One Nation Under God
Oct 16th, 2007 by Donagh
In the middle of a reading a perfectly interesting and informed post on Lenin’s Tomb this morning about the parallels between the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the apartheid system in South Africa I got a genuine shock.
“…the Palestinians face more than an onerous system of oppression and ritual devastation: they face real attempts to do away with them as a national group, to destroy their life-sustaining systems and throw them off their land inch by inch. We are speaking here of politicide. Given a sufficient crisis for Israel, we could be speaking of genocide: after all, if Israel’s existence as a polity were ever seriously threatened, we have it on reasonable authority that the state proposes nuclear annihilation of surrounding population centres.”
Now am I thick or does that not make one bit of sense? I haven’t checked the comments to see if anyone else thinks it’s completely mad, but I assume they must do.
It kind of ruins the argument for me. I don’t know if its true. I don’t want it to be true, but a part of me worries that it is. However, I’ll leave that aside for the moment and move on to this concept of Israel and apartheid.
The reason, I suspect, for using the apartheid label in this context is to try and develop a strong rhetorical case against the actions of the Israeli state. After all, apartheid was seen eventually as a huge injustice, an infringement of human rights and, with international pressure, was finally brought to an end. By associating them the desire is, I suspect, to imagine the ending of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. However, the differences between apartheid and the Israeli situation, as Lenin acknowledges, are considerable. It seems that the only real similarity is that both situations were brought about by colonialism and the establishment of the colonizer as the permanent gate keeper of the economy.
And this, ultimately, is Lenin’s point. As he says in his conclusion:
“The founders of Israel didn’t imitate the Nazis: they imitated colonialism and the apparatus of ‘racial’ knowledge that went with it. The Nazis radicalised and intensified European imperialist doctrines, whereas the Zionists simply adapted them for their own purposes.”
The problem with the debate about Israel is how hysterical it becomes, and how divisive words like Nazi are.
The reason, of course, is the historical association of the word Nazis with the holocaust and why the State of Israel was formed in the first place. However, before I go any further let’s be clear, the Israeli Government is not fascist. Israel is still a democracy, which allows some Arab citizen to vote in national and regional elections. It is not a totalitarian state, although its actions against the Palestinians can be seen as being totalitarian in nature. These actions should be considered an outrage and the fact that they can continue to oppress an Arab minority without suffering any penalty is solely down to the fact that the United States, for its own interest, continues to protect them. That said they are not likely to drop a nuclear bomb on the surrounding populations centres and therefore are not on the verge of being genocidal (but maybe I say that because I can’t imagine circumstance where that would make any sense).
So in criticizing Israel it seems easier to point towards the international taboo of apartheid, rather than suggesting that Zionism equals fascism. But unfortunately, there are connections. And these connections come not from an adherence to a Nazi ideology but from the way that the State of Israel was formed in the first place and how Zionism bases itself as the interests of a ‘people’.
In a previous post Lenin quotes Norman Finkelstein, who in a 1995 book suggested that there was a similarity in the German Romanticism that informs both pro-Nazi historiography and Zionism:
“Steeped in German Romanticism, the claim was that because the forefathers of the Jewish people had originated and been buried in Palestine, Jews could only - and only Jews could - establish an authentic, organic connection with the soil there. Noting the ‘German source’, Shapira points to the ‘recurrent motif’ in Zionism of the ‘mysticism that links blood and soil’, the “cult of heroes, death and graves”, the belief that “graves are the source of the vital link with the land, and they generate the loyalty of man to that soil”, and that “blood fructifies the soil (in an almost literal sense)”, and so on.”
[…]
This sort of ‘historic right’ was also seized by the Romantic precursors of Nazism and, with a vengeance, by the Nazis themselves, to justify the conquest of the East. Germany was said to have legitimate claims on Slavic territory (especially but not limited to Poland) since it was “already inhabited by the Germans in primeval times”, “fertilised by the most noble ancient German blood”, “Germanic for many centuries and long before a Slav set foot there”, “teutonic-German Volksbloden for 3,000 years as far as the Vistula. … In the 6th and 7th Century after Christ the Slavs pushed outward from their eastern homelands and into the ancient German land… - admittedly only for a few hundred years”, etc”
But ultimately, I think, Finkelstein is saying that the very idea behind a single ethnic nation leads inevitably to the contradiction that, just as you attempt to escape fascism you are creating a state that potentially leads to the denigration of whatever minority exists within the geographic borders of that ‘nation’.
“[T]he claim of Jewish ‘homelessness’ is founded in a cluster of assumptions that both negates the idea of liberal citizenship and duplicates the anti-Semitic one that the state belongs to the majority ethnic nation. In a word, the Zionist case for a Jewish state is as valid or as invalid as the anti-Semitic case for an ethnic state that marginalizes Jews. (Norman Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, Verso, 1995, pp 100-1).”
Quoted in Lenin’s Tomb.
Judith Butler, in her review of The Jewish Writings by Hannah Arendt points out how Arendt was aware of the contradiction (that as a stateless people, the Jews when creating a state for themselves could only do so by making others stateless).
“She stated the matter quite clearly in The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951. Statelessness was not a Jewish problem, but a recurrent 20th-century predicament of the nation-state. What happened to the Jewish people under Hitler should not be seen as exceptional but as exemplary of a certain way of managing minority populations; hence, the reduction of ‘German Jews to a non-recognised minority in Germany’, the subsequent expulsions of the Jews as ‘stateless people across the borders’, and the gathering of them ‘back from everywhere in order to ship them to extermination camps was an eloquent demonstration to the rest of the world how really to “liquidate” all problems concerning minorities and the stateless’. Thus, Arendt continues,
“after the war it turned out that the Jewish question, which was considered the only insoluble one, was indeed solved – namely, by means of a colonised and then conquered territory – but this solved neither the problem of the minorities nor the stateless. On the contrary, like virtually all other events of the 20th century, the solution of the Jewish question merely produced a new category of refugees, the Arabs, thereby increasing the number of stateless and rightless by another 700,000 to 800,000 people. And what happened in Palestine within the smallest territory and in terms of hundreds of thousands was then repeated in India on a large scale involving many millions of people.””
So while the motivation to create Israel was to resolve a situation brought about by Fascism it managed to replicate it, by basing itself on an idea that the ‘nation’ belongs to a single ethnic group. This then allows the guardians of that nation to treat those it considers outside of the ethnic group as part of a non-national minority while still retaining sovereign power over them.
On the point about nationhood and sovereignty Butler says:
“We have become accustomed over recent years to the argument that modern constitutions retain a sovereign function and that a tacit totalitarianism functions as a limiting principle within constitutional democracies. Giorgio Agamben’s reading of Carl Schmitt pays particular attention to the exercise of sovereign power to create a state of exception (state of emergency) that suspends constitutional protections and rights of inclusion for designated populations within established democratic polities. Arendt’s Jewish Writings offer a valuable counter-perspective.
Although Agamben is clearly indebted to Arendt’s The Human Condition in his elaboration of ‘bare life’ (the life which, jettisoned from the polis, is exposed to raw power), it is the nation-state rather than sovereignty that is Arendt’s focus in her work on totalitarianism.”
It is interesting to note that, according to the wikipedia entry on State of Emergency, that Israel has been in a state of emergency since the 1948 War of Independence.
Oh damn it, this post is long and bad enough and I’ve only just realized that Judith Butler has an London Review of Books article from 2003 in which she states her own opinions about Israel and the effective censorship of the debate pretty explicitly.
“Summers uses the ‘anti-semitic’ charge to quell public criticism of Israel, even as he explicitly distances himself from the overt operations of censorship. He writes, for instance, that ‘the only antidote to dangerous ideas is strong alternatives vigorously advocated.’ But how does one vigorously advocate the idea that the Israeli occupation is brutal and wrong, and Palestinian self-determination a necessary good, if the voicing of those views calls down the charge of anti-semitism?”
And
“What do we make of Jews such as myself, who are emotionally invested in the state of Israel, critical of its current form, and call for a radical restructuring of its economic and juridical basis precisely because we are invested in it? It is always possible to say that such Jews have turned against their own Jewishness. But what if one criticises Israel in the name of one’s Jewishness, in the name of justice, precisely because such criticisms seem ‘best for the Jews’? Why wouldn’t it always be ‘best for the Jews’ to embrace forms of democracy that extend what is ‘best’ to everyone, Jewish or not? I signed a petition framed in these terms, an ‘Open Letter from American Jews’, in which 3700 American Jews opposed the Israeli occupation, though in my view it was not nearly strong enough: it did not call for the end of Zionism, or for the reallocation of arable land, for rethinking the Jewish right of return or for the fair distribution of water and medicine to Palestinians, and it did not call for the reorganisation of the Israeli state on a more radically egalitarian basis. It was, nevertheless, an overt criticism of Israel.”
Of course, in the case of Norman Finkelstein it has now gone beyond being labeled as anti-semitic.
I don’t know if its true.
Of course it’s true. Why would any state retain nuclear weapons if not for that purpose?
Damn it, Hugh, you’re right. The idea of a deterrent is so passé.
You wrote So while the motivation to create Israel was to resolve a situation brought about by Fascism it managed to replicate it, by basing itself on an idea that the ‘nation’ belongs to a single ethnic group.
I think it is misleading to say that Fascism was the source of motivation to create the state of Israel. The idea of a homeland for the Jewish diaspora was always culturally part of their heritage. It was given impetus time and again when host communities expelled their Jewish minorities (as in Spain in 1400s) or killed them(Eastern Europe in 1800s).
The whole idea gathered momentum towards the end of the 1900 century. Probably the pogroms weren’t the only force at play. Nationalism and nationhood had come to the fore as the who idea of ethnic and national identity gained currency. This had to have an effect on the Jewish diaspora.
And after WWI the British sought and received a mandate from the League of Nations to set up a homeland for the Jews in Palestine.
The Holocaust therefore accelerated the urgency of a process that was already well under way.
To return to your opening remarks about the bomb. Like you, I doubt that the Israelis would indiscriminately nuke surrounding populations. It is hard to imagine the circumstances under which this would be necessary. It’s not as if Egypt or Jordan are going to attempt to annihilate Israel any time soon. What is conceivable, however, is that Israel would nuke Iran if the latter were thought to be about to launch a serious attack (nuclear or otherwise) on the Jewish state.
It seems the American’s have relaunched their efforts to broker a settlement. I wonder what is behind the timing of this: is it the 2008 election? Republicans trying to buy a foreign victory after the mire of Iraq? Hard to believe that since the powerful Jewish lobby at home will not react too well to US pressure on Israel to make the compromises necessary for peace.
I think it is misleading to say that Fascism was the source of motivation to create the state of Israel.
Now, Tomaltach, tut tut, I didn’t say that. Not even close. I didn’t claim that it was the source of motivation. Zionism, which informed the creation of the State of Israel, pre-dates Nazism after all. Its only that by conflating the idea of a nation with a single ethnic group that the potential for hitting on the minority is the same. A solution for the Israelis created a problem for the Palestinians.
Sorry, I respond to the rest later. Gotta dash.
What do we make of Jews such as myself, who are emotionally invested in the state of Israel, critical of its current form, and call for a radical restructuring of its economic and juridical basis precisely because we are invested in it?
This begs the wider question of why anyone should find themselves ‘emotionally invested’ in a state, as many people do? I can understand the idea of a state as being a form of an expressed desire for liberation.
So people living under oppression may think that a certain type of state will solve their problems. But once the state actually exists, things are different. And the problem with Israel, for Israelis and Palestinians alike, and as Butler herself points out, is that the state was established on another people’s land, and it required the expulsion and dispossession of the natives to exist in its current form.
By talking about ‘its current form’, Butler is offering the possibility that it could exist in another, more acceptable form. But could it? Well, Israel says it is the Jewish state, which means that if you’re Jewish and from California, you can go and live on the land and enjoy the rights of a citizen, but if you’re Muslim or Christian and your family was expelled in 1948, you cannot. If you could, that is, if Israel got rid of the law of return and recognized the Palestinian right of return, then Israel would not only cease to exist in ‘its current form’; I suggest that it would not exist at all.
The problem -and this is certainly not just an Israeli problem, but is rendered particularly vivid in the Israeli/Palestine situation- is that people develop an interest in ‘emotionally investing’ in the state, so that the state is not just a temporary arrangement there to serve their human needs, but is a seemingly fundamental and immortal element of their being. By criticizing my state, you are criticizing me. And, by saying my state should not exist, you are saying that I should not exist.
Good point Hugh. Perhaps a source of the problem is the confluence of the concepts of nation and state. Emotional attachment to the nation is easier to explain. The whole idea is that there is commonality - a shared heritage and by extension a shared destiny. And in most cases it was a flavour of the nation which gave rise to a particular state. Or more correctly, it was the predominant nation within a territory which gave rise to a particular state. For members of that nation (though not necessarily members of other nations or groups within the same territory) the state was constructed to, as you say, serve their human needs. But once born, the state takes on a life of its own, separate from that of the nation. How much the interests of the state and that of the founding nation diverge becomes a crucial question. But in the case of Israel, unhappily the interests of the stronger, founding nation weren’t just divergent from but wholly adverse to those of the Palestinians.
I think you’re absolutely right when you say that if you get rid of the law of return and allow Palestinians get back the land that was taken from them in 48 and later that you would be seriously impeding the existence of the state of Israel, if not getting rid of it entirely. Also the emotional investment in the state leads to a clashing of emotions when an Jew’s emotional invested in Israel comes into conflict with a muslim’s emotional investment in Palestine basically because that investment is occuring over the same patch of land.
I think Finkelsteins point on this is particularly illuminating, as he suggests that the narrative of that emotional investment, of blood and soil and the graves of their forefathers is not unique to Zionism, or even particular to it. Rather it comes from the German Romanticism and the much older notion of keeping the barbarian’s of the East at bay. Indeed, in the light of Enrights comments I think its Greek in origin. Indeed, having given Joseph Roth’s The Wandering Jews a cursory glance recently the attitude towards Eastern Jews, as they made their way West, reflects some of this narrative.
In the Arendt review, Butler quotes her when she is charged, after the publication of Eichmann in Jerusalem, with not loving the Jewish people. It shows that Arendt wasn’t comfortable with the way that people dedicate themselves to causes, even liberal causes, almost with question. They do this because they think it is the right thing to do. But in reality they are dedicating themselves to an abstraction. Her problem with Zionism stems from that dedication to an abstraction. Because, when it came to establishing a state that abstraction had to deal with real people, in this case the Palestinians. Because Zionism remained an abstraction after the creation of the State of Israel it blinded its adherents to the consequences of its actions.
Here’s the quote:
“You are quite right – I am not moved by any ‘love’ of this sort, and for two reasons: I have never in my life ‘loved’ any people or collective – neither the German people, nor the French, nor the American, nor the working class or anything of that sort. I indeed love ‘only’ my friends and the only kind of love I know of and believe in is the love of persons. Secondly, this ‘love of the Jews’ would appear to me, since I am myself Jewish, as something rather suspect. I cannot love myself or anything which I know is part and parcel of my own person. To clarify this, let me tell you of a conversation I had in Israel with a prominent political personality who was defending the – in my opinion disastrous – non-separation of religion and state in Israel. What [she] said – I am not sure of the exact words any more – ran something like this: ‘You will understand that, as a socialist, I, of course, do not believe in God; I believe in the Jewish people.’ I found this a shocking statement and, being too shocked, I did not reply at the time. But I could have answered: the greatness of this people was once that it believed in God, and believed in Him in such a way that its trust and love towards Him was greater than its fear. And now this people believes only in itself? What good can come out of that? Well, in this sense I do not ‘love’ the Jews, nor do I ‘believe’ in them; I merely belong to them as a matter of course, beyond dispute or argument.
What is interesting is the economics behind this, and sorry to bore anyone further. I remember watching a BBC report on the telly which said that there was a flood of French Jews migrating to Israel because of their experience of anti-semitism in France. At the time we had a French person staying with us. I found the report curious and asked him. He said it was bullshit and, after further investigation it revealed that the steady trickle of migrating Jews to Israel has remained relatively unchanged. The report didn’t mention the fact that many middle-class French people are moving out of France because of the stagnant economy - that in fact Ireland has received a ‘flood’ of French migrants during the same time.
A lot of the current problems stem from the increase in the Jewish population among Jewish migrants from the Eastern block. And if one stripped away the ethnic background of those moving to Israel one would see that they should simply be called economic migrants.
On your final point Hugh, I would agree that Butlers point is irresolvable without implying a serious existential threat. But continuing the economic ‘trope’, I would rephrase it thus: “By criticizing my state, you are criticizing my right to earn a living. And, by saying my state should not provide me with the means to earn a living, you are saying that I should remain destitute”.
Donagh,
The economic angle is very interesting. I think it deserves a closer look. I would be careful, however. For example, even if x amount of Christian French leave for economic reasons, that doesn’t prove that y amount of Jewish French who leave are also doing so for economic reasons. I’m not saying you are wrong - on the face of it, it’s a compelling idea - but it needs closer examination. I cannot help thinking that a certain portion of the (French and other) Jewish diaspora have a real affinity with Israel that provides a significant pull to emigrate there. The push of anti-semitism may be enough to sway the decision.
But is there anti-semitism in France? Certainly not at a state level.
But there are attacks on Jewish cemetries, community centres and the like. Were these simply anti-immigrant attacks spawned from France’s inability to integrate its large population of (mostly muslim) immigrants? Probably not. But in any case, whether real or imagined, French Jews feel that the country is anti-semitic. The rise of the likes of Le Pen (though recently eclipsed) was hardly any help. The Jewish representative body, the CRIF, regularly holds well attended (by Jews) demonstrations against anti-semitism in France. A quick look at their web site reveals they have special fixed links for “anti-semitism” and “demonstrations”. Further, their site is littered with references to Israel. And apparently French jews visit Israel in large numbers as both tourists and pilgrims. Surely there is something much deeper than economics behind this.
I cannot help thinking that a certain portion of the (French and other) Jewish diaspora have a real affinity with Israel that provides a significant pull to emigrate there. The push of anti-semitism may be enough to sway the decision.
I actually over stated my own case. What I thought but did not write was that the steady trickle of French Jews to Israel, as represented by those who were shown leaving France in the BBC report, probably were leaving because they believe that it is important to support Israel as a nation. That is, there is always going to be a proportion who move specifically for reasons of religion. Added to that there may well be an economic advantage, but not in any obvious way.
It is wrong to simply attibute political and social situations to one or other factor and claim that it is all down to that. Curiously it brings me back to a point Lenin made in the original article I linked to. The situation in Israel is different to aparthide in South Africa in that Israel is not gaining economic advantage from the work of the Palestinians, in the same way that Aparthide exploited black workers. Rather the Israeli economy needs to expand but in order to do so it has to utterly deplete the Palenstinian economy or to make it completly dependant on Israel.