[Peace-discuss] Arrogant, Cynical, Heartless: Just Another Scholar in Residence at PJCS

[David Green]

The following has been submitted to the IMC website:

The current scholar in residence hosted by the Program
for Jewish Culture and Society is columnist and author
Hillel Halkin, a “moderate” Israeli and scholar of
Yiddish literature. What makes Halkin moderate is,
beyond his scholarly writing, a patronizing rather
than virulent tone vis-a-vis the Palestinians (see
first excerpt below). He was a supporter of the
comatose Sharon and his Kadima party, which is now
what passes for moderation in Israel. Being a Yiddish
scholar also serves to evoke an aura of sentimentality
that makes Zionism and its openly racist practices
more palatable, or at least less relevant.

I believe, however, that what this man stands for is
clearly morally abominable, and that the field of
Jewish Studies on our campus (and presumably on
others) continues to distinguish itself in a manner
which attempts to give a human face to Israeli racism
and apartheid both in the occupied territories and
within Israel itself.

As you can see below, he doesn’t even have much of a
heart for poor Jews in Israel. So was the point of
establishing a “Jewish state” so that Jews can have
this sort of benign or malign contempt for each other
on the basis of social class? 

The view of “Jewish culture and society” promoted by
PJCS is narrow and esoteric, politically backwards,
self-serving to local Jewish leadership, academically
embarrassing, and irrelevant to any genuine insight
regarding the current dire state of affairs in the
Middle East, either in Israel/Palestine or more
broadly speaking. Nor does the program address
fundamental issues of importance to Jewish-Americans
regarding our history, ethnic and religious
identities, and political interests and ideals, such
as they are (see neoconservatism, Larry Franklin, and
Jack Abramoff, and second excerpt below, for
examples). By the way, these choices continue to
exclude perspectives regarding the Sephardic majority
of Jews within Israel (see the reference to poor Jews
below, most who are Sephardic).

We must begin to face up to the fact that the “Fiddler
on the Roof” is now serving at checkpoints in the
occupied territories.

Following are three excerpts from Halkin’s articles:

1. Hillel Halkin on return and compensation for the
Palestinians:

“From A Jewish point of view, of course, there can be
no question of returning even a small part of the land
and houses (the great majority of which are no longer
standing anyway) that belonged to the Palestinians who
fled in 1948. It's all ours now and it has to remain
ours.

But that doesn't mean we can't say to the
Palestinians: Yes it's all ours - but it was once
yours and we took it from you. That's not something we
have to apologize for; we took it because we needed it
and wouldn't have had a country to live in without it.
Yet it's still only fair that you should be paid for
what we took. There's a difference between
expropriation and theft and while we have no qualms
about having been expropriators we don't want to be
thieves.

In a word, compensation. No return of Palestinian
refugees to Israel much less any return of their
property but a willingness to pay for that property as
any government guided by law pays for what it
expropriates for the public good.”

2. Halkin on the alliance of Jewish-Americans with the
Christian Right:

“All this would hold true even were it not the case
that the Christian Right is today Israel's main
bastion of political support in the United States at a
time when the liberal Left has turned increasingly
against it. One can certainly understand that this is
a source of embarrassment and bewilderment for
American Jews who find themselves deserted by old
friends and embraced by perceived aliens. But
embarrassment and bewilderment are not political
strategies - and if the Jewish community of the United
States has no coherent political strategy for
defending a Jewish state that is under concerted
attack it is Jewishly worth nothing no matter how many
other worthy causes it makes its own. Ultimately
Abraham Foxman will have to decide what worries him
more: Praying quarterbacks or the future of the Jewish
people.”

3. Halkin on poverty in Israel:

“Although cutting poverty in Israel depends on many
things including more and better-paying jobs and
better educational training to prepare for them
smaller families would clearly help too. They would
enable working parents Muslim and Jewish to support
and educate their children better; make it possible
for non-working parents especially mothers to go to
work; would lower government expenditures and taxes -
and would in the bargain help firm up Israel's Jewish
majority.

We cannot of course simply abolish child allowances
and let the children who now depend on them grow up in
abjectness. If anything we should increase them - for
children who are already born. But at the same time we
should be thinking of policies whereby starting with
an official cut-off date child allowances after a
certain child would be eliminated. We have enough
poverty without subsidizing the creation of still more
of it.

There is nothing wrong with large families as long as
someone else is not expected to pay for them. In this
season of self-castigation for being a country that
permits so much poverty let's remember that sometimes
poverty is also the fault of the poor.”


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