Wandering Around

Zionism invented the Jewish nation and set its national home, Israel, into a devastating conflict that is now taking a global shape and has become a serious global threat. Yet, for the Israelis, those who happen to be in the eye of the storm, ‘Zionism’ means very little. Israelis join the IDF not because they are Zionists but because they are Jews (as opposed to the Muslims around them). This crucial realisation may convey a new meaning for the notion of the ‘wandering Jew’. The dialectic that is set between the Diaspora and Eretz Yisrael leads towards a counter flow of migration, aspiration and yearning. The Diaspora Jews are aspired by Israel in the light of the Zionist fantasy, the Israeli Jews, on the other hand, are determined to escape their emerging siege. The Diaspora is heading towards Eretz Yisrael, the Israeli Jews, at large, are desperate to get out.

This counter flow of migration/aspiration is far from being a matter of contingency, in fact it is the direct product of the holy Judaic scriptures. As I explored in my ‘Esther to AIPAC’ paper[1], more and more Bible scholars are now disputing the historicity of the Bible. Seemingly, the Bible is for most part “written after the Babylonian Exile and whose writings rework (and in large part invent) previous Israelite history so that it reflects and reiterates the experiences of those returning from the Babylonian exile.”

Consequently, the Bible, being an exilic text, leads to a fragmented reality in which the Diaspora Jew yearns for ‘homecoming’ yet once at home, the ideology loses its appeal. The case of Zionism is shockingly similar, it has managed to aspire some Jews about Zion, yet, once in Zion, the ideology fails to provide for the domestic adventure.

We can clearly detect a dialectic tension between Zionism, a Diaspora Jewish identity and Israeliness, which is largely related to the Hebraic project. Zionism and Israel are two diverse poles that together form the contemporary Jewish Experience.

Love Yourself as much as you Hate Everyone Else

Once we understand the dialectic opposition between Eretz Yisrael and the Diaspora, we are ready to move on and reflect upon the unique complimentarily relationships between the two.

As much as Eretz Yisrael and the Diaspora establish a counter flow of aspiration and migration, Israel is there to establish a coherent and consistent symbolic interpretation of Jewish tribal chauvinism and supremacy. Israel makes ‘love yourself as much as you hate everyone else’ into a devastating reality, in which the self-lover happens to be capable of inflicting the ultimate pain on his surrounding neighbours.

In order to understand the Jewish concept of self-loving, we may have to reflect first on the issue that makes this particular form of personal emotional consciousness take place: the issue of chosenness.

While the religious Judaic understanding of Jewish chosenness is realised as a moral burden in which Jews are ordered by God to stand as a model of ethical behaviour, the secular Jewish interpretation is reduced into a banal chauvinist form of racially orientated supremacy. It clearly encourages those who are lucky enough to have a Jewish mother to love themselves blindly. It is crucial to mention at this stage that in most cases Jewish supremacy would lead to a certain level of dismissal of the elementary rights of the other. In many cases it leads toward animosity and even hatred whether latent or manifest.

It is this supremacy which stands at the heart of the Zionist claim for Palestine at the expense of its indigenous inhabitants. But it obviously doesn’t end with Palestine, the radical manifestation of Jewish lobbying for extension of the “War Against Terror” as expressed, for instance, by the AJC is just another example. I would never dare say that this type of war mongering is inherent to Jews (as people), yet, unfortunately, it is rather symptomatic to Jewish tribal political thinking left, right and centre. Thus, it shouldn’t take us by surprise that at the forefront of the struggle for humanism and universal ethics we meet Jews such as Jesus, Spinoza and Marx. These people who went out of their way to introduce a notion of brotherhood stood primarily against the tribal supremacy they found in themselves and in their cultural heritage. They above all protested against what was familiar to them and suggested brotherhood and love instead.

However, we may note that Jesus, Spinoza and Marx, didn’t manage to transform the Jews (as a collective), though they had a bit of success with some of them. Seemingly, the move from hard-core dogmatic monotheistic tribalism towards tolerant pluralist universalism is on the verge of the impossible. Indeed, more than a few Jews have managed to leave God behind, as we know some had become Marxists but somehow even many of those remained loyal to their monotheistic tribally exclusive ‘Jews only’ philosophy (Bund, JAZ). Others moved as far as becoming a ‘nation like other nations’ (Zionism) except that they made sure they cleansed and killed those who didn’t fit ethnically to their vision of themselves (1948 Nakba). Some became so liberal and cosmopolitan that they managed to reduce contemporary global conflict into a simplistic take on ’soft drink’. “People who drink Coca Cola do not fight each other”, they informed us. This may be the truth, however, as it seems, the Coke drinkers have recently killed 1.5 million Iraqis all in the name of ‘democracy’.

It is extremely crucial to mention that many Jews have managed to assimilate and to leave their tribal traits behind, they operate as ordinary human beings. They have nothing to do with Bund, Neocons or Zionism. Seemingly, those truly liberated beings are not the subject of my study, and I can only wish them luck and success.

However, though Jews are divided between themselves on many things, they are united in fighting those who they collectively identify as their enemies. It took me a while to realise that those who operate under the exclusive Jewish banner within the Palestinian solidarity and the Anti-War movements are primarily concerned with fighting any references to Jewish lobbying or Jewish power.

One explanation was provided earlier on. Zionism per se, has little to do with Israel, it is an internal Diaspora Jewish discourse. Consequently, the debate between Zionists and Jewish anti-Zionists has no significance on Israel or the struggle against Israeli actions. It is there to keep the debate within the family while planting more confusion amongst the goyim. It allows the Jewish ethnic campaigner to maintain that “not all Jews are Zionists, in fact there are almost two dozen ‘Jewish Anti Zionists’ around the world”. As pathetic as it may sound, this dull argument has been good enough to effectively shatter any criticism of Jewish ethnocentric lobbying that may have been voiced the last four decades. Seemingly (and unfortunately), when it comes to ‘action’, the Zionists and the so-called Jewish ‘anti’-Zionists are acting as one people. Why are they acting as one people? Because they are one people. Are they really one people? It doesn’t matter as long as they themselves believe to be or act as if they are. And what is it that makes them into one people? They probably hate everyone else as much as they love themselves.

There is an old Jewish saying, “Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are”, it would be most appropriate to amend it into a far more refined reading of Jewish contemporary tribal politics. “Just tell me who you hate and I’ll tell you who you are”. If, for instance, you hate Finkelstein, Atzmon, Blankfort, Mearsheimer & Walt and so on, you must be Jewish. If you just don’t agree with any of the above you can actually be anyone.

Hatred and even personal loathing is sadly symptomatic to Jewish tribal politics, probably something to do with Jewish politics being marginal and defined by negation. Noticeably, Israel has managed to perfect it and give it real new meaning. While the Diaspora Jew is entitled to love himself, his hatred to the other is largely suppressed. As much as some Jews may like to follow their religious calling and spit on churches[2] or just destroy the lives of prominent academics and artists, hatred and violence is not tolerated within the contemporary Western discourse. This is exactly where Israel comes into play. As much as the Israelis love themselves, they are capable of hating anyone else. They are capable of starving millions of Palestinians, they are capable of killing when they feel like it. Israel made ‘love yourself/ hate everyone else’ into a viable practice. It resolved the most inherent ambivalent tension having to do with self-loving while being amongst others. Israel doesn’t just hate Prof. Finkelstein, it is capable of detaining and deporting him as well. Israel doesn’t just hate the Palestinians, it is equally capable of starving them, locking them behind walls and barbed wire, bombing them and even nuking the hardliners when the time is ripe.

This is the most frightening aspect of complimentarily between Eretz Yisrael and the Diaspora. It is the materialisation of a hate-ridden society. After two millennia of wandering, the newly reformed national Jew is capable of not just hating but also of inflicting the ultimate pain on those he may hate.

Exploring the Jewish Question

Once a year, around Easter, my family leaves me behind for two weeks. My wife Tali and our two kids Mai and Yann make their way to Israel. I can clearly see how much they love it there. I can clearly understand what is it that they love there. Gladly, I can say that at least for the time being, my kids are not madly in love with themselves and do not see themselves as part of any tribal collective. Consequently, they do not hate anyone either.

However, through their experience I can see what Israel is there to offer, especially to those who do not dwell there. I can see how successful the Israeli adventure looks from afar. Through their experience I learn about the dialectic between the Israel/Hebraic domestic quest and the Zionist/Diaspora aspiration. The negation and complimentarily between the Hebraic and the Diaspora is the essence of contemporary Jewish experience.

If we want to tackle the crimes committed by Israel and the evil promoted by global Zionist lobbies, we better initiate a profound study of the Jewish question and the Jewish experience. It is not just Israel or Zionism but rather the unique devastating amalgam of complexity formed by both. Unless we question the Jewish experience, we are doomed to continue wasting our time employing irrelevant archaic 19th century terminology that has nothing to do with the conflict.

Once we are brave enough to explore the Jewish question and Jewish identity we may be able to understand that Israeli apartheid is not just political circumstances, it is actually a natural outcome of a particular racially orientated tribal philosophy. The Israeli wall is not a political measure but rather a manifestation of an exclusive racist attitude that stands at the core of the Jewish notion of segregation. Once we stand up and insist upon interpreting Israeli/Zionist scrutinising of the Jewish question we may as well grasp why Senator Obama rushed to the AIPAC conference three hours after his nomination for the Democratic Party was secured. The set of promises made by Obama, Clinton and McCain in AIPAC a few days ago is in fact a true reflection of the contemporary Jewish experience. The senators feed the Jewish American prominent lobbyists exactly with the food they want to swallow. At the expense of the Palestinians, Iraqis, Syrians, Iranians and billion Muslims, American politicians openly promise that America will keep being biased. Seemingly, America prefers to appease its tiny Jewish minority instead of being an international mediator and a true genuine negotiator.

I would strongly argue that in the light of the crimes committed by the Jewish state in the name of the Jewish people, we are perfectly entitled to question the philosophy and praxis involved with Jewish experience. We should never be intimidated by Jewish ethnic activists and Zionist smear campaigners.

Since Jews do not form a race but largely succumb to some different forms of collective, racially orientated politics, we shouldn’t be afraid of touching the matter. Once we take it as a given that Jews do not form a race, the study of Jewish identity and politics is neither racism nor essentialism. It is actually the very opposite, it is in fact a critical reading of racist ideology and its inherent supremacy.

Those of us who regard Israel and Zionism as the grave danger to world peace must pursue in this study. Rather than focusing separately on Zionism or Israel, we must learn the unique amalgam of complexity that is formed by both. This dialectic compound shapes the contemporary notion of Jewish Experience. Zionism in itself is no more than a decoy. It is there to grab our attention and divert our focus. Seemingly our attack on Zionism has no significance on Israel, its policies and its people. At the most, it disturbs some Zionist Jews.

As much as the study of the ‘Jewish Experience’ may help us to save millions of lives of Palestinians, Iraqis, Syrians and Iranians, it is also a Jewish collective interest to understand the true nature of the Jewish experience and politics. At the end of the day, it is Jewish politics (rather than religion) that may eventually demonise the entire Jewish collective for the next millennia to come. It is a Jewish collective interest to stop the political beast before it is too late.

I owe it to my Palestinian brothers and sisters, I owe it to myself, I owe it to Yann and Mai, I want to make sure that by the time they protest against my own ‘anti-Jewish experience’ I’ll be clever enough to discuss it all with them in an open and thoughtful manner.

[1] http://www.counterpunch.org/atzmon03032007.html

[2] According to Dr. Israel Shahak, in his book Jewish History, Jewish Religion, this practice has ancient roots and has become increasingly commonplace: Dishonoring Christian religious symbols is an old religious duty in Judaism. Spitting on the cross, and especially on the Crucifix, and spitting when a Jew passes a church, have been obligatory from around AD 200 for pious Jews. In the past, when the danger of anti-Semitic hostility was a real one, the pious Jews were commanded by their rabbis either to spit so that the reason for doing so would be unknown, or to spit onto their chests, not actually on the cross or openly before the church.

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