Opinions of Peter Belmont
Speaking Truth to Power
| The three Jewish religions regarding Israel |
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by Peter A. Belmont / 2012-03-19
We are coming to the end game in a mighty contest between the three dominant philosophical-ethical-moral threads of modern Jews regarding Israel. I want to call them three “religions”. The first is the view espoused and preached, for one prominent example, by Peter Beinart and exposed in his New York Times op-ed, “To Save Israel, Boycott the Settlements” (3/19/2012). Perhaps it may properly be called “Liberal Zionism”. It is the modern version of the slogan “Palestine, a land without a people for a people without a land”. For this view, it is the land of Palestine and its possession by Jews which is important, not any (inconvenient) facts about the Palestinian Arab people—Muslims and Christians and others—who have lived in Palestine for the last 2000 years and justifiably called it “home”. This view doesn’t really “see” or consider the Palestinians before 1967: it especially doesn’t see the exiles/refugees from the Nakba (the Palestinian experience of the war of 1948). Rather, it sees only what it considers the miraculous blessing of the creation and independence of the State of Israel on 78% of the land of Palestine, from which (though it cannot admit it) 85% of the non-Jews (the people today called Palestinians) fled or were expelled in 1948. Why is this? Whence this blindness? From liberalism. The liberal cares about the distressed other. If—as with liberal Zionists—he is philosophically constrained not to be concerned for the distressed other, he can achieve this enviable condition of non-concern only by self-willed blindness. He must condition himself not to see the distressed other. And, indeed, Liberal Zionists do not “see” the Palestinian exiles/refugees of 1948. At least, they do not see them as a moral problem for themselves or for Israel. It’s a bit like Tom Lehrer’s version of Wernher von Braun: “ ‘Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department’, says Wernher von Braun.” Israel expelled the Palestinians. What happens next is not the problem of Israel or of the Liberal Zionists. Proponents of this view are ready to accept any Two State Solution (“2SS”) which may happen to come along, but are not usually willing to push Israelis to accept 2SS. Jews who accept this view are often ready to push Israel gently for an end of the occupation, but only without pointing forcefully to the illegal nature—under international law and agreements, UNSC-465 and ICJ-2004—of the settlements and the presence of the settlers in territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 war. Indeed, followers of this “thread” are not ready to push Israel at all seriously to do anything. True, Beinart recommends BDS boycotts against companies operating inside occupied territory (a negligible part of the Israeli economy), but such a boycott would be unlikely to inconvenience most Israelis to the point of energizing them to end the occupation, to propose a just and lasting 2SS peace, or, indeed, to do anything else. In this “thread”, Israel (when considered only within its pre-1967 territory) is—by a considerable act of wishful thinking— considered to be a wonderful democracy—almost without blemish. Certainly, the refusal by Israel to allow the return of the Palestinian exiles/refugees from 1948 and the consequent Jewish residential preponderance (and electoral preponderance, if we’re considering democracy) are not considered to be blemishes (or undemocratic) but, rather, wonderful marvels to be celebrated. Indeed, this “thread” regards with dread every proposal to implement a “right of return” for the exiles/refugees of the Nakba—on the grounds that such a return would attenuate if not destroy the Jewish majority in pre-1967 Israel and thus destroy the “Jewish State” to which this “thread” claims not only a post-Holocaust psychological need (which no-one would dispute) but also a “right” (never explained). Thus: The third and perhaps the biggest problem with the “Liberal Zionist” narrative is that they erase the Nakba from the history of Israel/Palestine. The Nakba (the depopulation of Palestine of the majority of its native inhabitants) continues to be at the foundation of the Israeli/Palestinian dynamic. Zionism necessitates a Jewish majority, which it achieved in 1948 through a series of events (including mass expulsion and the flight of civilians from hostilities), and perpetuated by systematically denying the human right of Palestinian refugees to return. It should come as no surprise that even while “Liberal Zionists” are willing to condemn many of the human rights abuses inherent in the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the rights of refugees go ignored. This first “thread” or “religion” does not see that anything need be done by Jews to repair injustices done in 1948 and since to the Palestinians people who formerly lived in pre-1967 Israel. Thus they make concrete their (false) notion that Palestine before 1948 was “a land without a people”. This “thread” wants peace with the Palestinians as long as they stay out of pre-1967 Israel. The Palestinians were philosophically invisible before 1948 to followers of this “thread” and remain philosophically invisible today. The Palestinians are not, to them, a people without rights—merely a people without rights as against Israel within its pre-1967 borders. But I am too generous with these “liberal Zionists”. Actually, most of them regard the Palestinians as a people without rights as against Israel in its pre-1967 borders as augmented by a big chunk of the now-occupied West Bank to which Israel now and expansively applies the ancient name of “Jerusalem”. This thread seeks an Israel which is a “Democratic and Jewish State” and the “democratic” part is a necessary part of this, as is a Jewish majority of the population. The second “thread” or “religion” of Jews with regard to Israel is what might best be called “hard-line or illiberal or revisionist Zionism”. It is the guiding philosophy of the terrorists of old—Begin and Shamir, both later Prime Ministers of Israel—of Ze’ev Jabotinsky of the “Iron Wall”, of many Israeli leaders until today, and especially of the current Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu. This “thread” or “religion” acknowledges the existence of the pre-Israel residents of Palestine, but regards those people as having neglible rights. On this view, they have no territorial or national rights within the entire land of Palestine, and no human rights which Israel must acknowledge. This negation of rights includes not only the Palestinians who are not Israeli citizens but also those who are (within pre-1967 Israeli territory). This “thread” or “religion” is associated with the religious settler-zealots who regard all of the West Bank as promised by God to the Jewish people and hence an imperishable part of Israel, whatever the other nations may say or do. And certainly, it must go without saying, whatever the Palestinian people may say or do. Accordingly, of course, no “negotiation” for a peace which shares the territory of Palestine between Israel and the Palestinians is possible for people who adhere to this “thread”. This “thread” sees Palestinians as existing, not to be ignored, not to be dismissed, but to be attacked, as in the 2008-2009 Israeli attack on Gaza which—the Goldstone Report suggested—was replete with war crimes. Human rights for Palestinians is not a concern for this “thread”. More generally, human rights for Arabs is not a concern, as the repeated unprovoked attacks on Lebanon (1982, 2006) make clear. Proponents of this “thread” do not propose to return any of the land of Palestine to the Palestinian people, nor do they propose to end the occupation or even to remove the settlers—as required by international law. In terms of formal religion, this “thread” is aligned with the fierce, warlike, and bloody stories of the Old Testament (Torah) rather than with the gentler rabbinic Jewish religion (of the Talmud) which—inter alia—forbids Jews to “return” to Zion, regarding the ‘ingathering of the Jews to Zion” as the prerogative of God, something to be done without human (Jewish) intervention: They are convinced that the Zionists are the most dangerous enemies of the Jewish people and that Orthodox Jewry must fight them until they are destroyed. The ancient Jewish state was annihilated by Gods [sic] will and only Messiah can reestablish it. Any interference to create a state is against the Torah ; the state of Israel is therefore unacceptable. Unlike the first “thread” I discussed above, this ‘thread” does not contemplate the return of any land (or water!) to the Palestinian people, sees no benefit to itself from making peace, is entirely happy to prolong the occupation’s Apartheid-like One State Solution as long as possible, let the heavens fall, anti-democratic though it be. This thread increasingly seeks an Israel which is a “Jewish State” rather than a “Democratic and Jewish State”. It is the views of this “thread” which primarily motivate AIPAC and the rest of the Jewish part of the pro-Israel lobby in the USA. It is this “thread” which is glad to “own” and control the USA’s Congress and President and is glad to attempt to manipulate the USA’s government to its own ends (and against the rights of the Palestinian Arab people, the Lebanese, and, lately, the people of Iran, which Israelis of this tendency wish to bomb). The third “thread”, which might well be called “the humanists, non-Zionists, and anti-Zionists”, are those Jews who recognize the human rights of all peoples—including Palestinians—and not just of Jews. I am of this school. We try to get international law enforced. We try to secure the human rights and national rights of the Palestinian people. This is the Jewish tendency, I am persuaded, from which came those Jews who actively and at risk of life supported the civil rights movement in the USA in the 1960s and the anti-apartheid movement w.r.t. South Africa. This is the “thread” which made me proud of “the Jews”. (Israel’s winning of the 1967 war, by contrast, is what made a lot of other Jews proud. Different strokes for different folks.) This is the “thread” which professes and actually advances the idea of “Tikkun Olam”—the repair of a damaged world, recognizing the enormous injury to the Palestinian people of the creation of Israel by bayonets and oppression as a major instance of such damage: Moreover, a Jewish Home in Palestine built up on bayonets and oppression is not worth having, even though it succeed, whereas the very attempt to build it up peacefully, cooperatively, with understanding, education, and good will, is worth a great deal, even though the attempt should fail. This is the “thread” which attempts to promote discussion—in the USA especially—of the plight of the Palestinians, of the injustices to the Palestinians, of the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict. In doing so, it fights an uphill battle against the Mainstream Media (“MSM”) in the USA which—like the government—appears to have chosen to be an appendage of the hard-line Zionists and thus suppresses and distorts much news relevant to Israel/Palestine. The non-Zionist thread wants any state exercising sovereignty in the territory of Palestine to be democratic, cares not a whit if such government is Jewish, calls for the “return” of the Palestinian exiles/refugees of 1948, and their progeny, to their homeland—whether that land be called Israel or Palestine or anything else, and irrespective of whether such return shift the demographics from majority Jewish to majority Palestinian. Even non-Zionists are aware of and sympathetic to the desire of an exiled people for return to their homeland. That was the fate of the Jews for thousands of years and has become—at the hands of some of those Jews—the fate of the Palestinians. May anyone who wishes to return to her homeland soon be able to do so. |
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