the delusion of a bi-national state in israel-palestine
daniel gordis | 30.05.2004 01:05
NEW JERSEY JEWISH NEWS
The anti-Semitic delusion of the ‘binational state’
TO: Prof. Tony Judt
Director, Remarque Institute
New York University
FROM: Rabbi Daniel Gordis
Director, The Jerusalem Fellows
Dear Prof. Judt,
I’ve just finished reading your recent piece in the Oct. 23 issue of The New York Review of Books, “Israel: The Alternative.” You can imagine how distressing it must be for someone like me, living here in Jerusalem, to read an article in a journal as respectable as the Review that declares the State of Israel an “insecure, defensive microstate born of imperial collapse”; that the idea of a Jewish state is a “late-nineteenth-century separatist project”; and that Israel, an “anachronism,” should be replaced by a binational state of Jews and Arabs, bringing the Zionist project to an end.
Wow. That is one anti-Semitic piece of writing, from a well-known academic, no less. Now, I know, you’ll say, “There they go again. Any time anyone says anything negative about Israel, they reply that it’s just anti-Semitism.” But you’ll be wrong if you say that. I, too, am uncomfortable with many of Israel’s policies. And I don’t believe one has to be Jewish to point out those failures. No, you have a right to critique.
So what’s anti-Semitic about your article, you want to know? It’s the fact that not so deep down, you just wish the Jews would disappear. No, of course you don’t say it that clearly — you just hint at it. “In a world where nations and people increasingly intermingle and intermarry at will…where more and more of us have multiple elective identities and would feel falsely constrained if we had to answer to just one of them…Israel is an anachronism.” But here’s the rub, Prof. Judt. Many Jews (most, I suspect) don’t want to intermingle and intermarry at will. Of course, we have multiple identities, but we answer to one before the others. We take pride in the fact that Jews have survived for thousands of years. We believe that Jews have something to contribute (as do other cultures, obviously) to the world, and frankly, we don’t think of our Jewishness as an “elective identity.” To many of us it’s a gift, and a responsibility.
The real problem, you see, isn’t that Israel is an anachronism. It’s that Judaism is an anachronism. We are so very annoying in our insistence that we don’t want to completely blend in. Now, when you compare us to Islam today, I think we’ve done a pretty admirable job of blending in. If Islam were to embrace modernity and western culture the way that we have, the world would be a much better place. The World Trade Center would still be standing, the United States would not be in Iraq, there would be no American troops in Afghanistan, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be over, because rejectionist Palestinian leaders would have accepted the state that they were offered in both 1947 (by the United Nations) and in 2000 (by Ehud Barak’s government).
But, of course, it’s not surprising that you focus on Jews, for example, and not Muslims. The world has a history of doing that. It would be hard to imagine a Jewish community more blended into its surrounding culture than German Jewry in the early 1930s. Yet they can’t tell you much about their lives, you see, because they went up smokestacks.
Now, I know you don’t want to hear about the Holocaust. You’ve told us to drop it. “The circumstances of [Israel’s] birth have thus bound Israel’s identity inextricably to the Shoah, the German project to exterminate the Jews of Europe. As a result, all criticism of Israel is drawn ineluctably back to the memory of that project, something that Israel’s American apologists are shamefully quick to exploit.”
Well, if mentioning the Shoa is shameful or exploitative, I’m guilty as charged. Since you’re a historian, though, I suggest that what’s shameful is not our mentioning the Shoa, but your subtle minimizing of its scope. The Shoa wasn’t just Germany’s project; there were quite a few other countries that joined in this “project.” (“Project” — that’s what you call the genocidal attempt to wipe out the Jews?)
Nor was the target just “European Jewry.” Hitler had a grander plan. Surely, he didn’t plan for a “Museum of a Vanished Race” because he planned to leave non-European Jewry alive. When he was done, there were going to be no Jews left anywhere. He was going to eradicate Judaism. Period.
Even those who fought the Axis powers weren’t exactly wild about the Jews. President Franklin D. Roosevelt closed the borders of the United States, Canada didn’t let the Jews in, and the British also sealed the shores of Palestine. In that regard, you’re in good company when you express your distaste for the Jews. This month, you’ve got the Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, who is annoyed with the Jews for ruling the world. But others will follow.
Your problem is that ethnic cleansing is out these days, so one has to subtly come up with other ways to end not just Zionism but the Jewish people. And that’s where your article comes in. Let’s just end the Jewish state and put an end to the fighting. Sounds reasonable. But you know what many others, Jews included, haven’t yet figured out. The end of the Jewish state is the end of Judaism as we know it.
Only in Israel
Would there be some Jews left who would practice a several-thousand-year-old religious tradition? Yes. But the thriving, flourishing Judaism that the world knows today is a Judaism that can exist only with a Jewish state. How many novels are written in Hebrew outside of Israel? I’m not aware of a single one. How significant is the production of Jewish art, or high culture, outside of Israel? Relatively speaking, there’s almost none. How many people would speak Hebrew — the language that allows access to Judaism’s critical and formative texts — if not for Israel? Very few, indeed.
But Israel has the Jewish cultural productivity that it does because it is only in Israel that Jews make up the majority of the population, it is only in Israel where a Jewish consciousness is part of the rhythm of the society, its media, its artists, and its women and men of letters.
You’ll say that you have no objection to that cultural richness surviving. You just want the political and military battles to cease. But there are solutions to this conflict, though you deny them, that do not require dismantling our country. So why advocate doing away with us? Because, Prof. Judt, you know in a binational state, Jews would almost immediately become a minority. And with time, a rather small minority. How well would we fare there? Well, how many Westerners do you see running to Egypt, to Saudi Arabia, to Jordan, to Syria, to Iraq, to Iran, or to Lebanon (for starters) so that they can live in an environment in which they’ll have complete and unfettered access to cultural expression? Those are the kinds of places that you suggest we re-create in order to permit the Jews to thrive?
And one final question, if you don’t mind. Why is it that when Ceausescu turns Romania into a living hell, no one suggests doing away with Romania? When North Korea announces its arms proliferation program, no one says that North Korea has no right to exist? Why do we hear claims that a country has no right to exist only when it comes to Israel? Doesn’t that strike you as odd?
Sadly, though, it’s not that odd. Throughout your article, you keep reminding us that the world has changed. But your brave new world doesn’t seem all that brave to me, or all that new. The French still have a country of their own, and a place to root their culture. And the same with the Germans, and the Swiss, the English, and so on. No, the only culture that you think doesn’t need or deserve a place to have roots is Jewish culture. The only people threatened by your view of the world are the Jews. No one’s talking about doing away with France. Alas, the world hasn’t changed almost at all. That’s the real problem.
Virtually every other major culture in the world has a home, Prof. Judt. Jews have learned what happens when we don’t have one. We’ve been there, and we’re not going back. Everything about this place reminds us that we are home, and everything about our history reminds that we need this home.
I’m sorry that you find us so bothersome. I’m sorry that the only way you can see ending this conflict is to do away with us. But we’re home, Prof. Judt, and your transparent objections notwithstanding, we’re here to stay.
Daniel Gordis (www.danielgordis.org) is the author of the just-released Home to Stay: One American Family’s Chronicle of Miracles and Struggles in Contemporary Israel (Random House/Three Rivers Press). He is vice president of the Mandel Foundation, Israel, and director of its Jerusalem Fellows Program.
Copyright 2003 New Jersey Jewish News. All rights reserved. For subscription information call 973.887.8500.
The anti-Semitic delusion of the ‘binational state’
TO: Prof. Tony Judt
Director, Remarque Institute
New York University
FROM: Rabbi Daniel Gordis
Director, The Jerusalem Fellows
Dear Prof. Judt,
I’ve just finished reading your recent piece in the Oct. 23 issue of The New York Review of Books, “Israel: The Alternative.” You can imagine how distressing it must be for someone like me, living here in Jerusalem, to read an article in a journal as respectable as the Review that declares the State of Israel an “insecure, defensive microstate born of imperial collapse”; that the idea of a Jewish state is a “late-nineteenth-century separatist project”; and that Israel, an “anachronism,” should be replaced by a binational state of Jews and Arabs, bringing the Zionist project to an end.
Wow. That is one anti-Semitic piece of writing, from a well-known academic, no less. Now, I know, you’ll say, “There they go again. Any time anyone says anything negative about Israel, they reply that it’s just anti-Semitism.” But you’ll be wrong if you say that. I, too, am uncomfortable with many of Israel’s policies. And I don’t believe one has to be Jewish to point out those failures. No, you have a right to critique.
So what’s anti-Semitic about your article, you want to know? It’s the fact that not so deep down, you just wish the Jews would disappear. No, of course you don’t say it that clearly — you just hint at it. “In a world where nations and people increasingly intermingle and intermarry at will…where more and more of us have multiple elective identities and would feel falsely constrained if we had to answer to just one of them…Israel is an anachronism.” But here’s the rub, Prof. Judt. Many Jews (most, I suspect) don’t want to intermingle and intermarry at will. Of course, we have multiple identities, but we answer to one before the others. We take pride in the fact that Jews have survived for thousands of years. We believe that Jews have something to contribute (as do other cultures, obviously) to the world, and frankly, we don’t think of our Jewishness as an “elective identity.” To many of us it’s a gift, and a responsibility.
The real problem, you see, isn’t that Israel is an anachronism. It’s that Judaism is an anachronism. We are so very annoying in our insistence that we don’t want to completely blend in. Now, when you compare us to Islam today, I think we’ve done a pretty admirable job of blending in. If Islam were to embrace modernity and western culture the way that we have, the world would be a much better place. The World Trade Center would still be standing, the United States would not be in Iraq, there would be no American troops in Afghanistan, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be over, because rejectionist Palestinian leaders would have accepted the state that they were offered in both 1947 (by the United Nations) and in 2000 (by Ehud Barak’s government).
But, of course, it’s not surprising that you focus on Jews, for example, and not Muslims. The world has a history of doing that. It would be hard to imagine a Jewish community more blended into its surrounding culture than German Jewry in the early 1930s. Yet they can’t tell you much about their lives, you see, because they went up smokestacks.
Now, I know you don’t want to hear about the Holocaust. You’ve told us to drop it. “The circumstances of [Israel’s] birth have thus bound Israel’s identity inextricably to the Shoah, the German project to exterminate the Jews of Europe. As a result, all criticism of Israel is drawn ineluctably back to the memory of that project, something that Israel’s American apologists are shamefully quick to exploit.”
Well, if mentioning the Shoa is shameful or exploitative, I’m guilty as charged. Since you’re a historian, though, I suggest that what’s shameful is not our mentioning the Shoa, but your subtle minimizing of its scope. The Shoa wasn’t just Germany’s project; there were quite a few other countries that joined in this “project.” (“Project” — that’s what you call the genocidal attempt to wipe out the Jews?)
Nor was the target just “European Jewry.” Hitler had a grander plan. Surely, he didn’t plan for a “Museum of a Vanished Race” because he planned to leave non-European Jewry alive. When he was done, there were going to be no Jews left anywhere. He was going to eradicate Judaism. Period.
Even those who fought the Axis powers weren’t exactly wild about the Jews. President Franklin D. Roosevelt closed the borders of the United States, Canada didn’t let the Jews in, and the British also sealed the shores of Palestine. In that regard, you’re in good company when you express your distaste for the Jews. This month, you’ve got the Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, who is annoyed with the Jews for ruling the world. But others will follow.
Your problem is that ethnic cleansing is out these days, so one has to subtly come up with other ways to end not just Zionism but the Jewish people. And that’s where your article comes in. Let’s just end the Jewish state and put an end to the fighting. Sounds reasonable. But you know what many others, Jews included, haven’t yet figured out. The end of the Jewish state is the end of Judaism as we know it.
Only in Israel
Would there be some Jews left who would practice a several-thousand-year-old religious tradition? Yes. But the thriving, flourishing Judaism that the world knows today is a Judaism that can exist only with a Jewish state. How many novels are written in Hebrew outside of Israel? I’m not aware of a single one. How significant is the production of Jewish art, or high culture, outside of Israel? Relatively speaking, there’s almost none. How many people would speak Hebrew — the language that allows access to Judaism’s critical and formative texts — if not for Israel? Very few, indeed.
But Israel has the Jewish cultural productivity that it does because it is only in Israel that Jews make up the majority of the population, it is only in Israel where a Jewish consciousness is part of the rhythm of the society, its media, its artists, and its women and men of letters.
You’ll say that you have no objection to that cultural richness surviving. You just want the political and military battles to cease. But there are solutions to this conflict, though you deny them, that do not require dismantling our country. So why advocate doing away with us? Because, Prof. Judt, you know in a binational state, Jews would almost immediately become a minority. And with time, a rather small minority. How well would we fare there? Well, how many Westerners do you see running to Egypt, to Saudi Arabia, to Jordan, to Syria, to Iraq, to Iran, or to Lebanon (for starters) so that they can live in an environment in which they’ll have complete and unfettered access to cultural expression? Those are the kinds of places that you suggest we re-create in order to permit the Jews to thrive?
And one final question, if you don’t mind. Why is it that when Ceausescu turns Romania into a living hell, no one suggests doing away with Romania? When North Korea announces its arms proliferation program, no one says that North Korea has no right to exist? Why do we hear claims that a country has no right to exist only when it comes to Israel? Doesn’t that strike you as odd?
Sadly, though, it’s not that odd. Throughout your article, you keep reminding us that the world has changed. But your brave new world doesn’t seem all that brave to me, or all that new. The French still have a country of their own, and a place to root their culture. And the same with the Germans, and the Swiss, the English, and so on. No, the only culture that you think doesn’t need or deserve a place to have roots is Jewish culture. The only people threatened by your view of the world are the Jews. No one’s talking about doing away with France. Alas, the world hasn’t changed almost at all. That’s the real problem.
Virtually every other major culture in the world has a home, Prof. Judt. Jews have learned what happens when we don’t have one. We’ve been there, and we’re not going back. Everything about this place reminds us that we are home, and everything about our history reminds that we need this home.
I’m sorry that you find us so bothersome. I’m sorry that the only way you can see ending this conflict is to do away with us. But we’re home, Prof. Judt, and your transparent objections notwithstanding, we’re here to stay.
Daniel Gordis (www.danielgordis.org) is the author of the just-released Home to Stay: One American Family’s Chronicle of Miracles and Struggles in Contemporary Israel (Random House/Three Rivers Press). He is vice president of the Mandel Foundation, Israel, and director of its Jerusalem Fellows Program.
Copyright 2003 New Jersey Jewish News. All rights reserved. For subscription information call 973.887.8500.
daniel gordis