- While Israeli ministers and Jewish activists continue
to describe every criticism of Israel - such as a problematic public opinion
poll showing that Europeans see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the
greatest threat to world peace - liberal Jewish circles in the West are
facing a different political threat.
-
- Recently, several articles appearing in the West (most
of them written by Jewish commentators) questioned whether it was a mistake
to establish the State of Israel along ethnic lines - as a Jewish state.
The settlements, it has been written, have ended any possibility of geographic
separation between Jews and Palestinians, and therefore the remaining solution,
in practice, is to establish a binational state.
-
- A specific reference to this idea appears in the October
issue of the influential New York Review of Books in an article by (Jewish)
commentator Tony Judt. At the end of a detailed analysis of the status
of the conflict, he writes: "The behavior of a self-described Jewish
state affects the way everyone else looks at Jews... but the depressing
truth is that Israel today is bad for the Jews ...to convert Israel from
a Jewish state to a binational one would cause far less disruption to most
Jews and Arabs than its religious and nationalist foes will claim ... a
binational state in the Middle East would require a brave and relentlessly
engaged American leadership. The security of Jews and Arabs alike would
need to be guaranteed by international force ... but the alternatives are
far, far worse."
-
- Similar ideas are appearing in other journals, also reflecting
the disappointment over Israel's policy in the territories. The veteran
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen recently wrote: "In the perpetual
war against Israel - its enemies are winning, but history admonishes Israel..."
And in the leftist liberal journal, The Nation, there was an article this
month by Daniel Lazar titled "The One-State Solution" and that
refers to one state for two peoples - Jewish and Palestinian. The article
concludes: "Hounded by rabbis, terrorized by suicide bombers, hemmed
in by nationalism, Israelis see no alternative but to throw in their lot
with a strongman like Sharon. The logic is irresistible, but suicidal -
unless somebody can figure a way out of the ideological cage."
-
- The Jewish Week, printed in New York and among the most
widely circulated publications, featured a column last Friday by its editor
and publisher, Gary Rosenblatt, in which he wrote: "Israel's military
approach to the Palestinian conflict - respond to attacks and defeat the
enemy - does not work when applied to U.S. campus ideological clashes over
the Middle East. And the more strident the pro-Israel position, the less
likely tens of thousands of American Jewish college students are to be
sympathetic to the Jewish state. A Hillel director on the West Coast, who
asks not to be named, stressed that 'strident pro-Israel advocates who
are unwilling to concede that Israel has a problem with settlements, occupation,
and other controversial stands, only end up making more Jewish students
skeptical. If you insist you are always right, you lose credibility'."
-
- Large Jewish organizations in the United States continue
to stand behind Israel, but many rank and file members feel increasingly
displeased with the aggressive policy of the government of Israel and the
growing strength of religious-nationalist influences in Israel. Anti-Semitic
entities in Europe and the U.S. are using Israel's policy in the territories.
It backs up their propaganda, but it is highly doubtful that this is indeed
evidence of a corresponding rise in the scale of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism
is not the main reason behind the increased criticism of Israel among liberal
circles in Europe. Indeed, there are today more incidents of anti-Semitism
in Europe, and clearly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict contributes to
that. It should be noted that the support for Jews (and Israel) in the
1950s and 1960s, which was born of feelings of guilt, has dropped considerably
in a generation that no longer remembers the Holocaust. However, the proper
comparison to make when assessing anti-Semitism is not between 2003 and
1963, but between 2003 and 1933, when Europe was calm and prior to Hitler's
rise to power. Even that comparison will highlight the political and social
changes for the better in the Jews' situation.
-
- Constant emphasis on the "perpetual presence"
of anti-Semitism achieves the opposite results. It is both despairing and
may also weaken the hand of those combating anti-Semitism. The fact that
Islam (even non-fundamentalist Islam, as evidenced by outgoing Malaysian
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad's remarks) disseminates images borrowed
from Christian-European anti-Semitism does not contradict the vast differences
that still exist between the two forms of anti-Semitism. Christian anti-Semitism
grew out of religious grounds and later adopted political and racist attributes
and objectives. The other anti-Semitism, contemporary Muslim, was born
out of political reasons and is now taking on racist attributes. Associating
contemporary Muslim anti-Semitism with classic Western anti-Semitism is
very convenient for extremists, both European and Israeli.
-
- It is true that there is a lot of hypocrisy in the demands
of anti-Semites that Israel and the Jews act with more tolerance and morality
than other nations. But they are not the ones who determined that Israel
should be a light unto the nations; that is a demand made throughout the
generations by Jewish ethics and that is the bond we asked the nations
of the world to redeem in 1948.
-
- We should therefore not complain if the world now demands
that we redeem that bond. There is of course a double standard in this,
but it is also recognition, for or better or worse, of the status of the
"chosen people."
-
- In this context it is fitting to quote Tomas Masaryk,
who established independent Czechoslovakia (and a friend of Zionism) who
cautioned his people: "Nations fall with the fall of ideas with which
they were established."
-
- © Copyright 2003 Haaretz. All rights reserved
-
- http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/357713.html
|
