Feeds: 
symbol identifies content for paid subscribers only.
THE IDEA OF ISRAEL.
As a writer with the last name "Goldstein," I've often found my opinions filtered through other people's assumptions of what Jews think or should think. It happened in comment sections when I reported on the controversy over using circumcision as an HIV-prevention method. (The truth is, I'm a defender of Jewish parents' rights to choose not to circumcise their children -- without facing opprobrium from the community.) In 2007 I was the target of an email harassment campaign initiated by a white supremacist web site after I wrote this piece. And even though I rarely cover foreign policy, I have several times received emails and even letters accusing me of harboring Zionist, imperialist views and hoisting them upon the public.
Because I find all of this unpleasant, I never, as a rule, write about the Israel-Palestine conflict. I'm going to break that rule today. It's not just that military solutions have a poor track record of solving problems of terrorism in the Middle East -- or, really, anywhere. It's not just that a ground war leading to the deaths of over 400 people, many of them civilians, is a disproportionate response to the latest rag-tag rocket fire of Hamas, which has claimed the lives of four Israelis. It is not just that while Israel has every right to target those missile sites and the terrorists who perpetrated those attacks, it seems that through brutal, widespread violence, the Israeli government is doing little more than devastating an already impoverished society and planting seeds of hatred in a new generation of Palestinians.
It is that this latest incursion, and indeed, much of Israel's military history, seems manufactured in opposition to the founding idea of the Zionist project itself -- that the world should be made safe for Jews. And that if the larger world could not be safe, than at least one place -- the Promised Land -- should be. I needn't argue here that Israel is one of the most unsafe places on earth to be a Jew; with suicide bombings, missiles, and now full-fledged war, that much is apparent. Asking young Jews to fight and die in a ground war, one whose perpetration inflames anti-Semitic sentiments, is not the best way to make Israel, or the world at large, safe for the Jewish people. And sure enough, it is tragic to learn that due to the fighting in Gaza, Jews in France, Sweden, Belgium, and Denmark have suffered anti-Semitic violence and vandalism in recent days.
To be sure, Israel's military response is not dissimilar from that of other nations that have faced terrorist threats, and errantly believed they could quash the threat with brute force. But in a post-Holocaust world, Israel is simply not like any other country. It is special, and holds particular sway over the religious and cultural imagination. I don't need to be convinced that anti-Semitism is a world-historical force that would exist, sometimes virulently, with or without the existence of Israel. I majored in European History, for god's sake. And as I wrote above, I'm all too acquainted with the lunatic, nativist right here at home. It's just that I want to believe that the collective, historical experience of Jewishness and Zionism leads to something better -- something more humane -- than what we've witnessed in the Middle East this past week. Jews in Israel and the Diaspora who are similarly frustrated have the responsibility, I think, to raise their voices. We support Israel's right to protect itself. We just don't see how this will accomplish that in the long run.
--Dana Goldstein
COMMENTS (9)
I'm sorry, I believe that saying Israel is or should be special leads to allowing Israel to violate the laws of war (the Geneva Convention). Did the US violate these laws in Iraq (see flattening of Fallujah)? Yes. Is Israel doing so in Gaza? Yes.
Being "special" leads to grandiosity and believing oneself above the law. Israel is a country like any other and ought to be held accountable to basic rules of warfare, as any other country *should* be.
And no, fighting terrorism does not make it a good idea to abrogate the rule of law. Terrorism can be fought effectively through good police work, good judicial work, and practicing basic justice. Alleviate economic and political distress, whether in Detroit or in Gaza, and you will alleviate violence.
The human rights you protect may one day be your own.
Posted by: Leila Abu-Saba | January 7, 2009 4:04 PM
Thank you for this frank, intelligent reflection.
Alas, Israel's system is a perpetual motion machine of injustice-driven violence. Depriving people of citizenship, property and rights based solely on their religion gave us 300 years of Wars of Religion in Europe. It wont be different in the Middle East.
Posted by: Harouet | January 7, 2009 4:49 PM
A question I frequently hear from the corporate media is, "What would we do if we suffered similar acts of terrorism and rocket attacks from any of our neighbors?" The more relevant question should be, "What would we do if our neighbors blockaded our borders and ports, continually appropriated our land for foreign settlements, and maintained a brutal military occupation on most of our territory?" The events of the past few days illustrate how lopsided the body count has been throughout this conflict. I do not find commentary that discusses Israel's response to terrorism and yet ignores Israel's own crimes to be very useful, especially now.
Posted by: Mark Coats | January 7, 2009 9:17 PM
You said:
"But in a post-Holocaust world, Israel is simply not like any other country. It is special, and holds particular sway over the religious and cultural imagination."
No, Israel is not special. Jews are not special becuase of their holocaust...70 million people died in WWII. 45 million of those, excluding the Jews,were civilians. 25 million were military. The Russians had 11 million civilians killed.
Jew were "half of the total number of people who died in German camps.
WWII was an actual "World War", the jews were incidential to that war.
The world for non jews does not revolve around the jews.
Americans and Israel do not a common culture or common interest.
We have seen what Israel is...we are sick of it.
By their own doing Jews around the world have made..Jews =Israel and Israel=Jews.
Anti semitism is a meaningless slur...expression of worldwide disgust for the Jewish State and their apologist is more accurate.
As an American I despise the political corruption US Israeli Jews have caused in my country's foreign relations that has so slimed and ruined what little good name we once had in the world. I will do any and everything I can to drive their sick influence out so that my children can live in the real America again and not be ashamed of their country.
We can have a war right here in the US to decide whether this is America governed by Americans or it is ISR'merica run by Israelis and zionist...that is the war that needs fighting and it is long overdue.
Posted by: Renfro | January 8, 2009 1:17 AM
I think Renfro's sick, racist and largely inaccurate comments should be deleted from this site.
Posted by: LG | January 8, 2009 7:28 PM
Israel knows what they are doing. Violence doesn't solve anything in the Middle East? On the contrary, violence is the currency in the Middle East that buys everything.
Almost every Israeli military action ends up making Israel a little safer each time. Four Arab-Israeli wars taught the Arabs the futility of trying to destroy Israel through conventional military force. Two Palestinian intifadas ended in complete defeat for the Palestinians and a serious degradation in their capabilities. Where at one time they could send suicide bombers into Israel almost weekly, now they are left impotently firing bottle rockets. After this operation(or maybe two or three, depends on how efficient Israel is), they'll be doing spitballs.
Israel does this because it works. If you think Jews are the type of people to keep trying the same thing and hoping for a differnet result, then you don't know your own people, or the situation, or both.
Posted by: Adam Herman | January 8, 2009 10:50 PM
As a Jew who escaped state-sponsored anti-Semitism in the USSR, I am sympathetic to the argument that Israel is often led to self-defeating policy choices. At the same time, I am endlessly dismayed by the glib sanctimony of my fellow progressives when it comes to judging Israel's actions. The reason I like the first argument is that it is not distorted by the self-serving and facile moralism that plagues the second. We simply cannot judge political actions directly by moral standards, even if some notion of what is right must ultimately guide us. Counting the bodies on each side is futile, as is apportioning blame. The problem is chiefly structural: Palestinian leaders become leaders by stoking sentiment against an enemy, and so are reluctant to abandon hostilities because to do so is to risk losing their status. Israel, whatever its actual degree of repsonsibility for the conditions of life in Gaza, simply cannot solve the dilemma that confronts it; there are no good options, only options that play better or worse at home at any given moment. Negotiation is impossible, since there is no one to negotiate with who is both willing and able to deliver on any agreement; but neither is it possible to "liberate" the Palestinians, if this means simply opening all the borders one fine morning. Only once we drop the moralizing and examine the political dynamics will we be ready to judge the merits of Israeli and Palestinian actions.
Posted by: Michael K. | January 9, 2009 10:11 AM
Renfro, your extremism, and prejudice are what drive the ugliest conflicts. It's easy to lay all your troubles at the feet of some supposed bad guy, to yell and scream "it's all his fault". Much harder to deal the complexities of reality, and the fact that some of your problems may be your own fault. Scapegoating is for people who want to avoid problems, not deal with them. Did the Jews wipe out the native Americans, overthrow Mosaddeq, or launch the Vietnam war? Jews are on all sides of the political spectrum, including the pro-Palestinian one. Don't try to lay the US's problems at the feet of any single group. As for your preposterous and ignorant notion that Jewish deaths were incidental to the Second World War: Certainly, The worth of a person's life has nothing to do the group he or she belongs to. What horrifies the world about the Holocaust is that Jewish deaths were not a consequence of the war, but one of its raisons d'etre. In the last days of the war, with their world crumbling around them, the Nazis chose to use their trains to continue transporting Jews to the death camps, rather than soldiers to the front. The point isn't that Jewish lives are uniquely precious, but that the Nazi attempt to exterminate an entire ethnicity is horrifying. Typically of your hateful type, you dismiss the crime, and advocate it. Yours is exactly the kind of hateful, unthinking, mentality that perpetuates the cycle of violence in the Middle East today.
Posted by: Puck | January 11, 2009 10:04 PM
Well said, Renfro although I would have used less inflammatory language. I would add that the establishment of an European colony at the end of World War II at the same precise time the South was throwing off the racist yoke of colonialism has always been moving against the tides of history and justice.
Posted by: Nancy C | January 12, 2009 9:20 AM