On McEwan and the Jerusalem Prize

Ian McEwan (2009). Photograph © Phillip Hollis.

You may like Ian McEwan and his fiction or not. I really have no opinion on that matter. But I do very much like his approach to receiving the Jerusalem Prize tomorrow. He has rebuked those who call for an intellectual and cultural boycott of Israel even as he frankly criticizes the deep and abiding horrors of Israeli policy toward Palestinians. You can read about his trip to Israel for the Prize ceremony here in The Guardian. I have posted here repeatedly about the folly of boycotts - in Israel specifically but elsewhere too. Politics is about arguing and that is what we ought to be doing. It seems to me that McEwan gets that.

How Not to Argue Against the Boycott of Israel

A Jewish settler (right) and a Palestinian demonstrator shout at
each other during a protest against an illegal outpost near the
Israeli settlement of Kharsina in the West Bank city of Hebron
on May 22, 2009. (HAZEM BADER/AFP/Getty Images)

In the most recent Newsweek you can find this diatribe by Jacob Weisberg against the ongoing cultural and academic boycott of Israel. At times Weisberg describes the thinking behind the boycott as merely "wrong" and "unacceptable," but he also rises to the bait, using terms like "repellent" to describe the campaign, accusing those advocating the boycott of "bad faith." He claims that the campaign is "not only intrinsically vile but actively counterproductive." And, eventually, he comes around to asserting that "this kind of existential challenge is hard to disassociate from anti-Semitism." As far as I can tell Weisberg barely makes the effort.

I do not support the boycott for reasons I have laid down here repeatedly. Having said that, Weisberg's screed is more or less wholly incoherent. Here are some problems with the case he presents:

(1) Weisberg categorizes Israel among "democratic societies, where other means of peaceful protest exist," contrasting it explicitly with "authoritarian societies" such as Cuba or the former East Germany or "China or Syria or Zimbabwe—or other genuinely illegitimate regimes that systematically violate human rights." Where has Mr. Weisberg been? He seems to have missed the past decade or so of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. That policy can be fruitfully summarized as one that systematically violates their human rights. Those in the west - including many Jews - support the boycott precisely because they see Israel as adopting authoritarian policies. And I would remind Weisberg that that is not simply the view from abroad - there are Israelis (e,g., Neve Gordon, David Shulman) who make the very same case. Does Weisberg have something like a response to such criticisms? Moreover, did he raise his voice - even in private - when American donors threatened to withhold financial support from Ben Gurion University where Neve Gordon teaches because of his outspoken criticisms of the regime and its policies? I suspect not.

(2) I think the boycott will be counterproductive in ways that Mr. Weisberg suggests; it may well simply reinforce a bunker mentality among Israelis. That said, Weisberg claims that "cultural sanctions on their own are more inconvenience than lethal weapon." How then, does the boycott rise to the level of an "existential threat" - how, that is, does it constitute "a weapon designed not to bring peace but to undermine the country" - and so provide evidence of "antisemitism"? Among the reasons I think that public argument is the most useful reply to the Israeli repression of the Palestinians is that it treats the Jewish population just like everyone else. It thereby subverts kneejerk complaints of antisemitism. Mr. Weisberg is an advertisement for that approach. Here is my challenge to him: stop hiding behind charges of antisemitism and provide a coherent argument to justify the systematic, ongoing mistreatment of the Palestinian population, including not just official repression by security forces, but the ongoing harassment by Jewish "settlers" in Palestinian territories. Those are the issues that give rise to the boycott campaign. You do not so much as mention them in your essay.

(3) Israel is indeed. as Weisberg insists, "a refuge for Jews persecuted everywhere else." In part that is why those who many of those who support the boycott are so disappointed in the Israeli treatment of Palestinians. The policies of the regime and the actions of many (not all) Israelis run counter to the putative ideals of the nation itself. That is the problem here. This is not simply about posturing celebrities. It is about real politics. Weisberg mocks the "sort of sheeplike, liberal opinion [that] once reflexively favored Israel." He is right to do so but perhaps not for his reasons. No country aspiring to be democratic - here we can include both Israel and the U.S. - should rest content with unthinking support. Weisberg insists that the "case against a cultural boycott of Israel is based on consistency, proportionality, and history." He overlooks the policies that lead advocates of the boycott to see their campaign as wholly consistent and proportionate. And he neglects to see that it is precisely the history that Israel is meant to embody that make its repression of Palestinian populations appear especially damning.

Will Israel Tolerate or Suppress Political Dissent?

"In a sense, the need for a boycott is a sign of weakness following the polarisation and marginalisation of the left in Israel. We are witnessing the development of a proto-fascist mindset. I am, for example, extremely anxious about the extent that the space for public debate in Israel is shrinking.

One of the ways of silencing dissent is through the demand for loyalty, so that a slogan you hear a lot now is "no citizenship without loyalty". This reflects the inversion of the republican idea that the state should be loyal to the citizen and is accountable for inequities and injustices." ~ Neve Gordon

I posted about Gordon here almost a year ago. Gordon is a Political Scientist at Ben-Gurion University. He is once again being threatened by the Israeli regime - this time as one among many Israeli citizens who either actively advocate or quietly sympathize with calls for a boycott of the country due to its ongoing repression of Palestinians. According to this story in The Guardian, the government has introduced legislation aimed at silencing those citizens (as well as non-Israeli's who support the boycott). I have not yet changed my mind on the usefulness of the proposed boycott; I do not think it is the right approach for reasons I have stated here numerous times. But, once again, I think it is crucially important to speak out in defense of those, like Gordon and others, who are under attack by the Israeli government for their dissenting activities. Gordon wrote this Op-Ed for The Guardian and in 2008 published Israel's Occupation (University of California Press) - you can find the supporting web page here.

All of that said, the political situation in Israel and Palestine is dire and, as The Guardian report makes clear, arguably degenerating. I recommend these reflections on recent events (including the despicable Israeli attack, in late May, on the 'Gaza Freedom Flotilla' which has provided new impetus for calls for a boycott) in the NYRB by David Shulman. While the Israeli government has agreed to relax their blockade of Gaza, that is a very small step and it hardly is the only point of ongoing, serious contention. It is only the most noticeable one - the insidious, very, very regular attacks by "settlers" on Palestinians in the West Bank are equally despicable, just less visible.

Orwell's Shadow: Fighting talk: The new propaganda ~ Robert Fisk

Fighting Talk: The New Propaganda
Robert Fisk

The Independent
21 June 2010

Following the latest in semantics on the news? Journalism and the Israeli government are in love again. It's Islamic terror, Turkish terror, Hamas terror, Islamic Jihad terror, Hezbollah terror, activist terror, war on terror, Palestinian terror, Muslim terror, Iranian terror, Syrian terror, anti-Semitic terror...

But I am doing the Israelis an injustice. Their lexicon, and that of the White House – most of the time – and our reporters' lexicon, is the same. Yes, let's be fair to the Israelis. Their lexicon goes like this: Terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror.

How many times did I just use the word "terror"? Twenty. But it might as well be 60, or 100, or 1,000, or a million. We are in love with the word, seduced by it, fixated by it, attacked by it, assaulted by it, raped by it, committed to it. It is love and sadism and death in one double syllable, the prime time-theme song, the opening of every television symphony, the headline of every page, a punctuation mark in our journalism, a semicolon, a comma, our most powerful full stop. "Terror, terror, terror, terror". Each repetition justifies its predecessor.

Most of all, it's about the terror of power and the power of terror. Power and terror have become interchangeable. We journalists have let this happen. Our language has become not just a debased ally, but a full verbal partner in the language of governments and armies and generals and weapons. ... more ...

A reader, Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, emailed the other day, calling my attention to this essay - both acute and astute - by Robert Fisk in The Independent. I thought I'd pass along his recommendation. Fisk argues, I think persuasively, that the news media - journalists, editors, publishers and producers, networks - are hostage to language and concepts that are peddled for political purposes and that they, the media, are relatively oblivious to the history and purposes of that language and those concepts. If we need always ask 'who is using this photograph and for what purpose,' the same is true too of words. Thanks Stanley!

Maybe Chuck Schumer Should Read the Israeli Press?

"The Palestinian people still don’t believe in the Jewish state, in a two-state solution. More do than before, but a majority still do not. Their fundamental view is, the Europeans treated the Jews badly and gave them our land — this is Palestinian thinking [...] They don’t believe in the Torah, in David [...] You have to force them to say Israel is here to stay. The boycott of Gaza to me has another purpose — obviously the first purpose is to prevent Hamas from getting weapons by which they will use to hurt Israel — but the second is actually to show the Palestinians that when there’s some moderation and cooperation, they can have an economic advancement. When there’s total war against Israel, which Hamas wages, they’re going to get nowhere. And to me, since the Palestinians in Gaza elected Hamas, while certainly there should be humanitarian aid and people not starving to death, to strangle them economically until they see that’s not the way to go, makes sense." ~ New York Senator Charles Schumer (June 2010).

"The vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians are willing to live alongside each other peacefully in separate states, according to an independent poll released on Wednesday. Results of the poll, commissioned by the grass-roots OneVoice Movement, indicate that 74 percent of Palestinians and 78 percent of Israelis are willing to accept a two-state solution." ~ Ha'artez (19 May 2010).

The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment

I spent most the past week in Montreal at a conference and so have been lax about posting. Among the items that I have been meaning to mention here is this recent essay in the NYRB by Peter Beinart entitled "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment." The essay has gotten some positive comment elsewhere - such as this column by Eric Alterman at The Nation. And this week Beinart and Abraham Foxman engaged in this exchange on the initial essay, also at the NYRB.

This strikes me as an essential debate. It is hard to see how Israel can continue on its current course. And it is even more difficult to see how it might be diverted from that course without the constructive intervention and critical posture of the American Jewish community and of others here in the U.S. - among whom I count myself [1] - who, even as they support Israel, lament the increasingly, unjustifiably aggressive stance that the Israeli government and military have taken on multiple occasions.

"You Will Not Be Alone" ~ Judith Butler

"To struggle against fear in the name of social justice is part of a long and venerable Jewish tradition; it is non-nationalist, that is true, and it is committed not just to my freedom, but to all of our freedoms. So let us remember that there is no one Jew, not even one Israel, and that those who say that there are seek to intimidate or contain your powers of criticism. . . . I understand that it is not easy to speak out in this way. But if you struggle against voicelessness to speak out for what is right, then you are in the middle of that struggle against oppression and for freedom, a struggle that knows that there is no freedom for one until there is freedom for all. There are those who will surely accuse you of hatred, but perhaps those accusations are the enactment of hatred. The point is not to enter that cycle of threat and fear and hatred--that is the hellish cycle of war itself. The point is to leave the discourse of war and to affirm what is right. You will not be alone."

~ Judith Butler, speaking in favor of a resolution calling for the University of California to selectively divest from investments in companies that contribute to war crimes in Israel and elsewhere.

I have, in the past, posted in opposition to the call for a cultural boycott of Israel in response to its ongoing, condemnable treatment of the Palestinians. (Click on the 'boycotts' label below.) In the remarks from which I've lifted this passage, Butler offers what I take to be a sensible and sensitive gesture toward a more nuanced way to address Israel and its policies. It is about learning and relearning how to speak publicly about injustice.