While we wait for Israeli election results... This is a plea to my fellow lefty/liberal/progressives who wish to engage in honest debate, criticism and condemnation of policies of the Israeli government. And it is a plea to my fellow supporters of a just, safe and secure Israel as Jewish and democratic country within internationally recognized and defendable borders.
Don’t argue by using analogies. Stick to specific facts and focus on the big picture and inevitable must get to, must happen end-point.
To paraphrase two different sages:
It’s the Occupation stupid, the rest is (often bad, false, and counterproductive) commentary.
Certainly since the acceptance of the Saudi plan by the Arab League, and essentially as far back as the Oslo accords, the primary onus for lack of peace is on Israel’s side, due to the continuous occupation with the never-ending and always continuing de facto expansion the settlements, the internal roadblocks, and external blockades.
The only real and stable solution is the two-state one, with the Palestinians getting a viable state that includes the West Bank, Gaza and the Arab sectors of East Jerusalem, and with Syria getting back the Golan Heights.
Ok. Now that my bona fides are in place, why is it that so many liberal, left, progressive Jew likes myself have such problems with so many lefty critics, and critiques, of Israel? Why does the accusation of anti-Semitism still come up?
Many things are true at once. They are not contradictory:
There is going to be a lot in the material below that will anger extremists on both sides. As I jump around below, there are sections that will seem to go in one direction, and then the other. Guess what. History and Reality are complicated. Many things that seem to be contradictory are not. Many things can be true at the same time.
For some, Israel enjoys a unique pariah status; they view Israel as inherently (as opposed to specific government policies and actions) undeserving of existence, as the world's sole remaining colonialist state - an exploitative, capitalist enclave created by Western powers in the heart of the developing world. This is b.s., and yes, overlaps with anti-Semitism, not just anti-Zionism or anti-Israel.
Opposing the policies of the Israeli government does not make a lefty (or anybody else) anti-Semitic; I've been doing it since the mid-1980s.
However, movements campaigning for social justice and/or middle east peace -- in the U.S. or elsehwyhere -- makes a mockery of itself by singling out just the Jewish state for condemnation.
The actual facts are enough! When it comes to Israel, I suggest that you do not argue by analogy.
Do not compare or invoke the Holocaust, Holocaust denial, Hitler, Nazis, Warsaw, South Africa, Native Americans and the invasion of the Americas by Europe, Western Imperialism and Colonialism. Just don’t. Analogies are at best imperfect (West Bank as Bantustans) and are usually just false (pretty much all others I have heard) and tend to make the invoker look ahistorical (regarding the actual history) and eliminationist (regarding both Israel and Jews).
Even the killing of hundreds or even thousands of civlians (e.g., recently in Gaza) is many things and may be war crimes. But it is not a holocaust or genocide. Words have meaning and analogies fail. Genocide is deliberately targeting and killing entire populations of people, civilians, men, woman children, because of their ethnic identity. Armenians by Turks after WWI is an actual example. Rwanda is another. Arguable cases include the killing Christians, Animasts and non-Arab Black Muslims by Arabs in Sudan; Bosnian Muslims by Serbs in former Yugoslavia; and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge (class based rather than ethinicity based). It may sound like I am arguing about semantics, but it is those who are deliberately being provocative by invoking and misusing these words who are the semantic abusers.
This appeal to not use sloppy provocational language and analogies applies to both sides. Defenders of Israel, should not, for example, talk about Gaza or the West Bank by invoking the analogy of terrorists in México or Canada lobbing missiles over the border in the U.S.; the U.S. is not currently occupying most of Mexico or Canada with settlements, internal checkpoints and external blockades.
Some background as to why Jews get nervous with some of the anti-Israel rhetoric from the left:
First of all, Jewish self-identity is not just as a religion, but as an ethnic identify, as a People.
Our legitimate paranoia comes from, but is not just from, the 2,000 years of anti-Semitism culminating in the Holocaust. It is also from current day real worries. Extinction is a real possibility.
Hard as it may be to believe, there are very very few of us Jews worldwide (~0.2% of the world’s population)
Jewish Population in the World:
Again this may surprise many of you, but there are far fewer Jews in the United States (less than 2%) than you might think from hanging around center-left Democratic party supporting blogs.
Jewish Population in the 15 Countries with largest Jewish Populations:
The Holocaust wiped out about half of all the Jews in Europe and one-third of all the Jews in the world (as bad as the killings of civilians in Gaza and Lebenon are, that is not the same thing). More recently assimilation, including mixed marriage, conversions, and just loss of identity, are feared to be doing what prejudice did not, and result in the total disappearance of us as a people. When we hear eliminationist sounding rhetoric, ostensibly directed against "Israel", it is heard by some of us as eliminationist anti-Semitism. Sometimes because it is.
Even in the United States, there was overt functional anti-Semitism and exclusionary discrimination from the mainstream Right that continued into the 1970s. For example, many colleges and universities admit Jews in the numbers as deserved by qualifications, an experience similar to Asians more recently. It may seem hard to believe or understand now, but no Jew was head of Fortune 500 company back then. Jews were still being actively kept out of old-line corporate law firms, businesses, and boards. Really, we Jews were not allowed into the power elite until the 1970s.
That was just in time for some Jews to start feeling that some on the Left were out to get them:
Jews were well known to be among the leaders among whites (though typically did not self-identify as white then) in civil rights movement. However, many felt betrayed, or at least hurt, with the rise black identity and Black Nationalist within the movement, especially after King’s murder and changes in the leadership at CORE and SNCC, and that this was directed particularly at them. Which to some extent it both was, and was understandable and valid. Support can also be Paternalism.
In addition, there has been conflict over affirmative action, which Jews felt then, as some Asian-Americans feel now, hurt them disproportionately and unfairly.
Among those Jews, especially for those coming out of the New York City area, who did turn to the right (e.g., the Neocons) another key event was the conflict around 1968 NYC Teacher Strike, and the protests on the issue of community control (e.g., Ocean Hills – Brownsville). This was not just a Jewish thing, insofar as it probably contributes for much of the meshuganah that we saw with folks like Geraldine Ferraro.
More recently, some elements in the anti-globalization movement have embraced anti-Semitism, with a linkage between classic anti-Semitism (own the banks) and populist anti-Zionism.
It is an old joke that we Jews are blamed by some on the right for all being a bunch of liberals, socialists and in charge of international communism... and we are blamed by some on the left for being all being bankers, and in charge of globalization and international capitalism.
While some of the above may not seem related to the Israel/Palestinian issue, it is the psychic and cultural background that plays a role in where American Jewish reaction to criticism of Israel is coming from.
Between small numbers, fear of actual extinction, memories of overt discrimination and continuing anti-Semitism from some on both hard-left and paleo-right, we do not feel as secure as outsiders might suppose.
Right of Israel to exist as a Jewish national homeland in principle:
This is not meant to be exhaustive. Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish majority State, as the Jewish national homeland. That right and fact is NOT derivative from or dependent on any sort modern Western colonialism or holocaust guilt. It comes of, by and from Jewish history, peopledom and effort.
Jews were there first, before Christianity or Islam existed. Christian and Muslim claims to the holy land are entirely derivative from the fact of Jewish primacy. Christ was there, and the New Testament events happened there, because Jesus lived and died there as a Jew. Mohammed and his followers only cared about Jerusalem and the temple mount because of their tying their religion to pre-existing Jewish precedent. As the later conquering empire, they built a mosque on top of the Jewish holy site for a reason.
The last independent country in the area was the Hasmonean Jewish one conquered by the Romans. There has never been an independent local Arab Palestinian state there before now. Which does not mean there should not be one now; there should be! But it simply is the fact since the last independent country in the area (Jewish conquered by Rome), Palestine has always been part of one or another external empire, including most recently the Ottoman Empire and then under British rule until the UN partition.
During all that time, the Jews never all left. After the Romans destroyed the second temple, after the Jewish revolt failed, many Jews left. And many Jews stayed. There always were Jews remaining in Israel/Palestine. Before there was an Islam, there were still Jews there. After there was an Islam, there were still Jews there. Ottoman census reports, even before the rise of modern Zionism in the nineteenth century, show many Jews there, including pockets of definable Jewish majorities and pluralities (compared to Muslims and Christians). We never all left. Some of us were always there.
Even before the modern Zionist begins in Europe with Herzl, Jews outside of Israel/Palestine always looked return, and small numbers of them always did trickle in. For two thousand years, Jews all over the world read and chanted, "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem" and "Next year in Jerusalem." And always, at all times in history, some listened to their own call and were trickling back.
Modern Zionism in Europe in 1890s begins in part as reaction to continued anti-Semitism despite emancipation of Jews from European ghettos, and also as equivalent to other people's (Italian, Greek, etc.) nationalisms in the nineteenth century. And as part of the same yearning to return mentioned above. Obviously all of the above predates the Holocaust.
Zionism, the national aspiration of the Jewish people to a homeland, is to the Jewish people what the liberation movements of Africa and Asia have been to their peoples. History has demonstrated the need to ensure Jewish security through such a homeland. The re-establishment of Jewish independence in Israel, after centuries of struggle to overcome foreign conquest and exile, is a vindication of the fundamental concepts of the equality of nations and of self-determination. To question the Jewish people's right to national existence and freedom is not only to deny to the Jewish people the right accorded to every other people on this globe, but it is also to deny the central precepts of the United Nations.
Now, as to what the borders should be, that is another question!
By the way, to my Israel-is-always right friends, that old line about how in 1947, "the Palestinian Arabs left so that their armies could get in" (yes, that is the line we American Jews were taught as children) is b.s. The Israeli Army under Ben-Gurion et al tried to create facts on the ground by expelling as many Arabs from the Jewish side of the partition as they could. It was deliberate policy. Also by the way, a roughly, an equal number of Arabs were pushed out by Israel in 1947-49, as Jews were pushed out by Muslim countries. There is not going to be a return by either group.
To those one-world humanists who suggest that Jewish disappearance/extinction/elimination through assimilation would be good thing, I wonder why they think that is okay for the Jews to disappear, but important to save other disappearing endangered tribal groups, be they in Papua New Guinea or the Amazon or Tibet?
To those who make the argument that the idea of a state for a people is racist, and that Israel and the Jews and Zionism is inherently racist, one has to ask why it is more racist or otherwise worse than other nationalism? Germans got Germany (and Austria), the Italians got Italy and the Greeks got Greece. There are a lot of Arab and Muslim nations (a lot; see below). Heck, after World War I, England as the then colonial power even carved out the 70% larger part of the then Palestinian Mandate and made it into a Palestinian majority state called it Jordan and installed the outsider Bedouin Hashemites as rulers (Abdullah got Jordan as the consolation prize for England having installed the Sauds in charge of Arabia). Many of us think it is rightful for the Kurds to have a country. Most of us feel that it is rightful that the rightful for Tibetan Buddhist to have Tibet (but, heck, they already have Bhutan). And of course the Palestinian Arabs must also have their other state. One does not have to deny the other. But yes, Israel also has the same right to exist, and as Jewish state.
To those who attack Israel and promote endless diaries that rise to the Rec list whenever Israel attacks civilians, I mostly concur. But, I also wonder where are all the equivalent diaries, not making the Rec list, on the many more millions who have died in the past few years during the wars in the Congo? The current civilian deaths in Sri Lanka. Russian atrocities in Chechnya. Sudanese Arab government atrocities against Christians and black Muslims in Sudan. Turkey and Iran and Iraq attacks on civilian Kurds? Chinese attacks on Tibet and others? Surely all those countries should not exist either? Shouldn’t they get their Rec’d diaries?
Why does Israel Attack the way they do?
Let me start by saying that Israel should not have attacked Gaza when and the way that they did. Same for Lebanon a year ago. But what makes Israel so nervous, call it trigger happy, at least in realist-geostrategic terms is a combination of geography and population.
Israel is roughly the size and shape of New Jersey. Israel is just 8,630 square miles, 290 miles in length and about 85 miles across at the widest point. Israel is very small.
Size of Israel compared to USA (Israel is very small)
Size of Israel compared to France (yup; very small):
And it is only 6.3 miles wide at its narrowest area near Tel Aviv. Short distance in general, and very easy to cut in half or into thirds, or other small pieces in particular.
Israel is very small and very surrounded by many and larger countries:
With only 5.3 million Jews in Israel and a total of 13 million Jews worldwide, compared to hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims, we feel very outnumbered.
Countries with a Muslim Majority (yellow are Arab countries; orange is Persian):
Israel is out-numbered and in an area where might has tended to make right, violence is regional way, power is the only thing understood. Or so it is argued.
Deterrence is key point Israel wants to make, and they feel that by being disproportionate they make the point. When Hezbollah initiates multiple small attacks across the internationally recognized Lebononese border, Israeli over-reaction, including killing lots of civilians (not directly targeted but as a predictable knowable by product) is hoped to result in deterrence. And based on Hezbollah commentary and Lebanese restraint since, maybe it works. Similarly in Gaza, Hamas shoots first and often (kills very few, but makes normal life on the Israeli side of the border impossible)... when Israel finally retaliates it is deliberately asymetric and disroportionate. Literally, overkill. No they are not targeting civlians and yes they leafleted and text messaged and phone called ahead in areas warning civilians to get out... but the attacks were clearly conducted in a way that knowling would kill a lot of civilians. And that was deliberate. Deterrance. Give civilians in Gaza extra reason to put pressure on Hamas to not attack again in the future. In similar disproportionate ratios as the usual 100:1 or 1000:1 of Arab to Israeli prisoner of war exchanges. And so the killing of hundred or thousands of civilians in Gaza and Lebanon is both not deliberate, not targeted, some effort made to not do so... and yet also deliberate policy.
And underlying this policy of massive retaliation for deterrence is the reminder that Israel has nuclear weapons. The idea is to be clear that if their existance is threatened Israel really would (no, really) use the nukes.
It is easy and convenient to forget now, but it was the policy of every Arab country to call for the total elimination of Israel, "drive the Jews into the sea." That was their policy and rhetoric before, during and after 1947-49 UN partition and Israeli war of independence; that was their policy and rhetoric before 1967 when Israel did not occupy West Bank or East Jerusalem (and during which time "nice" Jordan was busy knocking down the Jewish parts of east Jerusalem and the old city), and of course after 1967 and through the 1973 war when the Arab countries all attacked and tried to wipe out Israel, until Egypt under made peace in 1979. And even then, every other Arab country continued to condemn and boycotted Egypt and the idea of Peace with Israel, and Sadat was assassinated, for doing so. Not until Oslo in 1993, did some of the rest of the Arab world begin to reconcile with the existence of Israel. And not until 2002, with the Saudi plan being adopted by the Arab League, did such potential acceptance of the very existence of Israel and the two state solution become officially accepted by most Arab governments (To my mind, the biggest tragedy is that Arafat did not have such backing from his side to make peace in 2000).
Now all of that is true. Alas, there is also much delusional social-political pathology, in Israel and by too many American supporters of Israel regarding what is reality now; what is best for Israel in the long run, as well as what is right and necessary for the Palestinians. The big lie, the mistake, is that despite the Oslo agreements, Israel has, under every single government, center-left or center-right, continued to expand the settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Lie and deny has been the policy, not only to the rest of the world, but also to some extent to itself.
By the way, here are the number for Palestinian Arabs:
Palestinian Population:
The map below shows the Settlements and demarcates the Palestinian controlled areas in dark and medium grey, the Israeli controlled areas in lightest grey and the Israeli Jewish settlements in blue:
This is where the one analogy that makes some sense comes into play. The comparison of the West Bank settlements and chopping-up of the Arab Palestinian areas, with roadblocks and other military control, to the Bantustan program in Apartheid South Africa.
Here is a close-up of the settlements including Jerusalem and Golan Areas through 2002:
This one below shows the growth of Settlements from 1967 to 2008:
Sadly, though we know what the light at the end of the tunnel is, digging the actual tunnel seems to be impossible, with all sides (but mostly Israel with the upper hand of the fact of the occupation) having a veto.
Alas, Israel is about to elect a government and parliment that will be even more right leaning than now. As always, public opinion polling suggest that two-thirds of the Israeli public support some version of land-for-peace and a two state solution in principle, but is unwilling to actually make the steps necessary to actually do it.
Israel ought to offer to negotiate with anybody, anywhere, with the Geneva initiative and Camp David II/Taba and the Saudi/Arab League plan as the various slightly different starting points (of course they differ; but they are close enough to lump together as a starting point to get everybody to sit down). See who shows up. Give the Palestinians, and yes, even Hamas, a chance to succeed. Let them elect whomever they elect. Talk with them. Deal with them. Offer to sit down with them, and see if they show up. Allow them to fail or succeed.
But it may be the case that the two sides, but especially Israel at this point, will need to be made to get to that point. Indeed their leadership (both sides to some extent) may actually want to be able to say that they were made to do it.
It may require outside forces, the U.S. with the assistance of such countries with potential influence as France and Turkey, maybe Russia, to impose a settlement. It may require a stronger stick and stronger carrot by the U.S. -- reduced or withdrawal of support if Israel does not get out of the West Bank on the one hand, coupled with iron-clad security and military guarantees by not only the U.S. but by the rest of the world (or at least NATO) after it does so.
Let the border be secured and patrolled by third party forces if needed.
Then if there are any attacks on Israel, no excuses... they are acts of war from another sovereign state, across internationally recognized boundaries, and any and all defense and retaliation is justified and necessry.
If you are serious about wanting there to be peace, fight for the two state solution. Anything else, be it continued occupation on the one hand, or wishful thinking of one state solutions or Israel somehow going away, is just a recipe for continued death and destruction.
I suggest supporting J-Street as a way to help move Ameran Politicians in this direction.
Meanwhile:
Avoid rhetoric that can be considered eliminationist.
Avoid analogies.
Stick to the occupation itself.
It is enough.
No need to get into rhetoric that is, or can be considered anti-Semitic or eliminationist.
It is counterproductive.
There is enough to criticize in actual Israeli government policy.
So repeat after me:
- "It’s the Occupation stupid...
- ...and the rest is commentary (misleading, bad, often false, eliminationist, counterproductive, racist, anti-Semitic) commentary."
- ...and many things are true at once.
