Zionism: An Unhelpful Term

A big part of the controversy around Ken Livingstone's remarks is the use of the term ‘Zionism’ in relation to Hitler. The historical record can be looked up, though it may be better to question the use of language here. After all, words matter.

The Zionist movement was a broad church and included everyone from Noam Chomsky to Jackie Mason. However, Professor Chomsky is not a right-wing Jewish nationalist. Yet he was a Zionist youth leader and Alan Dershowitz was apart of the same Hebrew summer camp. But Chomsky’s childhood Zionism would not be recognised by the devotees of the state of Israel. He remembers the foundation of the so-called Jewish state as a “day of mourning”.

Of course, the obvious point cannot be made too often. Not all Zionists are Jews, neither are all Jews Zionists. For instance, Christian Zionism is a huge movement with deep roots and remains strong in the American Bible Belt, while anti-Zionism has a long history among Jews. Note the Christian Right tend to be fanatical supporters of Israeli aggression, but they also yearn for the Rapture and the end of Jewry worldwide.

Zionism is not synonymous with Jewishness, but it’s a highly imprecise term. In many ways, it would be more accurate to talk about Israeli or Jewish nationalism today. Precision of language is vital here. Clear distinctions have to be maintained. Not only because the misuse of the term ‘Zionist’ can be painted as anti-Semitic, but it can be received as such. This means deepening the vocabulary of the Left on Israel-Palestine.

Too often do we hear talk of the Israel lobby, or even the Jewish lobby, and this is not unproblematic. The only reason why lobbyists are welcomed in Washington and London is because there is an underlying interest in the first place. In other words, US policy favours Israel due to its own interests in the Middle East, not because of Israeli interference in American political life. The Left should not presuppose Western innocence in all of this, as if the US is being led astray by foreign interests. It is not necessarily anti-Semitic, but it certainly can be to talk in this way.

As Didi Herman argues, the Left should probably stop using the word ‘Zionism’ and try to grasp the problem in clear terms. By using ‘Zionism’, the Left opens itself up to right-wing offensives and infiltration by genuine anti-Semites. At the same time, there is little engagement with Jewish nationalism as a historic movement and the reasons for its appeal. It was once that the Left was avowedly Zionist, whereas today leftists are eager to pronounce themselves anti-Zionists. Here is a passage of advice from Herman:

The identification of a generic Zionism with nothing but racist practice in Israel entrenches an understanding of zionism not just as a dirty word, but as a pariah form of thinking unrelated to any other (except apartheid thinking). However, as Balibar (2009), Asharwi (2003), and many others have noted, Jewish nationalisms need to be taken seriously. The left’s wholesale intellectual rejection of an assumed monolithic Zionism does not assist such an endeavour. 

I suppose this post is, in part, a plea to the left to stop saying ‘Zionist’. Use ‘Israeli nationalists’ or ‘Israeli fundamentalists’ or better yet ‘Netanyahu’s regime’ or, as a last resort, at least refer to ‘Israel-zionism’ and not ‘Zionism’ per se, as in ‘media outlets that support Netanyahu’s regime’ or ‘the University of Birmingham is a bit of an Israeli nationalist outpost’. These alternatives won’t provide an easy shorthand in the way ‘Zionism’ does, for example, ‘Israeli nationalism = apartheid’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it, but I suppose that is my point — easy options often sacrifice understanding for rhetorical force. The Zionist shorthand is upsetting to many because it is a very old way of talking about ‘Jewish conspiracy’ (used by antisemites long before Israeli statehood), and no doubt more importantly, it harms the cause of Palestinian solidarity because it allows people with all sorts of agendas to attack the solidarity campaign, and with occasional justification. Of course Israel itself likes to messianically represent itself as the embodiment of a monolithic Zionism, but there is no need for the left to reproduce this erasure of all the other forms of zionism.

It’s not surprising that the self-described ‘anti-totalitarian Left’ is leading the witch hunt. Many of these soi-disant leftists and liberals supported the invasion of Iraq on progressive grounds. Israel is seen as a Western liberal democracy encircled by Arab dictatorships and Islamic fascist regimes. Therefore all criticism of Israel is painted as anti-Jewish. The reality is much less convenient for this herd of independent minds.

Localising anti-Jewish prejudice in the Left is a form of externalisation. Much like child sexual abuse, we’re meant to believe it’s always someone else who is guilty of it. The terrible truth is sexual violence is far more common and banal. And the same can be said of Judeophobia. It’s not the preserve of student activists, intellectuals and conspiracists. The global financial crisis set the conditions in place for a resurgence.

As for the Labour Party, there is little to no anti-Semitism among its ranks. The last leader Ed Miliband is of Belgian Jewish heritage - his father, a refugee from Nazism served in WW2 - yet the British press was comfortable mocking him for his inability to enjoy a bacon sandwich. His father Ralph Miliband was a refugee from Nazism served in WW2, and the right-wing press insinuated the man was ‘disloyal’ to Britain. There was no discussion of anti-Jewish undercurrents in the midst of this.

However, Jew-bashing is an old game for the Right. The times haven’t changed so much. As Sam Kriss argues, the contemporary Right is now avowedly philo-Semitic - it is fascinated by Israel and by Jews - but this supposed love is really its opposite. Jews who criticise Israel are deemed insufficiently Jewish. The Norwegian fascist Breivik drew a line between ‘patriotic’ and ‘disloyal’ Jews in his rambling manifesto. Naturally, a Jewish state appeals to anti-Semites who want to rid their countries of a certain minority.

At this point, we could do far worse than to turn to the words of Judith Butler on Jewish politics and the Western fascination with Israel:

In holding out for a distinction to be made between Israel and Jews, I am calling for a space for dissent for Jews, and non-Jews, who have criticisms of Israel to articulate; but I am also opposing anti-semitic reductions of Jewishness to Israeli interests. The ‘Jew’ is no more defined by Israel than by anti-semitism. The ‘Jew’ exceeds both determinations, and is to be found, substantively, as a historically and culturally changing identity that takes no single form and has no single telos. Once the distinction is made, discussion of both Zionism and anti-semitism can begin, since it will be as important to understand the legacy of Zionism and to debate its future as to oppose anti-semitism wherever we find it.

I rest my case, fellow travellers.

Derby's Terrorists.

I just read a report in The Guardian on a recent suicide bombing in the town of Beiji just north of Baghdad. The perpetrator was Kabir Ahmed, a British citizen from Derby - where I'm also from. The report details the impact: "The blast killed Lieutenant General Faisal Malik Zamel, who was inspecting forces in the town, and seven other police officers, while wounding 15 people, hospital staff and police officers." It wasn't all too surprising. I often wonder about the extent of alienation in the British Muslim community.

At the same time, there were car bombs in Baghdad and Ramadi which killed 12 people. So we should remain aware that we are only interested in a British death and its significance. We are always overly fixated on our own, even if we count our own among the enemy. I can't help but feel the need to comment when I read of the bombing. It reminds me of the Tel Aviv bomber Omar Sharif, who went to Bemrose as I did, albeit years earlier, and lived in Normanton - the city's Asian district, known in racist terms as a 'ghetto'. My mum recalls the area being described as the Black Hole of Calcutta and my own memory is littered with instances of racial tensions between white and Asian people. My first encounter with racism was in the playground of Becket.

I do wonder about the role of such communal tensions in the radicalisation of young British Muslims. From what I've seen I suspect disaffection with British society plays a role, but it's not a matter of a clash of cultures. There are a wide array of factors I would take into account. The English North and the Midlands have suffered economic deprivation for more than three decades now. On top of that there is the element of racism, as well as political disillusionment (which is also behind the rise of the Far-Right in the UK too) and a shift towards anti-politics. Religion stands as an alternative under such conditions. It's an identity-marker and it holds out hope of salvation by transcendence of the present situation. Tragically, it won't be taken seriously...

This latest incident comes after the US confirmed a series of air strikes against the Islamic State leadership. The US has been engaged against Syrian targets for quite some time now and its campaign in Iraq has found allies in Europe more than willing to join them. So far it seems that these airstrikes can be regarded as part of US efforts to maintain regional instability and, by extension, keep its hand on the global oil spigot.

Anti-Semites for Israel.

The younger Bushman has crawled out from under his rock to speak to speak at a fundraising dinner today with tickets going from $100 to $100,000. For the latter you can get a VIP pass for twenty guests to see the anointed one, have your picture taken with him and get a copy of Decision Points autographed. This would not be a noteworthy event if it weren't for the fact that the event is being held by the Messianic Jewish Bible Institute. If that sounds odd here's a little clarification, the Institute's stated mission is to convert world Jewry to Christianity in order to bring about the Rapture. No doubt this is in accordance with the view that the End Times will mean burning in an everlasting lake of fire for all Jews (except for 140,000 Jews who are converted to Christianity). This is just one strategy for those on the Christian Right in its Armageddonist fantasies.

We should not be surprised to find a confluence of this level of fantasy and anti-Semitism. Even if we accept their professions of love for Israel as genuine we should not buy into the assumption that the Jewish state and the Jewish people are synonymous. Faiths and cultures are far too complex generally to be confined to a body national. The history of Christian anti-Semitism is too often whitewashed in an era where Israel seems mired in perpetual conflict with its neighbours and the Palestinians. The Roman Catholic Church only rescinded its accusations of deicide against the Jews in 1965, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. European societies have long found the presence of the apparently unsettled and rootless rather troubling. No wonder then anti-Semitism often combines with anti-Roma sentiments. The solution for some European Christians was to resituate the Jews as rooted citizens, either by stripping them of their Jewishness or by relocating them entirely.

 

Even in the liberal Christian states of the 19th Century the problem was that the Jewish tradition was not easily confined to the realm of an individuals' rights and freedoms. Traditions are communitarian rather than individualist. In the past this meant effective conversions and later it led to the proposals of the Nazi Party to relocate European Jewry to Madagascar. By contrast the Muslim world had little beef with Jews as a people without a land, it was once the state of Israel was founded (and the way in which it was founded) that the problems really heated up. In this way we find that the Christian anti-Semites have a vested interest in a Jewish state as a solution to their problem. You find this with people like John Hagee, a televangelist who has even suggested that the Holocaust was a part of God's plan to turn the Jews back toward Israel. This is not an exceptional case.

 

That old mountebank Pat Robertson wrote a book of conspiratorial fantasy in which the Jews play a role in a new world order set up. Then there was Billy Graham who was caught on tape to President Nixon (another remarkable bigot) agreeing that the Jews have a 'stranglehold' on the American media and referred to a 'synagogue of Satan'. And of course, you can't forget Jerry Falwell, the spiritual godfather of the Moral Majority, who once stated that the anti-Christ is among us and that he is an adult male Jew. Yet all of these men professed support for Israel and pledged a great deal of political support for the Israeli government in wars from 1967 onwards. One of the prerequisites for the Rapture is that the Jews return to Israel. The compatibility of this restorationist agenda with anti-Semitism should not be ignored. Evidently, Judeophobia is not unique to the Old World. It's a country where hotels once bore the label 'restricted' to mean they wouldn't take in Jewish guests.

 

Given that George W Bush gave up Johnnie Walker Black for the Nazarene we may not be so shocked that he is at least sympathetic to the most fervent depths of nuttiness. This is one of the main sources of votes harvested by the GOP machine (not that Bush much needed votes). The former President is in good company as the last big speaker was Glenn Beck, the same man who tooted a horn for Elizabeth Dilling's crackpot tirades against Jews and Communists. Let alone the way he scapegoated Hungarian-Jewish banker George Soros as a 'puppet master' of the Left. In the end Beck lost his platform at Fox after he started to cost them advertising dollars and the dip in ratings. He had gone too far for Abe Foxman, but never too far for the Messianic Jewish Bible Institute who gave Beck its Defender of Israel award and then chowed down on a mighty hog-roast. Seriously treif scenes.

A note on the Woolwich murder.

 

On Facebook I posted the following points as a status after the hours of coverage of the attack in Woolwich and I stand by them today:
1. Your sympathy belongs with the victim and their family. It should go without saying that this is a horrible crime.
2. The perpetrators are not representatives of Islam, or immigration, they are murderous thugs and will go down for this. That's a good thing. We shouldn't let a pair of murderers change our society. No death penalty. No deportation. To be a civilised country means treating the worst people in a way which doesn't lower ourselves to their level.
3. Don't concede any ground to racists and/or neo-Nazis who are clambering over one another to exploit the death of another human being. The EDL have been quick to get down to Woolwich, they deserve no attention nor should we pretend they have any serious claim to comment on this crime.
4. This looks like a political act, if so then we have to talk about the real reasons for anger against Western governments from the Muslim world. A question that is much bigger . That means we have to address the wars that have waged in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the dictatorships that have been supported by Western governments for decades.

 

In the discussion that followed this post I was told that point 4 is in contradiction with the first points and that it constitutes a 'mitigation'. That's simply not the case as I was making a more subtle point than some can appreciate. The fourth point is the last of the points because I consider it to be the last of priorities under such extreme circumstances. It's a sorry fact about the world that there is no time for criticism of American and British foreign policy after the war in Iraq and the on-going occupation of Afghanistan. There isn't a causal link between the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the murder of Lee Rigby. It's plausible that there are people who could've killed even if these events hadn't taken place. But there is a sense in which certain foreign policy decisions fed the narrative of radical Islamism. That is the narrative and set of ideas the media describe as 'ideology'.

The Identity Politics of Reaction.

 

Upon observation the forces of Reaction seem much more adept at identitarian politics, as we have seen consistently for a very long time. It was in the 1970s that the forerunners of the New Right sought to co-op evangelical Christianity as a basis to resuscitate social conservatism and usher in the ensuing culture wars of the 1990s. Around the same time in Iran the collapse of the Shah’s rule created a vacuum into which the radical Islamists moved and crushed the competing tendencies of nationalism and socialism. In the late 1980s and early 90s Europe saw the recrudescence of irredentist ethno-nationalism in Serbia and Croatia to the detriment of Yugoslavia as a socialist federalism. The thoroughly counter-revolutionary and reactionary character of these developments can hardly be ignored with ease. The degree to which we may understand this form of identity politics as a co-optation by right-wing demagogues is a matter worth exploring.

 

One cannot help notice that the language and sometimes the practices of these movements were pilfered from radical traditions. The Catholic rightist Paul Weyrich infiltrated left-wing groups and sought to utilise the similar organising methods to politicise and mobilise Christians into a reactionary electoral base for the Republican Party. Likewise, it was Ayatollah Khomeini who emptied out the Islamic socialism of Ali Shariati only to substitute it for a conservative order within a radical framework. In dying days of Yugoslavia it was Slobodan Milošević and his supporters who appropriated the language of radicalism in condemning their enemies as ‘counter-revolutionaries’. It may be down to the compatibility of particular identity-markers (whether religious or ethnic) with a populist form of politics. In each of these instances we find that the collective identity serves as a means for demagogic leaders to attain power. The key difference is that the Serbs and American Christians can hardly be said to have been repressed in the same way as Shi’a Muslims.

 

Fundamentalism soon became the lynchpin of GOP campaigners and remains so to this day. The politicisation of Christianity came in conjunction with the right-wing reaction to the counter-cultural movements at the level of economics. The basic rights of American workers were soon under an unprecedented assault of Reaganism, while moral issues of abortion, gay rights, drugs and pornography became a means to mobilise millions behind an otherwise bankrupt party-state. It is worth acknowledging that the Islamist forces of reaction were originally mobilised in Iran to help overthrow the Mossadegh government in 1953. Instead of an Islamic regime it was a secular dictatorship which followed as the riots instigated by the CIA and MI6 were used in turn to orchestrate a coup. Khomeini was among the ‘Warriors of Islam’ protesting at the time, he would re-emerge as the Supreme Leader over 25 years later. It was an active policy of American and European governments to support the disintegration of Yugoslavia into splintered sectarian states. This went as far as offering aid to ultra-nationalists looking to secede and refusing aid to the Yugoslav edifice. It was a way to drive a nail into what was left of really existing socialism.

 

We have only to look at post-colonial Africa to find yet more instances of a convergence between identitarian forms of reaction. In the Congo we find the rise of Joseph-Désiré Mobutu brought with it a cultural nationalism opposing all forms of European culture still lingering in the country. As part of the authenticité campaign the suit and tie were banned and the name of the country was changed to Zaire. Mobutu came to power amidst the instability of the 1960s just as socialist democrat Patrice Lumumba was murdered in a coup no doubt supported by the Belgians, Americans and British secret intelligence services. In fact Mobutu was instrumental to the coup and would later to come to dominate the country as a kleptocrat until the 1990s. The soi disant African nationalism of Mobutu’s dictatorship may have functioned as a means of channelling the legitimate grievances of the people ruled by the Belgians through Mobutu. The same process may be found in Zimbabwe where Robert Mugabe maintains a party-state through the appeal to anti-colonial and nationalist sentiment. Stripping away the property of white land-owners has tremendous symbolic value to Mugabe’s regime, only for the property is then handed to the henchmen around the despot backed and funded by the capitalist roaders in Beijing.



Who the Unchosen?

 It has become apparent that Ethiopian Jews have been subjected to birth-control injections without their knowledge or consent in Israel. This is yet another revelation in issues and events in Israel that can only be summarised as a race problem. It's a real shock for a lot of people, and for others it's something to be brushed under the carpet. Israel's race problem is a necessary part of its national project, just as it was with the US - another state founded upon a great crime - where racism was a part of the state's order.

 It was just last year that Israel found itself shook by race riots in South Tel Aviv, with several African immigrants left injured. The Likudnik Miri Regev was quick on the scene, can of kerosene in hand, ever eager to put out the flames of racism. In her shrill populism Regev characterised the black refugees fleeing from genocide in Sudan as 'a cancer in our body'. She went on to stand by the comment, only apologising for the offence it may have caused to Jews reminded of the putrid effluvia of National Socialism. It's noteworthy that Regev thought it sufficient to apologise to Jews and, indeed, cancer patients who might be offended, but not to one black person in Israel. Race-baiting is a classic vote winner in times of economic instability. Nationalists are often so degenerate as to believe that as the ground shakes beneath you only flag-wagging will save the day. For nationalist politicians it certainly will save their salaries for many terms to come and this is especially useful in a country prone to coalition government. It's an endless well to tap into in a country where the buzzwords of discourse are 'national security' and 'self-defence'.

 That same year Bibi Netanyahu speculated that illegal immigration from Africa would "threaten our existence as a Jewish and democratic state". The calculating statesman chose his words carefully, it's a question of majoritarian definition that Israel remain Jewish in its demographics. The real trouble is the debate over what constitutes Jewishness and the dangers of racialising the definition can't be overstated. Yet Mr Netanyahu's ilk fear not such dangers, for his lot the Jews are white and Israel is an outpost of the Western world surrounded by dusky barbarians. Then there is the matter of whether Israel ought to be a Jewish state or a state for Jews. A subtle distinction never fully clarified in Zionist circles before 1947. If it's a state for Jews then it doesn't have to be a majority Jewish state, nor does it have to be run in accordance with religious law and the question of what constitutes Jewishness can be left aside. These problems are nothing new, they are fundamental questions of Zionism.

 So we find the race problem is entangled, not by coincidence, with Israel's origins, the need for a young country to define itself in terms of its identity, culture and values. To some this would seem a simple task, merely a matter of what aspects of Judaism to leave on the shelf. Actually it's incredibly complex given the lack of homogeneity in Judaism, the plethora of languages and cultures that Jews have picked up on over the millennia. The way this has been handled inside Israel is particularly important for analysts and commentators. The Ashkenazim enjoyed privileges and rights above those of the Mizrahi for a long time. Even as the Israeli elite are for a peaceful solution, the much more economically deprived and zealous citizens (e.g. the Mizrahi, the refuseniks, the kibbutzniks) are far more hawkish. To add to this mix the ruling-class has been busily eroding the civic institutions and welfare state of Israel in recent decades. The country was founded as a quasi-socialist and almost egalitarian (among Jews) arrangement, since then it has mutated into a country where 18 families control 60% of corporate equity.

 In a country as divided and dysfunctional as Israel there is a serious need for a means of mobilisation at elections. The dual role of racism is firstly the continuation of the occupation and maintain an electoral base for this status quo. It's inseparable from the conflict, and only a peaceful settlement may secure Israel and perhaps cure it of prejudice. That's one view of it. And it's easy to take it, recall the words of Moshe Dayan just after the conquests of 1967 when he said that the Palestinians will "continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads". So far that process has been a steady expansionism at the expense of the security of Israelis and the rights of Palestinians. The moments where this state of permanent crisis eventuates in bloodbaths do not rupture peace and harmony. There is no peace, whether Hamas fires rockets or not. The construction of the annexation wall around most arable land in the West Bank is incremental. Yet the demographic question will not be resolved by this expansion, far from it.

 The expansion into the West Bank with the annexation wall, which is longer than the Berlin Wall, is conveniently encircling the major arable land and resources of the area. This irredentism comes straight out of the same spawn-pool as nationalism and racism. The tendency of national discourse towards the völkisch should not be swept under the carpet where it will only fester in its own self-satisfying vulgarity. The prospect of a völk defined by 'chosenness' should not go unchallenged. The brilliant Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt had her reservations about the prospect of a Jewish state carved out of the body of colonial Palestine. The worst of all possible models was the European one, she thought, which rested upon a racial conception of the nation-state. This same model had proven successful in the are of pogroms, not forgetting slavery and other assorted atrocities. The preferable model would guarantee equal rights and recognition as citizens for Palestinians and Jews alike.

 This was a one-state proposal that preceded the coming decades of violence necessary to found a state. Arendt was prescient in her anxieties, she foresaw that the Jewish state would reside in permanent agitation with its Arab neighbours. The Jews would have to live in a precarious position surrounded by a hostile set of states and secluded inside ever-threatened borders. It's what drives Naftali Bennet's shameful calls for an outright annexation of 30% of the West Bank (presumably out of the 60% that Israel already has in settlements illegally). But you don't even need to look to Naftali Bennet for blunt-faced expansionism. It's an effective policy of the sitting Prime Minister and the barely restrained Russian thug at his far-right side. The precise end point of Israel's borders remains somewhat mysterious for those told to affirm the state's right to exist. There are neo-Zionist elements who would like to expand all the way along the river and ultimately absorbing Jordan.

A Land with a People.

Click on Image

In a discussion over the events in Gaza recently I had the following exchange with a friend of mine about the fundamentals of the conflict. Note that the questioner is coming from a Christian perspective on the conflict, while I'm coming from an atheistic perspective. The primary issue is raised is the claim to the land and the specifics of the Zionist project.

Q: I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. And I will enter into judgment with them there, on behalf of my people and my heritage Israel, because they have scattered them among the nations and have divided up MY land..."Does this land belong to Israel or Palestine? Well actually, according to bible scripture, God calls it His land, but the prophetic word from Joel, written 850BC is that it will in fact be divided.

 
"I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel. There will be one king over all of them and they will never again be two nations or be divided into two kingdoms." (Ezekiel 37:22)

 
Joshua (great name Joshua, means 'God is salvation' or 'God rescues') rightly calls this a 'miserable situation', it has a long history, Ezekiel was written sometime around 590BC, about 650 years before Israel and Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans and the people scattered to 'the four corners of the earth'. We may ask the question was Israel returned there in 1948, fully in 1967 simply to fulfill prophecy, was it just a self-fulfilling prophecy or is there some authenticity to the prophecy. Will Jerusalem be divided? Certainly according to bible scripture it is not intended to be and if it is, will those responsible incur God's judgement?

A: Well, I don't think Jerusalem should be divided, that's merely the beginning of another problem. I take the position that is enshrined in international law: Jerusalem should be an international city, it's just too precious to belong to any state or religion. This is the same framework that would settle the conflict in a roughly 80:20 split of what used to be Palestine into Israel and Palestine. I won't comment on the scripture as I'm not a theologian, nor am I a religious man (in spite of my cool name! lol) and I think it's fair to say that the Bible is open to a lot of debate and theorisation - just look at the use of the recurring use of Gog and Magog by fundamentalists, from Reagan to Bush II, to explain foreign policy decisions.

We know from Israeli archaeology that there is considerable evidence that there has been a Jewish presence in Palestine for a very long time, this can be determined simply by the lack of pig bones in ancient communities. So there is a legitimate Jewish claim to live there. That's the case even if you don't buy the Bible, which most Israeli archaeologists don't by the way. There is also evidence that suggests the Palestinians are the descendents of the Jews who were living there thousands of years ago. Probably they were converted through conquest. This is all interesting, and somewhat ironic, but it doesn't provide any answer to the crisis in itself. The question of what the Zionist mission ought to be in its finer details is left completely open still. That could be part of the reason why there is opposition to peace from inside Israel, it remains unclear where the expansion should end - if 80% is too little how about 90% and so on? There are those who dream of a Greater Israel, and that will mean a perpetual war with the Arabs.

Example, should Israel be a Jewish state or a state for Jews? That's an important distinction which has never been fully clarified in Zionist circles. This matters because it relates to what kind of law there should be in Israel, as well as the demographic composition - if it's a state for Jews then it doesn't have to be a majority Jewish state for instance. By comparison, Pakistan was founded as a state for Muslims modeled on India but in the 1980s the dictatorship began to change this to the notion of Pakistan as an Islamic state (and even began to compare itself to Israel funnily enough). It impacts the internal politics of the nation-state, Pakistan has been dominated by authoritarian governments sometimes more irreligious at times. I think that Israel could've been founded in a better way than it has been, though in its foundation it was just like every other nation-state (e.g. born out of violence/theft). But we can't turn back time. The strongest claim of the Jews is perhaps based on their need for a safe haven. Again, that doesn't really deal with the details of what Israel should look like.

The important point to stress is that Israel (however defined) can exist with an independent and free Palestine as it's neighbour. To paraphrase Abba Eban, a free Palestine would pose the same threat to the existence of Israel as Luxembourg currently poses to Russia.

Syria's Islamic 'civil war'.

The Wrong brand of Islam.

As Robert Fisk observes, the coverage of this conflict is mired in hypocrisy and mendacity. No Western power is serious about a ‘humanitarian intervention’ in this instance. The political class was relieved (though it won’t admit it) at the Sino-Russian veto which provoked such criticism in the West. Not that there is ever any such concern about the four decades that the US has spent blocking a peaceful settlement over Israel-Palestine. This is highly relevant as the Israelis want to see Syria fall into the hands of people who will betray the Lebanese resistance and sell-out on the Palestinian question. Interestingly, Hezbollah in Lebanon have gone completely quiet as its Shi'ite comrade Bashar al-Assad struggles to hold down a democratic opposition in his own country. Fisk notes "For 30 years, Hezbollah has defended the oppressed Shias of southern Lebanon against Israeli aggression. They have presented themselves as the defenders of Palestinian rights in the West Bank and Gaza. But faced with the slow collapse of their ruthless ally in Syria, they have lost their tongue."

In The Evening Standard Philipp Bobbitt comments “Various Iranian officials have depicted the Syrian civil war as a clash of outside powers, with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey serving as proxies for the US and the UK [which they most certainly are!], trying to weaken the alliance of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah [to further empower Israel].” Note that Bobbitt emphasises that this is the line of the Iranian regime, probably with the intention of muddying it in the minds of his readers. Yet it’s soon clear that Bobbitt is sympathetic to an “extensive bombing campaign, and air strikes” to undermine Syria’s air defences and lay the way for a power-sharing arrangement. He stresses that he isn’t for ‘Western ground troops’ (and no one is) but then stresses that we can rely on Turkey (and NATO) for that. Bobbitt goes on to frame all of this as a ‘civil war’ within Islam, between the Sunni and the Shia manifested in the competing orders of the Saudi Kingdom and the Iranian Republic.

Of course, it seems more like a conflict between Western influence in the region and the only current independent of American-Israeli edict. The problem is not Iran's human rights record, the real problem is that the Iranians will not take orders from Washington between hanging homosexuals. If there really is a ‘civil war’ within Islam then it’s a portion of the Sunni lot that’s on our side, in this view the Shi’ites are the enemy because they inhabit the oiliest land in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Iran poses a threat to the unnatural order that has oil profits being wired to New York and London. So naturally Iranian influence is highlighted as part of the problem in Syria. It seems more plausible that there’s a conflict over the natural resources of that region and it has multifarious belligerents. This is how to take the Sino-Russian opposition to any UN sanctions against Syria. It is also plausible that the objectives of the Western support for rebels go as far as the subversion of any democratic currents in Syria. But it isn't clear if this aim will be achieved.

The Saudi-Qatari ruling-class would love to create another bulwark to Iranian influence in it's tacit alliance with Israel. The Syrian regime has to be destroyed because it's a decrepit Ba'athist model rooted in the Alawite sect of Shi'ite Islam, which makes it a conveniently placed ally of Iran and Hezbollah. It is in the interests of the US and Israel to dethrone Assad and destroy the Ba'ath Party for this reason. This is where the interests of Wahhabi Islamists converge with the interests of Western power and the rebel groups fighting to bring down the Syrian regime. At the same time it has to be said that the popular movement to free Syria from this regime does not subscribe to any religious edicts coming out of Saudi Arabia. The sectarian Wahhabi Islamists are a minority within the struggle, as Richard Seymour has noted. It may be more plausible that the Turkish-backed Muslim Brotherhood will come to power at the ballot box, as seen in Egypt, but it's not a predestined conclusion.

The ideal outcome would take the most progressive aspects of the legacy of Arab nationalism further within a democratic framework to set the ground for a new politics. We should note, as Seymour does, that the Assad regime has sought to harden its position by paying agents to shout sectarian slogans. This is reminiscent of attempts by the Egyptian regime to stir inter-religious violence between Coptic Christians and Muslims. Instead the Coptics and the Muslims stood together in Tahrir Square, "We are one!" they shouted defiantly. Similar methods of whipping up anti-Semitic fervour among the crowds failed. This is a struggle for democracy in the region and it has yet to flower. It is vital that the Left stands behind the democratic opposition and resistance to Bashar al-Assad and the Ba'ath Party for the sake of a shift in paradigm. The opportunity to wrench Syria from all spheres of influence can't be missed. This isn't the same as saying that we should support the liberal interventionists and NATO apologists for bombing a sovereign country.

The Perils of Depoliticization.

Religious anti-Politics.

It’s often overlooked that the encroachment on public space and stultification of mass-politics has damned us to an anaemic existence in political terms. The inability to participate in a meaningful fashion in the realm of organised politics has left people without any means of identification, participation and association at the political level. Religious fundamentalism fills the breach when there are no meaningful forms of political organisation and participation to involve oneself.It seems significant that the politics of fear came to the forefront of American foreign policy in the early 21^st Century. The space which was once filled by Communism was now a slot occupied by Islamism. It became the new enemy we must vanquish in the name of freedom. This closed down the End of History narrative which began with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The old question of whether the future will be socialist, fascist or capitalist could be put aside. It was the triumph of liberal democratic capitalism, the only system left and the world was now beyond politics.

As Slavoj Žižek notes Kansas was once the bedrock of American leftism, after the triumphs of Reaganomics and the subsequent stultification of US politics Kansas has become another centre of Christian fundamentalism. The same can be said of Afghanistan, which was once a moderate Westward looking monarchy before the Communist coup and subsequent Russian invasion to which the primary resistance came from radicalised Muslim groups supported by the US. It was the US that founded the Mujahideen in 1978 and later financed the Taliban to secure plans for an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea through Afghanistan to Pakistan. In Pakistan the US supported the military dictatorship of General Zia ul-Haq which carried out an extensive radicalisation of Pakistani society in the 1980s. The military junta was conceived in a coup that unseated the comparatively liberal Bhutto government. The US actually went as far as to produce Jihadist manuals, printed at the University of Nebraska, to be distributed in Pakistan.

It is no coincidence that the rise of radical Islamism in the Middle East coincides with the failures and decline of Arab nationalism combined with the collapse of the Soviet Union. In part this came down to the deliberate destruction of nationalist alternative to secure the hold on the oil spigot through the theocracies on the Arab peninsula. The involuntary euthanasia of Arab nationalism also served to defend Israeli expansionism and insulate rejectionists from meaningful negotiations for a peaceful settlement and the international consensus which supports it. The radical Islamists were empowered by this decline as the Arabs turned from one identity-marker to another. The only form of association and identification became religious rather than national in what was left of the political realm. In the Middle East it has been the major form of the politics of resistance to American and Israeli military power in the region for far too long. It took the place of left-wing and nationalist movements often with the blessing of Washington.

Hope in Democracy.

Everywhere you look in the Middle East there were currents of secular nationalism that have been destroyed. In Iran the nationalist government of Mossadegh was overthrown in 1953 to install the Shah which acted as a bulwark to the various forces in the country until 1979 when radical Shi’ite Islamists seized the state in the midst of revolution.Hezbollah came out of the Amal movement on the other side of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which disarmed the Lebanese Left and the PLO. The Amal movement was a Shi’ite communalist movement, not fundamentalist, until it underwent radicalisation with Hezbollah as a splintered off-shoot with the sponsorship of the Iranian state. The Israeli government even supported Hamas in its early years to undermine the secular Left and particularly Arafat. Similarly in Egypt Sadat supported the emergence of radical Islamic groups to undermine the more left-wing Nasserites. It backfired and Sadat was killed by Islamists in 1981 for the peace treaty he signed with the Israelis.

After 30 years of Mubarak the Egyptian brand of nationalism has discredited itself fully and the halcyon days of Nasser remains a distant memory. Mubarak stuffed his family’s accounts with an estimated $70 billion while the majority of Egyptians have had to survive on less than $2 a day.The lowest moment came at the height of the Tahrir protests Mubarak got down on his knees and begged Netanyahu to invade Egypt so that he could hold onto his position as a ‘heroic Arab leader’. What he didn’t know was that the generals were listening in on his phone calls and Mubarak was soon dethroned. Ultimately the democratic uprising of 2011 that dethroned Mubarak gave birth to a neutered Islamic administration with a coterie of generals around it. It seems significant that the democratic nationalist Sabahi was knocked out of the race quickly, leaving the Egyptian people to choose between a felool and a fanatic. The nationalist alternative was dirtied far too much to be revived even in a dissident form.

The Arab Spring is an opportunity for the people of the Middle East to re-politicize. This does not mean a return to 'proper politics'. In the original Greek sense polis means more than a community as Mike Marqusee notes "It was a self-conscious unit of self-administration (independent of empires) and from the start was made up of separate, contending social classes." He goes further to note that Athenian democracy was itself the product of a class struggle and class compromise between aristocrats and artisants who had become 'free citizens'.  Politics emerged as a distinct activity concerned with the affairs of the polis in separation from any tribal loyalties. The polis was not to be conflated with the oikos, the economy was a private realm from the radical democratic polis. Depoliticization can open up greater space for capital's rule. The future of the Middle East is not in the anti-politics of theoconservatism, rather it is in the democratic opening which will give room for greater organisation at the grass-roots. This is only the beginning of a long process.

In defence of 'anti-Semites'.

The charge of anti-Semitism is regularly levelled against anyone with the clarity of moral conscience to criticise Israel in its rejectionism of international law and aggression against the Palestinians and neighbour-states. Ken Livingstone was routinely labelled an ‘anti-Semite’ for his support of the Palestinian rights and putting a Jewish journalist on the spot for writing for a paper owned by The Daily Mail, formerly pro-Mosley and pro-Hitler now just a sour proto-fascist rag. Incidentally The Daily Mail has stuck to the line that the Frankfurt School are behind the triumphs of gay rights, dependency culture, mass-immigration and multiculturalism. In other words, all the faults of modern society (as they see it) are down to a left-wing Jewish cabal. The bogeyman of cultural Bolshevism has been replaced by cultural Marxism. This is no different to the Hitlerian claim that the source of all the world’s problems is Judeo-Bolshevism. The Daily Mail gets away with it because it is ‘pro-Israel’ and Ken Livingstone is put on the spot for reviewing books on Press TV. It was more important for much of the press to slander Livingstone as a Judeophobe for his position on Palestine. 

The elementary standards of morality and human decency go out of the window in such cases. This is most evident in extreme instances of vilification. For example, Masada2000 have produced the Jewish SHIT list which amounts to a list of 7,000 Jews who are Self-Hating Israel Threating complete with black-and-white sinister photographs. The ambulance chaser Alan Dershowitz – a good lawyer for guilty clients – went as far as to accuse Norman Finkelstein’s late mother of being a Nazi collaborator while she was in Auschwitz. He then went on to conjure up a campaign against Finkelstein that culminated in him being denied tenure at DePaul University. No doubt the Catholic university would’ve been labelled ‘anti-Semitic’ if it had done otherwise. The most recent shocker was when a poem by Günter Grass was banned by the Israeli government, simply because it points out (what we all know) that the Israeli political-military class wants a fight with Iran. Even Mossad and Shin Bet have confirmed that Netanyahu is a dangerous figure, but it’s still too much to say so in the West where criticism of Israel is still unwelcome.

As Gore Vidal notes it was Irving Kristol, the fairy godfather of neoconservatism, who wrote “If one had informed American Jews fifteen years ago that there was to be a powerful revival of Protestant fundamentalism as a political as well as religious force, they would surely have been alarmed, since they would have assumed that any such revival might tend to be anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. But the Moral Majority is neither.” This conveniently ignores the anti-Semitism rife on the Christian Right. The evangelicals are supportive of Israel only to bring on the Rapture and see to it that the Jews (except for 140,000 who are automatically ‘saved’) along with the Muslims and other assorted heretics are sent straight to hell. It was Herzl who had foreseen that the anti-Semitic nations would become the political allies of Zionism. Today the anti-Semites who are ‘pro-Israeli’ can be let-off, while any opposition to Israeli policy from gentiles is a sign of a Brownshirt and from Jews it’s a symptom of neurotic self-loathing.

It was Ronald Reagan who said “Israel is the only stable democracy we can rely on as a spot where Armageddon could come.” The subject of Vidal’s scorn was another leading neoconservative Norman Podhoretz and his wife Midge Decter. The neoconservative ‘democratic revolutionaries’ are typically ex-leftist apologists for American military might and the cause of a Greater Israel. Irving Kristol remarked that a neoconservative is a liberal mugged by reality. It could well be said that these mugged liberals discovered the useful side of the politics of hate: whether it be feminists, blacks, fags or quiche-eating liberals the dice have to be rolled if you’re a betting man. And betting men like Kristol and Podhoretz have no problem taking the side of some of the most rancid anti-Semites on the planet. Gore Vidal pointed out that the Israel lobby has had to keep in line with American foreign policy for the sake of military aid to Israel. This has meant that the old liberal positions simply won’t do and the American Jewish Committee had to shift further rightwards.

The scathing ink of Gore Vidal’s pen never shirked away from controversy. He was not one of the politically correct minded liberals. This fearlessness came across in his provocative insinuation of ‘dual loyalties’ among the ex-leftist Jewish intellectuals who comprised neoconservatism at the time. It is the political-military establishment of the US and Israel to which the neoconservatives are most loyal, not the love of any country in particular. He stands with Israeli peaceniks, the very people that the neoconservatives despise.He describes the Israeli settlers as ‘predatory’ in the same way that the white people who settled and cleansed the Americas were ‘predators’. This isn’t ‘moral equivalence’ as Gore Vidal knows full well that the founding of America involved the deaths of millions of Native Americans. He merely acknowledges Israel is in the same line in its state-founding violence. Nearly 1 million Palestinians were dispossessed to found Israel and now constant violence is used to further expand the nation-state.

There’s a line that you cannot cross when it comes to criticism of Israel, then you instantly become an anti-Semitic defender of radical Islamism.In the attack on Gaza in late 2008 over 1,400 Palestinian civilians, one-third of them children, were killed by Israeli bombs and bullets. There was no target out of bounds, hospitals, mental health centres and ambulances were attacked. Even schools were doused in white phosphorus and the illegality of such an action does not rouse the conscience of the apologists for barbarism. In the words of George Orwell "The nationalist does not only disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." It all falls under the umbrella of ‘self-defence’, but if the use of white phosphorous is justified in these terms in ‘defence’ of Israel then would it follow that the suicide-bombers of Palestine are justified by their claim to ‘defence’? It should be noted that the Palestinian claim to self-defence is surely stronger than the Israeli claim, for the reason that the Israeli government is the primary aggressor.

Chaim Weizmann used to say that the danger to Israel was not the ‘extremists’, it was the ‘moderates’ who posed the real threat. It is the case that the Israeli establishment prefers anti-Semites to moderate reformers, it can dismiss the opposition if they are salivating at the prospect of slaughtering Jewish children. This is precisely the reason that the Israeli government protected Sheikh Yassin for a long time. Yet he was a major proponent of Islamic nutdom as well as anti-Semitic delusions. In the early days of the first intifada the Israeli government actually sponsored Islamism to undermine Arab nationalists and the secular Left. Strikes at universities on the West Bank were broken up by busing in Islamists. It went as far as to actually fund Hamas in order to undermine Arafat’s base of support. The PLO had to be destroyed because it proposed a pragmatic solution in 1976: a return to the borders before the 1967 war, 22% of the land goes to the Palestinians and 78% to the Israelis complete with recognition of Israel. The US blocked the settlement even though it had the support of virtually the entire world including the Arab states and the PLO.

Power, Faith & Unbelief.

"Monotheism is easily the greatest disaster to befall the human race." – Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal agreed with George Bernard Shaw that the subjects which interest civilised men can be narrowed down to politics and religion. Not just in Creation but in his 'inventions' Kalki and Messiah. The religious instinct in man fascinated Vidal, especially as he saw the late 20th Century as a period of the deterioration of the traditional religions. Meanwhile he had preempted the rise of the death cult in America in his 1954 novel Messiah. In the bourgeois fetish for the cultures of the past Vidal found great hopes for our civilisation in the Stoics of Rome and the Confucians of China. The great mistake of humanity, in his view, was monotheism in its claim to universal truth and he held Christianity in particular disdain. In his novel Julian the focus is the Roman Emperor Julian who sets out to undo the union of Christian dogma and state-power in order to revert back to the plurality of Paganism. This exemplifies the liberal side of Gore Vidal, his loyalty to secular humanism.

It is typical of Gore Vidal in his 'reflections' to blend history, religion and politics in fiction for the reason that the court historians are so awful that the novel is now the only medium that can redeem history. In Creation the protagonist is a member of the Zoroastrian faith, perhaps the earliest monotheism, and witnesses the murder of Zoroaster. Cyrus is on the side of monotheism in the book, as well as the established powers in Persia and holds the masses in contempt. This is in contrast to Vidal's own political views, which could be taken as a hybrid leftism. In the book the political leaders of the time, particularly Thucydides and Pericles, are juxtaposed against one another as conservatives and democrats. The chaos of China is presented as a land which may conceive of the totalitarian impulse, while at the same time Confucian politics are received in a very positive light. Cyrus Spitama identifies himself with the conservatism of Thucydides as well as of Confucian hierarchical order and practical moral values.

In Creation Gore Vidal takes us on a tour of the ancient world, from Persia to Cathay and back, with Cyrus Spitama as our guide. Spitama is embedded in the ruling class of the Persian Empire, whilst also being descendent of Zoroaster and a follower of the Wise Lord consequently. Many of the major philosophical and religious ideas of the time are explored in the book, in Ancient Greece Cyrus encounters many philosophers and delivers his tale to his nephew Democritus. It was appropriate given the affinity Vidal had with the atomist principles espoused by Lucretius and Democritus. The vision was of a cosmos as a kind of soup of atoms bumping up against one another. The book culminates in the exposition of the atomist philosophy by Democritus. In another sense the relationship between Cyrus Spitama and Democritus mirrors the relationship between Gore Vidal and his grandfather Thomas Gore. Specifically the passing of the elder's wisdom to the young man.

The focus on the Persian Empire rails against the Western vanity, the tendency to see itself as a great fusion of Hellenism and Judeo-Christian values. Creation begins with Cyrus leaving the Odeon as Herodotus goes over his own version of history. The portrayal of Ancient Greece is just as one of many great powers rather than the centre of the world. The warring forces of China in the days of Confucius as well as the rival kingdoms of India feature prominently. The relativity of Greek glory to the lessons of the Buddha and Confucius, Mahavira and Lao Tzu. It's more than a novel, it is a work of comparative religion and philosophy crafted to persuade the reader not to be so arrogant in his modern assumptions. This is not to say that Vidal isn't writing from a position beyond commitment. Vidal was a lifelong atheist and opponent of monotheism. If anything he wants to enlighten us of the possibilities beyond the desert God of Abraham. The novel was timed well with the rise of Reaganism and the emergence of the Christian Right.


For Gore Vidal the threat of the Christian Right is equivalent to the threat of Le Pen in France, in other words it is fascistic and anti-democratic in nature. The accumulation of obscene piles of wealth in a few private hands matches the concentration of power in American society. This creates a systemic need to block democracy at every turn. Vidal would remind us that the political system in the United States is not at all democratic. First of all, there is only one political party with two right-wings - the Democrats and the Republicans - which is the party of property. Chomsky has spoken in these terms too, except he called it the business party. There is a structural need within capitalism which can be differentiated in terms of a base and a superstructure. The economic base depends upon the ideological superstructure for its legitimacy. The relation of the base to the superstructure is not just dependency, there is a tension between the pluralism and relativism of the market against the sociality of institutions and tradition.


The management of this tension can found in the revival of political religion in the new world. The Christian Right was born out of the attempts made throughout the 70s by conservatives to regroup after the losses in the last decade. The Nixon administration left America disillusioned with politics, only for great hopes to arise with the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976. The failures of the Carter administration to achieve significant change cleared the way for Reagan in 1980. Nowadays it is almost compulsory for American Presidents to be Christian: No unbelievers allowed! But it wasn't always this way. Crucially it was Carter who had made religion an issue in his openness about the faith to which he subscribed. This could be taken as a long-time result of the Christian revival of the 1950s. Really it was the 1960s which convinced many Christians that the shared fabric of society - its traditions, institutions and moral values - was about to be destroyed in its entirety. This is less a story of a Christian Right than the story of the New Right.

The debacles of the early 60s such as the Cuban crisis and the assassination of JFK the Establishment was shaken to its foundations. Everywhere there seemed to be collapse as the issues of civil rights, racism and imperialism became the moral battleground in the American body politic. The obvious opponent for Gore Vidal was William F Buckley, l'enfant terrible of American conservatism, and they would cross swords repeatedly in debates at party conventions in the late 60s. Around this time Paul Weyrich infiltrated the student Left and was astonished by the level of planning and tactics that he witnessed. He realised that the conservatives were wrong in their assumption that the people would support them because they were right about the issues. In actuality what was needed was a movement capable of rolling back the achievements of the Left. It would be a counter to the counter-culture. The key was the mobilisation of the religious, who were largely apolitical.

As Adam Curtis notes "The fundamentalists were driven by pietism - the belief that a true Christian should not only devote their life to god, but also turn their back on the secular political world. They should live the good life through their own actions - and forget about politics." The New Left had actually laid the groundwork for the entrance of right-wing Christians into the political realm. The issues of gay rights, abortion and sexual discrimination mobilised the Christian Right because the liberalisation on these social issues threatened the way that they led their private lives. Then Jimmy Carter abolished the charity status of the religious schools. For many it was the last straw, enough was enough. Paul Weyrich reached out to Jerry Falwell, the product of this backroom deal was the Moral Majority. Falwell pulled some strings in order to pull together numerous right-wing preachers in America. The aim was now not just to convert, but to register the converted as Republican voters in what would later be known as the culture wars.

The network of preachers were soon spreading anti-Carter propaganda and then an obvious alternative revealed himself to the newly political Christians. It was Ronald Reagan, the old hero of libertarians, who had been trashed by Gore Vidal in a debate with Buckley. Vidal had condemned Reagan in 1967 as an aging actor with little knowledge of the world outside the United States. This is on top of viciously draconian policies were hardly friendly to blacks and the poor. Before a crowd of Christians, at a mass rally, Reagan said that if he were stranded on a desert island he would only want the Bible to read. The election could've been won without the Christian vote. It was about a movement that could be used to influence and shape the political discourse. The right-wing hegemony turned the debate towards social and cultural issues on which the liberal Left had to be marginalised. Meanwhile the Right could implement an economic agenda as the leading political issues were moral.

Self-Hating and Israel Threatening?

 

The anti-Semitism of Zionists.

In the disgraceful history of anti-Semitism there is an irony that the Jews have traditionally been depicted as both upper-class and lower-class, overly intellectual and too earthly, lazy and workaholic. For the Third Reich the Jew represented both the decadence of liberal capitalism and the Bolshevik spirit of socialism, the Fascists offered an alternative modernity devoid of class struggle and affirmed through a rebirth of the nation. For the Nazi conversion to Christianity is out of the question as the "guilt" of the Jews does not need to be proved, the "guilt" resides in the biological constitution of Jewishness. The source of the damnation was not theological but racial. The Jew first appeared as the enemy as the dark ages came to a close in Europe with the role of money in the rapid development of market exchange. The anti-Semitic depiction came in the form of parasites who disrupt the social fabric of society. Later, the wandering Jew came about just as capitalism began to emerge and as society was transformed it began to display the features that were attributed to Jewry.

The form of anti-Semitism prevalent today can be summarised in the words of Croat nationalist rockstar Marko Perkovic "I have nothing against [the Jews] and I did nothing to them. I know that Jesus Christ also did nothing against them, but still they hanged him on the cross."  Then there is the more recent development of Zionist anti-Semitism, which Žižek has pointed to, as the establishment of the Jewish state came so did the emergence of Jews who resist identification with the Jewish state. These are the Jews who insist on the "public use of reason" over the "private" domain offered by the nation-state being constructed in the Middle East. A standard case would be Noam Chomsky who stands against the self-designation of Israel as the state of the Jewish people on the grounds that it is based on the exclusion and oppression of the Palestinians. Chomsky was a Zionist Youth Leader and lived in a kibbutz in Israel for 5 years before leaving out of disgust with the ideological atmosphere of ultra-nationalism and even Stalinist sympathies expressed by some on the Left in those days.

A classic case of Zionist anti-Semitism can be found at www.masada2000.org where a list of over 7,000 S.H.I.T. (Self-Hating Israel-Threating) Jews can be viewed. The names listed often include detailed descriptions and unflattering photos of the person, along with an email address provided to enable hate mail. It has a lot in common with Red Watch and looks just like a Nazi list of decadent Jewish freaks. You will no doubt find Chomsky and Finkelstein on the list. The Jew who does not identify with the state of Israel is reconstructed along anti-Semitic lines as we can read in the manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik. The latter drew a distinction between "loyal" and "disloyal" Jews which is presupposed by a fundamental rejection of the Jewish contribution to European identity, which is a radical universalism. In Breivik's terms the "disloyal" Jew is a liberal opposed to nationalism and Zionist, for him these Jews are complicit in the multicultural experiment and the rise of cultural Marxism.

The Vilification Industry.

It is this reconstruction of the Jewish critics of Israel along anti-Semitic lines is how the anti-Semites of the Christian Right can support Israel. There's a great deal of projection involved clearly, notice that the Christianists will attack the media and the elites as left-wing whenever criticism of Israel is given public space. The conspiracy theory of Jews ruling the world is ripped from it's context to explain away negative reports of Israel as the plot of a ultra-leftist cabal in media. At the same time, the Christian Right support Israeli expansion out of a perverse attempt to bring about the Rapture which will herald the end for the Jews and the Muslims. Generally, the logic of anti-Semitism remains prevalent in Western civilisation as particular characteristics are still considered "Jewish". We find these features are sometimes morphed to the point that the greedy Shylock becomes the entrepreneurial spirit of Alan Sugar. Apparently, this is a compliment and not a racist insinuation!

Then there is the special case of the vilification of Norman Finkelstein orchestrated by Alan Dershowitz. Finkelstein had slammed the work of Alan Dershowitz on Israel and so Dershowitz went after him. The aim was not to refute Finkelstein's argument, it was to blast him out of the water, ruin his career and muddy the discourse to the extent that there can be no step forward. Dershowitz opted to go after Finkelstein's mother, who is a survivor of Auschwitz and he actually had the nerve to claim that she survived because she was a collaborator with the Nazi regime. It has been described by Chomsky as a "jihad" to try and prevent Norman Finkelstein from being appointed to tenure at DePaul University, a Catholic university, which is vulnerable to accusations of anti-Semitism that Dershowitz certainly has no qualms about making. The use of anti-Semitism as a label to vilify critics is cynically used to shoot out the opposition to the moral degeneracy of the Israeli government.


The consistent line of Alan Dershowitz is that all of the criticism of Israel comes from anti-Semites and self-hating Jews. This is nothing unique on his part, these same claims are often made to undermine the critics of Israel. The double-think here is that if you're opposed to mass-murder then you're a Nazi of course. It is clear that the facts of Palestinian suffering evoke outrage from normal human beings and not from people with a warped view of the world. The fact that (as of June 4th 2011) 124 Israeli children killed by Palestinians and 1,463 Palestinian children killed by Israelis since September 29, 2000 should move a normal human being. The same goes for the Israeli reaction to the deaths of three Israeli citizens as a result of around 2,000 rockets being fired into Israel, the reaction being that which had left over 1,400 Palestinians dead and thousands more injured. Of course, 10 more Israeli soldiers were killed in the mean time and the slaughter was called to a stop just before Barack Obama was inaugurated as President to avoid any embarrassment for the US.

Immodest Proposals?

At the time of the establishment of the Jewish state Hannah Arendt was one of the vocal critics of the particular statist formula that the leadership of the Zionist movement embarked upon. For Arendt the worst model for the Jews to emulate is the racial nation-state because that model had produced the horrors of Nazi Germany. To secure a future free of conflict it seemed imperative to Arendt that the Palestinians and Jews had to have equal rights and recognition as citizens based on justice. Instead of an Israel based on race carved out of the Arab world by force, Arendt proposed an independent state for Jews and Palestinians as part of the British Commonwealth of Nations that would ensure both ethnic groups got a fair deal. A Jewish homeland was a solution to the perpetual "rootless" status of the Jews and a federation amongst the Arabs and Jews in Palestine would be vital for the survival of a Jewish homeland. This was the alternative to the violence that has been used to carve a Jewish state out of a predominantly Arab region.


The concerns Hannah Arendt had about the future character of a Jewish state that had to live in agitation with its Arab neighbours were somewhat prescient. She foresaw that the Jews would have to live surrounded entirely by a hostile Arab population and secluded inside ever-threatened borders. The state would become inward looking to the extent that all other interests are marginalised by "self-defence". We have seen that the social programmes and welfare measures taken in other states have been reduced in Israel in order to raise military spending. The external threats would overwhelm social experiments, which we have seen as the most radical Kibbutzim were suppressed, whilst the military would take the centreplace of political theory and economic development. Israel was once an almost socialistic society for many years, but it is now in a state of immense inequality in which 18 families control 60% of corporate equity. Israel is second only to the US in terms of inequality.


Noam Chomsky has commented that the ideas which were considered Zionist before the establishment of the state of Israel would be considered anti-Zionist today for it is anti-statist. When Noam Chomsky was a Zionist Youth Leader he was for Arab and Jewish working-class cooperation to construct a bi-national socialist Palestine. The establishment of the state of Israel was a day of mourning for Chomsky and his pals. We can see the break between the kind of Zionism that Chomsky was involved in and the trajectory of Israel. In the country inequality has exploded as the military-industrial complex and high-tech industry (which are interconnected) have taken precedent over the welfare state. The wealth generated through financial services, chemical fertiliser and diamonds is concentrated in very few hands. Arendt went as far as to claim that the Jews of Palestine would change character to such a degree that they would no longer represent world Jewry as a whole. We find this is the case as the Israeli government differs greatly in policy to the liberal values of American Jews.