Israel-Palestine Part I: Criticism of Israel

I haven't waded into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for a while, mostly because in relative terms, not much has been happening. Sharon's government is looking mighty shaky with today's resignation of two ministers which eliminates Sharon's majority (New York Times). I have written in the past about what I see as the failures of the so called "two-state" solution and why I don't believe it's desirable, practical or even possible. Until recently, I had never read or heard anyone else agree with that assessment. However, listening to Air America this past week, I discovered a scholar who agrees with me. This entry begins a series of entries I will be writing about this subject over the next few days. I don't feel that I can do it justice without taking a long time to think about everything, and in any case if I were to do it in a single entry it would be far too long. In order to engage in this discussion it is necessary to be critical of all sides. While it is perfectly acceptable to criticize the Palestinian Authority/Hamas/Islamic Jihad/Hiz B'Allah/etc., critics of Israel have found themselves unfairly labeled as either a) anti-semites or b) "self-hating" depending on whether they are Jewish or not. This first part of the series addresses this serious problem in the discourse.

I wanted to avoid using the controversial Michael Neumann to make a point about what is and what isn't anti-semitism. However, since his bias is well known and because he does make some good points, I'm going to use him anyway:

"Antisemitism", properly and narrowly speaking, doesn't mean hatred of semites; that is to confuse etymology with definition. It means hatred of Jews. But here, immediately, we come up against the venerable shell-game of Jewish identity: "Look! We're a religion! No! a race! No! a cultural entity! Sorry--a religion!" When we tire of this game, we get suckered into another: "anti-Zionism is antisemitism! " quickly alternates with: "Don't confuse Zionism with Judaism! How dare you, you antisemite!" -Michael Neumann

His tone is awfully patronizing, but what he calls a "shell-game," the particular difficulty of nailing down and defining Judaism, is a real problem when trying to figure out what anti-semitism is. A reasonable definition of anti-semitism is hatred or violence towards Jews merely because they are Jewish. I don't want to use any more Neumann quotes -- he goes too far in some cases -- but he does make a good point that I want to articulate here. In America especially, powerful political lobbying groups have brainwashed the public into believing that criticism of Israel is anti-semitism.

First of all, this is just plain silly. It would be anti-semitic to criticize Israel just because it is a Jewish state. It is not anti-semitic to fairly criticize what Israel does. However, apart from that obvious distinction, calling criticism of Israel anti-semitism is actually dangerous to Jews. Much criticism of Israel is justified, but if we allow anti-semitism to include criticism of Israel, then that means that anti-semitism is sometimes justified. This is a slippery slope, and certainly no one wants to argue that anti-semitism is sometimes acceptable, yet that is exactly what it means to call criticism of Israel anti-semitism.

The next issue is that Jewish critics of Israel are labeled as "self-hating" Jews, which is such rubbish that it's barely worth addressing. It's the same ridiculousness that's being shoved down the throats of American citizens who are told that criticizing the President is "un-American." David Siegel describes the hypocrisy of the "self-hating" meme in this article on Common Dreams. The fact of the matter -- and I've addressed this before -- is that those who label critics as "self-hating" or "un-American" are dangerous fascists. Those who use this tactic have also been known to issue death threats, and it's as unacceptable as it is ridiculous to use this kind of reasoning.

The third and final problem in the Israeli-Palestinian discourse is that whenever anything is written that is critical of Israeli policy, there is a surefire way to change the subject and put the author on the defensive. All that anyone has to do to blunt the criticism is to loudly and viciously attack the author for not including a statement affirming Israel's "fundamental right to exist." This tactic is even sillier than the last. If I write an unfavorable book review, I don't need to include an affirmation of the author's fundamental right to exist. Nor do I when I criticize George W. Bush. Nor should I have to if I criticize Israeli policy.

The truth is that not every paragraph written about the topic has to be a completely comprehensive examination of both sides. If I want to write something critical of one side or the other, I can do that in good conscience without needing to write something twice as long to include iniquities on both sides. This is just another means of obscuring valid criticism and it's not just used for individual authors, it is the prime way that the U.S. justifies its vetoes of virtually every UN resolution involving Israel -- they insist that any condemnation of Israel's actions also include a condemnation of Palestinian actions. In the same manner, this is just silly. Separate resolutions are what is called for, not cramming everything into one.

It's a sad testimony on the state of the discourse that I even need to write all of this before going on with my analysis. However, to avoid confusion I have defined terms and hopefully set the stage for my coming discussions of why the two-state solution is doomed to failure