While we Babble and Rrave

NOVANEWS

By:Paul Eisen

… Only then will the old and young in our land realise how great was our responsibility to those miserable Arab refugees in whose towns we have settled Jews who were brought from afar; whose homes we have inherited, whose fields we now sow and harvest; the fruits of whose gardens, orchards and vineyards we gather; and in whose cities that we robbed, we put up houses of education, charity and prayer while we babble and rave about being the ‘people of the Book’ and the ‘light of the nations!’ (Buber/Chofshi).
For a relatively small number of Jews, support for what is being done to the Palestinians is a relatively easy matter. God gave the land to the Jews, the Palestinians are Amalek, and if they will not submit to Jewish rule they must, and will, be destroyed. Just like those Germans who relinquished National Socialism only when the Russians were on the streets of Berlin, such Jews will abandon their militant, eliminationist Zionism only when the options finally close down.
But for most Jews things are not so simple. Defending the indefensible is never easy, and many Jews, intellectually sophisticated, secular and liberal in their instincts, require more than just careful selections from the Bible to justify what is being done to the Palestinians. These Jews have had, over the years, to tell themselves a lot of stories. For some this has been easier than for others. For some, perhaps the majority, it has been simple enough to swallow the Israeli and Zionist line whole: Jews came to a land inhabited only by rootless peasants, and battled against overwhelming odds to establish their state. Since then, Israel, an island of Western decency in a sea of Arab decadence and decay has had to battle for its very survival.
But for some, after 1967, and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the illegal settling of the land, and, later, the war in Lebanon, the Intifadas, and the work of the new Israeli historians in uncovering the truth of Israel’s birth, the story has had to be revised.
The sin of moral equivalence
‘To talk about ‘a cycle of violence’ in the Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians is to commit the sin of ‘moral equivalence. – Walid Khalidi 
Conceived in the Israeli and Jewish peace camps, taken up by the mainstream and pretty much the entire solidarity movement, and, for many years, underpinned all acceptable discourse on Israel and Palestine, is the notion that the conflict in Israel/Palestine is not the brutal dispossession and oppression of one people by another, but a tragic conflict between two equal, but conflicting rights. This notion emerged after 1967 when doveish, more moderate Zionists, realising that the story of a blameless innocent Zionism could no longer be sustained, but still unable to acknowledge Israel’s guilt, after years of denying the very existence of the Palestinian people, began to concede that the Palestinians also had a story which ought to be heard.
In this narrative Israel is not guilty, because no one is guilty, and Israel is not the oppressor, because there is no oppressor. Everyone is an innocent victim. Variations on the theme include the I’ve-suffered,- you’ve-suffered,-let’s-talk approach, and what has been called the psychotherapy approach to conflict resolution, You-feel-my-pain-and-I’ll-feel-yours. Proponents of this theory like to say that the two sides are not listening to each other. If only each side would hear the other’s story a solution would surely be found.
But it is not true that neither has heard the other’s story. Palestinians have heard the Zionist story ad nauseam, and they have certainly heard enough about Jewish suffering. It is not, then, both sides that need to listen: it is Israelis, and Jews who need to listen.
But, as is heard so often from inside the Jewish and Israeli peace camps, both sides have a point of view, and both sides must be heard; both sides have suffered, and right or wrong is never on one side only. This, of course, is true, but did these same Jews, then struggling against apartheid and now campaigning for the ‘justice’ of a disempowered statelet for Palestinians on a mere remnant of what was once their homeland—and many were the same Jews—say then that we had to see both sides of the picture? They did not. They acknowledged that white South Africans were as deserving of peace and prosperity as black South Africans, but they never lost sight of who was the victim and who was the perpetrator.
Nor are the two sides in Israel-Palestine equal in power, or in moral weight. Israel, a modern Western-style state, with the fourth most powerful army in the world, faces a civilian population with a few poorly armed militias, and enforces a claim which is highly questionable. Jewish claims to Palestine are not only more complex than Palestinian claims, but are also more contentious. Even whilst acknowledging a Jewish connection with Palestine, and even if one might wish to see a Jewish presence there, the historical evidence can hardly justify exclusive Jewish ownership
This recasting of the struggle as a conflict between equals means that Jews do not have to see Israel for what it is: a powerful state, founded and maintained on injustice, oppressing a weak and defenceless civilian population. Instead, they see it for what they would like it to be: a tiny, embattled state, well-intentioned, but caught up in a tragic conflict of equal but opposing rights. So, an assault by the fourth most powerful army in the world on a largely undefended refugee camp becomes just part of a continuing ‘cycle of violence’, and the imposition of surrender on an exhausted and defeated people can be recast as ‘negotiations’, or ‘peace talks’.
Good cop/bad cop
Zionism’s eternal good cop/bad cop routine has for years deflected criticism, and provided for Jews and others a means of reconciling what they see with what they want to see. The good cop is the secular ‘left’, meaning the Labour Party and its offshoots, descended from the old Labour Zionism of David Ben-Gurion, while the bad cop is Likud, descended from the old revisionists founded by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and now joined by the religious fanatics and the settlers. And the argument runs, that Israel and Zionism are not themselves responsible for their crimes, but only extremist elements therein. If only the good guys were in power, things would be alright for the Palestinians.
History, however, does not bear this out. The fact is that certainly as much, if not more suffering has been inflicted on the Palestinians by Labour governments and the left, than by Likud and the right. It was Labour Zionism which created the pre-state society that excluded Palestinians, particularly in the organisation of labour. It was Labour Zionists, good, humanistic, left-wing kibbutzniks who directed the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians, and the destruction of their towns and villages. It was Labour Zionism which established the present state with all its discriminatory practices, and it was a Labour government that held the Palestinian citizens of Israel under military government in their own land for eighteen years. Finally, it was a Labour government which conquered the West Bank and Gaza, and first built the settlements, and it was a Labour government that embarked on the Oslo and other peace processes, coolly designed to deceive the Palestinians into surrendering their rights.
The difference between the good cop and the bad cop is not their final destination but only how they get there. Both Labour and Likud, indeed the whole of mainstream Zionism, has as its aim the complete conquest of the whole of Palestine, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, with as few Palestinians therein as possible. The only difference is that, whilst Likud and the ‘right’ understand, as they have always understood, that the only way to achieve this was through force, Labour would prefer, along with the use of force when necessary, to deceive their victims into going into the cage quietly. And, when the good cop has failed, and the victims have proved themselves unwilling to walk into the cage unaided, as they did at Camp David at the end of the Oslo process, what do they do? Why, they call in the bad cop, in that case, the butcher, Ariel Sharon.
The Palestinians have had 100 years of good cop, bad cop, good cop, bad cop. The good cop led them down the Oslo path and made them the generous offer of a tiny, fragmented and trashed statelet on just part of 22 per cent of what is their own land, under the political and economic control of Israel, and under the guns of the Israeli military. And, shock, horror, they turned it down. So the Israelis called in the bad cop, Sharon, who did his worst. Then after more than two years of relentless assault the victim was nicely softened up. So, in comes the good cop. In his hand is a piece of paper. On the piece of paper is a new peace plan. The peace plan offers just that, peace for the victor, but very little justice for the victim. All the Palestinians have to do is to sign, and the pain will go away. There is little doubt that the overwhelming majority of Jews, including many in the peace camp, will be clamouring for them to sign.
‘End the occupation!’
For years, many Jews, becoming aware of the injustice associated with the establishment of Israel, but still unable to relinquish their belief in Israel’s essential innocence, congregated around the slogans: ‘End the occupation!’ and ‘Two states for two peoples!’ That there never was an  ‘occupation’, and that there never could be a true Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, was simply denied.
The long-term Zionist strategy for the conquest of Palestine was always to wait for what Ben-Gurion called ‘revolutionary situations’, meaning situations which would provide cover under which the take-over of Palestine could be completed. The first of these ‘revolutionary situations’ presented itself in 1947 and 1948, when, under the cover of the conflict, 78 per- cent of historic Palestine was transformed into Israel. Another such situation presented itself in 1967.
We now know that Israel in 1967 was not the innocent party threatened with annihilation by the Arab states (though its population probably thought it was). Israel had been preparing for such a war for years. Neither was Israel’s victory anything other than totally expected by anyone who was even a little bit in the know. Like the 1947-48 conflict, the war of 1967 was an opportunity gladly taken for the take-over of the remaining 22 per-cent of Palestine. This was the fulfilment of Zionism’s historic mission.
There is then, no occupation. There never was an occupation. If there had been an occupation, and the Israelis had the slightest intention of ending it they would have done so years ago. The fact is, that no Israeli government, either of the left or the right, has ever shown any intention of fully withdrawing back to the 1967 border. No Israeli government, left or right, has shown the slightest inclination to permit anything even remotely resembling a real Palestinian state to be established on the West Bank and Gaza. Any state that could ever have emerged would have been tiny, fragmented and weak, simply a legitimisation of Palestinian surrender. The occupation, in fact, is and always was a fig-leaf to conceal the reality of the final conquest of Palestine.
Nevertheless, for many Jews the occupation was the bedrock of Israel’s essential innocence. Occupations are temporary and can be reversed, and this one, they believed, was the result of a war which Israel did not seek. So, Israel and Zionism were still, at heart, innocent. The Jewish state, established at the expense of another people’s national life, was blameless. It was the occupation that had ‘forced’ Israel into the role of oppressor, and if only Israel had withdrawn to the borders of 1967 all would be as it had been, only better: the gains of 1948 would have been secured, Jews would have had their Israel with its ‘moral foundations’, and the Palestinians would remain contained within a bantustan with a semblance, but not the reality, of justice. For many Jews, this would mean that they could have both their empowerment and their consciences.
One secular, democratic state…
But you can fool yourself only for so long and years and years of on/off ‘peace’ processes, relentless settlement-building and ferocious assaults on Lebanon and Gaza convinced even the most deluded of conscience-stricken Jew that the game was up – Israel had not the slightest intention of permitting anything like a real Palestinian state. Something new was needed and ‘One secular, democratic state’’ was it.
Contrary to accepted wisdom, those anti-Zionist Jews who congregate around this slogan really do mean it. These Jews have been accused of claiming to be anti-Zionists but really are crypto-Zionists who pretend to oppose Israel and Zionism while secretly protecting it. But this is not the case. These anti-Zionists Jews are just what they say they are – they loathe Zionism and Israel with a passion so often felt in civil, almost family conflicts – that much is true. What is less true is their real commitment to the Palestinian, or for that matter, any cause other than their own, Jewish cause.
Because, for these anti-Zionist Jews, these modern day Marranos who eschew all notions of God and a Messiah but who still need a Jewish god in which to believe – for these folk all kinds of secular substitutes are available: Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, human rights – good causes every one and every one envisaging some kind of messianic utopia to which the lumpen proletariat (read ‘ignorant goyim) may be led. Light unto the Nations.
Because, above all, these Jews ‘know’. Gilad Atzmon put it best when addressing an anti-Zionist Jewish activist Tony Greenstein
“…you are a supremacist Jew. You must believe that you know better. You must believe that you know better than the SWP what is important for the British working class. You must think that you know better than the Palestinians what is right for the Palestinian people.” 
So take a close look at these anti-Zionist, often Marxist Jews who “know” that Palestine should be a secular, democratic state? What do they really want? Do they want Palestinians to decide what they want or do they, the Jews, know best what Palestinians want? Could it be that the only difference between Zionist and anti-Zionist Jewish activists is that the Zionist Jews want to turn Palestine into a Jewish state for Jews, whilst the anti-Zionist Jews want to turn Palestine into a secular, democratic state for everyone – but, like the Palestinian solidarity movement itself, largely dominated by Jews. Thus in this ‘secular, democratic state’ all will be equal but… on every street corner there will be a local anti-Zionist Commissar who will just happen to be a Jew but who will ‘know’ exactly what’s best for everyone – and has the means to enforce it.
And what is this ‘secular, democratic’ state of Palestine? Will it be as secular and democratic as America and Western Europe – and as Jewish-dominated? Who will control the finance, the media, the education system, the police and the military? Who will control the government? And those who point to the likely demographic future of a Palestinian population inevitably outstripping the Jewish population; remember that in ‘secular, democratic’ America Jews make up only around 2 % of the population. So envisage these two societies as they come together after the years of conflict – the cohesive, highly developed, thoroughly indoctrinated, militarised and disciplined Jewish collective with the Palestinians, habituated to years of subjugation. How will they coalesce? Who will be on the top? Who will be on the bottom?
A light unto the nations
Le tzionut, le sozialism ve le achvat amim (‘For Zionism, socialism, and internationalism’)                                   Motto of Hashomer Hatzair (‘The Young Guard’)
Within many Jews there is the deep and abiding wish for the return of the ‘Beautiful Israel’ of their childhoods. This was the Israel that was conceived in universal ideals of socialism and justice to be ‘a light unto the nations’. That such an Israel never existed, and could never have existed, is ignored.
The notion of ‘Beautiful Israel’ lies at the very foundations of Political Zionism with roots deep in Jewish history. Zionism, which connects a modern Jewish state in Palestine with its supposed biblical antecedent, never saw itself as just another colonial enterprise, though it certainly was that. But it was much more as well. Zionist thinkers, though generally secular, used Jewish religious sentiment to further their cause, but this was not just cold-blooded political manoeuvring. Like so many ideologues, the early, and also later and present-day Zionists, believed their own stories.
Even for the least observant Jew, Jewish identity is a complex and resonant issue, and Jewishness may be experienced a long way from the synagogue, the yeshiva, or any other formal aspect of Jewish life. Jewish history, inextricably linked with Judaism, is also the bedrock of many secular Jews’ sense of Jewish identity. The founders of modern political Zionism, as secular a bunch as one could meet, still had a powerful sense of their history, and even destiny, with all the inevitable emotional and religious overtones. For many of them, and certainly for many of the Jewish masses who offered their allegiance, the founding of a Jewish state in Palestine was, if not overtly religious, still profoundly emotional and spiritual.
Many of the founding fathers of the modern state defined themselves as socialists. Unable to choose between their socialism and their Zionism, they tried to combine the two, believing that Zionism and Socialism could go hand in hand in building a Jewish state, founded on principles of equality and social justice, an absurdity really, since the one stood for universal principles and the other for Jewish ethnic interests. The motto of Hashomer Hatzair (The Young Guard), which formed the core of the ‘left-Zionist’ Mapam party, Le tzionut, le sozialism ve le achvat amim (For Zionism, socialism, and internationalism) is significant in that Zionism always came first.
Loftier than most run-of-the-mill colonial enterprises, pre-state Zionism did not so much rob the natives—though they certainly did plenty of that—as ignore them. Central to the pre-state society and the state itself were socialist structures such as the Histadrut trades union, which presided over both the organization of Jewish labour and the exclusion of non-Jewish labour. That their lofty socialist principles rarely extended in practice to non-Jews need not be attributed only to cynicism, but also to a moral schizophrenia that has always made Zionism so hard to analyse and therefore so hard to oppose.
But there was another Zionism: Cultural or Spiritual Zionism that envisioned a Jewish community, a spiritual, religious and cultural centre in Palestine, living in peace and equality with the Palestinians. These voices of bi-nationalism, led by such as Ahad Ha’am, Martin Buber and Judah Magnes, were small in number and increasingly marginalised. In retrospect it is hard to see that they had any effect on Zionist policy, or made much difference to present-day Zionist ideology. But these traditions were, and are, very important to Jews theologically and had an enormous cultural effect—the revival and development of the Hebrew language and literature, and the establishment of centres of learning, such as the Hebrew University and the Haifa Technion, were to have a huge and positive effect on the scientific and cultural progress of the pre-state Yishuv and of Israel.
But the theological and cultural effects of this Spiritual Zionism were nothing compared to the effects they had on the marketing of Political Zionism. One need not doubt the sincerity of these voices, nor of those Jews who hold them dear, to note how, with that particular blend of conviction, hypocrisy and self-delusion on the part of Political Zionists, they have been used to mystify and obfuscate, and so better promote, a far less scrupulous vision. Many leftist Zionists, such as those in Hashomer Hatzair, took great pains—whilst working for a Jewish majority through immigration, directing and participating in the ethnic cleansing of 1948, and subsequently building their socialist and utopian (but only for Jews) kibbutzim on stolen Palestinian land—to cloak themselves in the rhetoric of bi-nationalism. The sincerely held beliefs of Buber, Magnes, Ahad Aham and others were used to give Zionism that messianic, moral tinge which has done so much over the years to bamboozle us all. Today, these traditions are often cited as evidence of Zionism’s essential goodness, and many Jews today now look back on them with nostalgia, and cling to them for comfort, and also to conceal from themselves and others Political Zionism’s manifest character.
These moral ambiguities are evident, not only in the divisions within Israel, the Zionist establishment and the Jewish community world-wide, but also often within many individuals. Zionism, the drive for the return of an ancient and suffering people to their God-given homeland, is for Jews a compelling ideology. This surge of power to the powerless, this messianic story of return, the utopianism, the intensity, the near religious fervour of Zionism, blended with enormous dollops of self-delusion, constitute a heady mix which has gone straight to the head of many an otherwise sober and rational Jew, and has led to some strange and contradictory behaviour: left-wing Jews at solidarity demonstrations calling over loudhailers for justice for Palestinians, whilst at the same time vigorously defending Israel’s right, as a Jewish state, to discriminate officially against non-Jews; the ‘progressive’ Rabbi Michael Lerner claiming that Israel cannot be discriminatory, since it accepts Jews of all ethnic backgrounds, and that the establishment of Israel with the attendant obliteration of Palestinian society amounts to ‘affirmative action’ for Jews; and the appearance at Palestine solidarity rallies of organised Jewish youth in full Zionist regalia, blue shirts with stars of David on their badges and flags, carrying placards calling for an end to the occupation.
It is within these ambiguities and contradictions that so many Jews have found places of refuge from the moral condemnation of the crimes committed in their names. When confronted with the crimes of Israel and Zionism or the charge that Israel and Zionism are, by definition, discriminatory, many Jews will answer ‘Ah, but that’s not the Israel I love’, or ‘That’s not the Zionism in which I believe

This article is an updated version of a chapter in “Speaking the Truth about Zionism andIsrael”, edited by Michael Prior and published by  Melisende (London) March 2004.
ISBN 1 901764 26 5       £12.95
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