13. The Jewish Diaspora supports a Jewish Ethnic State

Shlomo Sand, concluding chapter in “The Invention of the Jewish People”, ETHNOCRACY IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION. Where does the impetus for an apartheid state really come from?

I am deleting the breaking news of the Trump assassination attempt I had put at the bottom. Everybody knows about it by now.

This post about the Jewish people is a very important viewpoint. No sense to confuse it with other information.

[It may be only a proposal, but I think an obvious statement.  Where does Israel get world-wide support?  It is the Jewish Diaspora that finds its identity in a Jewish ethnic state.  But they don’t have to live through the conflictual turmoil.  In this way, they also have a proxy to do the dirty work.  In a way, the Diaspora are also the most anti-Semitic people, because the want to isolate Jews in an 8,600 sq mi enclave.  It didn’t have to be an “ethnic state”, but it was built on that premise, and it goes deeper and deeper into that pit.  By now it is extremely difficult to imagine an egalitarian, democratic alternative without tons of backlash. 

There is also the anti-Semitic myth that Jews run the world.  The Jewish gravitate toward banking, but don’t own most of them.  The New York Times has a Jewish owner, but the Washington Post is owned by a Catholic.  So why do Gentiles want a Jewish (proxy) outpost in the Middle East?  I think that the last upload in the form of a theater monologue explains everything perfectly.  It is a chauvinistic colonial, (or neo-colonial) mindset.]

3,000 words, HERE’S THE BOOK CHAPTER:

Israel must still be described as an "ethnocracy."[86]   Better still, call it a Jewish ethnocracy with liberal features—that is, a state whose main purpose is to serve not a civil-egalitarian demos, but a biological-religious ethnos that is wholly fictitious historically, but dynamic, exclusive, and discriminatory in its political manifestation. Such a state, for all its liberalism and pluralism, is committed to isolating its chosen ethnos through ideological, pedagogical and legislative means, not only from those of its own citizens who are not classified as Jews, not only from the Israeli-born children of foreign workers, but from the rest of humanity.

Although it has experienced many upheavals, Israel has existed as a liberal ethnocracy for more than seventy-five years. The liberal features have grown stronger over the years, but the state's ethnocentric foundation remains an obstacle to their development. Furthermore, the effective myths that guided the construction of the national state may give rise to a future challenge to its very existence.

The myth of the historical claim to Eretz Israel, which fortified the self-sacrificing endeavors of the first Zionist settlers and legitimized the acquisition of the territorial base for the future state, led it after nineteen years of independence to become immured in an oppressive colonialist situation from which it is still unable to extricate itself.

Note 86: It was Nadim Rouhana, As'ad Ghanem and Oren Yiftachel who began to apply the terms "ethnic state" and "ethnocracy" to Israel. See Nadim N. Rouhana, Palestinian Citizens in an Ethnic Jewish State: Identities in Conflict, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997; As'ad Ghanem, "State and Minority in Israel: The Case of Ethnic State and the Predicament of Its Minority," Ethnic and Racial Studies 21: 3 (1998), 428-47; and Oren Yiftachel, Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine.

The occupation in 1967 led many Zionists, secular and religious alike, to view the new territories as the heart of the ancestral land. On the purely mythological level they were right—the imaginary spaces in which Abraham, David and Solomon lived were not Tel Aviv, the coast and the Galilee, but Hebron, Jerusalem and the mountains of Judea. For ethnic reasons, the supporters of the "whole Eretz Israel" rejected any idea of merging on an equal basis with the inhabitants of these territories. The partial but decisive removal of many of the local people, such as was carried out in 1948 on the coastal plain and in the Galilee, was not possible in 1967. Yet it remained an unspoken wish. A formal annexation of the new territories was avoided, as it would have led to a binational state and nullified the chances of maintaining a state with a Jewish majority.

It took the political elites in Israel forty years to diagnose the situation, and to comprehend that in an advanced technological world, control over bits of land is not always a source of power. Up to the time of writing this piece, (2009) Israel has not yet produced a bold leadership capable of splitting up "Eretz Israel." All the governments have supported and encouraged the settlements, and not one has so far tried to dismantle those that flourish in the heart of the "biblical homeland."[87] However, even if Israel abandoned the territories taken in 1967, the inherent contradiction in its very composition would still not be resolved, and another myth, even more firmly hard-wired than the territorial one, would continue to haunt it.

The myth of the Jewish ethnos as a self-isolating historical body that always barred, and must therefore go on barring, outsiders from joining it, is harmful to the State of Israel, and may cause it to disintegrate from within. Maintaining an exclusionary "ethnic entity”, and discriminating against one-quarter of the citizens—Arabs and those who are not considered Jews in accordance with misguided history and the Halakhah—leads to recurring tensions that may at some point produce violent divisions that will be difficult to heal. For Palestino-Israelis, every stage in their interaction with everyday Israeli culture accelerates their political alienation, however paradoxical this may sound. Social encounters and a closer acquaintance with Israeli cultural and political values and opportunities that today are reserved only for those defined as Jews heighten the desire for greater equality and more active political participation. That is why the so-called Arabs of 1948 are increasingly opposed to the existence of Israel as an exclusively Jewish state, and there's no telling how far this opposition may develop, or how it may be halted.

Note 87: The national attachment to Gaza never equaled the sense of proprietorship toward Hebron and Bethlehem. On the inability of Israel's political elites to achieve a peace accord, see the valuable book by Lev Luis Grinberg, Politics and Violence in Israel/Palestine, New York, Routledge, 2009.

The complacent assumption that this growing and strengthening populace will always accept its exclusion from the political and cultural heart is a dangerous illusion, similar to the blindness of Israeli society to the colonialist domination in Gaza and the West Bank before the First Intifada. But whereas the two Palestinian uprisings that broke out in 1987 and 2000 exposed the weakness of Israel's control over its apartheid territories, their threat to the existence of the state is negligible compared with the potential threat posed by the frustrated Palestinians living within its borders. The catastrophic scenario of an uprising in the Arab Galilee, followed by iron-fisted repression, may not be too far-fetched. Such a development could be a turning-point for the existence of Israel in the Near East.

No Jew who lives today in a liberal Western democracy would tolerate the discrimination and exclusion experienced by the Palestino-Israelis, who lived for generations in a state that proclaims it is not theirs. But Zionist supporters among the Jews around the world, like most Israelis, are quite unconcerned, or do not wish to know, that the "Jewish state," because of its undemocratic laws, could never have been part of the European Union or one of Americas fifty states. This flawed reality does not stop them from expressing solidarity with Israel, and even regarding it as their reserve home. Not that this solidarity impels them to abandon their national homelands and emigrate to Israel. And why should they, seeing that they are not subjected to daily discrimination and alienation of the kind that Palestino-Israelis experience daily in their native country?

In recent years the Jewish state has become less interested in large-scale immigration. The old nationalist discourse that revolved around the idea of aliyah has lost much of its appeal. To understand current Zionist politics, replace the word "aliyah" with "diaspora." Today Israel's strength no longer depends on demographic increase, but rather on retaining the loyalty of overseas Jewish organizations and communities. It would be a serious setback for Israel if all the pro-Zionist lobbies were to immigrate en-masse to the Holy Land. It is much more useful for them to remain close to the centers of power and communications in the Western world—and indeed they prefer to remain in the rich, liberal, comfortable "diaspora."

At the end of the twentieth century, the weakening of the nation-state in the Western world indirectly presented contemporary Zionism with new advantages. Economic, political and cultural globalization has significantly eroded classical nationalism, but it has not done away with the basic need for identity and alternative collective associations. The post-industrial context in the wealthy West, with its tremendous movement of material and cultural commerce, has not stopped people from seeking tangible social frameworks. And as the omnipotent state of the twentieth century gradually declines, the search for sub-identities—whether neo-religious, regional, ethnicist, communal or even sectist—has become prominent in the changing morphological fabric of the new world, and it's not clear where this development is heading.

Amid all these developments, Jewish "ethnicity" has enjoyed a resurgence. In the United States this has been a noticeable fashion for some time. As a typical immigrant state, the liberal and pluralistic American superpower has always left a generous margin for “legitimate” sub-identities. Mass nationalization in the US never sought to erase previous cultural layers or remnants of old beliefs (other than those it had exterminated at the start). In the presence of the Anglo-American, Latin American or African American; a descendant of Eastern European Jewry had to identity himself or herself as Jewish American. The person may not have preserved elements of the great Yiddish culture, but the need to belong to a particular community meant finding a focus of identity amid the sweeping cultural vortex.

As the Yiddish culture lost its vitality, Israel increased in importance for many American Jews, and the number of Zionists increased. If, during the Second World War, American Jewry behaved rather apathetically toward the mass slaughter in Europe, it responded with sympathy and support for Israel, especially following Israel's victory in the 1967 war. (They teat it like a sport and root for the home team.) In Europe, with the rise of the European Union and the weakening of the nation-states within it, the Jewish institutions in London and Paris also experienced a transnational ethnicization, and the State of Israel learned to derive maximum political benefit from this worldwide network of diaspora Jewish power.

Since the late 1970s, the perpetuation of the Jewish ethnos state has paid handsome dividends, and the closer Brooklyn came to Jerusalem, the further was Arab Nazareth removed from the heartbeat of Jewish-Israeli politics. That is why any project that proposed turning Israel into a republic of its citizens has come to seem like a fantasy. Jewish-Israeli blindness regarding the democratic radicalization of the Palestino-Israeli community, especially its younger and educated elements, has always been based on plain material interest. It not only rested on the weighty mythological past or was sustained by simple ignorance—it has also been reinforced by the profit and power derived from the existence of the overseas ethnos, which is content to subsidize it.

But there's a fly in the ointment. Although the globalization of the late twentieth century was accompanied by increased pro-Zionist ethnicization among the established Jewish communities, the runaway assimilation at ground level has continued to mix Jews with those who live beside them, who attend the same universities and who share the same workplace. The impact of everyday cultures, local and global, is stronger than the synagogue and the Zionist Sabbath folklore. Consequently, the demographic power base of the Jewish establishment is steadily eroding. Comfortable Jewish life in the "diaspora," the irresistible power of young love, and the welcome decline in anti-Semitism are all taking their toll. Surveys indicate that not only is mixed marriage on the rise, but support for Israel among Jewish families under thirty-five is declining. Only among the over-sixties is solidarity with Israel stable and popular. These data suggest that the inflow of power from Israel's "transnational diaspora" may not last forever.[88]

Nor should Israel assume that the support of the mighty West will never falter. The neocolonialism of the early twenty-first century—exemplified in, for instance, the conquest of Iraq and Afghanistan—has intoxicated the power elites in Israel, but for all the rising globalization, the West is still far away while Israel is situated in the Near East. The violent reaction to the humiliation of the East will fall not on the remote metropolis but on its forward outpost. The fate of the self-segregating ethnos state in a corner of the Arab and Muslim world is uncertain. In the present historical stage, as is usually the case, we cannot see the future, but there are good reasons to fear it.

For example, the peace camp must consider that a compromise accord with a Palestinian state, if achieved, may not only end a long and painful process, but start a new one, no less complex, inside Israel itself. The morning after may be no less painful than the long nightmare preceding it. Should a Kosovo erupt in the Galilee, neither Israel's conventional military might, nor its nuclear arsenal, nor even the great concrete wall with which it has girdled itself will be of much use. To save Israel from the black hole that is opening inside it, and to improve the fragile tolerance toward it in the surrounding Arab world, Jewish identity politics would have to change completely, as would the fabric of relations in the Palestino-Israeli sphere.

The ideal project for solving the century-long conflict and sustaining the closely woven existence of Jews and Arabs would be the creation of a democratic binational state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. To ask the Jewish Israeli people, after such a long and bloody conflict, and in view of the tragedy experienced by many of its immigrant founders in the twentieth century, to become overnight a minority in its own state may not be the smartest thing to do.

Note 88: See the article by Shmuel Rozner, "Mixed Marriages Create Two Jewish Peoples," Haaretz, December 29, 2006; and also the reports in Yediot Ahronot, August 31, 2007.

But if it is senseless to expect the Jewish Israelis to dismantle their own state, the least that can be demanded of them is to stop reserving it for themselves as a polity that segregates, excludes, and discriminates against a large number of its citizens, whom it views as undesirable aliens.

The Jewish supra-identity must be thoroughly transformed and must adapt to the lively cultural reality it dominates. It will have to undergo a process of Israelization, open to all citizens. It is too late to make Israel into a uniform, homogeneous nation-state. Therefore, in addition to an Israelization that welcomes the "other," it must develop a policy of democratic multi-culturalism—similar to that of the United Kingdom or the Netherlands—that grants the Palestino-Israelis not only complete equality but also a genuine and firm autonomy. Their culture and institutions must be preserved and nurtured at the same time as they are brought into the centers of power of the hegemonic Israeli culture. Palestino-Israeli children should have access, if they wish it, to the heart of Israeli social and productive centers. And Jewish-Israeli children must be made aware that they are living in a state in which there are many "others."

Today this forecast seems fantastic and Utopian. How many Jews would be willing to forgo the privileges they enjoy in the Zionist state? Would the Israeli elites be capable, following this cultural globalization, of undergoing a mental reformation and adopting a more egalitarian temperament? Do any of them really want to institute civil marriage and to separate the state entirely from the rabbinate? Could the Jewish Agency cease to be a state institution and become a private association for the fostering of cultural ties between the Jews of Israel and Jewish communities around the world? And when will the Jewish National Fund stop being a discriminatory ethnocentric institution, and return the 130,000 hectares of "absentee" lands that were sold to it by the state for a symbolic amount—more specifically, return them to the seller at that same symbolic price so that they may serve as the primary capital from which to compensate the Palestinian refugees?

Furthermore, will anyone dare to repeal the Law of Return, and to offer Israeli citizenship only to those Jews who are fleeing persecution? Will it be possible to deny a New York rabbi on a brief visit to Israel his automatic right to become an Israeli citizen (usually done on the eve of general elections) before he returns to his native country? And what's to stop such a Jew, assuming he is a fugitive (though not because of criminal acts), from living a contented Jewish religious life in an Israeli republic of all its citizens, just as he does in the United States?

And now the last, perhaps the hardest, question of them all: To what extent is Jewish Israeli society willing to discard the deeply embedded image of the "chosen people," and to cease isolating itself in the name of a fanciful history or dubious biology and excluding the "other" from its midst?

There are more questions than answers, and the mood at the end of this book, much as was the case in the personal stories at its start, is more pessimistic than hopeful. But it is appropriate for a work that has hung question marks over the Jewish past to conclude with a short, impertinent questionnaire about the uncertain future.

In the final account, if it was possible to have changed the historical imaginary so profoundly, why not put forth a similarly lavish effort of the imagination to create a different tomorrow? If the nation's history was mainly a dream, why not begin to dream its future afresh, before it becomes a nightmare?

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