who struggles to establish a coherent continuum between Chosen-ness and a multi-ethnic open society, Israel permits a coherent and consistent symbolic interpretation of tribal supremacism, in which ‘love yourself as much as you hate everyone else’ becomes a pragmatic reality. The Israeli is capable of inflicting the ultimate pain on his or her neighbours. In order to understand the tribal concept of self-loving, we must first consider the concept of Chosen-ness.

While the religious (Judaic) understanding of Chosen-ness is interpreted as a moral burden in which Jews are ordered by God to stand as an exemplary model of ethical behaviour, the secular Jewish interpretation has been reduced to a crude, ethno-centric, blood-orientated chauvinism. It encourages those ‘lucky’ enough to have a Jewish mother to love themselves blindly. In most cases, Israelis interpret their national homecoming as a legitimate dismissal of the elementary rights of the other. In many cases, it leads to animosity and even hatred, whether latent or manifest.

This form of supremacy lies at the heart of the Zionist claim for Palestine, at the expense of its indigenous inhabitants, but it doesn’t end there; Jewish Lobbies in the USA and Britain openly
advocate for the extension of the ‘War Against Terror’ against Iran, Islam and beyond. I would never claim that this type of warmongering is inherent to Jews as a people, yet, unfortunately, it is rather symptomatic of Jewish political thinking – left, right and centre. Though Jews are divided between themselves on many issues, they are somehow united in fighting those who they collectively identify as their enemies.

How is it that a people so divided can unite in this way? One explanation has us returning to the idea that Zionism
per se
has little to do with Israel, it is simply an internal Diaspora Jewish discourse. Consequently, the debate between Zionists and so-called ‘Jewish anti-Zionists’ has zero impact on Israel or the struggle against Israeli policies. It is there to keep the debate ‘within the family’, while planting more confusion amongst the
Goyim
. It allows the so-called ‘progressive’ Jewish ethnic campaigner to maintain that ‘not all Jews are Zionists’. This dull argument has been good enough to effectively shatter any criticism of Jewish ethnocentric lobbying that may have been voiced in the last four decades.

When it comes to ‘action’ against the so-called ‘enemies of the Jewish people’, Zionists and ‘Jewish anti-Zionists’ act as one people – because they
are
one people. (Whether or not they are, in reality, a single people is irrelevant, as long as they believe themselves to be or act as though they are.) What is it that makes them one people?

There is an old saying: ‘Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are.’ As we saw earlier on, a far more refined reading of Jewish contemporary tribal and identity politics would be: ‘Tell me whom you hate, and I’ll tell you who you are.’ If, for instance, you abhor Norman Finkelstein, Gilad Atzmon, Jeffrey Blankfort, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt and so on, you are probably a Jewish ethnic campaigner. If you simply disagree with any of these people, you can actually be anyone.

Chapter 13

The Right to Self-Determination:
A Fake Exercise in Universalism

A few years back, in a little community church in Aspen, Colorado, during the Q&A session that followed a talk I gave, a middle-aged man at the back of the room stood up and introduced himself thus: ‘I am a citizen of the world, a cosmopolitan and an atheist. I would like to ask you something, Mr Atzmon’

‘Hang on,’ I interrupted. ‘Please do not be offended by my asking, but are you by any chance a Jew?’

He froze for a second, and couldn’t stop from blushing as everyone in the room turned to look at him. I felt a bit guilty about it, because it was not my intention to embarrass the man. It took him a further few seconds to get his act together.

‘Yes Gilad, I am a Jew, but how did you know?’

‘I obviously didn’t know,’ I replied. ‘I was guessing. You see, whenever I come across people who introduce themselves as “cosmopolitans”, “atheists” and “citizens of the world”, they somehow always happen to be assimilated “Jews” who identify politically as progressive cosmopolitans. I can only assume that non-Jews find some different methods to deal with discontent related to their identity. If they are born Catholic and decide to move on at a certain stage, they just leave the Church behind. If they do not love their country as much as others do, they probably pack a few things and pick another country to live in. Somehow non-Jews – and this is far from being a scientific observation – do not need to hide behind some vague, universal, abstract banners or righteous value system. But what was your question?’

No question followed. The ‘cosmopolitan, atheist and citizen
of the world’ couldn’t remember what his question was. I assume that, following the tradition of post-emancipated Jews, he was there to celebrate his right to ‘self-determination’ in public. He was going to use the open discussion to tell his Aspen neighbours and friends what a great human being he was. Unlike them, these local patriotic and proud Americans, he was, actually, an advanced human, a man beyond nationhood, a godless, non-patriotic subject, a rational product of the Enlightenment and the true son of Voltaire.

Self-determination is a modern Jewish political and social symptom, even an epidemic. The disappearance of the ghetto and its maternal qualities led to an identity crisis within the largely assimilated Jewish society. Seemingly, all post-emancipated Jewish political, spiritual and social schools of thought, left, right and centre, were inherently concerned with issues to do with the ‘right to self-determination’. The Zionists would demand the right to national self-determination at the expense of the Palestinians; the Bund would demand national and cultural self-determination within the Eastern European proletarian discourse; Matzpen, the Israeli ultra-leftists group would demand the right to self-determination for the Israeli Jewish ‘nation’ in the ‘liberated Arab East’; Jewish anti-Zionist would insist upon the right to engage in an esoteric, exclusive, ethnocentric Jewish discourse within the Palestinian solidarity movement.

What does this very right to self-determination stand for? Why is it that modern Jewish secular political thought is grounded on that right? Why is it that some ‘progressive’ assimilated Jews feel the need to become ‘citizens of the world’ rather than just ordinary citizens of Britain, France, the USA or Russia?

The Pretence of Authenticity

Although the search for identity and self-determination would seem to suggest a final march toward authentic redemption, the
result of identity politics and self-determinative affairs is the precise opposite. As I have said, those who feel compelled to ‘self-determine’ who they are, are, more than likely, far removed from any authentic self-realisation to start with. Those who identify themselves as ‘cosmopolitan’, ‘progressive’, ‘secular’ or ‘humanist’ fail to grasp that true human brotherhood needs no introduction or declaration, only genuine love for one another. Genuine and authentic cosmopolitans do not feel the need to declare their abstract commitment to humanism. Real citizens of the world simply live in an open space with no boundaries or borders.

The Right to Self-Determination

The term ‘self-determination’ was used in the United Nations Charter of 1945, which reads, in part: ‘All peoples have the right to freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.’ Self-determination has since been defined similarly in various declarations and covenants, and the principle is often regarded as a moral and legal right.

While every human is entitled to celebrate his or her symptoms, the right to self-determination is in fact meaningful only within Western liberal discourse, which accepts such a right and premises it on the notion of enlightened individualism. Such a right is meaningless within a
tribal
discourse. The right to self-determination opposes tribal culture, which gives priority to the survival of the tribe over the celebration of individuality. Jewish politics is captured between these two poles. On the one hand, emancipated Jews insist on celebrating the fruits of enlightenment; they celebrate their right to determine who they are. On the other hand, Jewish politics is tribal, it is intolerant of Jewish dissidence or of any form of self-determination that may oppose what it regards as Jewish political or tribal interests.

The right to self-determination can be celebrated only by the
privileged, who are able to mobilise enough political or military power to transform reality. Yet in Western discourse it is only Jews who base their political power on the ‘right to be like others’. Zionists insist on being a nation like other nations. The Bund insist on being as proletarian as proletarians anywhere, whereas others prefer to just be themselves – true proletarians do not aspire to the proletariat, and do not need to mimic anyone, they are what they are. Seemingly the entire Jewish political discourse of self-determination is grounded on mimicry. It is thus categorically inauthentic. Consequently, the Jewish notion of self-determination leads its followers into a state of alienation. This may explain the apparent lack of ethical discourse within the realm of Israeli politics and Zionist rhetoric.

In oppressed societies, the right to self-determination is often overshadowed by the impulse to rebel against oppression. For Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and in Gaza, the right to self-determination means less and less. They do not need to self-determine as Palestinians, for they know who they are; if they should happen to forget, the soldiers at the next roadblock are there to remind them. For Palestinians, self-determination is a product of the daily confrontation with the Zionist denial of their most basic elementary rights. It is the right to fight against the occupier, against those who starve and expel them from their land.

As much as the right to self-determination presents itself as an ethical universal political value, in many cases it is used as a divisive and oppressive mechanism resulting in the abuse of others. The Zionist demand for the right to self-determination, for instance, has been openly celebrated at the expense of the Palestinians.

The Bund and Lenin’s Criticism

The Bund and the Zionists were the first to eloquently insist upon the Jewish right to self-determination. The General Jewish
Labour Bund of Lithuania, Poland and Russia was, like the Zionist movement, founded in 1897. It maintained that Jews in these countries deserved the right to cultural and national self-determination.

Lenin was probably the first to elaborate on the absurdity of the Jewish demand for self-determination, in his famous attack on the Bund at the Second Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, in 1903. ‘March with us,’ was his reply to the Bund, rejecting its demand for a special, autonomous ethnic status amongst Russian workers. Lenin had obviously spotted the ethno-centric, divisive and deceitful agenda within Bund philosophy. ‘We reject,’ said Lenin, ‘all obligatory partitions that serve to divide us.’ As much as the future founder of the Soviet Union supported ‘the right of nations to self-determination’
⁶⁴
, he was clearly dismissive of this right for Jews, which he correctly identified as reactionary – Lenin supported the right of oppressed nations to build their national identities, but resisted any bigoted, narrow, nationalist spirit. His objection to the Bund’s demand for cultural self-determination was threefold:

1.   Raising the slogan of cultural-national autonomy would lead to the splitting apart of nations, thereby destroying the unity of their proletariat.

2.   The intermingling of nations, and their amalgamation, would be a progressive step, while turning away from this goal would be a step backwards. He criticised those who ‘cry out to heaven against assimilation’.

3.   The ‘non-territorial cultural independence’ advocated by the Bund and other Jewish parties was not advantageous, practical or practicable.

Using his sharp political common sense, Lenin doubted the
ethical and political grounds of the right to self-determination for Jews, as much as the Bund demanded that Jews should be treated as a national identity like all other nationals. Lenin’s answer was simple: ‘Sorry, guys, but you aren’t. You are not a national minority just because you are unattached to a piece of geography.’

Matzpen and Wolfowitz

‘The solution to the national and social problems of this region [The Middle East] … can come about only through a socialist revolution in this region, which will overthrow all its existing regimes and will replace them by a political union of the region, ruled by the toilers. In this united and liberated Arab East, recognition will be granted to the right of self-determination (including the right to a separate state) of each of the non-Arab nationalities living in the region, including the Israeli-Jewish nation.’
⁶⁵
–Twelfth Fundamental Principle, Matzpen (The Socialist Organisation in Israel)

Lenin’s criticism has apparently never been properly internalised by Jewish ‘progressive’ ideologists and ethnic campaigners.

Reading the declaration of principles formulated by Matzpen, the legendary ultra-leftist Israeli organisation, may leave one perplexed. Already in 1962, the radical Matzpenists had a plan to ‘liberate’ the Arab world ‘through a socialist revolution’. According to Matzpen’s principles, all that was needed was to ‘overthrow all existing [Arab] regimes’ so that ‘recognition will be granted to the right of self-determination of each of the non-Arab nationalities living in the region, including the Israeli-Jewish nation’.

It doesn’t take a genius to grasp that, at least categorically, Matzpen’s principles are no different from Wolfowitz’s neocon mantra. Matzpen had a plan to ‘overthrow’ all Arab regimes in the name of ‘socialism’. Wolfowitz would do exactly the same in the
name of ‘democracy’. Replacing the word ‘socialist’ with ‘democratic’ in Matzpen’s ‘progressive’ text gives us a revealing neocon text: ‘The solution of the national and social problems of this region, can come about only through a democratic revolution in this region, which will overthrow all its existing regimes and will replace them by a political union of the region …’

Both the legendarily ‘progressive’ Matzpen and the ‘reactionary’ neocons make use of the same abstract concept, with some pretence of universality to justify the Jewish right to self-determination and the destruction of Arab regional power and Islam. Both Matzpen and the neocons profess to know what liberation means for Arabs. For the Matzpenist, to liberate Arabs is to turn them into Bolsheviks; the neocon is actually slightly more modest – all he wants is for Arabs to drink their Coca-Cola in a Westernised democratic society. Both Judeocentric philosophies were doomed to failure, because the notion of self-determination is overwhelmingly
Eurocentric
. Both philosophies are premised on an enlightened notion of individuality and have very little to offer the oppressed except another form of oppression in the name of ‘universal’ legitimacy. The revolutions taking place in the region currently are far from being socialist or Marxist. Middle East analysts agree that democracy in the Arab World would lead to a far greater representation of Islam within the regional politics, something neocons and Mazpenists would not welcome.

Matzpen has never had any political power or significance, and has never been in any proximity to Arab masses. Consequently, Matzpen could never affect the lives of Arabs; nor could it destroy their regimes. However, Matzpen is seen by Jewish leftists around the world as a significant ‘intellectual’ chapter in Jewish progressive thought. It is also regarded as a singular and significant moment of Israeli ethical awakening. It is acutely embarrassing, therefore, to discover that this most enlightened and refined moment of Jewish Marxism, or Israeli-leftist moral awakening, has produced a political insight that is no different, categorically, to George Bush’s attempt to ‘liberate’ the Iraqi people. It should be clear beyond doubt that Jewish ultra-leftism (à la Matzpen) and Zionist-influenced Anglo–American ‘moral interventionism’ (à la neoconservatism) are only two sides of the same
shekel
. They are theoretically, ideologically and pragmatically very close as political thought – Judeo-centric to the bone yet supposedly premised on universalism with the aim of ‘liberation’ and ‘freedom’. At the end of the day, what we see here is a Judeo-centric political exercise, namely self-determination, which comes at the expense of others.