Antony Lerman

JFJHR Public Meeting 21 March 2005 Hampstead Town Hall

 

I am not a Middle East expert; Iíve not been involved in Jewish-Palestinian dialogue; nor have I ever been a member of groups like British Friends of Peace now; and my Jewish concerns in my professional life have been with the future of Jewish life in Europe and the challenges and threats to that future, such as antisemitism. But like so many people, for decades my life has been intertwined with the history of the state of Israelóon an intensely personal and existential level but also a political one. And the views I now hold about the future of I-P have developed over a long period in which I sought to understand the meaning of my personal experience and develop some objective understanding of the nature of the I-P conflict and then try to reconcile the two. So my remarks today are a kind of interim report on this process. I make no claim to unique wisdom about these matters, but because of the continuing direct impact that the state of Israel has on our lives, with members of its government ever eager to speak on behalf of Jews worldwide, I assert my right to publicly express views on this subject and to reject utterly the notion that if you donít live there, you have no right to speak out on the countryís future. And for me whatís paramount is the need to try to speak the truth about what is just and right and not to be led by political calculation, appeals to loyalty and solidarity, fear of giving succour to enemies and so on.

 

What I want to do is very briefly set out my vision of how the future should look for Israel and Palestine and then give some explanation as to why I reach those conclusions. I donít intend to dwell on the current political situation. All Iíd say at this point is I see no good reason to get swept up in the mood of optimism. Sharonís Gaza disengagement seems to me more about creating conditions in which Israel can hold on to as much West Bank territory as possible and prevent a truly independent, viable and geographically contiguous Palestine from coming into being.

 

My preferred option is for the eventual evolution of one Israel-Palestine stateópossibly in a federal or confederal structureóa state of all its citizens, in which Palestinian and Jewish nationalisms are superseded by a civic patriotism based on the recognition of the legitimacy of the historical narratives of the two peoples and the reality of the presence of living communities of those peoples in the state. Israelís law of return, which exclusively favours Jewish immigration, would be repealed and the issue of Palestinian refugees dealt with on the basis of a recognition of the right of return. Written into the revised constitution of the state would be safeguards for the continued cultural and religious distinctiveness of all national, cultural and faith groups, but also principles designed to guide the state towards social and civic cohesiveness. Groupsósuch as Haredim and Islamic fundamentalistsówho wish to maintain separateness, will have the right to do so, but they will also have to abide by certain human rights based laws and values which are common to all, and these will carry with them certain duties and obligations.

 

To reach this point, any attempt to completely rewrite the entire history of the last 120 years would have to be abandoned. It will, however, be necessary to right some historical ëmistakesí or ëwrongsí, on the basis of compromise and mutual respect: for example, the situation of Palestinian refugees (as I already mentioned) and the acceptance by the Palestinians of the national aspirations of Jews in Palestine.

 

I reached these conclusions after looking again at many things, but in particular after (1) reassessing my once extremely strong Zionist convictions, (2) looking realistically at Zionismís successes and failures and (3) growing increasingly aware of the importance and primacy of human rights and universal values, and I want to say a few words about each of these. I apologise if this doesnít seem to quite square with the title of the evening, but Iíve chosen to deal with the issue in this way because, if there is to be a brighter future for the two people, we need to tell the truth about the past, starting with our won.

 

1.            Reassessing Zionist convictions

Over more than 20 years, I have moved a long way away from my early Zionist convictions, such that I start now from a recognition that the competing nationalisms of Jews and Palestinians are ultimately, like all nationalisms, deeply flawed. Those flaws can lead to disastrous consequences: the development of racist ideologies, tribalization, the denial of human rights, oppression, extra-judicial assassination and, ultimately, genocide. And many of these consequences have come about.

 

While it is perfectly understandable that Zionism should have developed as an answer to the failure of emancipation and the rise of antisemitism, it nevertheless required the acceptance of certain simple myths in order, eventually, to assert mass appeal. The central myth was that Palestine was ëa land without a people for a people without a landí. A second myth was the biblical claim to the land. And a third was that ërealí Zionism was humanistic, socialist, progressive, enlightened and fair.

 

The first myth we know to be nonsense, and many early Zionist leaders knew this too. And we have further proof in the work of the new Israeli historians who revealed that ethnic cleansing was an integral part of building the Jewish state. The second, the biblical claim, was endorsed by secular as well as religious Zionists and its inherent dangers only came home to roost after 1967 and the triumph of Zionist messianism. The third myth is based on the notion that the liberal form of nationalism will always prevail. But the ugly face of Zionism, its dark side, was always there (as Jacqueline Rose shows in her new book The Question of Zion). That it has prevailed in recent decades was not inevitable. It came about partly because of Labour Zionismís self-delusion that it could not be challenged.

 

2.            Zionism: successes and failures

We need to be objective about Zionismís flaws, but the fact is that Zionism eventually became a movement which captured the imagination of most Jews, of much of the world and created a Jewish state. Indeed, this was its historic achievement, and itís true that Israel is a central factor in the Jewish identity of the majority of Jews worldwide. But Zionism had other aims. How far were these achieved?

 

In fact there is deep ambivalence among Zionists as to the success of the Zionist project. Many Zionists are the first to portray the state as weak and vulnerable, susceptible to destruction by the Arab world. Theyíre in the forefront of claiming that antisemitism is rampaging round the world. They never cease telling us that Israel is being delegitimized in international forumsóas if these things are supposed to prove the Zionist case.

 

The real reason for ambivalence is because, on too many counts, Zionism has been a failure. Take 6 things Zionism and the establishment of the state were meant to do: Eliminate antisemitism, provide Jews in Israel and elsewhere with security, preserve Jewishness, secure a Jewish majority in perpetuity, create a secular Jewish ethos for the state, become a cultural-spiritual centre for the Jewish people.

 

1. Antisemitism has not disappeared; arguably, Israel has helped provoke it. 2. Incessant wars and mounting terrorism have produced more insecurity. 3. The Jewishness of Israelis is the subject of anguished concern among many in Israel. 4. Israel is so far now from achieving a Jewish majority in perpetuity, that many see it as the principal crisis facing the Jewish state. Some argue that demography is what finally persuaded Sharon to scale down his settlement aspirations. 5. While it is true that most Israelis are de facto secular, the ethos of the state is far more bound up with the normative implications orthodoxy has for public policy and the political realisation of the legacy of biblical promises than with secularism. 6. Finally, the centrality of Israel as a source of cultural and spiritual renewal is patchy at best.

 

For very many people, part of the seduction of Zionism was the idea that the Jewish state would be different; that in the way it would operate it would show itself to be on a higher moral plane. A number of things fed into this vision. First, the Jewish mission to be a ëlight unto the nationsí would be epitomised in the stateís conduct of its foreign relations. Second, being forged out of the most extreme and radical evilóthe HolocaustóIsrael was to be evilís absolute opposite: it would be impossible for a Jewish state to behave in a way that abused anyoneís human rights. Third, the kibbutz movement and the socialist ideals on which the kibbutz was said to be based were seen as synonymous with the ethos and values of the state.

 

All of these normative expectations have proved unfounded. Yet they remain central to the still popular master narrative of Zionism and the Jewish state.

 

Working backwards, while kibbutz values may have been seen as unimpeachable (an arguable proposition at the very least), the kibbutz movement went into decline and as Israeli society developed, it ceased to supply the dominant national ethos. Yet the notion of the significance of the kibbutz remains deeply embedded in the Jewish psyche. Last year, a letter I received from the London Jewish Cultural Centre inviting me to go on a 10-day tour of Israel for £1,100 said: ëTime will be spent on a Kibbutz, which is considered to be the crowning achievement of the Modern State.í

 

From all the objective evidence, it is abundantly clear that being born in extreme adversity, with the consequences of radical evil seared into Israeli and Jewish consciousness, is no guarantee that the victims will not perpetrate evil acts themselves. The slogan ëNever againí has come to mean ëNever again will Jews be killed by German Nazis in Europeíóas a talisman against genocide it has been meaningless and has not prevented Israel from perpetrating human rights abuses.

 

Finally, Israel has precious little to show by way of carrying out the mission of the Jews. What it has pursued on a state level, in terms of its international relations and bilateral and multilateral relationships, has been in its own state interests, furthering the cause of state building, achieving security, creating alliances in the face of Arab hostility. No moral pattern is traceable.

 

I would argue that it was not inevitable that Zionism would rack up all of these failures, although some were the result of internal contradictions and would have been difficult to avoid. The point is that with such a negative balance sheet, superseding Zionism makes a lot of sense.

 

3.         The importance and primacy of human rights and universal values<o:p></o:p>

The conclusions Iíve described were reached over more than 20 years; realising that Zionism and state policy were increasingly in conflict with human rights principles and universal values is something I have only come to far more recently.

 

Israel owed its international legitimacy to the embryonic international human rights based system developed after the Second World War as a response to the horrors perpetrated by Nazism. And in the early days of the state, Zionism was seen in the West as a progressive cause. But in practice, state policy and Zionism followed a narrow nationalistic path. Jews took their destiny into their own hands. According to Zionism, centuries of being the ëworld peopleí, contributing monotheism and Jewish values to civilization, had ultimately brought Jews nothing but death and destruction. Zionism said: Im tirzu, ein zu agadaóif you will it, it is no dream. In other words, what is right is what the people wants and, acting collectively, it can get.<o:p></o:p>

 

I believe that for very many peopleómyself includedóthis ethnocentrism was hidden, but for others a deepening disconnection between Zionism and Jewish universalism, so closely linked to progressive causes, was always apparent. For many Zionists and Israelis, that universalism is associated with the weakness displayed by the Jews of the Diaspora, which led to their destruction in the Holocaust. After the Holocaust, most of the Zionist movement revolted against this image of the Jew as possessed of a universal conscience. If you want to determine your own history, you have to be ready to compromise your ethicsówhich means forging the nation out of your own hands regardless of what anyone else says.

 

After 1967, the eventual success of the Israeli right and the revival of ultra-orthodoxy ripped the mask off Zionist ethnocentricity. The messianism at the heart of Zionism eventually became the driving force behind Israeli government policy, justifying settlements, the curtailment of the rights of Palestinians, the control of water supplies and, ultimately, for many, the need for transfer. Fulfilment of Godís promise was everything. The messianic idea was Jewish dominion over the whole of Eretz Israel and had nothing to do with the perfection of human behaviour.

 

Whether the Palestinians intended this to happen or not, Zionist/Jewish ethnocentrism was revealed in all its nakedness from 2000 onwards. The provocationóin the form of suicide bombingsówas extreme; anything more extreme is difficult to imagine, though not impossible. And in my view, a terrible ëpolicyí failure on the part of the Palestinian leadership. The Israeli governmentís response was not only harsh, not only undertaken with at best a grudging acknowledgement of the need to protect human rights, it was also fuelled by an attitude that said: ëWe will effectively do what we like, because the world is unfairly against us anyway, didnít care last time our nation was in danger of destruction, is infected with the virus of antisemitism and cannot be trusted to give us a fair hearing.í

 

That is not to say that in Zionism there is a predisposition always to deal with others violently. Rather that others will be dealt with fairly as long as they accept the legitimacy of the Zionist national project as Zionists so define it. The language of human rights applies to Jewsó the favoured formulation of many Jews and Israelis is that ëantisemitism is the litmus test of the state of human rights in any societyíóbut by definition, whatever Jews do, they cannot abuse human rights. And we cannot do so because, first, we are the ultimate victims, and second, protecting the national project supersedes human rights values when the two appear to be in conflict.

 

The Oslo agreements were deeply flawed, but the social, cultural, political and economic atmosphere that developed in Israel and burned so brightly for however short a period at the time gives hope that a post-Zionist future is possible and desirable. In many ways, I suppose, that period of post-Zionism was a kind of false dawn, because it came at the expense of going far enough in understanding what reconciliation with the Palestinians would need to mean in order for it to work. It was, if you like, post-Zionism on the cheap. But in 2003, I was told by Israeli Arabs that the Rabin period was a time of genuine hope for the Arab-Israeli community, which suggests that the conditions for reconciliation (and truth) can be recreated.

 

But I am convinced that the vision I have set out for the future of Israel-Palestine will only come when Israel realises that the ethnocentric path, the path of ethno-religious homogeneity, which can only be followed at the expense of human rights and universal values, is the wrong one. Itís a realization that the Palestinians must reach too, but itís not something that can be achieved simultaneously or negotiated to occur at the same time. Such engineering would result only in the kind of stalemate Arik Sharon has exploited since coming to power. Israel must begin its own journey beyond Zionism. There is nothing to wait for.