Charlottesville has been a depth charge. The Israeli right was loath to condemn the white nationalists at the fringe of Trump's base, and this has sent a shock through the American Jewish community. There is open argument about Israel; and it's not going to end.
The best news is that the Forward, America's leading liberal Jewish publication, published a piece by Naomi Dann of Jewish Voice for Peace last week equating Zionism with racism. That's revolutionary. Time was when that argument was made by Arabs at the United Nations and then stifled as supposed anti-Semitism. Now it's in the Forward, from the mouth of a Jew!
Dann says that white nationalist Richard Spencer was right when he expressed common cause with Israel, saying it's an ethnocracy that discriminates in favor of a privileged group.
Richard Spencer, whose racist views are rightfully abhorred by the majority of the Jewish community, is holding a mirror up to Zionism and the reflection isn't pretty.It's a marvel that this piece even ran. Forward editor Jane Eisner then responded angrily to Naomi Dann, denouncing her as a member of "the radical group Jewish Voice for Peace" spreading untruths about Israel. Ouch! Hat's off to Eisner for allowing the debate to happen. Even if she says it's all lies.
Looking at Israel today, we can see a state premised on the privileging of one group, and all too often perpetuating the erasure and displacement of another. We also see an obsession with demographics and the maintenance of an ethnic majority.
We work hard to reflect a range of American Jewish opinion, which is why the piece and reaction to it was published. The free flow of ideas is to be cherished. But when a Jew even hints at comparing Israel to Nazis, it must be denounced.Eisner is an ardent Zionist. She believes that ideology is necessary to Jewish survival and that the current Israeli government is undoing Zionism (not expressing it) with its discriminatory policies and the occupation and "denial of Palestinian sovereignty."
The argument that Zionism is akin to Nazism is not new, and it's never been correct. Its related equation - that Zionism is racism - was codified by the United Nations when it passed Resolution 3379 in 1975. Though hardly Israel's best friend, the international body later came to its senses and overwhelmingly rescinded the resolution in 1991.
That such policies are done in the name of Zionism is painful, a perversion of the Zionist ideal. It is something that all Jews must reckon with. But the imperfections of reality do not negate the underlying fact that Zionism is not inherently racist and can - and, in fact, does - exist side-by-side with democracy.It's great that the Forward is hosting this conversation, because people can argue openly about whether Zionism is necessary. That's all I've asked for; I believe the answer (No it's an anachronism) will change US Jewry and crumble the Israel lobby. Norman Finkelstein once mocked the idea that Americans could or should argue about Zionism because Zionism might as well be "the name of a hairspray" to Americans. Good joke; but he was always wrong about this. People can argue about any idea that's important, once it's identified. And this toothpaste is not going back in the tube.
Eisner clearly believes that Jews are unsafe in America, and that's why we need Zionism:
For Dann to write that Spencer is "holding a mirror up to Zionism and the reflection isn't pretty" is especially perilous in the current political climate. The intimidating display of Nazi slogans and symbols in Charlottesville, Virginia, legitimized by the shocking statements of President Trump, are a chilling reminder that even in America, Jews are at risk simply because we are Jews.We need to "recognize our shared vulnerability" and "strengthen our sense of solidarity," Eisner says. Back to the monolith! Palestinian vulnerability just gets passing mention.
Also addressing the idea of Jewish vulnerability are writers Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon. Last week they published an "open letter to our fellow Jews, in the U.S., Israel, and around the world" declaring that Trump is an anti-Semite who is endangering Jews and it's time for all Jews to denounce him.
Now he's coming after you. The question is: what are you going to do about it? If you don't feel, or can't show, any concern, pain or understanding for the persecution and demonization of others, at least show a little self-interest. At least show a little sechel. At the very least, show a little self-respect."Boot heel at the door" is a Gestapo reference. In another traditional phrasing, the writers warn Trump's Jewish family members Ivanka and Jared Kushner that if they don't act, You're dead to us.
To Steven Mnuchin, Gary Cohn, and our other fellow Jews currently serving under this odious regime: We call upon you to resign; and to the President's lawyer, Michael D. Cohen: Fire your client.
To Sheldon Adelson and our other fellow Jews still engaged in making the repugnant calculation that a hater of Arabs must be a lover of Jews, or that money trumps hate, or that a million dollars' worth of access can protect you from one boot heel at the door: Wise up.
To Jared Kushner: You have one minute to do whatever it takes to keep the history of your people from looking back on you as among its greatest traitors, and greatest fools; that minute is nearly past. To Ivanka Trump: Allow us to teach you an ancient and venerable phrase, long employed by Jewish parents and children to one another at such moments of family crisis: I'll sit shiva for you. Try it out on your father; see how it goes.Waldman and Chabon deserve a lot of respect because of their anti-occupation book Kingdom of Olives and Ashes, which contains anti- and non-Zionist voices. I disagree with them about the vulnerability of Jews in the United States. I don't think history repeats itself; I think that chapter in the west is over and the belief in its endurance is atavistic. But I'm glad to have the debate; especially because that question is at the heart of Zionism.
Among all the bleak and violent truths that found confirmation or came slouching into view amid the torchlight of Charlottesville is this: Any Jew, anywhere, who does not act to oppose President Donald Trump and his administration acts in favor of anti-Semitism; any Jew who does not condemn the President, directly and by name, for his racism, white supremacism, intolerance and Jew hatred, condones all of those things.
Finally, here is Chemi Shalev in Haaretz, who is more in the Jane Eisner camp, warning that the Israeli right has shattered American Jewish solidarity with Israel by siding with the enemies of American Jews.
"Rash Embrace of Trump Accelerates the Jewish Schism" is the headline. Shalev says Netanyahu's animosity toward "liberal, cosmopolitan, universalist Jews" is reminiscent of "the kind of anti-Jewish bile spouted by Jew-haters around the world, from David Duke to Viktor Orban."
The delineation between the two opposing Jewish camps has never seemed clearer. On one side we have Netanyahu, many of his colleagues, the pro-settler lobby, an unfortunate proportion of Orthodox Jews, supporters of Jewish settlements, Obama-and/or Muslim-hating Israelis along with hyper-hawks and ultranationalists such as Sheldon Adelson. On the other side there are Israeli doves along with American Jewish liberals, Reform and Conservative Jews and other Trump-haters. And increasingly it seems that never the twain shall meet.Again, I'd insist on the existence of broader strains of belief here. Neither Eisner nor Shalev is a universalist. Universalist cosmopolitan Jews can include anti-Zionist Jews, anti-racist Jews, and those of us who do not see the haters of Charlottesville as a real threat to our place in the west.
Israel's willingness to embrace Trump above and beyond the call of duty is alienating large chunks of the American Jewish community. Those that supported Israel wholeheartedly are beginning to question themselves, those who had been harboring doubts all along have reached a guilty verdict and those who are sitting on the wall certainly won't come down in Israel's favor now or anytime in the future.
Emotions run high in times of conflict. When people fear for their country or for their wellbeing or for the safety of their love ones, there is scant room for moderation and nuance. In the era of Trump, the main question on the minds of his critics is the one Joshua asked when he met God's emissary: Are you with us or with our enemies? By standing so firmly and so recklessly with Trump, Israel is telling American Jews exactly where it stands: With their enemy.
Thanks to Annie Robbins.
Reader Comments
a) What Einstein said, above;
b) How Israel has treated (Ethiopian*? black jews who come there 'Law of Return' more legitimately than other Ashkenazi Jews (typical E. European Jews forcibly converted... details elsewhere, but who certainly are not of the claimed 'lost tribes of Israel' and proven (all as I recall)via DNA.
c) Palestinian Arabs;
d) Jews;
It seems the country is not so much racist as opppressive against all they see who are not on 'their side,' e.g., Nut & Yahoo, et al.
R.C.
*Forget non Memnon, the Ajax sized Black Ethiope who came to help Priam save Troy, but who was killed by Achilles' son, Neoptolemus, he the same "Pyrrhus" who slays Priam in the 'play within a play' in Hamlet;* , **
*HAMLET: (snip) One speech in it I
chiefly loved: 'twas Aeneas' tale to Dido; and
thereabout of it especially, where he speaks of
Priam's slaughter: if it live in your memory, begin
at this line: let me see, let me see--
'The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast,'--
it is not so:--it begins with Pyrrhus:--
'The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
When he lay couched in the ominous horse,
Hath now this dread and black complexion smear'd
With heraldry more dismal; head to foot
Now is he total gules; horridly trick'd
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
Baked and impasted with the parching streets,
That lend a tyrannous and damned light
To their lord's murder: roasted in wrath and fire,
And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks.'
So, proceed you. (SNIP) First Player 'Anon he finds him
Striking too short at Greeks; his antique sword,
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command: unequal match'd,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage strikes wide;
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
The unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,
Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear: for, lo! his sword,
Which was declining on the milky head
Of reverend Priam, seem'd i' the air to stick:
So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,
And like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing.
But, as we often see, against some storm,
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
The bold winds speechless and the orb below
As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region, so, after Pyrrhus' pause,
Aroused vengeance sets him new a-work;
And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall
On Mars's armour forged for proof eterne
With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam.
Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,
In general synod 'take away her power;
Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends!'
LORD POLONIUS This is too long.
HAMLET It shall to the barber's, with your beard. Prithee,
say on: he's for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he
sleeps: say on: come to Hecuba. First Player 'But who, O, who had seen the mobled queen--' (SNIP)
First Player 'Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames
With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head
Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,
About her lank and all o'er-teemed loins,
A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up;
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd,
'Gainst Fortune's state would treason have
pronounced:
But if the gods themselves did see her then
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs,
The instant burst of clamour that she made,
Unless things mortal move them not at all,
Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,
And passion in the gods.'
** Supposedly based on Marlowe's Dido.
Who'd have thought it?
For more read the full text of this book explaining jewish religion written by a jew. [Link]