{news} Fw: USGP-INT The new Jewish bi-nationalism (Mark Levine, History News Network)

[Amy Vas Nunes]

This is an anti-semetic view and has been sent to the CT ADL***Amy***


>From: "Justine McCabe" <justinemccabe at earthlink.net>
>To: "CTGP Women's Caucus" <gpcwc at lists.riseup.net>,"CTGP-NEWS" 
><ctgp-news at ml.greens.org>
>Subject: {news} Fw: USGP-INT The new Jewish bi-nationalism (Mark 
>Levine,History News Network)
>Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2006 22:03:39 -0400
>
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>----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott McLarty" <scottmclarty at yahoo.com>
>To: <usgp-media at gp-us.org>; <natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org>; 
><usgp-int at gp-us.org>
>Sent: Sunday, October 22, 2006 2:34 PM
>Subject: USGP-INT The new Jewish bi-nationalism (Mark Levine, History News 
>Network)
>
>
>>The New Jewish Bi-Nationalism
>>
>>By Mark A. LeVine
>>History News Network (George Mason University),
>>October 14, 2006
>>http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/30789.html
>>
>>Mr. LeVine is professor of modern Middle Eastern
>>history, culture, and Islamic studies at the
>>University of California, Irvine, and author of
>>the forthcoming books: Why They Don't Hate Us:
>>Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil; and
>>Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv and the
>>Struggle for Palestine, 1880-1948. He is also a
>>contributor, with Viggo Mortensen and Pilar
>>Perez, to Twilight of Empire: Responses to
>>Occupation. Click here to access his homepage
>><http://www.meaning.org/levinebio.html>.
>>
>>
>>One of the things that has made Judaism unique
>>among world religions is that from the start Jews
>>have considered themselves members not just of
>>the same faith, but of the same nation. Unlike
>>Islam, in which the "ummah" comprises a
>>world-wide community not grounded in any specific
>>territory, the people of Israel--'Am
>>Yisrael--have always been tied to a specific
>>territory, the Land of Israel.
>>
>>It is natural, then, that while the pioneers of
>>Zionism were mostly secular Jews, the Zionist
>>movement and subsequently Israeli identity have
>>always had a strongly religious core, which
>>became increasingly powerful after the conquest
>>of Israel's biblical heart land in the West Bank
>>in 1967.
>>
>>The combination of religion, nationalism and
>>territory within Jewish peoplehood has made it
>>very difficult for Israelis, and Diaspora Jews,
>>to accept that Palestinians could have an equal
>>claim to the Land of Israel. To do so would call
>>into question the fundamental basis of Jewish
>>religious and national identity.
>>
>>From the beginnings of Zionist colonization in
>>Palestine, however, there have been Jews who felt
>>that the movement's maximalist
>>territorial-nationalist aims were both
>>unrealizable and immoral. Already in 1889 the
>>great Hebrew writer Ahad Haam sent a scathing
>>dispatch to the Russian Hebrew language newspaper
>>Ha Melitz, documenting the mistreatment of
>>Palestinian Arabs by Zionist immigrants. And in
>>the 1920s, as the conflict over land between Jews
>>and Palestinian Arabs was reaching crisis
>>proportions, a group of prominent Jewish leaders,
>>including Martin Buber, Gershom Sholem and Judah
>>Magnes created the Brit Shalom (Covenant of
>>Peace), which advocated a bi-national solution to
>>the worsening intercommunal conflict.
>>
>>Not surprisingly, few Palestinians were willing
>>to accept Brit Shalom's call for equal rights to
>>Palestine when Jews still constituted a small
>>minority of the country's population. And few
>>Zionist leaders were willing to consider giving
>>up their dreams of an exclusively Jewish state,
>>particularly when their benefactor, Great
>>Britain, held the mandate to prepare the country
>>for independence. Sharing the land became ever
>>less likely in the wake of the Holocaust and 1948
>>war.
>>
>>In the wake of the establishment of Israel, and a
>>generation later the conquest of the West Bank
>>and Gaza Strip, the idea of bi-nationalism fell
>>into the intellectual and political wilderness.
>>The few Jews who advocated it were castigated as
>>dangerous dreamers, self-hating Jews, or worse.
>>The Oslo peace process , which was clearly--if
>>not officially--premised on a two state solution,
>>seemed to relegate the binational idea to the
>>proverbial dust bin of history.
>>
>>But as the last decade has shown, Oslo was a
>>fatally flawed process. Palestinians share the
>>blame for its collapse, but its failure was most
>>deeply rooted in the inability of most Israelis,
>>even the politicians behind the peace process, to
>>pay the economic and territorial price for real
>>Palestinian self-determination: a truly
>>independent state, free of Jewish settlements,
>>with full economic sovereignty and control of its
>>resources. And so the years of the peace process
>>saw the number of settlers double, while land
>>expropriations, the expansion of by-pass roads,
>>and the destruction of Palestinian homes all
>>continued at an alarming rate. This during the
>>very period Palestinians were supposed to be
>>moving towards independence.
>>
>>By the fall of 2000, all that was needed was the
>>right spark--provided by Ariel Sharon's
>>provocative visit to the al-Aqsa mosque--to set
>>off a new intifadah. Six years later, the idea of
>>a viable Palestinian state being established in
>>the foreseeable future is hard to imagine.
>>
>>The current impasse in Israeli-Palestinian
>>negotiations, coupled with the intensification of
>>the West Bank occupation and increasing
>>militarization of Israeli-Jewish identity has led
>>a small but growing number of Jews to rediscover
>>the bi-national option as a morally, politically
>>and historically viable solution to the
>>Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Such a vision sees
>>Jews and Palestinian Arabs living throughout the
>>Land of Israel/Palestine in peace, and with equal
>>political and civil rights.
>>
>>One of the more recent advocates of
>>bi-nationalism is NYU Professor and
>>internationally renown historian Tony Judt, a
>>British-born Jew who lost much of his family in
>>the Holocaust. In the last month Judt has had two
>>talks canceled after phone calls from Jewish
>>leaders, including one at the Polish Consulate in
>>New York City. This is on top of frequent and
>>often strident attacks against him because of his
>>advocacy of bi-nationalism and periodic criticism
>>of Israeli policies.
>>
>>The attacks on Judt are not exceptional. Most
>>every Jewish scholar or activist I know who has
>>criticized Israeli policy has met with similarly
>>virulent attacks by the organized Jewish
>>community (non-Jewish scholars naturally fair
>>even worse). Anti-Israel, self-hating Jew,
>>Holocaust denier, terrorist apologist--these are
>>just a few of the epithets hurled at anyone who
>>challenges right wing Jewish orthodoxy concerning
>>Israel. Visiting Israeli scholars routinely face
>>similar accusations for expressing views that are
>>the daily fare of Israeli opinion pages and news
>>programs.
>>
>>I believe these intense clashes within the Jewish
>>community over the future of Israel reveal the
>>emergence of a new bi-nationalism; one related
>>but not identical to Jewish territorial
>>bi-nationalism. It reflects a deepening rift
>>within Judaism, as Jews move farther apart from
>>each other over the issue of Israel, and through
>>it, what it means to be a Jew in the era of
>>globalization.
>>
>>One half of the Jewish nation (sadly, the smaller
>>half) imagines Judaism as a religion of peace and
>>tolerance, one that fulfills the biblical
>>commandment to be a light unto the nations by
>>returning to the front lines of world-wide
>>struggles for justice, democracy, sustainable
>>development and healing the environment. The
>>other half of the Jewish people is following the
>>path of the Jewish founders of neo-Conservatism
>>in the United States. Similar to their
>>counterparts in the Christian and Muslim worlds,
>>they see humanity as divided by a clash of
>>civilizations and a zero-sum competition for
>>power, territory and resources, in which
>>compromise, never mind true coexistence with the
>>Other, is impossible. In such an amoral world,
>>their vision of Judaism celebrates achieving
>>maximal Jewish political and economic power as a
>>supreme good, whether in Israel/Palestine or the
>>United States.
>>
>>The two binationalisms are in fact intimately
>>related. As it becomes evident that a two-state
>>solution is no longer possible, the Jewish
>>community will divide even more sharply over the
>>future of Israel, and through it, of Judaism as a
>>religion and system of values. Many will support
>>even harsher repression against Palestinians,
>>which in the context of looming demographic
>>parity between Jews and Palestinians will evolve
>>either towards a Jewish-dominated apartheid state
>>in historical Palestine, or towards the forced
>>transfer of most of the country's Palestinian
>>population so that, similar to 1948, only a small
>>and manageable Palestinian community remains.
>>(Indeed, Israeli scholars have been warning of
>>"creeping" annexation, transfer and apartheid in
>>the Occupied Territories since before the
>>collapse of the peace process.)
>>
>>Others will choose reimagine Jewish and Israeli
>>identity in a manner that embraces Palestinians
>>as equal partners in the country's future, with
>>Jews able to live freely in the heartland of
>>biblical Israel while Palestinians are free to
>>return to the more than two thirds of Palestine
>>from which they have been exiled since 1948.
>>Viewing themselves as "pro-Israeli and
>>pro-Palestinian," they conceive of Jewish/Israeli
>>or Palestinian security as unattainable absent a
>>secure life for the Other.
>>
>>Of course, Palestinians, and the Muslim ummah
>>more broadly, face a similar choice between
>>peaceful coexistence and permanent war with Jews
>>and the West at large. The divisions within their
>>communities on these fundamental questions are
>>becoming starker by the day.
>>
>>Few proponents of a bi-national solution to the
>>Israeli-Palestinian conflict claim that it is an
>>ideal solution. But given the failure of the
>>two-state discourse and the unpalatability of
>>most conceivable alternative solutions, it
>>certainly deserves a hearing. At the very least,
>>those who advocate it don't deserve to be accused
>>by Jewish leaders of offering "offensive
>>caricatures" of Israel (as ADL head Abraham
>>Foxman accused Judt of doing), of being Holocaust
>>deniers, or of supporting terrorists and even the
>>"genocide" of our people.
>>
>>That kind of language will only sharpen the
>>divisions within the Jewish community, weakening
>>solidarity at the same time it violates the
>>self-critical spirit of Judaism's prophetic
>>heritage. Such a development will do more harm to
>>Israel and Judaism than Hamas, Hezbollah and
>>al-Qa'eda could ever hope to do.
>
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