A friend sent a link to a What He Said article for me from Paul Berman. I particularly like this bit (the article is presented in the form of a conversation):
”A lot of people honestly believe that Israel's problems with the Palestinians represent something more than a miserable dispute over borders and recognition--that Israel's problems represent something huger, a uniquely diabolical aspect of Zionism, which explains the rage and humiliation felt by Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia. Which is to say, a lot of people have succumbed to anti-Semitic fantasies about the cosmic quality of Jewish crime and cannot get their minds to think about anything else.
"I mean, look at the discussions that go on even among people who call themselves the democratic left, the good left--a relentless harping on the sins of Israel, an obsessive harping, with very little said about the fascist-influenced movements that have caused hundreds of thousands and even millions of deaths in other parts of the Muslim world. The distortions are wild, if you stop to think about them. Look at some of our big, influential liberal magazines--one article after another about Israeli crimes and stupidities, and even a few statements in favor of abolishing Israel, and hardly anything about the sufferings of the Arabs in the rest of the world. And even less is said about the Arab liberals-our own comrades, who have been pretty much abandoned. What do you make of that, my friend? There's a name for that, a systematic distortion--what we Marxists, when we were Marxists, used to call ideology."
And I got around to reading this excellent essay by Omer Bartov last night, ostensibly reviewing the new English translation of Hitler’s second book (unpublished during his lifetime). Bartov does a better job than I ever could of connecting the dots between Nazism and Islamism, primarily by quoting liberally from both. There are many quotable quotes but I liked this one best (probably because I tend to be preoccupied with academia for obvious reasons):
Throughout campuses in the United States, students associated with Arab and Islamic organizations, Christian groups, and the left carried flags, banners, and posters that were mostly focused on one theme: the equation between Zionism, or Israel, and Nazism. Banners portrayed a swastika joined by an equal sign to a Star of David and an Israeli flag featuring a swastika instead of a Star of David. Placards issued the call to "End the Holocaust," and proclaimed that "Zionism = racism = ethnic cleansing," and that "Zionism is Ethnic Cleansing," and that "Sharon = Hitler." A particularly ingenious sign asserted: "1943: Warsaw 2002: Jenin." While some summarized their views with the slogan "Zionazis," others warned, "First Jesus Now Arafat."
What makes this virulent anti-Semitism respectable is that it presents itself as anti-Nazism. To accomplish this sinister exculpatory purpose it needs only to declare that Zionism equals Nazism, just as the old canard of a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world is legitimized by its association with American imperialism, capitalism, and globalization. That the vocabulary of this rhetoric is taken directly (whether consciously or not) from Nazi texts is so clear that one wonders why there is such a reluctance to recognize it. In part this is owed to ignorance, which is as rampant today in journalism and political commentary as it always was. In part this is owed to the fact that those who would most readily identify the provenance of these words and ideas are largely liberals, some of whom also happen to be Jewish, and thus are likely to be most harmed, both personally and ideologically, by making this identification. By exposing the anti-Semitic underbelly of this phenomenon, they would expose themselves as Jews and friends of Jews, and would open themselves to the argument that precisely their opposition to this phenomenon is the best proof of Jewish domination in the world.
Update: A reader asks, what is an appropriate comparison to Israel?
I replied: I tend to think of the creation of Israel in terms of the displacement of Native Americans with the European and then U.S. conquest of the North American continent. Except without the genocide, with a UN Charter, and smaller. Well actually maybe there's a better analogy out there. (Nearly every existing nation is chock full of people who shoved somebody else out at some point in history, so there's gotta be something).
D. replied: I've had my ass handed to me for proposing analogies in the past. Since there are no close analogies, what you pick depends entirely on what you're trying to emphasise. Rightly or wrongly, Native American removal immediately equates to "genocide" in most people's minds, so that's flat out. Actually, most people-shoving analogies founder on the fact that the Hebrews originated as a people in Palestine (or thereabouts), so, according to them, they're merely returning from exile rather than colonising new territories.
Of course, arguments like these are greatly complicated by the kind of interbreeding and acculturation that follows in the wake of most significant migrations. The wholesale replacement of peoples, like what happened in the New World and the Antipodes, was uncommon in the ancient world where there wasn't such a huge mismanage in tech levels and disease resistence. I wouldn't be in the least surprised to find that modern Palestinians have more genetic material in common with Moses' little band than most European Jews.
However, the kind of protesters you're talking about aren't interested in historical analogies for the greater situation or they wouldn't gravitate to the Nazis in the first place (who were seeking primarily to expand their "homeland", which they'd never left, not "reclaim" it). They want negative comparisons for the Israeli's behaviour. Their ideology won't let them choose the ethnic cleansers nearest to hand--Ba'athists and Stalinists (and, in both cases, you end up invoke genocide again)--so I'm not sure what that leaves. No other villain--not even Bolshies--excites the imagination as generally and as forcefully as the Nazis.
M. replied: Of course, arguments like these are greatly complicated by the kind of interbreeding and acculturation that follows in the wake of most significant migrations. The wholesale replacement of peoples, like what happened in the New World and the Antipodes, was uncommon in the ancient world where there wasn't such a huge mismanage in tech levels and disease resistence. I wouldn't be in the least surprised to find that modern Palestinians have more genetic material in common with Moses' little band than most European Jews.
Though genetics doesn't necessarily map to the way peoples are defined (by themselves or others) in any case. To pick an obvious example, Americanness has nothing to do with a genetic connection to previous generations. Traditionally, Judaism has defined membership primarily in terms of female descent, so that people of identical genetic relationship to previous Jewish generations may or may not be automatically Jewish depending on which line of ancestry the relationship runs.
However one gauges the connection of the Jewish people to Israel, percent of genes that came from around there seems like a weird way to do it. It's not, as far as I know, the basis of anyone's claims to the area. (Even if you look at it as a modified version of inheritance, there's no requirement that an heir be a genetic descendant, or that genetic descendants be heirs.) There's no serious question that modern Judaism is a community with a continuous history tracing back to pre-diaspora Israel/Judah/Judea.
Whether that in itself functions as a right to that land is a reasonable question, but it's one that was asked and answered in 1948. (Taking into account other factors in addition, of course.) That answer may no longer be convincing to some, but if we start disestablishing countries based on how and why they they began, I'm not sure where we're going to stop. (Compared to "it's empty except for all these Indians, so we might as well take it," Israel has a pretty solid legal title.)
D. replied: However one gauges the connection of the Jewish people to Israel, percent of genes that came from around there seems like a weird way to do it. It's not, as far as I know, the basis of anyone's claims to the area.
As I understand it, claims to territory are usually based, as you say, on legal inheritance and continuous occupation. On those criteria, the Israelis don't have much of a claim to most of the territory they're occupying, so it has to be based on some other factors. I've never been completely clear on what those are. Whenever I mention that other peoples (however defined) with historic possession of a territory aren't considered to have a legitimate claim to it anymore I've gotten, as I said, my ass handed to me.
But the history of the Jews really is unique in the world and, as I said, any attempt to relate it to that of other groups is going to founder somewhere. The closest analogy I can think of is the Armenians and they still haven't gotten Ararat back.
M. replied: Whenever I mention that other peoples (however defined) with historic possession of a territory aren't considered to have a legitimate claim to it anymore I've gotten, as I said, my ass handed to me.
The most recent historic possessors of Israel's territory prior to its establishment were the Ottomans (unless you're counting the League of Nations or the Brits). Its successor state, AFAIK, hasn't shown any recent problems with the existence of Israel. (Not that I'd expect them to have much of a brief for giving land back to its previous possessors, though there are probably a number of Greeks, particularly of Ionian ancestry, who wish they did.)
There are reasonable questions about what sorts of financial compensation, if any, are owed to people displaced by changing borders. (*If* said people choose to avail themselves of legal means of conflict resolution. If they resort to arms first, then arms will generally settle the matter. Cf. CSA sympathizers who make a big issue of the legal right of secession. The choice to assert the right by firing on Ft. Sumter rather than by bringing a Supreme Court action was the South's, and once you choose to try your cause by war I don't think you can go back to legal action just because the war went badly for you.) I note that thus far, we've rather limited our interest in compensating the previous owners of our own territory. In any case, changing the borders back is pretty much a nonstarter everywhere else in the world. Germany isn't getting East Prussia back. Oklahoma isn't going to be turned back into Indian Territory. Independent Granada isn't going to reappear on the map of Iberia. Despite grave temptation from all the relevant countries, it seems unlikely that we're going to put Kurdistan on the map either. Why is this one slip of land subject to so much more scrutiny than all the other involuntary border changes and population movements in the last couple of centuries?
D. replied: Why is this one slip of land subject to so much more scrutiny than all the other involuntary border changes and population movements in the last couple of centuries?
Probably because people are dying daily because of it. The Basques' grievances at being incorporated into the Spanish state used to get a lot more airtime when they were blowing up things regularly. Likewise Northern Ireland. Compensation for displaced Germans was a very emotional topic after the fall of the Wall and has had a huge impact on post-Communist relations between Germany and the Czech Republic and Poland. The organisations of Sudeten Germans, Danubian Swabians, East Prussians, etc. have powerful lobbies, but they're not in the habit of denotating themselves on buses, so their actions aren't reported on in the USA. (Also, they're quietly dying off, whereas Palestine, with its pre-modern demographics, is producing more hotheaded teenagers every day.) Issues of self-determination and territorial claims in ex-Yugoslavia pushed the Middle East out of the headlines for a time due to their higher body counts; I suspect they will again when the simmering conflict there inevitably turns hot.
None of these other issues has become a cause célèbre in the West (and I think you have your own suspicions why that is), but that doesn't mean they've been forgotten and ignored.
Mr. Bell Jar said: As sound as Bartov's argument is in sum, in fine he does need to deal with the fact that Zionism did, in fact, equal ethnic cleansing, in the aftermath of the 1948 War (see, for example, Binny Morris' books, and his recent interview with Haaretz, IIRC, which was all over the web), and in the minds of many of the "Eretz Israel" wackjobs it still does.
It's also important to remember that ethnic cleansing does not necessarily equal genocide: there was no genocide of Germans during their ethnic cleansing by Czechs and Poles from the Sudetenland and Silesia in 1946, and I don't think the evidence supports genocide against the Palestinians in 1948, so "Zionism = Nazism" is still completely invalid, not to mention obscene. (Although there is a disturbing trickle of Nazi-fascination in some right-wing Israeli circles, it's not remotely representative of the Israeli polity, and it's nothing compared to the full-blown Hitler-worship in mainstream Arab culture.)
Any comparisons with, say, our Indian Removal policies in the American West I'll leave for another day.