By Vivienne Porzsolt
I welcome the opportunity to debate the issue of Israel, Zionism and anti-Semitism in the pages of GLW and respond to Malloy and Lorimer's article (issue 111) written in reply to my letter in the previous issue.
My purpose in writing my original letter was not to support Zionism, even in its most idealistic form, but to draw attention to anti-Semitic and muddled elements in some anti-Zionist discourse. To argue for legitimacy is not to argue for desirability.
For the record, quite apart from its impact on the Palestinians, I do not believe that an independent state for Jews (the correct translation of Herzl's Judenstadt "a state for Jews" not "Jewish state") is a solution to anti-Semitism. Further, Zionism, in its assertion that Jews cannot really belong anywhere in the world except Israel is both reactionary and a replica of anti-Semitic dogma. As far as I am concerned, people belong where they live and work, and their ethnic, civil and human rights flow from that. But the debate over Israel and Palestine is on the ground of national rights, and double standards are not on.
Malloy, Lorimer and I are agreed that Israel as currently constituted, is a colonial, settler state. However, for what other such state — Australia, the Americas, Africa etc — would the proposed solution be the abolition of that state? The issue is to recognise the wrongs of the past and present and to compensate for the past in so far as that is possible and change the racist, colonialist aspect of the present. The parallels with Mabo are far closer than with Nazism.
The idea of Zionism asserts the legitimacy of national aspirations for the Jews. The fact that Zionist historical practice has been colonialist, racist and oppressive is no more basis for a critique of the idea of Zionism than the flaws of the Soviet Union were a justification for rejecting the socialist and communist ideal. And where else could such aspirations be realised but in the land of the origin of Jews, with which they retained their links with an unbroken cultural memory? It is just a quirk of Jewish history that the Jews were alienated from their land for so long, while for an amalgam of economic, religious and other reasons they retained their identity without a homeland.
There was an earlier trend in Zionism which sought a bi-national state for Jews and Arabs on the basis of full equality in national and human rights, called by I.F. Stone "the Other Zionism". While never a dominant strand in Zionist aspirations, the idea of a bi-national state was only finally abandoned by the World Zionist Congress, significantly in 1942, the date of the adoption of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem" by the Nazis. In any case, a bi-national solution was never acceptable to the Palestinians. And from their point of view, why should it be?
Arafat, quoted by Malloy and Lorimer, stated that the Palestinians would have opened their doors to the Jews, on the basis of full equality of rights and duties again, significantly, only "as far as our homeland's capacity for absorption permitted". The democratic secular state formula was always predicated on a Palestinian majority.
Here we see how the racist concept of the "demographic problem" lurks beneath the surface whenever we argue on the ground of national rights, as opposed to human rights. The retention of national control of the homeland is dependent on essentially racist immigration criteria — for both Palestinians and Israelis. However, it is on the ground of Palestinian national rights that the debate is engaged and clearly at this historical time, it is these national rights which must be asserted and defended. If we argue on this same ground for Jews, the democratic secular state formulation would have met their civil rights but not their national or even ethnic aspirations.
These are just the difficulties inherent in nationalist solutions to social liberation. The problem with a lot of anti-Zionist discourse is that it denies national aspirations to the Jews in the same breath as they are promoting those of the Palestinians. And we cannot simply get off the moral hook so easily. That is why I asserted that the core of the struggle in Palestine/Israel is the clash of legitimate nationalisms, regardless of how illegitimate the Israeli efforts to resolve that clash. While, from the point of view of the Palestinians, it is colonialism like any other, in its historical roots it is not entirely so.
Efforts to get off this "moral hook" of a clash between legitimate national aspirations lead to all sorts of obfuscations in some anti-Zionist discourse in order to discredit Jewish claims to Israel.
First, Jews are said to be a mere persecuted religious community. This view is so prevalent amongst anti-Zionists that I have heard surprise expressed that someone who was not religious should identify as Jewish! We are told there is no such thing as a Jewish people. I am not going to get into the minefield of the definition of a Jew — only orthodox Jews and anti-Semites have no problem with this! Suffice it is to say that through whatever amalgam of race, religion, class and ethnicity, there has been historically formed a group which through whatever divisions of nation and culture, race and language, shares a sense of identity. Anti-Semitism has been a major factor in this development.
Definition of ethnicity needs to be based on individual and social identification, not impossible "objective definitions". For instance, the definition of Aboriginality is that all the following three criteria should apply: that you are descended from Aborigines, you identify as Aboriginal and you are recognised by your own descent group as Aboriginal. The same could well apply to Jews. It is inappropriate for others to seek to impose their own definition.
Secondly, the ferociousness and specificity of the Holocaust together with its precedents in the 19th and early 20th centuries is denied, diminished or trivialised as well as the failure of so many countries to provide a refuge. While this was a European phenomenon, as Malloy and Lorimer point out, had Hitler realised his ambitions, Jews worldwide would have been implicated. It cannot be denied that the existence of a nation state would have provided a better, while not absolute, protection than none. Of course, worldwide mobilisation by Jews and non-Jews alike would have been better still and a good deal more reliable a protection than an enclave operating as an expanded ghetto.
I too am entirely opposed to the construction of Jewish history, including the Holocaust, as consisting of a suffering unique to the Jews. As one of your correspondents remarks, this reading isolates Jews from potential allies and denies a positive political solution. It is also used by Zionists to justify the colonisation of Palestine. But anti-Zionists who seek to discount the Holocaust as a feature of Jewish history are actually arguing on the same ground — that if it happened as historically it did, and if it is permitted to transmit it, including its unique aspects, as part of history, then the colonial seizure of Palestine was justified. Some anti-Zionists oppose Nazi war crime trials, for instance, on the ground that they merely support Zionism. There are plenty of rational grounds for opposing Israeli oppression (and recalling Nazi crimes) without joining the David Irving brigade.
Thirdly, the right of any historical Jewish rights in Palestine is denied. (Note my emphasis — clearly several peoples have their origins in that part of the world.) The parallel which Malloy and Lorimer draw with any putative Arab claim to Spain or Sicily is "grotesque". These latter were colonial acquisitions — Palestine was the place where the Jews had their origins and were historically constructed as a people.
Since nationalism emerged only in the 19th century, it is unhistorical to expect that the Jews would seek to return prior to that. In terms of the religious dream of the reconstruction of the Temple, in practical terms, only a reconquest of the land would have made this possible. But in fact, Zionism was a secular movement concerned with national rights, not the rebuilding of the Temple. These national rights were achieved on the coat-tails of imperialist and colonial interests.
Fourthly, Zionism is accorded far more power than it really has. This is reminiscent of the anti-Semitic attribution of sinister control to Jews as in forged documents such as the Protocols of Zion. I repeat, without the coincidence of British and then US imperial interests with the establishment and maintenance of the Zionist state, Israel would never have had the power to exist, let alone conquer further Palestinian territory.
A progressive Zionism might have sought to join with anti-imperialist Arab forces to promote liberation of the entire region. Progressive Arab forces, including Palestinians, could therefore together have fought the feudal Arab regimes. But both Zionism as it developed historically and Arab resistance to the very idea of Jewish national self-determination in the area made this quite impossible.
The fact remains that we are faced with the conflict and reconciliation of the aspirations of both Palestinians and Jews for national self-determination. To seek to deny legitimacy to one while asserting it for the other does not resolve the conflict. This can only be done by opposing Israeli colonial rule — political and economic.
If the two state solution becomes a mere stepping stone to a bi-national secular democratic state, fostering both national and individual self-determination, so much the better. But it is hard to see how the latter could ever emerge without at least a stage of the former. And this, if it emerges at all, seems a long way off yet.