[Peace-discuss] Zionism is the problem

Mon Mar 16 20:54:23 CDT 2009

Simply put, Finkelstein finesses the question of the importance of  
Zionism to Israeli policies towards Palestinians . He can assert that  
it has no importance (in his opinion), but if one wants understand the  
sectarian nature of Israel, it obviously has importance, despite his  
glib assertion to the contrary. The sectarianism of that state is of  
primary importance—it is not (only) a question of religion or  
tradition. As for the rest, I suppose Finkelstein can push the idea of  
a two state solution, since it backed by international law coming from  
the Court of Justice, the UN, etc., but it will go nowhere if the USA  
and Israel does not recognize those entities.

Ali Abunimah was far more persuasive on this than Finkelstein. As he  
reiterated, equality is the issue. --mkb

On Mar 16, 2009, at 7:15 PM, David Green wrote:

> It's also interesting to note that Finkelstein steers clear of  
> discussion about Zionism, anti-Zionism, post-Zionism, etc.:
>
> From a recent discussion transcribed on his website:
>
> Finkelstein: Number 1: it's going to mean steering clear of  
> ideological debates and
>
> discussions. As Sumayyah mentioned in her introductory remarks, I  
> did write a doctoral
>
> thesis on Zionism. However, whenever I speak on the topic — recent  
> years when I've
>
> written on the topic — I never mentioned the word Zionism because I  
> do not want to get
>
> involved in ideological debate about whether or not you are a  
> Zionist. Frankly, I couldn't
>
> care less whether you are or you aren't. It's an interesting  
> intellectual topic ,maybe, but it's
>
> of exactly in my opinion — it's of exactly zero political  
> importance. So I'm going to
>
> recommend, and you'll see in the course of my remarks, I'm going to  
> recommend steering
>
> clear of any ideological debates about the nature of the Israel- 
> Palestine conflict.
>
> [5:44]
>
> Finkelstein: Number 2: I'm going to recommend that if you're  
> seriously committed to
>
> trying to resolve the conflict, that the only way in my opinion to  
> resolve the conflict at this
>
> point is to bring to bear the consensus of the international  
> community on how to resolve the
>
> conflict — not to try to defy the international community with more  
> radical radical slogans.
>
> (noise) .. OK, not to try to defy the international community with  
> your own or someone
>
> else's more radical slogans, but rather to bring to bare the weight  
> of international public
>
> opinion: bring to bare the weight of the United Nations resolutions,  
> the world court — the
>
> International Court of Justice — decision and so on and so forth in  
> trying to resolve the
>
> conflict. For some of you in this room, and maybe for the majority  
> of you in this room,
>
> that's not going to be a satisfying answer. You're going to tell me  
> you want to go out and
>
> advocate a one state solution, or you want to go out and advocate a  
> democratic secular or
>
> whatever Palestine. And my answer is going to be to you, in my  
> opinion, that's a dead-end
>
> strategy. It may be very satisfying for you in your little group; it  
> may be satisfying for you
>
> in your living room, and maybe satisfying for you in your little  
> club or grouplet. But if you're
>
> seriously committed — as I assume was my mandate from Sumayyah — if  
> you're seriously
>
> committed to trying to lessen the suffering of the Palestinian  
> people, to bring a little bit of
>
> sunshine into an otherwise very gray life of forty years and more,  
> then that's not in my view
>
> the strategy. Because there's exactly zero support in the  
> international community for a one
>
> state, democratic state, of whatever you want to call Palestine. On  
> the other hand, there's a
>
> huge amount of international support for a two-state settlement, and  
> it's that which we
>
> have to bring to the attention of People.
>
>
>
> From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>
> To: Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
> Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 6:13:57 PM
> Subject: [Peace-discuss] Zionism is the problem
>
> [A piece by the son of Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed).  See  
> her article on socialism in the current Nation 9with other  
> contributions), FWIW: <http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090323/ehrenreich_fletcher 
> >. It's important to note that, as Norman Finkelstein pointed out  
> here last week, US support is the conditio sine qua non for Israel's  
> existence as a racist state.  We Americans should address our  
> protests to DC rather than Tel Aviv.  --CGE]
>
>
>     From the Los Angeles Times
>     *Zionism is the problem*
>     The Zionist ideal of a Jewish state is keeping
>     Israelis and Palestinians from living in peace.
>     By Ben Ehrenreich
>     March 15, 2009
>
> It's hard to imagine now, but in 1944, six years after Kristallnacht,
> Lessing J. Rosenwald, president of the American Council for Judaism,
> felt comfortable equating the Zionist ideal of Jewish statehood with
> "the concept of a racial state -- the Hitlerian concept." For most of
> the last century, a principled opposition to Zionism was a mainstream
> stance within American Judaism.
>
> Even after the foundation of Israel, anti-Zionism was not a  
> particularly
> heretical position. Assimilated Reform Jews like Rosenwald believed  
> that
> Judaism should remain a matter of religious rather than political
> allegiance; the ultra-Orthodox saw Jewish statehood as an impious
> attempt to "push the hand of God"; and Marxist Jews -- my grandparents
> among them -- tended to see Zionism, and all nationalisms, as a
> distraction from the more essential struggle between classes.
>
> To be Jewish, I was raised to believe, meant understanding oneself  
> as a
> member of a tribe that over and over had been cast out, mistreated,
> slaughtered. Millenniums of oppression that preceded it did not  
> entitle
> us to a homeland or a right to self-defense that superseded anyone
> else's. If they offered us anything exceptional, it was a  
> perspective on
> oppression and an obligation born of the prophetic tradition: to act  
> on
> behalf of the oppressed and to cry out at the oppressor.
>
> For the last several decades, though, it has been all but impossible  
> to
> cry out against the Israeli state without being smeared as an
> anti-Semite, or worse. To question not just Israel's actions, but the
> Zionist tenets on which the state is founded, has for too long been
> regarded an almost unspeakable blasphemy.
>
> Yet it is no longer possible to believe with an honest conscience that
> the deplorable conditions in which Palestinians live and die in Gaza  
> and
> the West Bank come as the result of specific policies, leaders or
> parties on either side of the impasse. The problem is fundamental:
> Founding a modern state on a single ethnic or religious identity in a
> territory that is ethnically and religiously diverse leads inexorably
> either to politics of exclusion (think of the 139-square-mile prison
> camp that Gaza has become) or to wholesale ethnic cleansing. Put  
> simply,
> the problem is Zionism.
>
> It has been argued that Zionism is an anachronism, a leftover ideology
> from the era of 19th century romantic nationalisms wedged  
> uncomfortably
> into 21st century geopolitics. But Zionism is not merely outdated.  
> Even
> before 1948, one of its basic oversights was readily apparent: the
> presence of Palestinians in Palestine. That led some of the most
> prominent Jewish thinkers of the last century, many of them  
> Zionists, to
> balk at the idea of Jewish statehood. The Brit Shalom movement --
> founded in 1925 and supported at various times by Martin Buber, Hannah
> Arendt and Gershom Scholem -- argued for a secular, binational state  
> in
> Palestine in which Jews and Arabs would be accorded equal status.  
> Their
> concerns were both moral and pragmatic. The establishment of a Jewish
> state, Buber feared, would mean "premeditated national suicide."
>
> The fate Buber foresaw is upon us: a nation that has lived in a  
> state of
> war for decades, a quarter-million Arab citizens with second-class
> status and more than 5 million Palestinians deprived of the most basic
> political and human rights. If two decades ago comparisons to the  
> South
> African apartheid system felt like hyperbole, they now feel  
> charitable.
> The white South African regime, for all its crimes, never attacked the
> Bantustans with anything like the destructive power Israel visited on
> Gaza in December and January, when nearly1,300 Palestinians were  
> killed,
> one-third of them children.
>
> Israeli policies have rendered the once apparently inevitable two- 
> state
> solution less and less feasible. Years of Israeli settlement
> construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have methodically
> diminished the viability of a Palestinian state. Israel's new prime
> minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has even refused to endorse the idea  
> of an
> independent Palestinian state, which suggests an immediate future of
> more of the same: more settlements, more punitive assaults.
>
> All of this has led to a revival of the Brit Shalom idea of a single,
> secular binational state in which Jews and Arabs have equal political
> rights. The obstacles are, of course, enormous. They include not  
> just a
> powerful Israeli attachment to the idea of an exclusively Jewish  
> state,
> but its Palestinian analogue: Hamas' ideal of Islamic rule. Both sides
> would have to find assurance that their security was guaranteed. What
> precise shape such a state would take -- a strict, vote-by-vote
> democracy or a more complex federalist system -- would involve years  
> of
> painful negotiation, wiser leaders than now exist and an  
> uncompromising
> commitment from the rest of the world, particularly from the United
> States.
>
> Meanwhile, the characterization of anti-Zionism as an "epidemic" more
> dangerous than anti-Semitism reveals only the unsustainability of the
> position into which Israel's apologists have been forced. Faced with
> international condemnation, they seek to limit the discourse, to erect
> walls that delineate what can and can't be said.
>
> It's not working. Opposing Zionism is neither anti-Semitic nor
> particularly radical. It requires only that we take our own values
> seriously and no longer, as the book of Amos has it, "turn justice  
> into
> wormwood and hurl righteousness to the ground."
>
> Establishing a secular, pluralist, democratic government in Israel and
> Palestine would of course mean the abandonment of the Zionist dream.  
> It
> might also mean the only salvation for the Jewish ideals of justice  
> that
> date back to Jeremiah.
>
> Ben Ehrenreich is the author of the novel "The Suitors."
> Copyright 2009 Los Angeles Times
>
> http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ehrenreich15-2009mar15,0,6684861.story
>
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