A meditation on Zionism and anti-Semitism
ZIONISM
Zionism is a political philosophy that demands that Jewish people have their own state. Not their own homeland–their own state. The usual argument that most other major ethnicities have their own states is flatly false. Most major ethnicities have their own homelands, but not their states. The difference is not trivial. Even states that (unlike Israel) are overwhelmingly dominated by a single ethnicity are not defined by that ethnicity, at least not legally. Poland, for example, is not the state of the Polish people but a state of its citizens, the vast majority of whom happen to be Poles. The Republic of Poland IS defined by the Polish language and other aspects of Polish culture, but it is not defined as a state constituted by Poles.
Even Germany, with its racist laws about obtaining citizenship that allow people with German ancestry from centuries ago to quickly become citizens while excluding many second-generation Turks, is defined, as a nation, in terms of its citizens, not in terms of a Volk. However you become a citizen, once you get there, you’re as much a part of the state as anyone else. For that matter, the United Kingdom, while it has an established church and is defined as an Anglican state, is not defined as a state of Anglicans.
Zionism is, thus, exceptional in the modern world in its demand for a state bound to a people. That demand is intrinsically a recipe for discrimination–not just belief in being a “chosen people” and suchnot, but outright political distinction on a tribal/religious basis as the underlying national principle. Those who consistently oppose any such discrimination are therefore compelled to be anti-Zionists, even if they have sympathy for the idea of a Jewish homeland, because the Zionist ideal (and present-day reality) of a state defined by its Jewishness is inherently discriminatory.
The nonsensical conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism thus inverts the actual situation: it is pro-Zionism that is unsustainable without prejudice. That is not to say that all Zionists have a pro-Jewish or anti-Arab prejudice, for many of them are simply ignorant or confused about what’s involved; but no informed, honest argument for Zionism can avoid being an argument for prejudice. While many Americans realize this quite clearly, it is still very difficult to say so loudly and publicly in this country without serious repercussions for yourself, due to the activities of censorship squads of self-appointed American guardians of Israel, along with the monolithic position of the Beltway establishment.
I well remember, while serving on the station board of KPFA radio, manning the phones during a pledge drive. When Dennis Bernstein’s Flashpoints, the highest-pledging locally produced show on KPFA, came on, suddenly a roomful of mostly quiet phones lit up. And very soon, along came the disruptors. People would call in and start going on about how they objected to Bernstein’s treatment of Israel and his Palestinian-friendly position. Mind you, this was not a comment line: the number in question was only supposed to be used for pledging. I told as much to the disruptor whose call I fielded and quickly hung up, but other volunteers got bogged down arguing. Disruptors would ask the phone volunteers for their own opinions of Flashpoint’s Middle East coverage in an obviously deliberate attempt to prolong the conversations. The result of tying up these lines was to quite possibly create some busy signals and perhaps lose some pledges, since nearly all the phones were in use once Dennis got into his groove.
This sort of thing had been going on for a while at KPFA. I’d heard about it before, although this was my first direct experience of it. Obviously, there was a concerted campaign by some ultra-pro-Israel folks with too much time on their hands to disrupt our pledge drives at this oldest listener-sponsored station. The sheer level of contempt for free speech–and even for the very bougeois concept of freedom of association, which gives you the right to hang out with the kind of people you like and give them money for any (legal) causes you like, no matter how dubious others find them–says much, not only about Zionism itself, but of the breakdown of any sense of fair play that has been so apparent in American political discourse for the past twenty years.
Fortunately, most of the political left in this country is hip to this issue. In fact, Israel/Palestine relations form a useful litmus test for separating the anti-establishment progressives from the pro-Democratic-Party liberals. If you tune in, as I do, to a lot of left discourse, what you hear is miles apart from the clamped-down establishment take on this issue, not only in the corporate media but even in academia. Finkelstein, Walt, and Mearsheimer are not the only academics who have suffered retaliation for Israel-critical views; Noam Chomsky, for example, has been punished as much over the years on this issue as for all his other heresies combined. Even someone as widely respected as Jimmy Carter opened himself up for instant vilification the minute he understated the sad truth of the Holy Land situation in his gentle, forgiving voice.
On the American left, we hear lots about this kind of censorship, and we talk lots about the vacuum it creates, but we don’t actually experience that vacuum–because, fortunately, our own discourse is quite different. We strongly condemn the purveyors of both Zionist propaganda and Israeli state terror; the former consequently gains little foothold in our midst, even when it comes from otherwise left-leaning sources. (Granted, this is only true on the left, not in establishment-liberal venues.)
ANTI-SEMITISM
It has to be said, though, that when REAL anti-Semitism rears its ugly head–an occurence considerably more common than many seem to realize–if it is interspersed with otherwise left-leaning comments, our responses are not so clear. It is true that many of us condemn it as vigilantly and forthrightly as we would Zionism, if not more so. It is also true that enough of us express a certain level of uneasiness or even partial sympathy as to create a certain ambiguity in our communal reaction. This is precisely what “left anti-Semites” (the term strikes me as a contradiction) plug into and exploit. Not that they’re popular. It is unambiguous that leftists don’t like to have to listen to them and wish they would tone it down; but it a matter of some uncertainty whether this is due to discomfort or outright rejection.
Just today I happened upon an unmoderated posting on opednews.com, a high-traffic progressive website with an unusually high tolerance for differences of opinion, for which I myself have been known to pen articles. I took a look at it after noticing it was by Seattle writer Jay Esbe, whose quite openly anti-Semitic proclivities I had already encountered in a previous debate on the site. The piece, Everything you know is wrong, meanders through the obligatory shots at Bush & Co. before finding its true target, the Jews, e.g.:
Here, on this site, the term “Zionism” is frowned upon –currently-. Prior to simply being frowned upon, the site’s Jewish owner Read the rest of this entry »
