ANTI-ZIONISM WILL TAKE CARE OF THE REST:

Europe’s “Good Jews" (Emanuele Ottolenghi, December 2005, Commentary)

One evening last spring, the UK branch of Peace Now hosted a debate on the Israel-Palestinian conflict at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. Taking the Israeli side, ironically enough, was Benny Morris, the pioneer New Historian. (In recent years Morris has found himself at odds with some of his colleagues since he still supports Israel’s right to exist; he has also begun to entertain second and third thoughts on the issue of Zionism’s “original sin.”) Opposing him was Ahmed Khalidi, a Western-educated scion of Palestinian aristocracy and a “moderate” who is willing to negotiate Israel’s demise diplomatically rather than advocating its destruction through violence.

During the question-and-answer period, a frail student stood up to make an impassioned plea. “I want to express my gratitude to you, Dr. Khalidi,” said this young woman, “for your willingness to share Palestine with the Jews as a common patrimony.” (“Common patrimony” was the anodyne catchphrase Khalidi had coined to promote his one-state solution, i.e., the dissolution of Israel.) Such conspicuous, large-hearted charity, the student went on, heedless of her choice of ancient religious antinomies, stood in sharp contrast to the miserly approach of Benny Morris, who had insisted on Israel’s right to continue its national existence. “As a Jew,” she concluded her address to Khalidi, “I feel ashamed that your land was taken away from you in my name and that of my ancestors. It is my duty as a Jew to stand up for justice.” If indeed she stood up in shame, she sat down to thunderous applause.

In statements like this, one cannot but notice the recurrence not only of those enduring theological tropes but of a certain very dangerous dance in which European Jews have long participated. Today, as yesterday, Jewish “particularism,” then religious, now national, remains a thorn in Europe’s side. Today, as yesterday, removing the thorn involves a renunciation of particularism followed by an espousal of the regnant form of universal salvation—then Christianity, now the tenets of humanistic liberalism.

This is not 1930’s-style anti-Semitism; in that narrow sense, anti-Israel Europeans are correct in protesting that they are not anti-Semites. Nevertheless, it is an age-old form of anti-Semitism, and one that has always called forth a typical pattern of response on the part of the Jews under scrutiny. For most, the choices are to lie low in hopes that the trouble will pass, to pick up and seek life elsewhere, or to resist and oppose to the extent they can. We have seen all three responses in European Jewish society over the last years, each bearing its cost. Some, however, take a different route, finding favor and reward by exerting every effort to assimilate themselves to whatever is required of them, including to the point of publicly dissociating themselves from their people’s history and fate. As ever with such maneuvers, exculpatory rationalizations must be found, and are readily at hand.

Unlike the case in pre-Enlightenment Europe, present-day anti-Semitism does not expect Jews to abandon their religion. Today’s Europe is a self-consciously multicultural society. Although it cherishes secularism above all, it respects, if somewhat warily, religious pluralism. What the enlightened sector of today’s Europe would like Jews to do, in exchange for fully approved membership in the circle of approved opinion, is to renounce a core component of their identity: that is, their sense of Jewish peoplehood as expressed through their attachment and commitment to the democratic state of Israel and to the Zionist enterprise.

What remains constant is that, as in both pre- and post-Enlightenment Europe, today’s European elite has its good Jews and its bad Jews. There are the Jews whom it embraces, encourages, and celebrates; and then there are the Jews whom it chastises and condemns. For the former, there will always be a place of honor in the European sun. On the latter, today’s officially pluralist and tolerant Europe has turned its back. Is it any wonder, then, that some “good Jews” have chosen to live in the light, stopping only to burnish their qualifications by noisily joining the chorus that has consigned their fellow Jews to the dark?

A Jewish state is objectionable to them for the same reason that our Judeo-Christian one is--belkief in anything larger than the self is threatening to the secular project.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 3, 2005 5:29 PM