Israel and the Enlightenment
I'm finally catching up with Norman Podhoretz's new book, Why Are Jews Liberal? It's a great read, as usual. It provokes in me, however, the obverse question here: Why are so many liberals so hostile to the state of Israel?
I'm no expert here. It does strike me, however, as it strikes Norman, that though Israel started as a progressive project, with its strong labor contingent and socialistic predilections of its founders, it is now mostly reviled by the Western left. And one wonders: is that not inevitable? Inevitable, because the very concept of a Jewish state, at least one that takes that serious, is fundamentally irreconcilable with the dominant Enlightenment view that these kind of distinctions must be washed away. If so, it suggests that no matter how "progressive" Israeli policies may be, so long as it holds to the idea that it has a Jewish identity, it is just something the Enlightenment cannot ever digest. I'm not talking about religiosity or theocracy, just the idea of identity. Just curious.
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Jul '10
Re: Israel and the Enlightenment
Progressivism is a form of gradual revolution. It depends upon fostering instability.
Progressives thus have a reflexive hostility to the only stable entity in the Middle East.
May '10
Re: Israel and the Enlightenment
Bill, you might be right that a strong national identity is part of that rejection, though I doubt it is consciously so. Part of the modern Utopian vision is a jumble of cultures ignoring each other inside one nation, as opposed to a patchwork of culture-nations working together or an elimination of culture altogether (because liberals sure as hell are not going to give up their culture).
Ursula raised the question before of why American Jews hate Israel (in the comments).
Jun '10
Re: Israel and the Enlightenment
Liberal Jews love the underdog, hate the predator, but they forget that to protect an underdog, you can't be one yourself. An underdog protecting an underdog gives you two dead underdogs.
Re: Israel and the Enlightenment
Bill, greetings from Israel. I think you're right on the money. Discomfort with Israel's Jewish identity is a big part of American Jews' revulsion.
Jews here in Israel have the luxury of being pretty much anything they want to be -- politically engaged, politically oblivious; right, left, center, nothing; critical of the government or supportive (wait -- everybody's critical of the government); practicing Buddhists or ultra-orthodox Jews; accomplished, lazy; brainy, surfer-dudes: in other words, whatever. Our Jewish identity is a given, so nobody wrings their hands over it. In the US, Jews are just as varied, but it is their Americanness that's a given, not their Jewishness. The Jewish part is something most of them are willing to allude to in passing as a generational artifact but aren't really sure what to do with, since they're neither religious nor Israeli. On the increasingly rare occasions that Israel arouses a sense of pride by affiliation, that pride is often mixed with embarrassment, since Israel = Jewish, and enlightened Americans are extremely reluctant to take pride in something that defines itself in religious terms. (Celebrating someone else's pride in their religious identity is another thing entirely.)
Re: Israel and the Enlightenment
All good points. Further to Judith's here, I do think that much the Enlightenment project is a secular form of Paul's letter to the Colossians about their being "neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all." It may explain why the left's idea of diversity is that we all have to be diverse in exactly the same way, while the right is more about diversity of institutions and states, etc. Again, it just seems to me that the Western left will never be comfortable with an Israel that is an explicitly Jewish state, no matter how (or how tenuously) that is defined.
Jul '10
Re: Israel and the Enlightenment
Someone once said that for American Jews, Jewishness is their identity, but liberalism is their religion.
May '10
Re: Israel and the Enlightenment
Whatever the reason, leftism trumps religion in my experience. It trumps friendship too, I'm sorry to say. I'm barely on speaking terms with my closest Jewish friends after arguments over the past year arising from discussions about this administration and Israel. Although my friends appear to be religious to some extent – they celebrate the major Jewish holy days – they seem, at least to me, to be mostly secular. Their one true religion, to varying degrees, is Liberalism. And 2 important tenets of this religion appear to be: Israel is always at fault & Do no dare to criticize Teh One.
Obama truly is unprecedented. He has divided friends & families though out the land.
Sep '10
Re: Israel and the Enlightenment
Saul Alinsky, for one, would have agreed with you 100%, Kenneth.
Jews in America have always been at the forefront of liberalism & progressivism. They practically made a fetish out of rooting for the underdog. This led to some dark consequences. The A-Bomb traitors were mostly Jewish. They were motivated by a sincere belief that it was somehow "unfair" for America to monopolize nuclear weapons. I confess that I find that way of thinking incomprehensible.
But there is a terrible irony in American Jewry's disdain for Israel. During WWII, the Arab World was deeply tainted by Nazism. We know that Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party took the Nazi Party as its model. The Syrians are reputed to be the most vicious torturers on Earth. That is easy to believe, since they learned their techniques from the Gestapo.
So Israel is not only a mighty redoubt in America's war against Islamic terror, but a bulwark against the lingering remnants of European fascism.
The failure of American Jews to support Israel is downright perverse & suicidal.
Edited on Sep 9, 2010 at 10:44amSep '10
Re: Israel and the Enlightenment
David Parsons
Saul Alinsky, for one, would have agreed with you 100%, Kenneth.
It is worth noting that some very strange alliances have been made in the cause of progressivism. Saul Alinsky had a friendly relationship with Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti, and apparently learned some of his socio-political intimidation tactics from the Chicago Mob. A real peach of a fellow, Saul was.
Sep '10
Re: Israel and the Enlightenment
That applies to many non-Jewish liberals, as well, Jeanne. I was stunned to discover that one of my liberal "friends" put my name on some sort of list – "Enemies of the Party" or some such rot. I always say, scratch a liberal deeply enough and you will find a bloodthirsty commissar, itching to start the Purge.
Jun '10
Re: Israel and the Enlightenment
Having never been a liberal, I'm often tone deaf to what makes them tick. One would think, logically, that they would support the only real democracy in the Middle East, but they don't (and it's even worse in England).
Could part of the problem be a reaction to the idea of "chosen-ness," the Biblical belief that the Jews were chosen of God? In other words, liberals (whom Tom Sowell refers to as the "self-anointed") could be reacting competitively, thinking something like: "Those Jews (with their Jewish state) cannot be the chosen, because we--those with the "vision of the anointed"--are the only ones who know how to create the one true, fair, society."
Perhaps this accounts for the fact that liberals readily accept the counter-historical narrative that Zionism put Jews back in the Middle East, when in fact Jews have lived in Jerusalem and many other areas of the Middle East going back to biblical times. Thoughts?
Jun '10
Re: Israel and the Enlightenment
Jews were "chosen" in the same sense that military draftees were chosen--to take up positions at the front lines of a "war." But for the honor, not what most people want to be chosen for.
Jun '10
Re: Israel and the Enlightenment
I think you raise a key issue here, as Helen Thomas said: "Remember, these people are occupied and it's their land. It's not German, it's not Poland." I suspect many liberals subscribe to the Arab narrative that Israel is the last outpost of European colonialism, that the Palestinians are the natives who rightly own the land, while the Israelis are European settlers who have conquered and "stolen" the land.
Particularly for American liberals, supporting the Palestinians may be a way to atone for their own sense of guilt at having "stolen" their homes from the Native Americans. Perhaps they should lead by example, donate their land to a local Native tribe, and return to the land of their ancestors...
Re: Israel and the Enlightenment
All very interesting. But I'm less interested in why Jews are liberal than why liberals -- not just liberal Jews -- can't abide the idea of Israel. My hunch is that it is not just Israeli policies. I think that deep down just the idea of a Jewish state just cuts against the Enlightenment grain too much, and of course the Enlightenment is the philosophical root of much modern liberalism. Love to hear more chime in.
Aug '10
Re: Israel and the Enlightenment
Why do liberals hate Israel? Why do they love Muslims???
Re: Israel and the Enlightenment
Charles, I'm going to wade into some dangerous waters now to answer your question. I think part of the reason liberals hate Israel/Jews and love Muslims is racism. Israeli Jews are white like "us;" in the case of American Jews, they actually are "us." Muslims are brown. White equals privileged, entitled, dominant, powerful; brown equals underprivileged, disenfranchised, cheated by history, the underdog. White equals strong; brown equals weak. White liberals support brown people by definition, tying themselves in knots to justify it even when all logic and consistency defies it, since if you look hard enough, the white side is probably responsible for whatever ills the brown people are suffering (or so the thinking goes).
Put another way, there's an assumption -- again essentially racist -- that the Israelis should "know better." They are held to a completely different standard than, say, Hamas, because Israelis are white and are therefore really just Americans talking funny. Hamas can "act out" and get away with it because they're viewed, deep down, as savages, and civilized white people have no business passing judgment on savages who have not been blessed by white privilege.
Re: Israel and the Enlightenment
To finish the thought (sorry I'm exceeding the word limit): Israel, which is widely viewed as an outpost of white colonialists, refuses to work by that playbook (never mind that to do so would be suicidal), so it's automatically at fault. Fold into the mix the identification "Jewish" with "Israeli" and you'll have whole crowds of liberal Americans recoiling in horror.
Edited on Sep 9, 2010 at 11:31pmAug '10
Re: Israel and the Enlightenment
Hi Judith,thanks for your response- I am a great admirer of your work and particularly appreciate seeing an insight from within Israel. I don't disagree with anything you say but I suspect that it's not all about Israel, although that brave country bears the brunt of liberal ire.For instance,I don't think you can use Israel to explain the tacit support among the left for so-called insurgents in Iraq whose stock-in- trade was bombing other Muslims. In the Euro State I live in ALL deaths in Iraq are glibly blamed on the US (and Tony Blair). At a public event in a university here a couple of years ago attended by a firebrand Muslim cleric no alcohol was served so as not to offend his sensibilities! Coming back to Israel, a favourite of mine is the protest outside the Israeli embassy in Dublin during Lebanon 2006 when members of a lesbian group wore tee-shirts reading: "We are all Hezbollah now". They should try marching through Southern Lebanon and see how much appreciation they get?
Aug '10
Re: Israel and the Enlightenment
As a post-script to my last comment, the same University (Trinity College Dublin) gave Robert Fisk an honorary doctorate recently.Meanwhile Bob's ex Lara Marlowe is the US correspondent for the Irish Times. Only last week she referred to the PA's arrests of Hamas members in response to the murders as "pathetic" as in it was an attempt to ingratiate Abbas with the Israelis and Americans. I realize I am straying off-topic but I think it is important to explore what drives the virulent opposition to Israel in so much of Europe.Biased news reporting is certainly part of it.
Re: Israel and the Enlightenment
Charles, thank you. You might enjoy this piece from the Jerusalem Post on the Irish boycott of Israel.
Bill, back to you. ;-)