Colin Shindler: The non-Jewish Jews who became the scholars of an ideological dreamworld.

Colin Shindler author of recently published “Israel and the European Left”, writes in the Jewish Chronicle :

During Jewish Book Week in February 1958, the great Marxist historian, Isaac Deutscher, gave a talk entitled “The Non-Jewish Jew”. It was later published and became required reading for the student revolutionaries of the 1960s. Deutscher tried to explain why some Jews embraced the revolutionary imperative and relegated their Jewishness to a secondary level.

As an ilui (child prodigy) of the yeshiva of Chrzanow in Poland, Deutscher supplanted God with Lenin and Trotsky at an early age. Although he moved beyond the Jewish community, he never renounced his Jewishness. He believed that non-Jewish Jews symbolised “the highest ideals of mankind” and that Jewish revolutionaries carried “the message of universal human emancipation”. He regarded such figures as optimists. And yet his father, the author of a book in Hebrew on Spinoza, disappeared in the hell of Auschwitz.

Deutscher argued that such Jews existed on the borderlines of various civilisations, religions and cultures. And from there on the margins, they were able to clearly analyse societies and events – and guide humanity into more benevolent channels.

His revolutionary heroes included the Talmudic heretic, Elisha Ben Abuya who was the teacher and friend, according to the midrash, of Rabbi Meir Baal Hanas. While his actual misdemeanours were never revealed, Ben Abuya was at pains to warn his close friend, Rabbi Meir not to transgress the Sabbath when he was unwittingly in danger of doing so. Why did Elisha do this if he was the advocate of heresy? Why did Rabbi Meir maintain his friendship with Elisha when the entire Jewish community had boycotted him? Such questions perplexed Deutscher, who identified with Ben Abuya and regarded him as the model for contemporary revolutionaries such as Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky. Yet this story and its mystery did point to the convoluted issues that faced non-Jewish Jews who had travelled outside the community yet culturally remained within. Such issues of national identity and internationalism affected many Jews on the European Left who were often marooned between identities.

Read the full article here.

 

You can also watch Colin talking about his book

Zizek: “antisemitism alive and kicking in Europe”

Mairav Zonszein:

“On Friday evening, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek gave a lecture in a bookstore in Central Tel Aviv teeming with familiar faces of leftwing activists. It was hosted by Udi Aloni, an Israeli-American artist and BDS activist, who just completed a book entitled What Does a Jew Want, which is edited by Zizek.

…

Many seem to have come with the expectation to hear Zizek rip into Israel and use his wry wit and charisma in such a bourgeoises Tel Aviv setting to endorse the BDS Movement. Indeed when Udi Aloni introduced Zizek, he identified himself as an activist on behalf of BDS and said he chose the bookstore as a venue in order to not cooperate with any formal Israeli institution.

However, Zizek did not officially endorse or even talk much about BDS – and when he did it was because he was prompted to during Q&A. His two clear statements about BDS were that a) he is not 100% behind it and b)he supports a movement that is initiated jointly by Palestinians and Israeli here in the region.

Rather, Zizek spent almost two hours with the crowd’s undivided attention talking about antisemitism, capitalism and the place of the Jew in the world. He warned that antisemitism is “alive and kicking” in Europe and America and asserted that the State of Israel should worry more about Christian right antisemitism  rather than wasting its energy on self-proclaimed Jewish anti-Zionists. He said that the Christian Zionists in America are inherently antisemitic and that Israel’s willingness to embrace their support is baffling.

…

After establishing the deep-rooted vitality of antisemitism, he mentioned that he has no patience for those who excuse Arab antisemitism; that even the most oppressed and poor Palestinian should not be tolerated for being antisemitic. He also spoke about his well-known argument regarding Zionist antisemitism, whereby Zionists use antisemitic language towards fellows Jews in accusing them of not being Zionist enough. This was his main critique of Israel – its witch hunt against those Jews it finds not “Zionist enough.”

Read the rest.

Raincoat Optimist comments:

“What to some might appear like Zizek withholding sympathy for Palestinians, is in actual fact highlighting the paternalism and snobbery of some pro-Palestinians, who believe those who are lesser off than them should be pitied, left to their own devices, and if they express antisemitic views, well, who can blame them, ‘eh, after all they don’t know any better do they, they’re poor – and as all people know poor people are stupid and don’t deserve to be told they’re wrong to blame the Jews for their plight.”

HT Shiraz Socialist

Howard Jacobson on Alice Walker and her trip to Gaza

This piece by Howard Jacboson is from cnn.

It should not need arguing, this late in the ethical history of mankind, that good people can do great harm. One of the finest and funniest novels ever written — Don Quixote — charts the damage left in the wake of a man who would make the world a better place.

Human beings are seldom more dangerous than when they are sentimentally overcome by the goodness of their own intentions. That Alice Walker believes it is right to join the Freedom Flotilla II to Gaza I do not have the slightest doubt. But beyond associating her decision with Gandhi, Martin Luther King and very nearly, when she talks about the preciousness of children, Jesus Christ, she fails to give a single convincing reason for it.

“One child must never be set above another child,” she says. A sentiment that will find an echo in every heart. But how does it justify the flotilla? Gaza is under siege, Israelis will tell you, because weapons are fired from it into Israel, threatening the lives of Israeli children. If the blockade is lifted there is a fear that more lethal and far-reaching weapons will be acquired, and the lives of more Israeli children endangered.

You may want to argue that had Gaza been treated differently it would have responded differently, but if the aim of the flotilla is to ensure that one child will not be set above another it is hard to see how challenging the blockade will achieve it. All an Israeli parent will see is a highly charged emotionalism disguising an action that, by its very partiality, chooses the Palestinian child over the Israeli.

The boat on which Alice Walker will be traveling is called The Audacity of Hope. Forgive me for seeing a measure of self- importance in that reference. It will be carrying, Alice Walker tells us, “Letters expressing solidarity and love.” Not, presumably, for Israeli children. Perhaps it is thought that Israeli children are the recipients of enough love already. So what about solidarity? It is meant to sound innocuous. “That is all.”

Alice Walker makes plain, “its cargo will be carrying.” But what will these letters of solidarity be expressing solidarity with? Solidarity is a political term implying commonality of interest or aspiration. So what interest or aspiration do Alice Walker and her fellow travelers share with the people of Gaza? A desire for freedom? Well we all aspire to that. A longing to live in peace?

If they have such a longing we must be solid with them in that too, though the firing of rockets from Gaza is not, on the face of it, an expression of such a longing. And what about the declared hostility of Hamas to the very existence of Israel? Hamas, we are often told, is the elected government of Gaza, a government that fairly represents the wishes of its people. In which case we must assume that Hamas’s implacable hostility towards Israel fairly represents the implacable hostility felt by the people of Gaza. Are Alice Walker’s letters of love and ‘solidarity’ solid with the people of Gaza in that hostility?

Alice Walker, writer of 'The Colour Purple'

“If the Israeli military attacks us, it will be as if they attacked the mailman,” she says. Wrong on a thousand counts. As a writer, Alice Walker must understand the symbolic significance of words. The cargo is a cargo of intention. It is freighted with political sympathy and attitude. It means to blunder into where it isn’t safe, clothed in the make-believe garments of the unworldly, speaking of children and speaking like children, half inviting a violence which can then be presented as a slaughter of the innocents.

Even before the deed, Alice Walker has her language of outraged moral purity prepared — “but if they insist on attacking us, wounding us, even murdering us…” The Israeli response is thus already an act of unprovoked murder, no matter that the flotilla is by its very essence a provocation. Whatever its cargo, by luring the Israeli military into action which can be represented as brutal, the flotilla is engaged in an entirely political act. To call it by any other name is the grossest hypocrisy.

Alice Walker might be feeling good about herself, but by giving the Palestinians the same old false comfort we’ve been doling out for more than half a century, and by allowing the Israelis to dismiss it as yet another act of misguided and uncomprehending adventurism — further evidence that its fears go unheeded – her political gesture only worsens the situation. The parties to this conflict need to be brought together not divided: but those who speak disingenuously of love will engender only further hatred.

This piece by Howard Jacboson is from cnn.

Lots more from Howard Jacobson here.

 

 

A reply to Neve Gordon by David Hirsh

As part of a series entitled ‘Universities in Crisis’ on the website of the International Sociological Association, Neve Gordon, a supporter of the campaign to exclude Israeli scholars from the international academic community, writes a report on the state of academic freedom in Israel.

Gordon, N, (2010) ‘An assault on israeli academic freedom – and liberal values’ Blog of the International Sociological Association (ISA), http://www.isa-sociology.org/universities-in-crisis/?p=559, downloaded 6 october 2010.

He describes a demonstration in which he took part on his campus at Ben-Gurion University  in May 2010, which protested against the Israeli assault on the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish ship which was heading towards Gaza.  He then describes a counter-protest the next day in which students demonstrated their support for the Israeli forces.  ‘There were … shouts demanding my resignation’,

 

Neve Gordon

 

writes Gordon, and ‘one student even proceeded to create a Facebook group whose sole goal is to have me sacked.’  The Facebook page carried personal denunciations and death threats.

A right wing political group published a ‘report’ accusing sociology departments of being unpatriotic and left wing.  The President of Tel Aviv University asked to see syllabi being taught at Tel Aviv University.  A newspaper article reported that another right wing organisation had tried to persuade donors to Ben-Gurion University to make their giving conditional on an end to ‘anti-Zionist’teaching.  The President of Ben-Gurion University publicly opposed this campaign as a threat to academic freedom but the Education Minister, a member of the right wing Likud party, writes Gordon, simply opposed this campaign on the basis that it was aimed at harming donations.  ‘The problem is’, he concludes, ‘that instead of struggling over basic human rights, we are now struggling over the right to struggle.’

As is clear from the reports from other countries, these kinds of right wing campaigns against academic freedom, against the intellectual left and against disciplines such as sociology are far from unique to Israel.  But antizionism as a political framework is always tempted to treat things which are done by the right in Israel as though they were manifestations of the essential racism and the essential illiberality of the ‘Zionist’ state.

Neve Gordon’s argument is that the phenomena he describes are manifestations of a much broader ‘protofascist’ asault against Higher Education and liberal values in Israel.  He writes that this assault is being mobilized by ‘numerous forces in Israel’ and also by

 

David Hirsh

 

‘neoconservative forces in the United States’.  He writes that this assault is targetted first against the universities because ‘they are home to many vocal critics of Israel’s rights-abusive policies’, voices which are considered ‘traitorous and consequently in need of being stifled’.

He writes that the right wing organisations see universities as ‘merely arms of the government’ and so politically controllable.  He characterizes right wing colleagues as ‘a thought police’ and right wing students as ‘spies’.  The ordinary but nevertheless worrying mobilisation of a right wing and anti-liberal political current is presented in the language and in the framework of Israeli exceptionalim.

This text exemplifies two tendencies which characterise much discussion of the Palestine-Israel conflict, of the campaign to boycott Israel and of contemporary antisemitism.

Firstly it is once removed from a discussion of the issues themselves.  It is ‘struggling for the right to struggle’.  In this text there is no discussion of the substantial issues themselves.  Rather they are mobilized as weapons in the struggle over the boundaries of legitimate discourse.  Issues which are raised but not discussed: Israeli human rights abuses; the assault on the ‘flotilla’; ‘anti-Zionism’, ‘post-Zionism’, ‘Zionism’; Israeli patriotism and unpatriotism; the proposed boycott of Israel and antisemitism; the connections between ‘protofascism’, the Israeli right, the American neocon right and the American Christian right.  The issues are raised and mobilized rhetorically but not analysed.

The right wing groups of which Neve Gordon is correctly, in my view, wary, aim to define the left as being outside of the legitimate boundaries of Israeli discourse.  Neve Gordon, on the other hand, aims to define those right wingers as being outside of the boundaries of liberal and antiracist discourse.  Neither argues why the other is wrong on the substantial issues.  Instead, both are ‘struggling’ to have the discourse of the other recognized as illegitimate.

This is not necessarily as bad as it sounds.  For example it is normal that racism or homphobia or misogyny is recognized as being outside of the legitimate boundaries of sociolgoical discourse.  Sociologists would not try to debate with a colleague who claimed that black people were inferior to white people.  Historians would not try to debate with a colleague who said that the Atlantic slave trade never happened.  We would argue, rather, that the questions were illegitimate.

We do not want to get into an apparently rational discussion with racists over racist questions.  We do not want to treat racists as though they were one side of a legitimate debate.  If there were serious people who began to ask these questions, if the questions became legitimate in the public sphere, in spite of our efforts to prevent that, then we might still have to debate, to mobilise the reasoning and the evidence against racism.

The second tendency which Gordon’s text exemplifies is that towards the conflation of, and the slippage between distinct phenomena.  For example he mentions that Alan Dershowitz argued that Israeli professors who support the campaign for their Israeli colleagues to be excluded from the global academic community should themselves resign from Israeli academic institutions as part of this ‘boycott’.  He also mentions that some students at the protest were calling for his resignation.  And he conflates these calls for resignation, made by people with no power to fire anybody, with a call upon universities to carry out a purge of ‘leftist’ faculty.  In a discussion of academic freedom this distinction may be thought to be important, yet one phenomenon is piled on top of the other in order to give the whole greater rhetorical weight.

Gordon says that people want to sack him because he is critical of Israeli human rights abuses.  Some of his opponents say they want him to resign because he agitates for a boycott of his colleagues in Israel academia.  Sacking is not the same as a call for resignation.  Criticism is not the same as a call for boycott.

Instead of rebutting Dershowitz’s argument about the academic boycott Neve Gordon characterizes it as being outside of the boundaries of what is legitimate in a university.  In return, Dershowitz characterizes Gordon’s pro-boycott stance as being outside of what is legitimate in a university.  Either position may be right or wrong, but Gordon doesn’t make an argument here.  Instead he relies on the conflation of criticism with boycott and on the conflation of a call for resignation with a sacking.  In both cases speech acts are conflated with acts of exclusion by power.  It may be his case that the speech acts feed into a discourse whose logic is then concrete exclusion.  But then again, the case has to be argued and the mechanisms analysed.

There is another more subtle conflation here.  The very name ‘Alan M. Dershowitz’ has become a synecdoche for something bigger than the flesh and blood individual who is its apparent referent.  The name ‘Alan M. Dershowitz’ connotes the fearsome power of the ‘Israel lobby’ (was he not the man who single-handedly prevented Norman Finkelstein from winning tenure?), it connotes all that is threatening about the neocon agenda (has he not written a lawyerly defence of torture?), it connotes all the lies of the ‘Zionists’ (has he not written ‘the case for Israel?’).  The name ‘Dershowitz’ stands symbolically amongst Gordon’s imagined audience, for the whole of ‘Zionism’, which itself is understood as a racist and totalitarian movement of global influence and notoriety.

Neve Gordon’s political project is to have Israel recognized as an apartheid state, to make it into a pariah, to position Israel itself outside of the boundaries of legitimate countries.  The terminology he employs in this piece, ‘protofascist’, ‘thought police’, ‘spies’ is not justified by the evidence he presents.

What he presents is bad enough and it is familiar to academics all over the world.  He shows that there are right wing individuals and groups who wish to position sociology outside of the boundaries of legitimate scholarly inquiry.  He is aware that right wing parties sometimes win elections and form governments.  These are real threats to academic freedom which we should take seriously and which we should oppose.  But Gordon is also clear that for the moment at least, the university sector in Israel is bravely and successfully defending itself, and the institutions are not bending to the pressure.

But for Israel-boycotters, Israel comes first, it is the one state whose academics should be excluded, it is the state moving towards fascism.  And it may or may not be.  But his anecdotes do not make the case.  This is less a debate and more a struggle over what is, and what is not to be legitimately debated.  There is a tendency for reason and evidence to take second place to rhetoric, conflation and keywords which communicate unspoken and emotional connotation.

Neve Gordon’s position tends to mirror that against which he is struggling.  He is against those who would have him silenced but he is for his Israeli colleagues being silenced in the global scholarly community.  He is for his own right to free speech and academic freedom but he refers to his right wing colleagues as ‘thought police’ when they use their free speech to criticize him and their academic freedom to oppose his views.  He opposes the right wing tendency to see Israeli universities as ‘merely arms of the government’ and he shows how the universities are successfully defending their own independence from government.  Yet then how can he argue that Israeli universities should be boycotted because they are complicit with the crimes of the Israeli government?

Neve Gordon says that things are so bad in Israeli universities that he receives death threats and calls for his sacking.  He says that things are so bad that he and his colleagues are using g-mail instead of university email addresses for fear that a hostile university administration might open their emails and take action against them.  Interestingly anti boycott academics in Britain have received death threats too, have been faced with rhetoric which questions their fitness to be recognized as academics too, and many are afraid to use university email addresses too, since there have been examples of pro-boycott academics in authority gaining access to colleagues’ inboxes.  Ironically, it is the global corporation Google which we all appear to trust more than our own university administrations.

There is nothing wrong with arguing that certain kinds of question ought not to be considered to be legitimate questions.  But if arguments concerning the positioning of the boundaries of legitimate discourse are not made with careful clarity, avoiding conflation, avoiding rhetorical tricks and demonization, then there is a possibility that the struggle itself will slip off the terrain of rational discourse.  If one side is tempted to shout ‘antisemite!’ at all who oppose Israel’s actions and the other is ready to shout ‘Zionist!’ at all who raise the issue of antisemitism then the space for political or academic discussion, debate, analysis and research will be closed off.  If argument and evidence are replaced by ad hominem attack, with accusations and counter-accusations of bad faith replacing communicative action, then knowledge becomes, more definitively than ever, power.

David Hirsh

Goldsmiths, University of London

See this further discussion by David Hirsh of Neve Gordon’s shifting position on the campaign to boycott Israel

 

UPDATE : Richard Gold adds:  As well as the link to Neve Gordon’s piece provided by David, here’s Neve Gordon’s complete piece :

An Assault on Israeli Academic Freedom—and Liberal Values[1]

On May 31, I joined some 50 students and faculty members who gathered outside Ben-Gurion University of the Negev to demonstrate against the Israeli military assault on the flotilla carrying humanitarian aid toward Gaza. In response, the next day a few hundred students marched toward the social-sciences building, Israeli flags in hand. Amid the nationalist songs and pro-government chants, there were also shouts demanding my resignation from the university faculty.

One student even proceeded to create a Facebook group whose sole goal is to have me sacked. So far over 2,100 people (many of them nonstudents) have joined. In addition

Eve Garrard on Israel, human decency and common humanity

Over at Norm’s, Eve Garrard considers Israel, human decency and common humanity.

“Fintan O’Toole thinks that Israel regards itself as ‘exempt from the demands of common humanity‘ (via Z Word Blog). Iain Banks thinks that ‘simple human decency‘ means nothing to Israel (see this normblog post).

Two well-known writers, very anxious to tell the world that Israel lacks humanity. Israel’s not like the rest of us, the rest of the human family. Compared to other nations, it’s inhuman. It doesn’t recognize what everyone else knows about, the simple requirements of being decently human. It ought to recognize these things, it isn’t hard to do so, since they’re so simple; and most other people do, since they’re part of common humanity.

Leave aside the sinister provenance of that claim, and let’s just consider it on its own.”

Read on for why the claims, made uniquely and with great passion about Israel, are indeed sinister.

Misunderstanding what is divisive

Perhaps Antony Lerman supposes he has “creatively exploited and managed” antisemitism “in such a way as to generate vibrant and relevant discussion about issues of the moment”.

Implicating the Community Security Trust (one of the major Jewish organisations which records, investigates and organises against antisemitism) in Jewish community rifts, he opines that calling for research into antisemitism in Scotland is somehow divisive and “grounds for concern seem slight”.

“So while research on antisemitism should always be encouraged, how will it help Jews in Scotland if it throws up the existence of a Holocaust denier on the Mull of Kintyre?”

Well, wouldn’t it be a great relief to discover that antisemitism in Scotland was emanating from a solitary remote Holocaust denier? Those of us who’ve been worrying that there is something more to it could have a hearty laugh at our mistake, pack up, and go joyfully about our business again. It is strange that the former director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research has no spirit of inquiry to discover what is behind the incidents.

I’d like to hear from anybody who has the urge to diminish reports of antisemitism, after a week shadowing one of the visibly observant Jews who have approached SCOJEC and The CST. Reading Antony Lerman’s piece, you’d think they somehow didn’t matter. It’s wrong to suppose that community renewal can be achieved through diminishing their experiences and fears. It’s head-burying to attempt to address politicisation of racism by diminishing the effects of that racism on its targets.

The Community Security Trust’s Head of Communications Mark Gardner comments on the post (9 Jun 2010, 3:02PM):

“I stressed that the vast majority of Glasgow’s Jews are not visibly Jewish, and lead a comfy enough existence in largely white middle class neighbourhoods where street thuggery, street crime, gangs, racism and antisemitism were very rare. I noted that many of them would drive to work in their cars and did not have to use public transport.

I then said that antisemitism, like any racism, impacts against the more vulnerable sections of the community – schoolchildren who wear kippot on their heads and use public transport; people who are literally the only Jew in the village, or on the council estate etc.

I noted that these were the people who had felt vulnerable and isolated and had consequently turned to SCOJEC expressing alarm at the atmosphere they perceived during Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza last year. I said that I was proud to work with SCOJEC in representing these people’s concerns to Scottish Govt, Police and others, so that they did not feel alone and so that strategies could be developed to prevent things getting any worse.

In any other context, I suspect that Guardian readers would be horrified to read an article such as Tony Lerman’s: an article that basically mocks people’s fears about racism (eg his line about Holocaust deniers on the Mull of Kintyre, which carries far more strength than his emotion free mantra “any incidents are to be deplored”.)

The frightened contacts to SCOJEC and CST from Scottish victims of antisemitism last year were not figments of our imagination. What do you want us to do? Tell these people to stop being such Zionists, to go put a kilt on, eat a black pudding, drink some Irn Bru, buy a house in Whitecraigs, and then everything will be ok?”

Crudités

A selection of news and comment.

Ignoblus on Yoav Shamir’s film Defamation.

Via Bob From Brockley: Contentious Centrist surfaces some under-reported news of a separation wall built by Hesbollah and Syria which isolates a Lebanese border region mostly populated by Christians and Druze, and  home demolitions by Hamas; the revolution will not be Tel Aviv’ed – gingerly linking to Spiked to give you Natalie Rothschild; Martin in the Margins on Chomsky refused; Michael J. Totten’s interview with Paul Berman about his book Flight of the Intellectuals.

Off-topic for this blog (but kind of on-topic because I came to it via a Labour parliamentary candidate who, nonetheless worryingly though she was unsuccessful, apparently believes that problematising Zionism will pay off in British politics) Peter Beinhart considers some long-term trends in Israeli society and trends in the attitudes to Israel of Jews outside Israel, calling for an uncomfortable Zionism as alternative to anti-Zionism, a lethargic non-Zionism, or an exclusive and aggressive kind of Zionism.

The Turin Book Fair was targeted by boycotters again this year, but they were rebuffed, and Israeli author Amos Oz won the readers’ prize. Umberto Eco was again (scroll to the L’Espresso translation, 2008) one of those who spoke against boycott. Here is something good from him back then :

“I understand very well what certain friends of the extreme left (who only need to turn 360 degrees to come dangerously close to the extreme right) are thinking when they demand such a thing: we have to direct people’s attention to the ominous politics of the Israeli government, so we can kick off a scandal that will hit the headlines in all the papers. It is true that politicians and advertising companies work like this (and Berlusconi has mastered the art), but what is happening in Turin right now is a bit like the Blue Telephone trying to draw attention to the abuse of children by having some of them whipped in public.”

Mearsheimer’s Lists

Mark Gardener at the CST.

It is a curious fact that many of the academics and professors who so eagerly bash Israel and Zionism, do so whilst moonlighting from other issues in which they are actually specialist, but don’t seem quite so animated about.

When a professor uses their own academic field to bash Israel and Zionism, their impact upon the debate can be quite profound. One such professor was John Mearsheimer, co-author with Stephen Walt of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, a book lent gravitas by the authors’ respective positions at Chicago and Harvard universities; and in particular by their leading roles in the grandiloquently titled school of “Structural Realism” (aka Neorealism).

The book was decried by some critics as antisemitic conspiracy theory in academic guise; and hailed by others as a studious, careful and urgent warning about the Zionist fifth column that it warned was driving American foreign policy.

Now, however, as Mearsheimer’s analysis drifts ever further from Capitol Hill, the more he becomes just another over-animated basher of Zionism and Israel: only more so, because now the learned Professor is categorising American Jews into lists; and holding them responsible for bringing Israel to heel.  As if this were not bad enough, his list of good Jews evokes the Holocaust by being called “righteous Jews”. In this context, his list of bad Jews as “new Afrikaners” seems almost benign, rather than being the deligitimising slur that it actually is.

Mearsheimer’s Lists and logic were laid out by him in a lengthy speech, delivered as the Sharabi Memorial Lecture at Washington D.C.’s Palestine Center and transcribed by the Jerusalem Fund.

Like many before him, Mearsheimer appears deeply frustrated and somewhat angered by the failure of Israel and Jews to fit his own predetermined view of the world. This leaves him grasping for answers that are increasingly reliant upon speculation rather than scholarly evidence. It is what is called cognitive dissonance and it is a very common point of refuge for those with fixed theories about how the world works: or at least how it would work if only there weren’t unseen forces, that a select few must bravely drag into the light. It is easy to slide from this into conspiracy theory, where the absence of evidence actually reinforces your belief that hidden powers must indeed be at work.

Of course, Israel and Jews already have something of a reputation for transgressing whatever ideological theories and historical certitude comes their way: regardless of whether it is Christian, Muslim, Marxist, Structural Realist or whatever. This obstinance has given rise to what may well be the most extensive list of conspiracy theories faced by any people. Mearsheimer’s speech reminds us of the “Jews run the media” aspect of antisemitic conspiracy theory, where he says

Israel and its supporters have been able to do a good job of keeping the mainstream media in the United States from telling the truth…But the Internet is a game changer…[it] allows Americans to learn the story that the New York times and the Washington Post have been hiding from them

However, by far the most significant aspect of Mearsheimer’s analysis is the central role he gives “American Jews” and “the Jewish American community” in the future prospects for peace. It may be “hardline Israelis and their American supporters” who comprise “the lobby”, but Mearsheimer’s logic dictates that it is only American Jews (rather than the US Government) who have the strength to slay the Zionist dragon

Hardline Israelis and their American supporters are aware of these problems [of apartheid Israel legitimacy], but they are betting that the lobby will defend Israel no matter what, and that its support will be sufficient to allow apartheid Israel to survive… In fact, one could argue that Israel could not have gotten as far down the apartheid road as it has without the help of organizations like AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League.  But that strategy is not likely to work over the long run.

The problem with depending on the lobby for protection is that most American Jews will not back Israel if it becomes a full-fledged apartheid state…there are good reasons to think that a marked shift in the American Jewish community’s thinking about Israel is in the offing.  This is not to deny that there will be some diehards who defend apartheid Israel; but their ranks will be thin and it will be widely apparent that they are out of step with core American values.

Mearsheimer goes on to explain how the crucially important American Jewish community currently stacks up. This is where he starts with the lists

Let me elaborate. American Jews who care deeply about Israel can be divided into three broad categories.  The first two are what I call “righteous Jews” and the “new Afrikaners,” which are clearly definable groups that think about Israel and where it is headed in fundamentally different ways.  The third and largest group is comprised of those Jews who care a lot about Israel, but do not have clear-cut views on how to think about Greater Israel and apartheid.  Let us call this group the “great ambivalent middle.”

It is Mearsheimer’s use of the term “righteous Jews” that really infuriates. To many Jewish eyes and ears, including my own, the phrase is an antisemitic provocation, with its spit and sneer comparison to the Holocaust-related term “righteous Gentiles”.

We cannot be certain that this is Mearsheimer’s intention, but he is no fool and we must assume that he expected his audience, and Jews in general, to understand the allusion. Mearsheimer does, however, explain what he means by “righteous Jews”. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t mean American Jews who risk death to their entire household by sheltering Palestinians from Israeli death squads, merely those who

believe that self-determination applies to Palestinians as well as Jews, and that the two-state solution is the best way to achieve that end. Some righteous Jews, however, favor a democratic bi-national state over the two-state solution.

I have the impression that Mearsheimer believes this group of Jews to be significantly smaller than it actually is. Nevertheless, you have to wonder how many of them would classify themselves alongside Norman Finkelstein, whom Mearsheimer includes in his personal avenue of the righteous, also populated by Philip Weiss, Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk, Naomi Klein and Tony Judt amongst others.

You may have guessed by now that the wrong list to be on is that entitled the “new Afrikaners”. This is not because Mearsheimer would place you in a Boer War concentration camp, far less a Nazi one: but rather because you would be epitomising all that is worst about American Zionist defenders of Israeli apartheid.

Mearsheimer specifies that

I would classify most of the individuals who head the Israel lobby’s major organisations as new Afrikaners.

He then goes on to list four such individuals and their organisations: the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations, and the Zionist Organization of America.

As with those whom he listed as “righteous Jews”, the list of “new  Afrikaners” have diverse motivations, methodologies and goals. The fact that Mearsheimer just lumps them all together into two lists – good and bad – exemplifies how far he has now strayed from his area of expertise.

Nevertheless, read (or watch) the remainder of Mearsheimer’s speech and you may well be cheered to discover that the “great ambivalent middle” Jews will rise from their slumber and save the day:

I believe that most of the Jews in the great ambivalent middle will not defend apartheid Israel but will either keep quiet or side with the righteous Jews against the new Afrikaners, who will become increasingly marginalized over time.  And once that happens, the lobby will be unable to provide cover for Israel’s racist policies toward the Palestinians in the way it has in the past.

So, there you have them, Mearsheimer’s Lists and the chilling historical echoes that this kind of Jew-categorisation evokes.

Aside from their content, what does the actual existence of Mearsheimer’s Lists say about his tactics and scholarship? The language employed is a poor simplification, poisonously expressed. Mearsheimer is from the Offensive branch of Structural Realism, but every explanation I have read of Offensive Realism describes it as an intellectually rigorous analysis of how states conduct power politics. Nowhere can I find an explanation that says it is an intellectual pursuit in which academics find un-academic ways to cause offence to the objectified targets of their vitriol.

It almost goes without saying that double standards are also at play here. Could we envisage Mearsheimer’s defenders tolerating such a categorisation of Muslims or of African-Americans?

Of course, Mearsheimer isn’t blaming The Jews per se, only those who are on the wrong list. The problem is, however, the longer it takes for the “great ambivalent middle” to fulfil Mearsheimer’s prediction, the more likely (and more deservedly) they are to end up on the wrong list. Worse still, if there’s one thing that you can predict about Jews, its that they don’t fulfil other people’s predcitions

Report and video of Bricup meeting at Soas with Bongani Masuku

Jonathan Hoffman : “I read out the last paragraph of the HRC finding. I was shouted down but managed to ask the question. When I had finished asking the question Hickey said that no-one should answer my question – not in the lecture theatre and not on the Panel. It is all in the video on YouTube.”

See the whole article and the link to YouTube here.

More “problematic cliches” about Nazi Israel at the Guardian

Mark Gardner from the CST discusses a change made in a recent Comment Is Free piece. Changes have been made before,such as when a piece originally titled “McCain’s pander to Jewish voters”, by Richard Silverstein was changed to “McCain’s play for pro-Israel voters”.

More “problematic cliches” about Nazi Israel at the Guardian
Mark Gardner

It is neither CST’s role nor wish to enter the often overheated debate as to whether or not criticism of Israel in the Guardian – and its highly successful online variant, Comment is Free (CiF) – is fair, balanced or proportionate.
Nevertheless, there are far too many occasions when the anti-Israel sentiment of Guardian and CiF contributors comes to our attention: this is not so much because the content might be misconstrued as explicitly antisemitic, but rather because it employs loose, crass and offensive langauge that should have no place in as influential an institution as the Guardian. (An institution, moreover, that claims to uphold the highest of moral and editorial values).
There are numerous examples of Guardian and CiF excesses in CST’s latest antisemitic discourse report, and another depressing example occurred on 18 August in an article by Slavoj Zizek that featured in both the print edition of the Guardian, and online at CiF. Zizek’s article accused Israel of taking over Palestinian territory: and in its original CiF version, stated that the land would be “Palestinian-frei”. Two days later, on 20 August, CiF amended this to read “Palestinian-free”, just as the actual print copy had read in the Guardian.
To some, this may appear a moot difference, but “Palestinian-free” is not the Nazi-themed term that “Palestinian-frei” is. After all, the Nazi Holocaust was designed to leave Europe “Juden-frei”, and the gate at Auschwitz read “Arbeit Macht Frei”. This is not to say that the Guardian and CiF should be accusing Israel of ‘ethnic cleansing’, far from it, but in this world of very small mercies, “frei” is clearly a Nazi slander, whereas “free” has no particular Jewish connotation.
CiF has tried hard in recent years to improve its moderation policies regarding comments upon the site, and in particular against the upsetting and hateful screeds that so often follow Israel and Jewish related articles. Their attitude to the accuracy and content of actual articles (rather than comments) has not always been so apparent, but CiF has explained their welcome decision to alter “frei” to “free” (see the foot of Zizek’s article) as:
“Due to an error, an edit to the print version of this article was not made to the online version. In print, the term “Palestinian-frei” was changed to read “Palestinian-free”. This edit has now been applied to the online version, as of 20 August 2009.”
It is not 100% clear from this explanation whether or not “Palestinian-frei” originated from Zizek’s original transcript, but this seems by far the most logical reading of the sentence. So, CiF’s alteration is certainly a welcome one and it leaves the article not quite as gratuitously offensive as it originally appeared to be.
I say ‘not quite as gratuitously offensive’, because the actual paragraph in which “Palestinian-frei” originally appeared is itself quite disgraceful. The paragraph is shown below (in its original “frei” form):
“Palestinians often use the problematic cliché of the Gaza strip as “the greatest concentration camp in the world”. However, in the past year, this designation has come dangerously close to truth. This is the fundamental reality that makes all abstract “prayers for peace” obscene and hypocritical. The state of Israel is clearly engaged in a slow, invisible process, ignored by the media; one day, the world will awake and discover that there is no more Palestinian West Bank, that the land is Palestinian-frei, and that we must accept the fact. The map of the Palestinian West Bank already looks like a fragmented archipelago.”
So, according to Zizek, the Palestinians’ “problematic cliche” of Gaza being “the greatest concentration camp in the world” is “dangerously close to the truth”. Israel, one presumes, is becoming the new Nazi Germany, and Palestinians are becoming the new Jews. Furthermore, this moral and historical perversion of Holocaust imagery is nothing more than a “problematic cliche” that is, anyway, now coming to fruition.
Zizek’s assertion that “one day, the world will wake up and discover that there is no more Palestinian West Bank, that the land is Palestinian-frei…” is not so much immoral as simply ludicrous. Are we to believe that one morning, the world will wake up and suddenly realise that Nablus, Hebron, Jericho, Bethlehem and countless other places have no population remaining? How will this occur? Will a Guardian journalist call room service in their Ramallah hotel one morning and receive no breakfast? And if so, will this journalist also fall prey to the extraordinary phenomenon whereby this enforced mass depopulation was somehow an “invisible process, ignored by the media”?
There is more than one “problematic cliche” in Zizek’s article, and in its publication by the Guardian and CiF. The most egregious part of one of those has been belatedly taken care of, but how many more “problematic cliches” will the Guardian stable keep chucking at us?