Israel at 60: From Bad to Worse
Posted by Rosa Harris on May 14, 2008
12 May 2008. A World to Win News Service.
As Israel marks its sixtieth birthday, the mood among many Israelis is more sour than celebratory.
There is a great malaise, or some people say, a crisis, in Israel , although there’s no question of threatened collapse. The patriotism of a privileged society, the amoral self-seeking of its members and mystical, murderous religious fervour all contend and combine in one seething, cynical – and often unhappy – morass.
Writing in the May issue of the U.S. magazine The Atlantic, in an article reporting a sombre mood in Israel that has been widely discussed there, Jeffrey Goldberg tries to lay out why Israelis should be rejoicing, even if they aren’t.
“Their country is, by almost any measure, an astonishing success. It has a large, sophisticated, and growing economy (its gross domestic product last year was $150 billion); the finest universities and medical centres in the Middle East ; and a main city, Tel Aviv, that is a centre of art, fashion, cuisine, and high culture spread along a beautiful Mediterranean beach. Israel has shown itself, with notable exceptions, to be adept at self-defence, and capable (albeit imperfectly) of protecting civil liberties during wartime. It has become a worldwide centre of Jewish learning and self-expression; its strength has straightened the spines of Jews around the world; and, most consequentially, it has absorbed and enfranchised millions of previously impoverished and dispossessed Jews. Zionism may actually be the most successful national liberation movement of the 20th century.”
This attempted glowing description leaves out two basic questions: How the Zionists invented Israel , and how it became an “astonishing success”.
To take the last sentence first, Zionism was never a national liberation movement. The world’s Jews had not been a single people for almost two thousand years. They didn’t even have a common language used in daily life. Hebrew was somewhat similar for Jews as Latin to Catholics and Arabic to non-Arab Moslems. It was the language of the scriptures and religion. The imposition of this dead language represented the triumph of a self-consciously “European” racist and colonialist culture over the far more lively and diverse Yiddish, Arabic and Ladino-speaking cultures of many of the Jews who came there. (Yiddish and Ladino are related to German and Spanish, respectively. )
To create Israel , the Zionists drove out most of the land’s actual inhabitants. To keep Israel a Jewish state, the Israeli army today holds millions of the original people and their descendents locked up in the open-air prison of Gaza, and, in the West Bank, penned in by Jewish settlements and rabidly racist, violent settlers; encircled by militarily strategic, Jewish-only roads; with 562 Israeli army humiliation- checkpoints separating Palestinian communities; columns of tanks and marauding commando teams entering at will; and 254 kilometres of an apartheid wall.
Where is the liberation in any of this?
The”national” component in this is the standpoint of “my nation” first (whether real or artificially constructed) . That is an outlook that every revolution that has to pass through national liberation as part of the world revolution needs to overcome.
As for the Zionist movement’s success in making Israel what it is today, the Israeli people have little to do with that. If someone else had not stepped in, Israel might be a much smaller and poorer agricultural country today – if it existed at all.
The hand that made Israel rich and powerful belongs to Uncle Sam, the U.S.A.
“For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of U.S. Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel … Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing that given to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct economic and military assistance since 1976, and is the largest recipient in total since World War Two, to the tune of well over $140 billion (in 2004 dollars). Israel receives about $3 billion in direct assistance each year, roughly one-fifth of the [American] foreign aid budget, and worth about $500 a year for every Israeli. This largesse is especially striking since Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to that of South Korea or Spain …
“Most recipients of aid given for military purposes are required to spend all of it in the U.S. , but Israel is allowed to use roughly 25 per cent of its allocation to subsidise its own defence industry. It is the only recipient that does not have to account for how the aid is spent…. Moreover, the U.S. has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to develop weapons systems, and given it access to such top-drawer weaponry as Blackhawk helicopters and F-16 jets. Finally, the U.S. gives Israel access to intelligence it denies to its Nato allies and has turned a blind eye to Israel ’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.
” Washington also provides Israel with consistent diplomatic support. Since 1982, the U.S. has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel , more than the total number of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members. It blocks the efforts of Arab states to put Israel ’s nuclear arsenal on the IAEA’s agenda. The U.S. comes to the rescue in wartime and takes Israel ’s side when negotiating peace… Finally, the Bush administration’s ambition to transform the Middle East is at least partly aimed at improving Israel ’s strategic situation.” (John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, “The Israel Lobby,” London Review of Books, March 2006 – www.lrb.co.uk. The academic authors, who say they support both Israel and the U.S. ’s real interests, have been persecuted for bringing out the relationship between the two countries so sharply.)
Yet, while Israelis have achieved a comfortable economic existence, as The Atlantic article and many other accounts concur, “the mood in Israel is worse than the situation.”
It’s not just the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert faces indictment for accepting bribes from an American businessman, the fourth set of such charges he has confronted. Top Israeli politicians have long been corrupt, as in the case of Olmert’s illustrious predecessors, Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu. Last year Israel ’s president was also forced out of office by criminal charges, in that instance for raping women subordinates. The case shed light on the degree to which rape and sexual abuse, including of female soldiers by their Israeli army superiors, has become a part of the fabric of life.
It is widely recognized in Israel that the Zionist project of attracting the Jews of the whole world has failed. The inward migration has all but stopped and the number of young people leaving is a serious concern.. The “idealist” veneer of early secular and social-democratic (pseudo-”socialist” ) Zionism of Israel’s early days now seems as distant as the now-dead kibbutzim (cooperatives) where Jews could supposedly live in harmony among themselves in the stolen homes of a conquered people. A great many Israelis are uneasy with the problem of how to reconcile what they think of themselves (enlightened humanists, etc.) And what they really are (the privileged citizens of a criminal enterprise).
Other trends in Israel seek to resolve this contradiction by becoming more forthright. Many people, including the man once considered a paradigm of Israeli progressive intellectuals, the historian Benny Morris whose research helped uncover the mechanisms of the violent “transfer” of the Palestinians out of Palestine that accompanied Israel ’s birth, now explicitly and loudly call for the forcible “transfer” of Israel ’s remaining Arab minority, in Morris’s case to “something like a cage”. (The New Yorker, 5 May 2008) Palestinians with Israeli citizenship make up 20 percent of the population but have lost almost all of their land. Lately rabbis – who increasingly shape public life, such as demanding separate buses for men and women – have taken to issuing religious edicts forbidding Jews to rent homes to Arabs. A majority of Israelis now advocate the “transfer” of all the remaining Arabs out of Israel , a view considered extreme a decade ago. (International Herald Tribune, 28 April 2008)
There is also a growing genocidal mood among those Israelis most open-eyed about what it will take to save Zionism. This includes the extensive “national religious” masses and the settler movement (those eager to “settle” in the West Bank and shove out the Palestinians there). The equivalent of the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guards and Basijj religious fanatic militia, they now constitute a quarter of the Israeli officer corps, a big change from the days when the army was considered a bulwark of secularism. A high government official’s recent threat of “a bigger holocaust” (BBC, 29 February 2008) against Palestinians is one notorious indicator of this mood, especially given the profoundly religious subtext the word “holocaust” (shoah) carries in Hebrew – a burnt offering from the chosen people to their god.
The great debate in Israeli politics and public life today is “the demographic problem”.. With few Jews coming to Israel from abroad, the fear is that at some point, if Arabs are allowed to stay in Israel , Zionism may no longer be able to claim that it operates by majority rule, even within its present borders. The same argument is often made about all of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean , where Palestinians are already a big majority.
Prime Minister Olmert is quite honest about it: only a “two-state solution” – putting Palestinians somewhere other than Israel , and keeping them there – can save “Israeli democracy”. This is the South African solution, an apartheid state reserved for Jews towering over crippled, carved up Palestinian “homelands”. It is no solution at all for the Palestinians, as can be seen more clearly now than ever in the big prison that is Gaza , after Israel pulled out its settlers and army without giving up an inch of its domination
The foundational rule in Israeli democracy is that Israel must be Jewish. Like any basic rule about the character of a society, this is an issue to be settled by force, not ballots. That is the parameter that has defined what is considered acceptable in Israeli society. Several decades ago, the historian Morris was denied a job in Israel until, when publicly put to the question, he stated that despite his critical research he supported Israel ’s existence. Now, due as much to self-censorship as censorship, even that ability to entertain critical ideas and that narrow circle of tolerance is shrinking in the face of what is seen as an uncertain future.
Many observers have noted that the triumphalism that marked Israel ’s fiftieth anniversary only a decade ago is gone today. The media debates the factors involved: the continuing inability of the Israeli army to make Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza do what they’re told, Israel’s 2006 failed invasion of Lebanon, the prospect that Israel may no longer be able to wage war with other Middle Eastern countries at little cost in Israeli lives – and the erosion of Israel’s claims to the high moral ground, even among its own people.
As distant as it may seem in today’s circumstances, what solution other than a single, secular multinational state – the end of Israel – could represent the interests of the vast majority of people? One thing that can be said for sure is that the present situation is not sustainable.
May 14, 2008 at 8:08 am
I think this is largely correct, but the tone bothers me sometimes. Questioning the legitimacy of the ‘nationhood’ of Jews seems awfully sketchy to me. The ‘nation’ of ALL ‘nationalist’ movements is artificial and constructed, for better or for worse. And the problems a non-national minority can have under a succesful nationalist movement are hardly unique to Israel either; one difference is that, of course, the ‘minority’ was not a minority at all at the start of the nationalist project. In this though, not so different from the u.s. South.
Zionism is a particularly ‘interesting’ intersection of 19th century European nationalist ideology, orientalism, and European coloniaism, coming from the European branch of a diasporic ethnic group suffering some pretty abominable oppression. It’s unique in it’s particulars like all particular events are, but the weft of history runs through it connecting it to those other phenomena it is the ideological and political heirs to. For a critical account of Zionism to separate it from those other trends and focus on it’s uniquenes, to the extent of claiming that the ‘nation’ of the nationalism is somehow even less legitimate than any other nationalist nation—to me smells funny.
Of course, we’ve dicussed the issue of nations and nationalism before, and I realize that the typical communist perspective on nationalisms is all about determining whether a given nation is legitimate in communist eyes or not. This still seems an odd question to focus on, in general, to me.
May 14, 2008 at 9:04 am
From what I’ve read in Stalin’s Marxism & the National Question, the main point of a “nation” is that it is supposed to be a historically constituted community of people has a material possibility to function as an independent country (common territory, common language, common economic life, common social culture). If not, they are not a nation. While the ancient Hebrews did have independent states (Israel and Judah), the Jewish diaspora destroyed that; and I would hardly call Yemeni Jews, German Ashkenazi Jews, Russian Jews, and Ethiopian Jews to all be of the same nation.
Nevertheless, I kinda see where you’re coming from, Nil, in the sense that nation-states are something we are trying to overcome… but to deny that nations exist under capitalism is like denying that money exists under imperialist capitalism.
Now, I have some questions of my own:
1) Is there a proletariat in Israel, or is it simply a full-blown settler-state [like the Ceylon Communist Party stated in 1988's A World To Win?]
2) Who are the “Israeli Arabs” and why are they allowed to live in Israel, but “Palestinian Arabs” are NOT?
May 14, 2008 at 10:27 am
I think Nil is raising an important question, and one that is often simply dismissed (in some quarters) without much deep engagement.
There is a methodological question: How much do we assume that the 1912 position of JVS was correct then, and how much do we assume it is applicable now.
There is a sharp distinction made (in JVS’s writing) between a nation and a nationality — which as AM says focuses on the existance as a distinct historically constituted community of people PLUS ability to form an independent market (either capitalist or socialist) — all assumed prerequisites for an independent state.
Were Jews not a nation in Eastern Europe? Why was their main contentrations (in the Jewish Pale, with cities like Lvov etc) not sufficient?
Clearly it is nonsense to assume that a people has a “right” to land that they have a religious connection to (and a questionable historical connection). So the Zionist “right” to a homeland in Palestine was really (in essense) rooted in all kinds of religious, mystical arguments, and then on brute colonialist force.
(Little discussed DNA studies seem to suggests that Jewish populations in Europe and elsewhere have little common bio-connection to an ancient “Hebrew” people — and are hard to distinguish genetically from the surrounding peoples in poland, or whereever. Ashkenazi Jews are European people, and Sephardic jews are people of those mediterranean and Mideastern regions.)
However, what is wrong with a dispersed people (or cultural grouping, or religious sect) seeking to gather in one place to form a stable community? Nothing inherently, except that most places on earth already have inhabitants… and so in the case of Zionism, the vision quickly became entwined with the unjust expulsion of non-Jewish inhabitants by force, continued over time in waves and still ongoing.
Then there is the more complex question, of when a colonial settler state becomes a people. And this is often not discussed in anything but the vaguest ways by people who (with great justification) support Palestinian claims to land and nationhood.
In line with Andrei’s point: It seems to me that Israel is both a highly parasitic and artificial settler state (still!) propped up from without by various means, and also a class society with its own contradictions.
(The U.S. was something similar, that went from being a “settler state” to being a multinational imperialist state — in some ways in a process where the completion of genocide, the close of the frontier, the reversal of reconstruction, and the wars for external colonial conquest were fairly closely linked in the late 1800s).
There was a line (largely by the very conservative arab governments) that said “drive Eastern Europeans back into the sea.” But history has moved past that point: Israel is not mainly “eastern european” settlers (even if there has been an influx of immigrants from Russia and Brooklyn). Many people in Israel no longer have a place to “go back” to.
The question of “national rights” comes up in the “two-state solution” in a different way — since there is an implied “right” to a historically constituted “Israeli” nationality (not “Jews as a nation”), even while there is often a simultaneous explicit rejection of that same right.
On the one-state solution: the issue for Palestine involves creating a multinational secular state, including both Jews and Arabs (who together have many religions and often no religion).
On one level: the issue is not “disentangling competing national rights” (with a parallel debate over whose claims are legitimate and whose are not)… the issue really is ending oppression, and creating new societies that are not founded on perpetuating massive forms of oppression. That is a question of stand and approch, i think — not a nationalist approach but one with a farther vision.
May 14, 2008 at 3:30 pm
If anything, Stalin’s definition is rooted in an agrarian, 19th century, economics. While not ‘obsolete’, it is historical. ‘National’ development since has been tremendously uneven, and while it might have appeared at one time to be an ‘historically inevitable’ socio-economic form, the intervening decades indicate otherwise. For example, most of the present day countries known collectively as the Middle East were geographically defined by British, French and US imperialism.
In the case of Palestine, the indigenous population is still ‘there’ and still claiming their right to return to their homes and land.
While the settler Israeli state defines its culture by killing as many Palestinians as they can, bulldozing homes and clear-cutting orchards.
May 14, 2008 at 3:46 pm
[[ the main point of a “nation” is that it is supposed to be a historically constituted community of people has a material possibility to function as an independent country ]]
Well, if nothing else, I believe the Zionist state has demonstrated empirically a “material possibility to function as an independent country”, has it not? You can’t argue with history. It’s there. It’s functioning as an independent country (at the expense of the non-national minority, yes).
Andree[etc] was that a rhetorical question or not? The term “Israeli Arabs” generally means non-Jewish Arabs who are citizens of Israel. Why are they citizens of Israel while “Palestinians” are not? Mostly, they or their parents managed to not be driven out of the “48 boundaries” in 1948. There’s plenty of Israeli history available on the web, if you’re interested. Or if you want an actual book, Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian (and historian of Israel) that I would reccommend.
[ Incidentally, "Israeli Arab" _could_ also mean Israeli citizens who are Mizrahi Jews---Jewish people from the middle-east of Arabic culture, who spoke Arabic. But it pretty much NEVER is, because the idea that one can be both Jew and Arab is too confusing for the official story.]
Is there a proletariat in Israel? Do you mean a Jewish proletariat? Well, this gets to a debate me and Mike E have had in comments before about whether there is in fact a _white proletariat_ in the US, and how to understand it. (Don’t forget that the US is also a settler state, how “full blown” a matter of opinion). But, yeah, there probably is a Jewish proletariat in Israel I’d say, but it’s formulated largely around ‘ethnic’ criteria not unlike the US and other settler states–Ethiopian, Mizrachi, Russian immigrants, etc.
May 14, 2008 at 3:54 pm
And incidentally, it’s worth pointing out that “Palestinian” is a constructed national identity too. This is often brought up by anti-Palestinian people who want to claim that therefore Palestinian liberation is somehow illegitmate. That’s far from my intent. There wasn’t really a “Palestinian” identity before the end of the 19th century—hey, coincidentally just about the time the Zionist project was constructed, and the modern Jewish “national” identity was constructed too. The (non) “coincidence” I point out is NOT that Palestinian identity was a reaction to Zionism (although that’s a small factor), but at the end of the 19th century when modern European nationalist ideology was invented, all _sorts_ of national identities were constructed. It was the time of nationist-identity-building. MOST modern national identities we have are in fact constructed–and of course exist in a political, material, context that led to their . It is the nature of nationalism. I have no idea if Stalin or post-Stalin theorists have dealt with that idea or not–I doubt it, Stalin’s conception of ‘nation’ seems to assume some kind of pre-historic and unchanging identity, but in fact that’s not the way human social (including national) identity works. No people are without a history, not even pre-industrial people–and that history includes a history of their identity, which is not stable, but changing in response to material conditions (hey, look, dialectics again!).
For Nando, I don’t think scientific exploration of genetic simularities of Jews is neither here nor there. Dialectical materialism is not biological determinism or pseudo-scientific evolutionary psychology that mascarades as a scientific state religio these days. National identity is always constructed one way or another, and no matter the myths the national polity tells itself, it’s got to do with material political economy not genetics (and not what God said either).
May 14, 2008 at 6:21 pm
The geographic designation ‘Palestine’ is historical, but that does not change the fact that the indigenous population of the region — those who now refer to themselves as Palestinian — does not include the Euro-American settlers or their forebears.
The ahi