Habakkuk responds to Batondor

"batondor,

Thanks for your comment. I would like to stress that I would certainly not want to identify the views of Jews in general – and certainly not of Jews in my own country, Britain – with those of the current Israeli government. It seems to me clear that attitudes among Jews here are ihn flux, and are also commonly conflicted. It is also quite difficult to be clear as to what is going on – particularly as people are often imperfectly candid about what they think, and even with very old and close Jewish friends I have found myself engaging in oddly elliptical conversations.What however I think is happening is that very old issues concerning Jewish identity are resurfacing, often in a very painful way. How far the position in the United States is or is not different from that in Britain is I think an interesting question.Since writing my original comment, I have read a discussion of the recently disclosed documents by Alastair Crooke – the former MI6 officer who created an organisation called Conflicts Forum – which draws heavily on the analysis of Professor Mushtaq Khan of the School of Oriental and African Studies here. I am not putting either forward as an unbiased observer, but I think their views give food for thought.(The Crooke article is at:http://english.aljazeera.net/palestinepapers/2011/01/201112412224387862.html;

the talk by Professor Khan to which he refers is not available on the net. But an earlier version of the analysis is at

http://mercury.soas.ac.uk/users/mk17/Docs/Security%20First.pdf )The key argument made by both is that the policy alike of the Western powers and of the Palestinian leadership has been based upon what seemed a plausible realpolitik argument, which however is wrong. The underlying assumption has been that a key Israeli objective is to maintain a Jewish majority in Israel – and that particularly given the obvious demographic trends, this would lead the Israeli government sooner or later to acquiesce in a Palestinian state, providing just enough for the Palestinian leadership for them to be able to sell it to their own people.Accordingly, the central problem has been perceived as being to overcome Israeli distrust – a conviction reflected in the approach both of the Western powers and of the Ramallah leadership.However, both Crooke and Khan argue, the Israeli government is seeking to perpetuate not simply a Jewish majority, but the state based upon the conception of differential rights for Jew and non-Jew. This is how Crooke glosses key passages from the newly disclosed papers:An angered Tzipi Livni, in a pre-Annapolis negotiating session with Ahmed Qurei, spells out Israeli motivations: “I think that we can use another session – about what it means to be a Jew and that it is more than just a religion. But if you want to take us back to 1947, it won’t help. Israel is the state of the Jewish people -- and I would like to emphasize the meaning of “its people” is the Jewish people -- with Jerusalem the united and undivided capital of Israel and of the Jewish people for 3007 years....”Two months later, Livni tells Ahmed Qurei and Saeb Erekat, “Israel was established to become a national home for Jews from all over the world. The Jew gets the citizenship as soon as he steps in Israel, and therefore don’t say anything about the nature of Israel…The basis for the creation of the state of Israel is that it was created for the Jewish people. Your state will be the answer to all Palestinians including refugees. Putting an end to claims means fulfilling national rights for all.”What Livni is saying is clear: She never mentions ‘Jewish majority’; her objective is a Zionist state. A Zionist state is one, she emphasises, that is open to any Jew who knocks at the door. It follows therefore it is a state that must conserve land and potential water resources for the new arrivals: ‘Jews from all over the world’. Israel in this conception cannot be a multi-cultural state: It is fundamentally a conceptualisation of differential rights for Jew and non-Jew. Minorities claiming equal political rights within a Zionist state represent an internal contradiction, a threat to this vision of a state based on special rights for Jews.Drawing on Khan's analysis, Crooke goes on to spell out reasons why establishing a Palestinian state may quite correctly be seen by the Israeli leadership as making the problem of sustaining a state based on differential rights for Jews more difficult, rather than less so – on this issue Khan's paper is very well worth reading.What however I think Tzipi Livni is implicitly assuming is that the Holocaust definitively vindicated one side in arguments about Jewish identity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In Britain, perhaps the most significant representative of the other side was Edwin Montagu – who was passionately opposed to the Balfour Declaration. The Memorandum 'On the Anti-Semitism of Present (British) Government' he submitted to his Cabinet colleagues in August 1917 is available on a Zionist website.(See http://www.zionism-israel.com/hdoc/Montagu_balfour.htm )The introduction on the website combines a very cogent point – that Montagu had what turned out to be a grossly over sanguine view of the prospects for Russian Jews – with a peculiarly silly argument. The 'fear of Zionism' evident in the Memorandum, it suggests was 'was animated, apparently, by the ancient Jewish desire, the desire of all persecuted minorities, not to be "noticed" and not to provide any possible excuse for persecution.'Given that at the time he wrote the Memorandum, Montagu had recently been appointed Secretary of State for India – and so was holding in wartime one of the most crucial and sensitive positions in the administration of the British Empire – the notion that he did not want to be 'noticed' is absurd. In fact, it comes close to turning the truth on its head. As with other prominent Anglo-Jewish families, the Montagus had taken exuberant advantage of the opportunities opened up by the elimination of barriers preventing non-Anglicans gaining entry into the British elite.It is certainly clear from the Memorandum that Montagu feared that a conspicuous – and conspicuously successful – Jewish minority could be very vulnerable to anti-Semitism. A condition for their acceptance, he believed, was a wholehearted commitment to their native land. But it would be a mistake, I think, to attribute too much cynicism to him. In a private letter Montagu wrote to the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, the sense of outrage is palpable: 'The country for which I worked ever since I left the University – England – the country for which my family have fought, tells me that my national home … is Palestine.'So what the Memorandum represents is a quite coherent definition of Jewish identity, which explicitly repudiates the argument which Tzipi Livni makes to Ahmed Qurei. After the failure of his attempt to stop the Declaration, Montagu commented bitterly in his diary that the Government had 'endeavoured to set up a people which does not exist.'Clearly, the Holocaust changed the situation radically, tilting the balance heavily towards Zionism in Jewish arguments. However, my suspicion is that both Israelis like Livni and leaders of the American Jewish community exaggerate the extent of the change – and some of the potential risks of the positions they are taking up.If for example I try and think of my various Jewish friends and acquaintances as belonging to a coherent 'people', whose capital has been Jerusalem 'for 3007 years', in most cases I am struck by a sense of absurdity. For example, my wife's god-daughter, a very beautiful and sweet-natured girl, whose grandmother made it over here from Vienna shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, and whose father is American, says she would like to live either in Surrey or San Francisco. She is certainly Jewish, I really cannot see that her 'national home' is Israel, a place in which she has palpably no desire to live – what would it mean to say this?A bedrock among many Jews is an identification with the potential vulnerability of fellow Jews, which derives from the Holocaust. But beyond this, is there really a coherent Jewish people today any more than there was in Montagu's time?A further point is that some of the traditionally strongest allies of Jews in Britain have had what one might call Dreyfusard attitudes – as Montagu did. If a Jew demonstrates his commitment to his country of birth or adoption by being prepared to fight for it, according to this pattern of attitudes, it is iniquitous to treat him as an outsider – and also, from a pragmatic point of view stupid, given that Jewish intellectual curiosity and energy can be immensely valuable national assets, not least in wartime.(So for example, when in May 1940 a Jew from Vienna collaborated with a Jew from Berlin on a memorandum on the possibility of an atomic bomb, they did so for the British Government, not the German. And – to revert to the Montagu family – Edwin's nephew Ewen was a key figure in British intelligence in the Second World War, being a principal architect of Operation Mincemeat, the ruse by which the Germans were fooled into believing the Allies would land in Greece and Sardinia, rather than Sicily.)It was precisely the fact that so many of the German Jewish refugees from Hitler were people who had never conceived themselves as being anything else than German which helped many British liberals in the Thirties, to grasp that National Socialist racism was something uniquely evil, and radically different from either traditional religious or indeed, if to a lesser extent, ethnic prejudice.A consequence of all this is that in post-war Britain Edwin Montagu's apprehensions about the implications of 'dual loyalty' have seemed beside the point. It has in fact been very common for many Jews to have a genuine and deep loyalty both to Israel and to Britain. The latent conflict between the identification of Jews here with Israel and their identification with Britain has not seem a practical problem either to Jews, or to essentially 'Dreyfusard' philosemites.However, for this situation to be sustainable, it is necessary that the entrance of Israel, as perceived by the government of that country, are not judged by many to be radically incompatible with those of Britain.The 'Global War on Terror' has thrown the whole situation open. It appears to be the view of some neoconservatives, both in the United States and in Britain, the opposition to this has commonly been related to anti-Semitism. In fact, the very different grounds on which many of us have opposed American and British policy since the attack on the World Trade Center commonly have nothing to do whatsoever with attitudes towards Jews. However, there is a very real reverse causation, which operates in different ways.Among the five members of the panel in the inquiry into the Iraq War currently being chaired by Sir John Chilcot are the historians Sir Martin Gilbert and Sir Lawrence Freedman. Twenty years ago it would simply never have occurred to me that the fact that either of them were Jewish was remotely relevant to their suitability for an inquest into a major British foreign policy failure. Today I among those who think that neither should have been appointed to this inquiry, and certainly not both. Despite what the Jewish Chronicle would have one believe, there is nothing inherently anti-Semitic about this view.What is also happening – and this brings me back to Tzipi Livni's comments – is a growing sense among a lot of people that they have been played for suckers by the Israeli government: and that the persistent attempts to claim they have no partner for peace, and that the absence of a settlement is purely due to reasonable fear, are in very substantial measure a pretext. There is, once again, nothing inherently anti-Semitic about this view. However, it is quite clear that perfectly reasonable objections to the actions both of Israel and its sympathisers among Jews outside the country are eminently capable of spilling over into very unpleasant anti-Semitism – and indeed are doing so. The fears of Edwin Montagu look less irrelevant than they did.All this, I think, leaves many Jews in Britain pulled in many different ways – and in particular, torn between an identification with Israel and the increasing difficulty both of believing that the Israeli government is seriously interested in any meaningful two-state solution, and of justifying, both others and to themselves, the brutalities which, absent such a solution, are going to go on and on with no prospect of ending. And in addition to this there is the fear of awakening anti-Semitism, which pulls people different ways.As to the crucial question you raise about whether there is any prospect of a radical change in Israel, I confess to being pessimistic. However, if there is to be a change, it will need to start with a radical change among Jews outside the country – particularly in the United States. I think that may well come – but is liable to come too late to keep us from the 'precipice' and 'deep and dark chasm' to which you refer.

Reply | Edit | 11 minutes ago on Peace was close in …

Comments

[batondor]

David,

Thank you very much for your initial comment... with which I identify completely. I have not yet read the longer part of your dispatch and cannot do so until later today, but as a Jewish-American born in the 50's, I fully grasp the observations with which you began and will try to respond as soon as possible...

... but I did wish to immediately make clear that I did not believe that your specific arguments in the original piece on how "peace was [perhaps more] close in 2008 [than we had previously known]" were in any way as universally stated as others in the thread seemed to be.

[WILL]

Thanks for the Alistair Crooke article. He is a former member of MI5 & is always very insightful.

Thoughtful article. a quibble, b/ a few paragraph breaks would have really helped.

[Patrick Lang]

will

DH wrote it as a "comment" and I don't have time to fool with it. Quibble away! BTW, I think he was n MI-6. pl

[J]

will,

The Colonel is correct, Crooke's a MI6'er. MI6 is famous (infamous depending on point of view) for playing both sides against the middle. Personally I wouldn't give you a dime for them.

Here's an article critical of Crooke in the 2009 Mother Jones

http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/09/spy-who-loved-hamas-and-hezbollah-and-iran

Like I said, MI6 is infamous for playing both sides against the middle.

[J]

batonder,

I have a question, why do you identify yourself as a 'Jewish American' instead of an 'American of Jewish extraction' or an 'American Jew? Other fellow Americans of different extractions tend to identify themselves with the 'American' first followed by their particular ethnic/cultural/race extraction. I find your use of it very curious, no disrespect intended.

[WILL]

my bust, i often confuse MI5 &6. 5 is kinda of like FBI and MI6 is CIA. Or did i screw it up again?

[rjj]

As a Cracker-American I would like to state my objection to promiscuous Tribo-American hyphenation.

This is not some peevish quibble; I believe it plays into the schemes of the media shit stirrers and political schismatics.

[walrus]

Thank you very much for your thoughts Mr. Habakukk.

I saw my first bit of "cultured" anti Semitism on the net only recently. It was in response to an article regarding an outgoing treasury under secretary, a Mr. Levi was to be replaced by a Mr. Cohen. The comment: "Only Jews need apply."

I think the basic premise is essentially correct - Israel's abhorrent behaviour is going to re legitimise Anti Semitism.

[WILL]

All that MI5, MI6 stuff so confusing. Just like that March 8, March 14 Alliance Lebanese stuff- how is one to keep it all straight?

Brings to mind Qifa Nabki on Hitchens in Beirut.

"We walked all along the Corniche first, passing the war-ruined Holiday Inn and the new Dubai-style condo towers of Waffic Sinno: children carrying flagpoles bigger than themselves, old women with faces painted red and blue, teenage girls in blue hats crying “Saad! Saad!”–the name of Rafiq’s son, now the anointed hero of what has come to be called the “March 15 movement.”

"M15, huh? A felicitous slip of the pen? (The impressions throughout the article do have an Ian Fleming-ish cast to them). Aww, who can keep all these Marches straight? I mean, there are two after all."

http://qifanabki.com/tag/christopher-hitchens/

[Medicine Man]

As Walrus does, I agree with the basic premise. This is unfortunate because I don't think Israel's policies are representative of the global diaspora.

[Diane Mason]

Will @11:35 -

MI5 = responsible for domestic threats in the UK, including foreign agents. (responsible for finding them, that is, not causing them).

MI6 = responsible for UK agents overseas

[batondor]

J

I understand your argument completely, so here's my answer: I never even made the distinction until about a decade ago when a close friend suggested exactly the opposite logic that you present and I agreed with him and have held this position firmly for clarity sake ever since; being Jewish-American is no different than being Italian-American or African-American... the qualified attribute being subordinated to the root.

I would respectfully suggest, in that sense, that all of us carry more than one identifying characteristic that may have relative weight when compared to the others... and in that sense, I would argue that only a person who sincerely and consistently puts their religious or ethnic identity on a higher plane than their civic sense of belonging should invert the two; so, for example, the current Pope would be identified as a Germanic Catholic while Sergio Berlusconi is a Catholic Italian.

Does that make sense? This is, of course, just my opinion (and I am open to a correction on the formal semantics behind the question if there is one to be offered... though I must admit that I find the logic of my position compelling).

... and to the argument by "rjj" that hyphenated identities are objectionable, I would humbly suggest that one-dimensional identity is equally illusory and, in fact, is often destructive. Sometimes the complexity of identity is rendered explicitly (as with the hyphen) and sometimes it is implicit but obvious...

[J]

Medicine Man,

What is really hurting the 'global Jewish diaspora', is that they don't appear to have enough backbone collectively to speak out against Israel's abhorrent behavior, aside from the Ultra-Orthodox Anti-Zionist Jews who do speak out against Israel and its behavior on a constant and consistent basis. Unfortunately for them the pro-Israel crowd labels them as self-hating Jews. Aside from them, where are the outcry's of remaining diaspora? All the world hears are either their diaspora silences, or at the most their diaspora muffles under their breaths. Their silence and not standing up against Israel, is going to bite them in their backsides. And it's a sad situation all around.

[J]

batonder,

As for myself, I'm most comfortable with being labeled as 'American', the rest is a non sequitur. My forefathers because of their actions (crossing the high seas in squalor conditions aboard sea bound vessels), trying to make new homes for themselves in the 'colonies', BECAUSE OF their sacrifices, today I can say I'm American for better worse just like a wedding vow. I'm thankful for what they did, and I wouldn't have it any other way! I was born 'American', and thankfully I'll die 'American'!

[Adam L Silverman]

J: I think that you're giving the global Jewish diaspora more blame than it deserves. In terms of American Jewry I think there is clearly a number of different trains of thought on this, some is generationally differentiated with older Jewish-Americans keeping the idea of Israel as a bolt hole to run to if things go bad for Jews in the US. In fact I've heard that one stated on any number of occasions with the "bad" varying from the silly to the substantive, but mostly unlikely. What I think happens in the US, which is I think also the case for a variety of Christian denominations, some ethnic groups, and even for political movements and parties, is that the professionals (for lack of a better term) that we see constantly in the media as speaking on behalf of Jews or about Israel really aren't reflective of what most Jews actually believe politically, socially, or about foreign policy. Without trying to make this personal how many of the Catholic readers of SST really feel represented by Mr. Donohoe and his Catholic League and how many Evangelicals really feel like Reverend Robertson or Reverend Hagee or Dr. Dobson are really representing the reality and spirit of their denominations. Or one step removed the pundits associated with these faiths: the Kristols or Krauthammers or Cal Thomases or Ross Douthats? Just to pull some names out of the air. The same thing with the Democratice or Republican politicos or the Conservative or Liberal commentators? So while it is a problem, perhaps, that Jewish-Americans are worrying about their daily lives and all the same things that other Americans worry about whether they're Christian or Muslim, of African or Asian descent, to think that all are lined up in agreement based on the ramblings of the ones who get on TV or radio or in the papers all the time is to identify the wrong culprits. Sure some support these positions, but an awful lot don't, and from the data I've posted here at SST before the latter definitely outnumber the former. The real issue is how do we leverage that to change the dialogue and the political framing in order go change the policy?

[optimax]

Euromutt-American is too long and sounds too much like urinemutt.

read an article that convinced me I might be circulating Neanderthal blood, so researching my geneology is out the question.

[David Habakkuk]

J,

Ever since the fiascoes over intelligence on Iraqi WMD I have been deeply sceptical about MI6 – and subsequent events – including the farcical story of 'The Grocer and Alice's Cat' which F.B. Ali told recently on this site – have not diminished this scepticism. And I am certainly not putting Alistair Crooke forward as some source of Socratic wisdom – I think he is excessively indulgent towards Islamists, and in particular the regime in Tehran. But reportedly he was sacked from MI6, and in recent years he has been attacking, not defending, the activities of his former employees in Palestine.

What the cables have confirmed is what there was reason to suspect already – that MI6 had been intimately involved in building up the Palestinian Authority's security forces and cracking down on Hamas. To do this, while at the same time putting no pressure whatsoever on Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians, is not a strategy – it is stupidity. On this point at least Crooke is right.

In any case, in the article to which I referred, Crooke is simply reading the Palestine papers through the lens of the argument of Professor Mushtaq Khan that we have misread Israeli security requirements, and accordingly the prospects for a two-state solution, as a result of failure to grasp that what is at issue is not simply preserving a Jewish majority in Israel.

I e-mailed Professor Khan, and he gave me the link to the paper Crooke was quoting, which was given in Ramallah in December. It is:

http://mercury.soas.ac.uk/users/mk17/Docs/Prof%20Mushtaq%20Final%20Transcript%20Sayigh%20Lecture.pdf

The relevant section starts on page 14. While I am certainly not putting this forward as holy writ, it does provide a coherent framework in which both the extraordinary concessions offered by the PA as reported in the documents, and the even more extraordinary reluctance of the Israelis to make any meaningful response to them, makes some kind of sense. The argument that in terms of preserving a society based upon differential rights for Jew and non-Jew, letting go of the West Bank may actually make things worse, not better, certainly deserves thinking about.

walrus,

I saw my first bit of 'cultured' anti-Semitism on the net only recently.

The use of the taboo on anti-Semitism as a means of controlling debate on Israel and on U.S. policy has in my view been extraordinarily foolish, particularly given that the directions in which those controlling the debate want to take U.S. – and British – policy – have commonly been silly. The predictable effect has been to weaken the taboo – and also to produce the kind of festering resentment people to which people are prone to succumb when they feel they have been silenced, and cannot express perfectly legitimate thoughts and feelings.

Adam Silverman,

The real issue is how do we leverage that to change the dialogue and the political framing in order go change the policy?

I would certainly agree with that.

The notion that some kind of unified Jewish 'people' can be led by the heirs of Jabotinsky has always seemed to me patent nonsense. What I however do think is that there have been psychological inhibitions, militating against people actively opposing the disastrous directions in which those heirs have taken Israel, and also making people excessively prone to accept the apologetics of the Israel government.

And I think there is still a lot of resistance to accepting that the two-state solution is dead –and with it the basis for the 'liberal Zionism' which has been the political position of so many Jews both in the United States and here.

[J]

Adam,

I see so many 'good people' in the Jewish diaspora needlessly suffering all because of the Israeli government and its supporters downright cruelty and bullheadedness. The Ultra-Orthodox Rabbis have said, are saying that the current Zionist State of Israel is presumptuous before Heaven which has ramifications over all Judaism. They say that the current state as it stands because it is presumptuous before Heaven that it needs to be dismantled and left to the Divine hand to create. They say (and it is proving to be true) that the current Zionist State of Israel because of its presumptuous attitude/behavior is a threat to Jews worldwide. I see so many suffering all the way around needlessly (Arabs, Jews, Palestinians) all because of some's cruelty and bullheadedness.

It's like Rodney King said after the LA riots and he was beaten nearly to death, 'Why can't we all get along?' The man's right.

[J]

Adam,

Just a suggestion, again this is just a suggestion on my part. The U.S. Jewish Diaspora that disagrees with the Zionist Israeli state and its cruel and barbaric behavior need to go after their U.S. financial supporters. Cut their financial legs out from under the ones that control the megaphones (mainstream media) and politicians who are feeding at the feeding trough, and the communication lines will start to clear. This will require much effort and hard work on the part of the Jewish Diaspora that disagrees. The world at large only sees the Ultra-Orthodox Anti-Zionist Jewish Community as the only ones of the Jewish Disapora that objects to the Zionist State of Israel and its supporters barbarism and cruelty. Outside of their voices, all the world hears is deafening silence from the rest of the Jewish Diaspora.

[J]

David,

I wouldn't give you a dime for MI6 or a plug-nickle for the Israei errant boyz club known as their Mossad. Both do a disservice to their respective nations and the world at large.

I have a personal grudge against the Israeli Mossad, it's their hands dripping with needlessly shed American Military blood that they are directly responsible for. If I was in control of things and had my way, their Herzliya
complex would be a smoking hole tomorrow at the latest. Again that is if I was in control and had my way of things.

Mossad are not professionals, they're low-life thugs.